Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

====Donde habite el olvido (1932–1933)====

This book resulted from a love affair that ended badly.  When the collection was first published, by the ''Signo'' publishing house, nobody noticed the significance of a large "S" in the form of a snake on the inside back cover.<ref name="Taravillo1303">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 303</ref>  Derek Harris identified the other man as Serafín Fernández Ferro<ref name="Poesia completa" /> a young man from a poor family in [[La Coruña]] who led a picaresque life and insinuated himself into the artistic circles of Madrid in early 1931, aged 16.  Biographical data for him is scanty, fragmented and often confusing.  In 1945, he appeared in [[Malraux]]'s film [[Espoir: Sierra de Teruel]] and then emigrated to Mexico, where he died in 1954.<ref name="Taravillo1238">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 238</ref> Cernuda probably met him in April 1931 and fell head over heels in love. This led to the flood of creativity that resulted in ''Los placeres prohibidos'', the majority of which was written between April 13 and 30.<ref name="Taravillo1229">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 229</ref> The relationship quickly soured. Serafín was both promiscuous and bisexual, which led to jealousy on the part of Cernuda, he used to ask his lover for money and was generally manipulative. There were occasional violent rows between them.<ref name="Taravillo1257">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 257</ref> Some of the atmosphere of their relationship is described in "Aprendiendo olvido", one of the prose poems included in ''Ocnos''. By June 1932, their relationship was finished.<ref name="Taravillo1259">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 259</ref>

In later years, Cernuda was embarrassed by the candour with which he wrote about it in ''Donde habite'', attributing this to the slowness of his emotional development, and admitted that this section of his oeuvre was one of the least-satisfying for him.<ref name="Cernuda639">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 639</ref>

In this collection, Cernuda steps away from surrealism, feeling that what was lying around hidden in the depths of his subconscious had been dredged sufficiently. Instead of what he had come to see as the artifice and triviality of hermetic images deriving from the flow of thoughts through the poet's mind, he turned to the example of the 19thc. poet [[Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer]], who produced tightly controlled poetry on the subject of lost love.<ref name="Cernuda639" /> Cernuda continued to eschew rhyme and assonance but, like Bécquer's ''Rimas'' the stanzas are short and self-contained and their language is restrained.<ref name=Connell206>Connell p 206</ref> Sometimes, the poems return to the world of the ''Primeras poesías''.

The first poem alludes obliquely to Serafín, the archangel who is named explicitly in a later poem "Mi arcángel". The ''leit-motiv'' of the angel recurs in "II" and in "XII", among others.<ref name="Taravillo1258">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 258</ref> In "III", the theme is the emptiness left by the passing of love - just as in "Telarañas cuelgan de la razón" from ''Los placeres prohibidos'' - but rendered in a much simpler, more lyrical fashion. "IV" shows how the dreams and aspirations of youth are destroyed when they soar too high - probably a reference to the myth of Icarus. "VII" returns to the enclosed world of the early poems, suggesting that despite all his experiences the poet is still an unfulfilled dreamer. "XII" suggests that love alone makes life real. It persists as a universal force even though it might have died in a particular individual.<ref name=Connell206 /> The ideas behind surrealism are still present, although the presentation of them is markedly different.

This love affair had a lasting effect on Cernuda. He alludes to it in "Apologia pro vita sua" in ''Como quien espera el alba'' and also in a short story written in 1937, right in the midst of the Civil War - "Sombras en el salón".<ref name="Taravillo1253">Taravillo Luis Cernuda vol 1 Años españoles p 253</ref>