Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

====Con las horas contadas (1950–1956)====

This collection was started in Mount Holyoke during the winter of 1950 and completed in Mexico. One of the most noteworthy things about this book is that it contains a group of 16 poems - "Poemas para un cuerpo" - about an intensely physical affair he had with an unidentified man in Mexico. The title of the collection suggests not merely Cernuda's obsession with the passing of time but also the sense of strangeness he felt whilst living this amorous adventure - an old man in love as he describes himself.<ref name="Cernuda658">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 658</ref> As already stated, this was one of the happiest periods in his life. Some of the poems refer to the experiences he felt during the affair but the majority are reflections after the affair ended, attempts to explain and fix this experience of intense love.  There are obvious parallels with ''Donde habite el olvido'' but these later poems are not bitter, resentful or disillusioned.  Cernuda "is primarily concerned to investigate the relationship between himself and the experience of love, so much so in fact that the loved one has only a secondary importance in the poems".<ref name="Harris: a study140">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 140</ref> However, he is, unlike Serafín Fernández Ferro or Stanley Richardson, present in the poems rather than a shadow or absence.<ref name="Villena 39">Villena: intro to Las Nubes p 39</ref> The poems lack sensuality. Poem "IV Sombra de mí", for example, "is a meditation on the relationship between the lover and the beloved. The loved one is again the visible image of the lover's desire but nonetheless necessary for without him love could not have been exteriorised."<ref name="Harris: a study143">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 143</ref> What we get is a sense of the poet's gratitude for having been given the chance to experience love. It is interesting that although Cernuda later expressed his affection for these poems he acknowledges that they give cause to one of the most serious objections that can be made to his work: that he was not always able to maintain the distance between the man who suffers and the poet who creates.<ref name="Cernuda660"/>

The bulk of the poems in the collection are shorter than in previous books and start to incorporate assonance more frequently in an attempt to concentrate the thematic material rather than explore it at length and also to seem more purely lyrical, even though these urges were not the result of a conscious decision.<ref name=Cernuda658 />

Among the other interesting poems is the one that opens the collection, "Aguila y rosa", a very sober, restrained account of the unfortunate marriage of Philip II and Mary Tudor, and Philip's stay in Britain. At times, it could be that Cernuda is projecting his own feelings onto the king. Brief and ultimately tragic as their married life was, at least the love she experienced gave Mary some recompense for her unhappy life.<ref name="Harris: a study138">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 138</ref> With this poem, Cernuda completed a trilogy of works about Philip II. The first was "El ruiseñor sobre la piedra" in ''Las nubes'', followed by "Silla del rey" from ''Vivir sin estar viviendo''. Both of these poems evoke the building of the monastery-palace at [[El Escorial]]. In the first poem, the monastery becomes a symbol of the visionary, idealist, eternal Spain that Cernuda loved.<ref name="Villena 131">Villena: notes to Las Nubes p 131</ref> It is an image of beauty, the creation of a sensibility that despises the practical and is diametrically opposed to the utilitarian environment of Glasgow, the place where he lives in exile. The nightingale singing its song, just to please itself, is a symbol for Cernuda the poet and it becomes fused with his conception of El Escorial.<ref name="Harris: a study100-1">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 100-101</ref> "Silla del rey" depicts Philip watching the construction of his palace from his seat in the hills above. Cernuda takes as a starting point the king's thoughts of the building as the expression of his faith and centralising political ideas. This develops into a reflection on his work, time and society and leads to a declaration that he is creating a haven from the world, protected by spiritual power from temporal change. Reality and desire have become one. The king is an outlet for Cernuda himself.<ref name="Harris: a study102">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 102</ref>

"El elegido" is an objective account of the choosing, preparation and killing of an Aztec sacrificial victim. It is recounted in very simple language but it clearly picks up on the thoughts behind the soliloquy in ''Invocaciones''. The poem presents an allegory of the choosing, beguilement and final destruction of the poet by life or the "daimonic" power.<ref name=Connell208 />