Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

====Los placeres prohibidos (1931)====

The poems gathered in this and the previous collection came to Cernuda fully formed. The poems that eventually got published were the same as the first drafts, which was very different from his experience with his first two collections.<ref name="Cernuda637">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 637</ref> It is a book of love, rebellion and beauty.<ref name=Villena19/>

The poet's homosexuality is made defiantly manifest in this collection. However, the title of the work suggests that there were other "forbidden pleasures" and he explores various ways of defying the norms of bourgeois behaviour.  It is the product of an intensive period of literary production between April and June 1931, when Alfonso XIII abdicated and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.<ref name="Harris notes to Un rio85">Harris notes to Un río etc p 85</ref>  In "Diré cómo nacisteis", Cernuda launches a war cry against a society in decay that represses and imprisons people who transgress the social norms of love.  And in the next poem, "Telarañas cuelgan de la razón", he sets up the other major mood of the collection, an elegiac mood of sorrow.<ref name="Harris notes to Un rio89">Harris notes to Un río etc p 89</ref> The poems in this book draw a distinction between the poet's freedom of imagination and the accepted rules of life that confine and limit his freedom.<ref name=Connell205>Connell p 205</ref>  The predominant tone is one of desolation, recalling the transitory nature of love and the emptiness it leaves in its wake.  In "De qué país", Cernuda looks at a newborn child and depicts the betrayal of his sense of wonder and innocence by the way the adult world imposes artificial codes of behaviour and a sense of guilt when the code is transgressed.  It is a theme that is explored many times in his oeuvre.