Electronic Bilingual Review       Nº 6     August 1996
Luis Alberto Machado's A song to Woman by Eduardo Casanova
There are not many examples of men linked to power who have been able to do good poetry. Among the most ancient one finds Hadrian, emperor Publius Elius Adrianus, born in Italica, in the old Roman Betica, quite close to Seville, in the year 76 of the Christian Era, and who died in Baia, not far from Naples, in the year 138. He was, indeed, the most powerful man of his times but he nevertheless had the time and the talent to write, shortly before his death, one of Roman literature’s gems (Animula vagula, blandula, hospes comesque corporis… ) a brief poem masterfully dealing with the nostalgia of time gone, with those things to become that, many years later, would be touched also by the other Spaniard Jorge Manrique in his Coplas dedicated to his dead father. A third Spaniard is the other notorious case of a man of power and a poet: Alfonso X the Wise, born in Toledo in 1221 and who died in Seville in 1824. Four hundred of the wise king’s Cantigas, in Galician language, are known. Among them Cantigas de Santa Maria, obviously dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There are those who would like to add to this list of two King Shlomo, the king Solomon, perhaps the greatest of all kings of Israel, who lived and died during the tenth century before Christ, but the King Solomon’s Chants are anonymous, an reference to the great king is due to the fact that they were written as songs dedicated to the perfect union between man and woman, during his kingdom. However, in order to briefly comment a Song to woman by Luis Alberto Machado (Editorial Poiesis, Caracas, Venezuela, 1996, 120 non numbered pages), it is worth recalling not Hadrian nor Alfonso X, although in Machado’s work there is lyricism and mysticism at the same time, but rather, precisely, king Solomon, who was not a poet. Simply because in the forty nine poems of Song to woman, the imprint of the biblical poems is evident, although there is not a single iota of imitation. These are forty nine poems with immense beauty, where the motive, the woman, emerges from all sides, omnipresent, as light, as the permanent sound of the permanent accompaniment to the enamored poet’s songs. As from the first five verses ( Tú estabas allí / al principio, / cuando Dios creó / los cielos y la tierra [You were there/ at the beginning, when God created / the heavens / and the Earth.] Poem 1) there is the presence of a combination of love and mysticism, of the singing to the woman and God’s adoration, that the poet prints on each and every one of the poems offered to the reader in this book. In many cases, he mixes aphorisms with metaphors that the reader must decode to get to the depth of his ideas. There is a most beautiful sublimated eroticism in some of the poems, reminding us of certain of the Spanish golden century’s figures óand we once again find the Spain of Hadrian and Alfonso the Wise. But it is not eroticism by itself, but rather a clear sense of the transcending ( Ven conmigo / a sembrar / las semillas de mañana. / Incendiaremos la tierra / con los frutos / de la vida. [Come with me / to sow / the seeds of tomorrow. / We shall burn the ground / with the fruit / of life]. Poem 4.) sometimes fixed on recurrent ideas ( Todos los caminos / pasan / por las venas/ de tus pies [All roads / go / through the veins / of your feet. Poem 18. Te vi venir / desde el principio / con la claridad de la noche / sobre tus huellas. [ I saw you coming / from the beginning / under the clarity of night / on your steps. Poem 22) until it becomes plural ( No dejemos / ninguna de nuestras obras / atrás. [ Let us not leave / any of our works / behind, Poem 37) to reach the paroxysm of offering his own sacrifice. ( Y desde ya / aquí / y ahora / frente al Diablo clamo / que yo / no quiero salvarme / si no estamos todos. [ And as yet / here / and now / facing the Devil I claim / that I / wish no salvation / if we are not all saved.] Poem 44) as a clear waiver of individualism, of an egoism that seems to impose itself nowadays, all of which could be summarized in a single verse, that of Juntos enterraremos a la muerte [we shall jointly bury death] at the end of poem 47 óit could have been the end of the set of poems if it were not for the reiteration in poem 49 and the coda, placed there to displace any doubt that the poet wants to evoke the Bible. In summary, Song to a Woman, by Luis Alberto Machado, is an excellent set of poems, done by a man who has been very close to power, who has been and can be powerful, but who has preferred lyricism, the so called useless lyricism that serves to prove that the human being is not a simple simian, as a means of expression.