Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

==Cernuda and his contemporaries==

===Salinas and Guillén===

He came to the attention of Pedro Salinas in his first year at Seville University - 1920-21 - and recorded, as late as 1958, that he would probably never have found his vocation as a poet had it not been for the older man's encouragement.<ref name="Cernuda627"/> However, his attitude towards Salinas seems to have been quite complex, as far as can be judged from his writings. In 1929 and 1930, his growing political militancy, inspired by his attraction to surrealism, made it difficult for him to tolerate friends whom he had come to consider bourgeois - such as Guillén, Salinas and even Aleixandre.<ref name="Cernuda637" /> Even though he might have reverted to friendly terms with Salinas and Guillén (and this was right at the start of his relationship with Aleixandre, when he viewed him as a comfortable bourgeois), in a collection of essays published in 1957, ''Estudios sobre Poesía española contemporánea'', it is possible to see that he continues to view them as adhering to a different conception of poetry. For Cernuda, a true poet has to break away from society in some way, even if he might live a lifestyle that looks totally conventional from the outside, and these two poets never managed to do that.<ref name="Cernuda196">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Salinas y Guillén p 196</ref> He does not approve of the playful qualities in Salinas's poetry and his seeming refusal to deal with profound subjects.<ref name="Cernuda197">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Salinas y Guillén p 197</ref> When he considers the change that came over Salinas's poetry with ''La voz a ti debida'', he dismisses it as

<blockquote>just another game, a desire to show that he was as human as the next man.<ref name="Cernuda199">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Salinas y Guillén p 199</ref></blockquote>

In truth, the poetry of Salinas was alien to Cernuda - so alien as to be antipathetic to him.  His personal relationship with Salinas had probably never fully recovered from the blow of his apparent rejection of ''Perfil del aire'' in 1927.  Not even his favourable review of the first edition of ''La realidad y el deseo'' seems to have appeased Cernuda for long.  Salinas wrote an introduction to an anthology of Spanish poetry that was published in the 1940s and referred to Cernuda as ''el más Licenciado Vidriera de los poetas'', an allusion to the Cervantes short story ''[[El licenciado Vidriera]]'', in which the hero retreats timorously from life under the delusion that he is made of glass.  In a poem called "Malentendu", included in ''Desolación de la Quimera'', Cernuda launches a bitter attack on a man who, he claims, consistently misunderstood and ill-treated him, alluding specifically to that description.{{cn|date=October 2022}}

His contacts with Guillén seem to have been more sporadic.  Cernuda clearly valued his supportive words when ''Perfil del aire'' first appeared and he does not seem to have done anything to vex Cernuda.  However the latter's assessment is based solely on the evidence of ''Cántico'' - the later collections had not begun to appear when Cernuda wrote about him.  Clearly, the poet who wrote in "Beato sillón" that

<blockquote><poem>
El mundo está bien
Hecho
</poem></blockquote>

has a different view of reality than Cernuda.  Nevertheless, Cernuda respects his dedication to his poetry and his commitment to revising it and making it better.  However, he does regret that Guillén should have expended so much care and energy on expounding such a limited view of life.<ref name="Cernuda203">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Salinas y Guillén p 203</ref>  He notes what he views as Guillén's tendency to draw everything he sees into a contained, bourgeois viewpoint.<ref name="Cernuda202">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Salinas y Guillén p 202</ref>  He also notes the way that when Guillén writes about Lorca, the latter's life and works become a personal affair of the Guillén family.  His assessment ends in a contradictory way.  He views Guiillén as a poet in the manner of [[Coventry Patmore]] - a now forgotten 19thc. British poet - and yet also one of the 3 or 4 finest poets of his generation.<ref name="Cernuda205">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Salinas y Guillén p 205</ref>

===Aleixandre===

One of the first things that Cernuda did on arriving in Madrid in 1928 was to pay a visit to Vicente Aleixandre.<ref name=Cernuda633 />  This was their first meeting.  However, they did not immediately become friends and Cernuda blames it on his own timidity and distrust.<ref name="Cernuda2201">Cernuda: OCP vol 2 Vicente Aleixandre (1950) p 201</ref>  He was struck by Aleixandre's warmth and friendliness, not realising until a later date that his visit had been during the hours when Aleixandre, for the sake of his health, would normally have been resting. Unfortunately he was also struck by Aleixandre's calmness and the sense of ease that he exuded at being in familiar surroundings.  For Cernuda, who was always uneasy about feeling at home anywhere, this was a reason for deciding that he did not want to see Aleixandre again.<ref name="Cernuda2202">Cernuda: OCP vol 2 Vicente Aleixandre (1950) p 202</ref>

After his return to Madrid from Toulouse in June 1929, he met Aleixandre again: he recounts that it was Aleixandre who re-introduced himself to Cernuda as he himself did not recognise him.  Gradually, over the course of many meetings, Cernuda's habitual reserve and distrust faded.  His friendship with Vicente Aleixandre developed into the closest he had ever had.  They often met in Aleixandre's house, sometimes with Lorca and Altolaguirre there as well.  Aleixandre seems to have had a special gift for friendship, because he also became one of Lorca's closest friends (according to Ian Gibson).<ref name=Gibson199>Gibson p 199</ref> and Cernuda notes specifically his skill as an attentive and sympathetic listener.  The implication is that he was trusted with the intimate confessions of many of his friends.<ref name="Cernuda2204">Cernuda: OCP vol 2 Vicente Aleixandre (1950) p 204</ref> Cernuda also gives a very favourable account of Aleixandre's poetry in ''Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea'', seeing in his work the struggle of a man of intense feeling trapped inside a sick body,<ref name="Cernuda228">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Vicente Aleixandre p 228</ref> an analogous situation to his own struggle for fulfilment.

However, not even Aleixandre was able to escape from Cernuda's sensitivity about his future reputation.  In the 1950s, he wrote a few essays on his memories of Cernuda, which of course were fixed in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  He describes his friend's apparent detachment from the world and unwillingness to engage.  No attempt was made to see whether that old image still fitted the man who had gone through all the upheaval that Cernuda had experienced while going into exile.  Perhaps more importantly, there was no attempt made to dissociate the poetry written by Cernuda, from Cernuda the man as Aleixandre had known him 20 years earlier.<ref name="Harris A Study11">Harris A Study of the Poetry p11</ref>

===Lorca===

Cernuda's relationship with Lorca was one of the most important in his life, notwithstanding the fact of its brevity. He first met Lorca in Seville in December 1927, during the celebrations in honour of Góngora.  He recalled this meeting in an article he wrote in 1938.<ref name=Cernuda2148>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Federico García Lorca (1938) p148-154</ref>  They met on the patio of a hotel in the evening.  Cernuda was struck by the contrast between Lorca's large, eloquent, melancholy eyes and his thickset peasant's body. He was not favourably impressed by his theatrical manner and by the way he was surrounded by hangers-on - reminiscent of a matador.  However, something drew them together: "Something that I hardly understood or did not wish to acknowledge began to unite us....he took me by the arm and we left the others."{{cn|date=October 2022}}

He next met Lorca three years later in Aleixandre's apartment in Madrid<ref name="Cernuda637"/> after Lorca's return from New York and Cuba.  He noticed that something in Lorca had changed; he was less precious, less melancholy and more sensual.<ref name=Cernuda2148 />

Considering the friendship between them and his admiration for Lorca, Cernuda is dispassionate in his assessments of Lorca's poetry.  He is not a whole-hearted admirer of the ''Romancero gitano'', for example, unimpressed by the obscurity of the narratives in many of the individual poems and by the theatricality and outmoded [[costumbrismo]] of the collection as a whole.<ref name="Cernuda210">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 210</ref>  When he discusses ''Canciones'', he deplores the jokiness of some of the poems -

<blockquote>an attitude unworthy of a poet, but more appropriate to the son of a wealthy family who, comfortable in his very bourgeois status, is able to mock it, because he knows that it will not cost him anything and that it will earn him the reputation of being a smart, witty chap.</blockquote>

He notes that this is a fleeting characteristic in Lorca but more persistent in someone such as Alberti.<ref name="Cernuda211">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 210-211</ref>  For Cernuda, poetry is a serious business and he tends not to approve of people who take it lightly.  It also tends to show how his criticism is guided by his own principles.  He tends to be more lenient in his judgments of poets who are like him.  He seems to approve of the fact that after the success of the ''Romancero gitano'', Lorca continued along his own track, not seduced into writing more gypsy ballads.<ref name="Cernuda211_2">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 211</ref>  In ''Poeta en Nueva York'', a collection not published in Spain in Lorca's lifetime, Cernuda identifies the heart of the collection as the "Oda a Walt Whitman".  This is interesting as it is a poem in which Lorca clearly shows his identification with homosexuals<ref name=Gibson297>Gibson p 297</ref> but Cernuda's reference is rather obscure -

<blockquote>in it the poet gives voice to a feeling that was the very reason of his existence and work.  Because of that it is a pity that this poem is so confused, in spite of its expressive force.<ref name="Cernuda212">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 212</ref></blockquote>
 
On March 8, 1933, he was present at the premiere in Madrid of García Lorca's play ''Bodas de sangre''.<ref name=Gibson348>Gibson p348</ref> but he makes no reference to it, or indeed to any of Lorca's plays in his writings.  He notes at the end of the chapter on Lorca in ''Estudios sobre Poesía española contemporánea'' that Lorca's later poems give clear signs to suggest that he had a lot more to say at the time of his death and that his style was developing in emotional force.<ref name="Cernuda214">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 214</ref>

Cernuda wrote an elegy for Lorca which he included in ''Las nubes'' and to the end of his life took pains to try to ensure that the image of Lorca was not academicised, that he remained a figure of vitality, rebellion and nonconformism.<ref name="Villena introduction50" />

===Dámaso Alonso===

In 1948, Cernuda published an open letter to the famous critic Dámaso Alonso in reaction to an article by the latter titled ''Una generación poética (1920-36)''.<ref name=Cernuda2198>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Carta abierta a Dámaso Alonso p 198-200</ref>   He takes exception to two passages:
#Cernuda, at that time very young
#Cernuda was still a boy, almost isolated in Seville, in the year of our excursion to Seville, the same year in which ''Perfil del aire'' appeared in Málaga, which neither represents his mature work....

He points out that he was 25 at this time, so can scarcely be considered "very young" or a "boy".  As for his isolation in Seville, Alonso should recall that he had already had poems published in the ''Revista de Occidente'' and elsewhere.  However, it is noteworthy that in his later essay, ''Historial de un libro'', he used the same expression to depict his sense of confusion at the hostile reviews to his first collection.<ref name=Cernuda629 />  He also criticises Alonso's use of the word "mature".  He points out the essential inconsistency in saying that the poet was young and then expecting maturity in his early work.  He then states that for him the key factor is not whether a poem is mature or not but whether it has artistic merit.  He goes on to say that, even after the passage of time, he still prefers some of his earlier poems to certain poems written later.{{cn|date=October 2022}}

The major complaint he raises is that this critique is just a lazy repetition of the initial critical reaction in 1927.<ref name=Cernuda2198 />  One of his key beliefs is that there are poets who find their audience at once and poets who have to wait for an audience to come to them - he reiterates this in ''Historial de un libro''.<ref name=Cernuda641 />  He is one of the latter.  So when people like Alonso, who rejected his early work and still persist in calling it immature, now say he is a fine poet, he takes that to mean that they are merely picking up on the favourable reactions of people 20 years younger to his recent works - in other words, the audience that has found him - and that they are unable to see the continuities between the earlier and the later work.{{cn|date=October 2022}}


This develops into a key theme of Cernuda's final collection.  In "Malentendu", he shows his unease that his own reputation could be shaped beyond the grave by the perceptions of someone such as Pedro Salinas and his reference to ''El Licenciado Vidriera''.  In "Otra vez, con sentimiento", he shows the same unease on behalf of Lorca.  Alonso had written in the same article (''Una generación poética (1920-36)'') a tribute to Lorca, calling him "my prince".  Cernuda is keen to save his old friend from appropriation by reactionary forces, defending his unconventional lifestyle (homosexuality) and everything else about him that would prevent him from being free to live in Franco's Spain.<ref name="Villena introduction50">Villena intro to Las Nubes etc p 50</ref>

===Alberti and political commitment===

Alberti was another of the people whom he met for the first time in the Góngora celebrations in Seville in 1927.  Alberti describes him as "dark, thin, extremely refined and meticulous".<ref name=Alberti239>Alberti p. 239</ref>  However, it is not likely that Alberti ever became close to Cernuda although the latter contributed to many of the former's journals during the early 1930s.  Alberti invited him to contribute to the celebratory album that he was editing<ref name=Alberti242>Alberti p. 242</ref> but Cernuda did not follow it up.  His relationship with Alberti is suggestive of the pathways along which his mind was moving after his initial contact with surrealism.  In 1933, for example, he wrote for Alberti's magazine ''Octubre'' a piece called ''Los que se incorporan (Those who join up)''.  In it he calls for the destruction of bourgeois society:  "I trust in a revolution inspired by communism to achieve this".<ref name=Cernuda2_63>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Los que se incorporan p 63</ref>

In an article written for ''Hora de España'' in 1937, he wrote that: "the poet is inevitably a revolutionary... a revolutionary with full awareness of his responsibility".<ref name=Cernuda2121>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Líneas sobre los poetas y para los poetas en los días actuales p 121</ref>  However, by that time, it seems clear that he did not expect poets to get directly involved in revolutionary actions.  In an essay devoted to Aleixandre in 1950 he goes so far as to say that, for a poet to take the course of direct action "is absurd and tends to ruin the poet as a poet".<ref name="Cernuda2207">Cernuda: OCP vol 2 Vicente Aleixandre (1950) p 207</ref>

This attitude seems to colour his response to Alberti's poetic output. A key point in Cernuda's view of Alberti's poetry is that Alberti seemed to lack any sense of self and his poetry lacks interiority.<ref name="Cernuda220">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Rafael Alberti p 220</ref> He also highlights the fact that Alberti was a virtuoso versifier, able to counterfeit the manner of Gil Vicente or any other folk poet. Cernuda does not approve of the playfulness that Alberti shows in his first three collections.<ref name=Cernuda220 /> He does not believe that Alberti rises above the level of his models, such as Góngora and Guillén in ''Cal y canto'' - in other words he sees Alberti as a parodist rather than as an original poet.<ref name="Cernuda221">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Rafael Alberti p 221</ref> The reader gets the impression that he envies the fact that Alberti became so successful so rapidly, using him as an example of a poet who found his public immediately.<ref name=Cernuda221 />  These thoughts were written in his essay in ''Estudios sobre poesía espaňola contemporánea'' on Alberti and seem to derive from Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", because he goes on to draw a contrast between writers who are readily accepted by the public with writers who are more original, who modify the tradition with their own experiences of life and who have to wait for the public to accept them. 
Cernuda ends up by praising his poetic fluency and virtuosity while stating that he had nothing to say and that his work is basically deprived of passion and emotion. Cernuda even wonders whether Alberti's recognition of the social injustice of Spain was the inspiration for him to write political poetry because it is difficult to see any fundamental change in his ideas and feelings.<ref name="Cernuda223">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Rafael Alberti p 223</ref> The political poems are not very different from his previous phase and he remains just as committed to traditional poetic forms as ever. Cernuda closes his essay by noting that Alberti's commitment to Communism does not stop him from turning to apolitical subject-matter in which the reader can divine nostalgia for his former success. In an attempt to revive this, he churns out variations of his old themes.

===Altolaguirre and his family===

That there was a close bond between Altolaguirre, his wife Concha Méndez, and Cernuda seems clear.  Cernuda devoted separate chapters in both ''Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea'' and ''Poesía y literatura'' to the poetry of Altolaguirre, consistently asserting that he was not a minor poet, despite the critical consensus to that effect.  In ''Desolación de la Quimera'', he defends his dead friend from superficial, mistaken memories of "Manolito" the endearing man, held by people who have forgotten or never knew his rare gifts as a poet, in "Supervivencias tribales en el medio literario".<ref name="Villena introduction50" />   It is like an echo of his fears for what will happen to his own reputation after death - will people remember him or turn to the legends promulgated by people like Salinas.

When Altolaguirre and Concha married in June 1932, Cernuda was one of the witnesses at their wedding, along with Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Guillén.<ref name=Islasintro14>Altolaguirre intro to Las Islas invitadas p 14</ref>  When in March 1933 their first child died in childbirth, Cernuda dedicated a poem to him - "XIV" in ''Donde habite el olvido''.<ref name=Islasintro15>Altolaguirre intro to Las Islas invitadas p 15</ref>  They lived in the same building in Madrid from 1935 to 1936 and, in Mexico, he lived in Concha's house.  At times, it seems that this was his real family.  In ''Desolación de la Quimera'', there are two poems that suggest this.  "Animula, vagula, blandula" is a tender poem about watching Altolaguirre's five-year-old grandson, whom he nicknamed [[Entelechy]], playing in the garden and wondering how his fate will differ from his own.  "Hablando a Manona" is like a nursery rhyme addressed to their granddaughter.<ref name="Villena200">Villena notes to Desolación de la quimera p 200</ref>

===Generation of 1898===

Cernuda's best critical writing tends to be about writers who interested and inspired him.  His writing about the Generation of 1898 is objective but nevertheless lacking in sympathy for the most part.  For one thing, he seems to have found it difficult to forge personal relations with them.  Regarding Juan Ramón Jiménez and Valle-Inclán, he recalled that they were so intent on their own speech that they neglected to listen to other people.  And even in respect of Antonio Machado, so revered by for example Alberti,<ref name=Alberti216>Alberti p 216</ref>  he recalled that he spoke little and listened to even less.<ref name=Cernuda2156>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Juan Ramón Jiménez 1941 p 156</ref> In contrast to most Spanish thinkers, he respected [[Unamuno]] more as a poet than as a philosopher.<ref name=Cernuda128>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Miguel de Unamuno p 128</ref>  For Ortega y Gasset, he had little positive to say:  scattered all through Cernuda's critical writings are remarks such as "[he] always understood very little when it came to poetry"<ref name=Cernuda126>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Miguel de Unamuno p 126</ref> and "with his strange ignorance of poetic matters".<ref name=Cernuda175>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Gómez de la Serna p 175</ref>

Regarding Valle-Inclán, he makes it clear in his 1963 essay how much he admires his integrity as an artist and human being.  He does not rate his poetry very highly, does not comment often on his novels and reserves his admiration for 4 plays, the 3 ''Comedias bárbaras'' and ''Divinas palabras''.<ref name="Cernuda817">Cernuda OCP vol 1 Poesía y literatura p 817</ref><ref name=Cernuda2191>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Teatro español contemporáneo p 191</ref>

In his study ''Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea'', Cernuda is clearly drawn to those aspects of Antonio Machado where he finds similarities with his own poetic practice.  So, for him, the best of Machado is in the early poems of ''Soledades'', where he finds echoes of Bécquer.<ref name="Cernuda135">Cernuda OCP vol 1 Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea p 135</ref>  He writes of them <blockquote> these poems are sudden glimpses of the world, bringing together the real and the suprasensible, with a rarely achieved identification.<ref name="Cernuda136">Cernuda OCP vol 1 Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea p 136</ref></blockquote>
He is also drawn to the commentaries of Abel Martín and the notes of Juan de Mairena which began to appear in 1925.  In these, he finds the "sharpest commentary on the epoch".<ref name="Cernuda131">Cernuda OCP vol 1 Estudios sobre poesía española contemporánea p 131</ref>  On the other hand, he is definitely not attracted by the nationalistic themes that appear in ''Campos de Castilla'', especially the poet's focus on Castile, which Cernuda sees as negating the essence of Machado's best poetry, which stems from his Andalusian nature.<ref name="Cernuda135"/> However, this is difficult to reconcile with a strand of Cernuda's own poetry, as exemplified by the first poem of the "Díptico español" from ''Desolación de la Quimera'', which is a tirade of invective against Spain that would not seem out of place in Machado. Indeed, one of Cernuda's major themes is the contrast between modern Spain after the Civil War and the glorious past, which is also an important current in Machado's poetry. One aspect of Machado that he focuses on is his use of language and how he fails when he tries to emulate the type of popular language described by German Romantics. He shows particular scorn for Machado's attempt to write a popular ballad, "La tierra de Alvargonzález".<ref name="Cernuda136"/> As Octavio Paz says:<blockquote> "Jiménez and Antonio Machado always confused "popular language" with spoken language, and that is why they identify the latter with traditional song. Jiménez thought that "popular art" was simply the traditional imitation of aristocratic art; Machado believed that the true aristocracy resided in the people and that folklore was the most refined art.......Influenced by Jiménez, the poets of Cernuda's generation made of ballad and of song their favourite genre. Cernuda never succumbed to the affectation of the popular.....and tried to write as one speaks; or rather: he set himself as the raw material of poetic transmututation not the language of books but of conversation<ref name="The Edifying Word xxi-xxii">Paz: La palabra edificante trans Michael Schmidt in Gibbons:Selected Poems of Luis Cernuda p xxi-xxii</ref></blockquote>

The member of that generation who had most impact on him is Jiménez, although when he went to Britain one of the very few books that he took with him was [[Gerardo Diego]]'s anthology ''Poesía española'' and he found solace for his nostalgia for Spain in reading the selection of poems by Unamuno and Machado contained within.<ref name="Cernuda645"/>  It is also true that in his study of Unamuno, he makes a comment that seems to relate directly to his own practice as a writer, his preoccupation with creating and perpetuating himself in his poetry, transforming the circumstances of his life into myth:<ref name="Poesia completa48">Derek Harris: Introduction to Poesía completa p 48</ref>

<blockquote>Alive and striving beyond what were only current circumstances, moments that pass and do not remain, Unamuno was hoping to create himself, or at least create his personal myth, and to be forever what was passing.<ref name=Cernuda129>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Miguel de Unamuno p 129</ref></blockquote>

He first met Jiménez in late September-early October 1925 in Seville.  The meeting had been arranged by Pedro Salinas and he suggested to Cernuda that he should ask one of his friends, whose father was a warden of the Alcázar, for permission to visit the gardens, out of hours.<ref name=Cernuda733>Cernuda OCP vol 1 PyL II Los Dos Juan Ramón Jiménez p 733</ref>  Cernuda's account is interesting.  He was overawed by being in the presence of such an important figure.  In addition, there was the presence of Jiménez's wife - [[Zenobia Camprubí]] - which also put him at a disadvantage, both because of his shyness and a lack of interest in women, although he had not yet realised why women did not interest him.<ref name=Cernuda734>Cernuda OCP vol 1 PyL II Los Dos Juan Ramón Jiménez p 734</ref>  He placed himself in the role of a disciple, just listening to the Master.  He records how gracious Jiménez was to him that evening and on subsequent meetings.  At that time, he was something of a hero to Cernuda and he notes how much effort it cost him to free himself from Jiménez's type of egoistic, subjective poetry with no connection to the world and life, which was so influential in Spanish cultural circles at that time.<ref name=Cernuda734/>

In the essay in which he describes this meeting, "Los Dos Juan Ramón Jiménez", included in ''Poesía y literatura vol 2'', he analyses the Jekyll and Hyde personality of Jiménez.  On the one hand he was a famous poet, worthy of admiration and respect.  On the other hand, he was the man who launched abusive attacks on numerous literary figures.  This latter side gradually became more and more dominant.<ref name=Cernuda731>Cernuda OCP vol 1 PyL II Los Dos Juan Ramón Jiménez p 731</ref>  In particular he took against the poets of Cernuda's own generation, at first confining his attacks to verbal ones but then turning to print.  He continued to print vilifications right to the end of his life, which had the effect of turning Cernuda's former admiration into indifference or even worse.<ref name=Cernuda733/>

Cernuda wrote many pieces about Jiménez, including a satirical poem included in ''Desolación de la Quimera''.  The early influence was decisively rejected and his essays identify all the stylistic elements that he cast off, such as the impressionistic symbolism,<ref name="Harris A Study5">Harris A Study of the Poetry p5</ref> hermeticism,<ref name=Cernuda149>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Juan Ramón Jiménez p 149</ref> the fragmentation of his poems,<ref name=Cernuda147>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Juan Ramón Jiménez p 147</ref> his inability to sustain a thought,<ref name=Cernuda149/> the lack of desire to go beyond the surface of things.<ref name=Cernuda143>Cernuda OCP vol 1 Juan Ramón Jiménez p 143</ref>  His final thoughts about Jiménez came in an essay titled "Jiménez y Yeats" dated 1962 and included in ''Poesía y literatura vol 2''. E.M. Wilson included a look at this in his survey of Cernuda's literary borrowings because it contains a translation of Yeats's poem "A Coat" and compares it to Jiménez's "Vino, primera, pura".  Of the translation, Wilson writes <blockquote>One can point out minor infidelities....but the translation has life of its own and fulfils its purpose in Cernuda's essay: a rod for the back of Juan Ramón Jiménez.<ref name=Grant242>Cernuda's Debts in Studies Presented to Helen Grant p 242</ref></blockquote>  Cernuda concludes that Jiménez is a more limited poet than Yeats because the latter put his poetry to one side in order to campaign for Irish Home Rule and to work as director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin whereas Jiménez's whole life was totally dedicated to poetry.  He devoted himself to aesthetics and did not involve himself with ethical considerations at all.<ref name=Cernuda824>Cernuda OCP vol 1 PyL II Jiménez y Yeats p 824-5</ref>