Rosenthal, David H.

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

L I T E R A T U R E  
TRADITION AND INNOVATION 
IN VICENT ANDRÉS ESTELLÉS 
ESTELLÉS'S PRIMARY ACHIEVEMENT IS THE EASE AND SURENESS 
WITH WHICH HE KNITS TOGETHER TRADITIONAL AND MODERN 
TONES AND MOTIFS. 
D A V I D  H .  R O S E N T H A L  A U T H O R  
persistent goal of modern North 
American poets - o n e  perhaps 
most successfully realized by Ezra 
Pound- has been to recapture the pure 
fire and impact of classical lyric poetry. In 
the United States, despite some brilliant 
successes, this attempt has usually been 
frustrated by a combination of unbridgea- 
ble cultural distances and a leadenly 
academic notion of "classicism". It can, I 
thjnk, be argued that Catalan poets have 
had better Iuck, for they inhabit a world 
whose links with the classical past are far 
more tangible and accessible. 
Literary tradition enters Estellés's work 
- a s  it does modem Catalan poetry as a 
whole- in at least two guises. One is the 
troubadour tradition that culminated in 
Ausias March, whose abrasive lyricism 
and obsessive treatment of sex and death 
often seem to find a modern echo in Es- 
tellés. The other is that of classical 
Mediterranean literature, which of course 
includes such figures as Sappho, Catullus, 
Horace and Ovid. Although in a few 
pages one can hardly hope to treat either 
of these links in sufficient detail, I hope my 
examination of one poem from the vol- 
ume Horatians will suggest both the 
classical element in Estellés and his con- 
ception of Mediterranean cultural tradi- 
tion as a whole: 
LV 
the night rises like one of sappho's hymns. 
i've talked a lot with my father. 
often i recall those silences too 
that swelled naturally, like a tranquil pregnancy. 
i've talked to him about al1 the things 
a person talks about with a good friend. 
my father was my best friend, 
without ever ceasing, however, to be 
my father. there was no rigidity 
in our varied daily relationship. 
i think this was shown by 
my adolescence. ovid's pleasant 
drivel amused me, the poor guy, 
scandalizing even the kindest 
gods, but i couldn't 
do it, i still felt some last twinge of shame. 
my father womed about 
my health. maybe the fatherland 
or caesar or westem civilization would need me 
some day; i had to be 
ready just in case. i've 
had girlfriends and mistresses. i never 
thought of getting mamed and becoming 
a peaceful husband, a prudent paterfamilias 
like so many men i see. when my father 
died, i went on living like 
before. maybe i wrote better or drank 
more or went in more for the pleasures 
of the bed. now i think i could have made 
some compatriot happy by discreetly 
dedicating a poem to her, giving her 
a child, strolling with her beside 
the sea, the wheat fields, the vineyards. 
i'm about to get sad. at dusk 
my eyes glisten. i always wait for 
my father's retum or 
maybe my return home to him 
to eat some cracked olives 
a bit of cheese some 
almonds a glass of wine 
a little of each 
nothing at al1 
polished off 
in silence ' 
he 
and 
1. 
L I T E R A T U R E  
Both the title of the volume in which this 
poem appeared and its allusions to 
Sappho and Ovid clearly indicate its con- 
scious links with classical vene. At the very 
start, in a single line set apart from the rest 
of the poem, Sappho's name is uttered al- 
most ritualistically and her work is evoked 
in the image of a darkening evening sky. 
For modern poets, Sappho must suggest a 
starkly purified lyric energy that serves as 
a kind of standard for al1 of us. 
After this opening evocation, Estellés 
begins his own discoune in a very dif- 
ferent key. His tone at fint is casually 
expository, slowed by long phrases like 
"i've talked to him about al1 the things / a 
penon talks about with a good friend." 
The thoughts tend to double back and 
qualify each other, as in "without ever 
ceasing, however, to be / my father," thus 
further slowing the movement and making 
it more ruminative. Ovid's name is then 
drawn into this series of memories and 
contemplations. Unlike Sappho, however, 
he appean not as a talisman but as an 
integral part of the poem, signalling a shift 
into the swifter and more ironic tone of 
the lines that follow. Estellés parallels Ovid 
both in his sarcastic treatment of the state 
and his insertion of slangily colloquial lan- 
guage within an otherwise serious elegy, 
as in "the poor guy, / scandalizing even 
the kindest gods, but i couldn't / do it." In a 
political sense, the association of the ap- 
parently straight-faced words "fath- 
erland" and "caesaí' with "westem civili- 
zation", a cliché of fascist propaganda in 
postwar Spain, also bring Estellés close to 
Ovid's mocking attacks on the pompous 
rhetoric of Augustan Rome. 
At the same time, this section reveals the 
speaker's divided attitude toward his fath- 
er, an attitude both ironically distanced 
and full of longing for the simple convic- 
tions the father represents. The irony is 
carried by phrases like "peaceful hus- 
band" and "prudent paterfamilias." This 
tension between loving evocation and 
gentle mockery dominates the poem's 
central sedion, but gradually dissolves 
under the impact of the poet's intensify- 
ing grief and his wistful longing for tradi- 
tional peasant certainties. Estellés's tone 
becomes more self-revealing and his 
rhythmic units shorter in "maybe i wrote 
better or drank / more or went in more for 
the pleasures / of the bed." Though these 
lines still retain something of the ironic ' 
tone that precedes them, their basic feel- 
ing is one of desperation and bitter regret: 
"now i think i could have made / some 
compatriot happy by discreetly / dedicat- 
ing a poem to her, giving her / a child, 
strolling with her beside / the sea, the 
wheat fields, the vineyards." 
In this context of quickening intensity the 
word "compatriot" becomes friendly and 
loses any sarcastic sense it might have had 
earlier. The rhythm becomes more lyr- 
ically pattemed as the short, repeat- 
ed parallelisms ("dedicating," "giving," 
l'str~lling," and "the sea, the wheat fields, 
the vineyard") draw us into a realm of 
undulating incantation. Just when this 
incantation is at its singing peak, Estellés 
suddenly stops skort with two brief, una- 
dornedly depressive statements that form 
a kind of low point in the poem. These are 
then softened and dissolved in the remem- 
bered shared rituals of eating and drinking. 
Here the enumeration of traditional 
Mediterranean foods -almonds, cheese, 
olives and wine- becomes a kind of 
healing ritual that link the father with a 
world that both preceded and will survive 
him. Like the landscape of vineyard, sea, 
and wheat fields, the ritual meal is at once 
real and stylized, everyday and imme- 
morial. 
This poem, then, like Horatians as a 
whole, is "traditional" in its deft evocation 
of classical poetry in a variety of keys. 
These keys range from ironic to fervently 
elegiac, and the phrasing is firmly bal- 
lasted with details at once realistic and 
suggestive of earlier cultures. What is, ob- 
viously, modern here is Estellés's freedom 
to follow a subiective train of associations 
that lead him from one mood to another 
without formal transitions. Another 
modern element is his equal freedom in 
moulding the poemls formal elements to its 
shifting emotional pitch. Estellés's primary 
achievement, then, is the ease and sureness 
with which he knits together traditional and 
modem tones and motifs. He speaks with 
his own thoroughly contemporary voice 
and at the same time evokes an entirely 
Mediterranean literary and human land- 
scape so that it seems the freshest and most 
natural thing in the world. • 


Tradition and innovation in Vicent Andrés Estellés

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