Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

==Works in prose==
===Prose poems===
====Ocnos (1940–1956)====
Cernuda did not enjoy his life in Glasgow. He felt exiled both from happiness and love and began to feel a yearning for his childhood days. He remembered the South as a lost paradise.<ref name="Villena introduction35">Villena intro to edition of Las Nubes p 35</ref> It was in 1940 that the contrasts between the sordid and ugly city of Glasgow where he was living and his childhood memories of Seville inspired him to start to write brief prose poems to try to exorcise the tensions building up inside him. As the collection built up, he cast about for a title, finally finding one that pleased him in a work by Goethe. Ocnos was a mythical Roman figure who twisted reeds into ropes only to discover that his donkey methodically ate them. Yet he persisted in his efforts in order to give himself something to do and perhaps learn something. It struck Cernuda that there was a fitting irony - the creator continually trying to create and the donkey symbolising time the destroyer, standing in the place of the reading public, an unwittingly destructive consumer. The first edition was published in London in 1942 and consisted of 31 pieces. Cernuda continued mining the seam of work that writing prose poetry opened up for him and brought out a second edition in Madrid in 1949, with 48 pieces. The first edition had focused solely on Cernuda's childhood and adolescence in Seville. In the second edition, he gave the pieces a biographical sequence and moved beyond his life in Seville. The final edition had 63 pieces and was published in Mexico in 1963.<ref name="Poesía completa823-826">Luis Cernuda: Poesía completa Notes p823-826</ref>

The first group of poems overlapped with the writing of ''Como quien espera el alba'' and this was obviously one of those periods of inspired creativity, such as when he was writing "Un río, un amor" and ''Los placeres prohibidos''. Exploration of his formative years was becoming a major preoccupation and there are overlaps between his poems and prose poems. The clearest example is "Jardín antiguo", which is both the title of a poem in ''Las nubes'' and a prose poem in ''Ocnos''. Both are inspired by the gardens of the Alcázar of Seville. In the poem, an ageing man dreams of returning to the walled garden, with its fountain, lemon trees, magnolias and birdsong. He dreams of the return of youth with its pangs of desire, knowing full well that they will not come back. In ''Ocnos'' we get a more expansive description of the garden and at the same time a deeper reflection on his connection to that place, the sense of rapture that he felt as a boy there.<ref name="Harris A Study91">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 91</ref> It concludes with a statement of the gap between reality and desire: <blockquote>Más tarde habías de comprender que ni la acción ni el goce podrías vivirlos con la perfección que tenían en tus sueños al borde de la fuente. Y el día que comprendiste esa triste verdad, aunque estabas lejos y en tierra extraña, deseaste volver a aquel jardín y sentarte de nuevo al borde de la fuente, para soñar otra vez la juventud pasada.

(Later you had to understand that neither action nor enjoyment could be lived with the perfection they had in your dreams at the edge of the fountain. And the day you understood that sad truth, even though you were far away and in a strange land, you wished to return to that garden and sit again on the edge of the fountain, to dream again of past youth.)</blockquote>
John Taylor writes,"As [Cernuda] recalls loci of ephemeral harmony, increases his knowledge and self-knowledge, and crafts his ruminations, he hints that these introspective and poetic labours are all in vain. The donkey is already chewing the beautiful reed-woven rope."<ref name="Taylor18">Taylor: Into the Heart of European Poetry p 18</ref>

While the predominant mood of the collection is sad, imbued with a sense of loss and nostalgia, there is also room for the occasional celebration as in "El estío" and "El amante", where he recalls the sensual delights of a holiday in Málaga in 1933, frolicking on the beach and in the sea, walking naked under his white robe with his friends and, in particular, his lover Gerardo Carmona.<ref name=Taravillo277>Taravillo: Cernuda Años españoles p 277</ref> Apart from the short-lived affairs with Serafín Fernández Ferro and Stanley Richardson, Carmona is the only other person we know about with whom Cernuda had a lasting affair in the 1930s.<ref name=Taravillo303>Taravillo: Cernuda Años españoles p 303</ref> Again, these prose poems share an affinity of mood and subject-matter with a poem written around the same time, "Elegía anticipada", included in ''Como quien espera el alba'', in which he declares that their love has broken out of the prisons of time.

When his thoughts turn to Glasgow, in "Ciudad caledonia", he describes his hatred of the place, its monotony, vulgarity and ugliness and his dislike of the utilitarian, puritanical people. It was like a prison, useless in his life apart from work, parching and consuming what youthfulness he had left.<ref name="Taylor17">Taylor: Into the Heart of European Poetry p 17</ref> One prose poem, "Escrito en el agua" (Written in the water), was excluded from the second edition of ''Ocnos'' by the censors in Franco's Spain - presumably because it contains blasphemous ideas - "God does not exist." He had the reputation of holding Communist views, of being anti-Franco, of living a lifestyle and holding views repugnant to the regime - a homosexual who was anti-religion and anti-family values,<ref name=Taravillo2218>Taravillo: Cernuda Años de exilio p 218</ref> so his writings were always likely to come under close scrutiny from the censors. Cernuda himself decided not to include it in the third edition.<ref name="Epistolario452">Epistolario Letter to José Luis Cano June 1948 p 452</ref> Taylor points out that the title is a translation of Keats's epitaph, "Here Lies One Whose Name was Writ in Water". Cernuda had come to think it was too rhetorical in tone. It is another account of the destructiveness of time and how reality destroys all hopes and dreams. There is also an extended meditation in "El acorde" on his conception of cosmic harmony, a unity of feeling and consciousness that comes fleetingly, a moment of ecstasy. He calls it by the German word ''Gemüt'' and writes that the closest thing to it is "entering another body in the act of love [and thereby obtaining] oneness with life by way of the lover's body."<ref name="Taylor18" />

====Variaciones sobre tema mexicano (1950)====
The first piece in this book is called "La lengua". Since his departure from Spain in February 1938, although he had been in contact with many Hispanic people, he had missed the sense of being surrounded by his native language. His visit to Mexico in the summer of 1949, the feeling of being in a Hispanic culture, the temperament of the people, the hot sun all seem to have kick-started his inspiration. These prose poems and his next collection of poetry, ''Con las horas contadas'', are the result.<ref name="Villena introduction38">Villena intro to edition of Las Nubes p 38</ref> He wrote these pieces in the course of 1950, once he was back at Mount Holyoke, and the collection was published in 1952. He sets the general theme in an introduction by discussing the lack of interest in Mexico shown by writers from peninsular Spain. As a child, he had no curiosity about the country. His curiosity was sparked by chance after his arrival in America. Curiosity turned into interest, which developed into love and this love is explored in these pieces.<ref name="Poesía completa622">Luis Cernuda: Poesía completa p622</ref> This is one of the sunniest, in all senses, of Cernuda's collections. Gone is the sad introspection of ''Ocnos''. In "Miravalle", he is enchanted by the viceroy's palace. If he were allowed to stay, he cannot imagine that he could tire of it or want to move elsewhere. In "Lo nuestro", the sight of native children begging reminds him of his homeland. His initial impulse is to return to the USA but, on further reflection, he comes to realise that this country is alive, in spite of its poverty. He reflects that perhaps poverty is the price you pay for being so alive. The USA seems vacuous and trivial in comparison. In "El mirador, he describes how the landscape, so similar to Spain, is taking control of him, exerting a spell over him, like it must have done over the conquistadors. "Perdiendo el tiempo" depicts a scene of indolent sensuality. "Ocio" is a reflection on the necessity of idleness. In "El patio", he feels as if he is back in the Seville of his childhood. He has finally managed to recover it. In "La posesión", he describes his urge to fuse with the land. In "Centro del hombre", he observes that the feeling of being a stranger, which had been a constant in his years of exile, has gone. He had been living with his body in one place and his soul in another. Now they are reunited:<blockquote> con todo o con casi todo concordabas, y las cosas, aire, luz, paisaje, criaturas, te eran amigas.{{cn|date=October 2022}}{{original research inline|date=October 2022}}

(you agreed with everything or almost everything, and things, air, light, landscape, creatures, were friends with you.)</blockquote>

However, these moments of harmony and union can only be fleeting - perfect shimmering moments, each of which is like a pearl between its two valves.<ref name="Taylor18" /> On the plane back to the USA, he had to hide his tears and keep his feelings private. He then comments that this would add to the legend that has been created of his being dry and cold-hearted.

===Short stories and drama===
He published a set of three short stories - ''Tres narraciones'' - in Buenos Aires, 1948. The stories are:

*"El Viento en la Colina", originally written in 1938,
*"El Indolente", originally written in 1929, 
*"El Sarao", originally written in 1941-42.

Two more stories appeared in ''Hora de España'', "En la costa de Santiniebla" (1937) and "Sombras en el salón" (1937). The latter depicts the atmosphere of Carlos Morla's ''tertulias'' in which "not only literary and aesthetic questions were debated but quarrels and affairs of the heart: love, disillusion, dislikes..."<ref name="Taravillo253">Taravillo: Años españoles p 253</ref> It seems to be a fictionalised account of the breakdown of Cernuda's affair with Serafín Ferro.

He completed one play - ''La familia interrumpida'' - in two acts in 1937-38. It was published posthumously in 1988. Before that, in 1931, he wrote 9 pages of an untitled play that he never completed.

During his time in London, probably 1946, he began to translate Shakespeare's [[Troilus and Cressida]] into Spanish verse. This was a task that taught him a lot and which gave him a great deal of satisfaction.<ref name="Cernuda652">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 652</ref>
He acknowledged the advice given by E.M.Wilson, especially his help in clarifying difficult passages.  Wilson was an eminent British scholar of Spanish Golden Age theatre who was at that time Professor of Spanish Literature at [[King's College, London]].  They had met in Madrid in 1930-31, when Wilson was on a scholarship at the ''Residencia de Estudiantes.''<ref name="Taravillo185">Taravillo: Años españoles p 185</ref> Cernuda finished his translation in 1950 when he was at Mount Holyoke.  With sponsorship from the British Council, it was published in ''Ínsula'' in 1953.<ref name="OCP2827">Cernuda: OCP vol 2 Notas p 827</ref>

He also translated part of the first act of [[Romeo and Juliet]].

===Criticism===

Cernuda wrote critical essays throughout his career, many of which were published in newspapers or magazines. Towards the end of his life, however, he brought out 4 collections of his most important pieces.

The first was ''Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea'' (Madrid 1957). The conception of this work probably dates back to the 1940s but he only began work on the articles that comprise it in 1954. Cernuda gives a survey of what seem to him to be the most important currents in Spanish poetry from the 19th century onwards. He deliberately omits any neo-Classical or Romantic poets and starts with [[Ramón de Campoamor y Campoosorio|Ramón de Campoamor]]. He also covers Bécquer and [[Rosalía de Castro]] before moving on to a general essay on "[[Modernismo]] and the [[Generation of 1898]]". This is followed by individual essays on [[Miguel de Unamuno]], Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez. He then moves on to [[León Felipe]], [[José Moreno Villa]] and Gómez de la Serna before focusing on his contemporaries, Salinas, Guillėn, Lorca, Diego, Alberti, Aleixandre and Altolaguirre. He ends the collection with some thoughts on developments since 1936. These articles were first published in a magazine called ''México en la Cultura'' between 1954 and 1956. The subsequent publication of the collected articles was delayed by the uproar that some of them had provoked, especially the essays on Juan Ramón Jiménez, Salinas and Guillén. It was eventually published in 1957 in a heavily bowdlerised version that omitted chapters relating to Guillén, Aleixandre, Altolaguirre, Diego and Alberti.<ref name="Cernuda835">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 notes p 835</ref>

His next collection was ''Pensamiento poético en la lírica inglesa'' (Mexico 1958). Luis Maristany suggests that it is more interesting as an indication of Cernuda's interests than as a work of criticism in its own right, given that it was written up in Mexico from his notes at a time when he lacked access to a proper English language library and so could not properly develop his arguments. Yet, his audience was attracted by the novelty of a study of English poetry, written by a Spaniard.<ref name="Cernuda56">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 El ensayo literario p 56</ref> In a letter to Derek Harris, dated March 3, 1961, Cernuda states that "English literature, from my arrival in England (1938) until now, has been part of my daily reading."<ref name="Epistolario908">Epistolario Letter to Derek Harris p 908</ref> In his essay on Aleixandre, collected in the ''Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea'', he writes of his fascination with the tradition of poet-critics in English literature, comparing unfavourably the writings of such people as [[Sainte-Beuve]] and [[Menéndez y Pelayo]] with [[Coleridge]], [[Keats]], [[Matthew Arnold|Arnold]] and Eliot.<ref name="Cernuda224">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 notes p 224</ref> He was particularly inspired by his reading of essays by Eliot such as "The Frontiers of Criticism" and "Tradition and the Individual Talent".<ref name="Cernuda20">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 El ensayo literario p 20</ref> The collection shows just how extensive and deep his reading of English literature was, as it contains studies of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swinburne and Hopkins.

''Poesía y literatura, I y II'' (Barcelona 1960, 1964) These collections gathered together his most important essays or articles on literary themes. They display the extraordinary range of his reading, covering authors as diverse as Galdós, Goethe, Hölderlin, Cervantes, Marvell, Browning, Yeats, Gide, Rilke, [[Ronald Firbank]], Nerval, [[Dashiell Hammett]], Reverdy, Valle-Inclán as well as figures more often found in his writings such as Eliot and Juan Ramón Jiménez. The dates of composition of the essays range from 1935 to 1963, so they cover the full range of his critical career. For students of Cernuda, the main interest lies in the first volume. Not only does it contain his heartfelt 1946 tribute to Andrė Gide but also "Palabras antes de una Lectura" and "Historial de un Libro", two of the most revealing accounts of his poetics and starting-points for all Cernuda criticism. "Palabras" was the text of a lecture delivered at the Lyceum Club in Madrid in 1935 and edited for publication in 1941. He begins by discussing the purpose of poetry, which for him is a question of conveying his personal experience of the world. It is in this lecture that he reveals his primary theme: reality versus desire. His aim is to find "a transcendental plane of existence where the division between the objective and the subjective dimensions of the world is eliminated"<ref name="Harris: Luis Cernuda 62">Harris: Luis Cernuda a study p 62</ref> and cosmic harmony can be attained. He makes a clear distinction between the world's deceptive appearance and the hidden "imagen completa del mundo",<ref name="Cernuda602">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Palabras antes p 602</ref> which is the true reality. He also develops the idea of a "daimonic power" that pervades the universe and is able to achieve this synthesis of the invisible underlying reality and its deceiving appearance. But a force powerful enough to do this is also capable of destroying the poet, as in the case of Hölderlin.<ref name="Cernuda605">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Palabras antes p 605</ref> The "Historial" was first published in instalments in ''México en la Cultura'' in 1958. It is a detailed account of Cernuda's intellectual development and gives great insight into the process of how he became a poet and how his poetry evolved over time. In a review in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Arthur Terry described it as "the most remarkable piece of self-analysis by any Spanish poet, living or dead".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Terry |first1=Arthur |title=Poesia y literatura |journal=Bulletin of Hispanic Studies |date=October 1961 |volume=38 |issue=4 |pages=287–288|doi=10.3828/bhs.38.4.287 }}</ref> It is, however, very reticent about his emotional development. For example, he only alludes very obliquely to the love affairs that inspired ''Los placeres prohibidos'', ''Donde habite el olvido'' and "Poemas para un cuerpo".