José Asunción Silva: 9 essential poems analyzed and interpreted

José Asunción Silva (1865-1896) is the most recognized Colombian poet of all time. According to some critics, his poetry has not yet been surpassed by any Colombian poet. The romantic and musical cut of his earliest poems gave the characteristic tone of Colombian poetry.

He was a pioneer of modernism. His strong critical sense towards literature itself and the use of humor, satire and irony in his last poems, have also made him a pioneer of antipoetry.

Next, we present a selection of poems (analyzed and interpreted) where the trajectory of the poet is synthesized: while the first poems of The book of verses are governed by the rhyme and the precision of the number of syllables that characterizes the lyrical tradition, can appreciate a critical stance towards romantic and modernist aesthetics that is fully unleashed on Bitter drops.

His last poems use a prosaic and stark language, and the scathing tone of black humor, irony and satire.

Chrysalis

When the girl is still ill

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came out a certain morning
and she walked, with an uncertain step,
the neighboring mountain,
brought among a bouquet of wild flowers
hides a chrysalis,
that in her room he placed, very close
of the white bed.
………………………………………

A few days later, at the moment
in which she expired,
and everyone saw her, with their eyes
clouded by tears,
the instant she died, we felt
slight rumor of älas
and we saw escape, take flight
through the old window
that overlooks the garden, a small
golden butterfly ...
………………………………………

The now empty prison of the insect
I searched with a quick view;
when I saw her I saw the deceased girl
the pale and withered forehead,
And I thought, if when leaving his sad jail
the winged butterfly,
the light finds and the immense space,
and the country auras,
when leaving the prison that encloses them
what will souls find? ...

The poem is structured in three stanzas of ten lines that are interspersed in seventeen syllables. It tells the story of a girl when she dies, and what happens to the chrysalis that she had placed next to her bed a few days before. It was written by Silva at age 18 in memory of his sister Inés, who died at the age of six, when the poet was 11 years old.

The butterfly serves as a metaphor for the soul. The subjectivity of the poetic voice appears at the end, in the last stanza, by means of the rhetorical question. It implies an existential approach that asks about being and the transcendence of it, as Piedad has affirmed Bonnett: "Silva condenses, with tremendous mastery and power of synthesis, the metaphysical uncertainty caused by death".

It is a metaphor with great evocative power. The butterfly suggests freedom, beauty and vulnerability. The light, the vastness and the aura point to the ethereal.

The timbers of San Juan

Sawdust!
Sawdust!
Saw!
The timbers of San Juan,
they ask for cheese, they ask for bread,
those of Roque
alfandoque,
those of Rique
weakling
Those of triqui, triqui, tran!

And on Grandma's hard and firm knees,
with rhythmic movement the child sways
and both are shaken and tremulous,
the grandmother smiles with maternal affection
but it crosses his spirit like a strange fear
so in the future, of anguish and disappointment
the ignored days of the grandson will keep.

The timbers of San Juan,
they ask for cheese, they ask for bread.
Triqui, triqui, triqui, tran!

Those deep wrinkles remind a story
of long sufferings and silent anguish
and her hair is white as snow.
Of great pain the seal marked the withered forehead
and their cloudy eyes are mirrors that clouded
the years, and that, there have been times, the forms reflected
of things and beings that will never return.

Los de Roque, alfandoque
Triqui, triqui, triqui, tran!

Tomorrow when the Old Woman sleeps, dead and silent,
far from the living world, under the dark earth,
where others, in the shadows, have long been
from the grandson to the memory, with grave are that encloses
all the sad poem of remote childhood
crossing through the shadows of time and distance
from that dear voice the notes will vibrate ...

Those of Rique, weakling
Triqui, triqui, triqui, tran!

And while on Grandmother's tired knees
with rhythmic movement the child sways
and both are shaken and tremulous,
Grandma smiles with maternal affection
but it crosses his spirit like a strange fear
so in the future, of anguish and disappointment
the ignored days of the grandson will keep.

Sawdust!
Saw!
The timbers of San Juan
they ask for cheese, they ask for bread,
those of Roque
alphandoque
those of Rique
weakling
Triqui, triqui, triqui, tran!
Triqui, triqui, triqui, tran!

The poem makes a recreation of the old Spanish popular song "Los maderos de San Juan", related to the feast of San Juan and the summer solstice, and of which there are different versions throughout Latin America.

It is made up of nine stanzas, and begins and ends almost identically. The lyrics of the song appear in short verse and contrast with the long verse of the poem, which refers to prose and allows reflection.

The passage of time in the poem works the same way as in memory. The lyrics of the song evoke a past moment that is recreated every time the lyrics of the song appear.

Thus, initially an image is shown that seems to be in the present tense, with the song and the image of the grandmother playing with the grandson; then the future of the grandson full of anguish is evoked, and this in turn refers to the anguish experienced by the grandmother in the past. Then the poem takes us to the future in which the grandson sadly remembers his deceased grandmother, and again the memory of the child is recreated playing with the grandmother in the present time.

The change and the ephemerality of life appear through loss, death and wonder.

Nocturnal III: One night

One night
a night full of perfumes, murmurs and music of älas,
one night
in which the fantastic fireflies burned in the damp nuptial shadow,
by my side, slowly, against my belted, all,
mute and pale
as if a presentiment of infinite bitterness,
even the most secret depths of your fibers will shake you,
down the path through the flowered plain
you walked,
and the full moon
through the blue skies, infinite and deep, it spread its white light,
and your shadow
fine and languid,
and my shadow
by the rays of the projected moon
over the sad sands
of the path they gathered
and they were one
and they were one
And they were one long shadow!
And they were one long shadow!
And they were one long shadow!

Tonight
alone, the soul
full of the infinite bitterness and agonies of your death,
separated from yourself, by the shadow, by time and distance,
by the black infinity,
where our voice does not reach,
alone and dumb
on the path he walked,
and the barking of dogs could be heard at the moon,
to the pale moon
and the screech
of the frogs,
I felt cold, it was the cold they had in the bedroom
your cheeks and your temples and your adored hands,
Among the snowy whites
of the deadly sheets!
It was the cold of the grave, it was the cold of death,
it was the cold of nowhere ...
and my shadow
by the rays of the projected moon,
I was alone
I was alone
I went alone through the lonely steppe!
And your slender and agile shadow
fine and languid,
as in that warm night of dead spring,
as in that night full of perfumes, murmurs and music of wings,
approached and marched with her,
approached and marched with her,
he approached and marched with her… Oh the interlocking shadows!
Oh the shadows that gather and seek each other in the nights of blackness and tears! ...

Also known as "Nocturno III", it is the most recognized poem by José Asunción Silva and one of the treasures of Colombian poetry. The poem is about memory, loss, loneliness, death.

In its structure the mixture of short and long verse stands out. We find verses of 24 syllables, separated by commas, and also verses of 16, 12, 10, along with verses of 4 and 6. This shows that the poem does not follow the rigor of syllabic counting, instead, as in modern prose and poetry, it seeks its own rhythm.

The music created by alliteration stands out, especially by the sounds of the "n", "m" and "s" and the anaphora. It is also a rhythm characterized by different speeds in phrasing, pauses and the hit of the accents of certain words, such as "tears".

The poem creates a sensory environment, charged with emotion. Paying tribute to the symbolist influence, from the beginning of the poem all the senses are alluded to: "A whole night full of perfumes, murmurs and the music of wings." Later he speaks of the "screeching of frogs", the "barking of dogs". It is an environment full of sounds, but there is also the moon and particular light, along with the shadows. There are also mentions of coldness or warmth.

The poem's emotionality is also marked by the numerous anaphoras: "one night", "they were one", "they were a single long shadow".

Ars

The verse is a holy vessel. Put in it only,
a pure thought,
At the bottom of which the images boil
like golden bubbles from an old dark wine!

There pour the flowers that in the continuous struggle,
the cold world,
delicious memories of times that do not return,
and tuberose drenched in dew drops

so that the miserable existence is embalmed
which of an unknown essence,
Burning in the fire of the tender soul
a single drop of that supreme balm is enough!

This poem is a poetic art in which the author talks about poetry itself and presents the canon, principles or philosophies that govern his work. It is structured in three stanzas of four verses. The second verse is short, seven syllables, and contrasts with the other longer ones, 14 and 15 syllables.

The first stanza presents a vision of poetry introduced by romanticism and continued by modernism. After the primacy of rationality, science and positivism, in which reason seemed to offer the solution and explanation to everything ( medicine, economics, pure sciences) in the eighteenth century, art denounced the shortcomings and failures of this type of thinking, pointing out all the reason.

The spirituality that had been relegated by positivist thought is taken up by the artist, who recovers the notion of mystery, magic, wonder, what fascinates and what is sacred. Thus, the first stanza alludes to the intention of poetry to evoke that which is much greater than human limitations and which is worthy of being revered.

The images that "buzz" of which the poem speaks, refer to images loaded with sensations and senses, and the gold refers to a treasure.

The second stanza shows us a decadent beauty characterized by the beauty of the ephemeral, what was once beautiful and is now completely distant and unattainable.

The third stanza shows the vision of art, literature and poetry as an alchemical process that serves as a balm and relief for existence.

It may interest you 30 modernist poems commented.

Modern workshop

Through the air in the room, saturated
of a pilgrim smell of old age,
from twilight the evening ray
it will fade the brocade furniture.

The piano is on the easel next to
and of a bust of Dante the thin profile,
of the blue arabesque of a Chinese vase,
half hides complicated drawing.

Next to the reddish rust of an armor,
there is an old altarpiece, where it worries,
the frame light shines on the molding,

and they seem to cry out for a poet
let him improvise the painting from the room
the color spots on the palette.

The poem is presented in the classical form of the sonnet, characterized by two quartets and two triplets with hendecasyllable verses.

Although Silva is a modernist poet, he is also recognized for being a critical thinker of himself and of his contemporaries. Through satire and humor, he creates a distancing that allows critically evaluating the modernist aesthetic developed by some, and that can be seen, among others, in the book Blue of the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío.

The poem criticizes an interest in the anachronistic, the complicated, the preciousness, the rarities and the saturated, to which it alludes with the mention of the armor, the altarpiece, the brocade, the Chinese vase with its arabesque, and that, finally, point to an empty, superficial and barely decorative.

Likewise, he makes a satire of decadent aesthetics, alluding to the rust on the armor, the fading of the furniture and the stains on the palette.

Psychopathy

The park wakes up, laughs and sings
in the morning freshness... the mist
where air jets jump,
it is populated with rainbows
and in luminous veils he rises.
The scent of him scatter half-open flowers,
the peep sounds in the green branches, peep,
of the winged singing guests,
the dew shines on the wet grass ...
Blue the sky! Blue!... And the süave
passing breeze says:
Laugh! Sing! Love! Life is a party!
It's heat, it's passion, it's movement!
And forging an orchestra out of the branches,
with a deep voice the wind says the same,
and through the subtle enchantment,
of the morning rosy and fresh,
of light, herbs and flowers,
pale, sloppy, sleepy,
without having a smile in your mouth,
and in black dress
a young philosopher walks,
he forgets spring light and smell,
and undaunted he continues in his task
To think of death, of consciousness
and in the final causes!
The azalea branches shake him,
giving the air the scented breath
of the pink flowers,
some birds call it, from the nest
do their loves sing,
and the laughing songs
they go through the trembling foliage,
to awaken voluptuous dreams,
and he goes on his way, sad, serious,
thinking of Fichte, Kant, Vogt, Hegel,
And of the complicated self in the mystery!

The little doctor of the passing doctor,
an adorable blonde whose eyes
they burn like an ember,
open your wet and red lips
and she asks the father, moved ...
—That man, papa, of which he is sick,
what sadness clouds his life like this?
When he goes home to see you, I fall asleep
so silent and sad... How bad does he suffer? ...
... A smile the teacher contains,
then look at a flower, the color of sulfur,
she hears the song of a coming bird,
and it begins suddenly, with impudence ...
"That man suffers from a very rare disease,
who rarely attacks women
and few to men..., my daughter!
He suffers from this disease...: to think..., that is the cause
of his grave and subtle melancholy ...
The teacher then pauses
and it goes on... —In the ages
of barbarous nations,
serious authorities
they cured that evil by giving hemlock,
locking up the sick in prisons
or burning him alive... Good remedy!
Decisive and absolute healing
that cut the dispute completely
and healed the patient... look at the middle ...
prophylaxis, in short... Before, now
evil takes on so many grave forms,
the invasion expands terrifying
and it is not cured by powders or syrups;
instead of preventing governments
they water it and stimulate it,
thick volumes, magazines and notebooks
they stir and circulate
and spread the murderous germ ...
Evil, thank God, is not contagious
and very few acquire it: in my life,
I have only cured two... I told them:
/ «Boy,
go straight to work,
in a black and burning forge
or in a very thick and serene forest;
I crushed iron until it sparked,
or knock down old secular logs
and get the wasps sting you,
if you prefer, cross the seas
as cabin boy on a ship, sleep, eat
move around yell and struggle and sweat
look at the storm when it peeks out,
and the aft cables tie and knot,
Until you get ten calluses on your hands
and clear your brain of ideas! ...
They did it and came back healthy… ».
"I'm so fine, doctor ...". "Well, I celebrate it!"
But the young man that is a serious case,
as I know few,
more than how many were born he thinks and knows,
he will spend ten years with the madmen,
and he won't be cured until the day
in which he sleeps at ease
in a narrow cold grave,
far from the world and crazy life,
Between a black coffin of four plates,
with a lot of dirt between the mouth!

The poem is inserted in the literary tradition that treats the melancholic as its theme and that refers us to Hamlet. The melancholic of literature not only tends to sadness and depression, but also has a tendency to think, to analysis, to philosophy and reading.

He is a figure who becomes problematic especially because of his need to question an already established order. While curiosity, analyzing, pondering or asking are not defects in themselves, they can be perceived as threats to society. Psychopathy is defined by the Royal Academy as an anomaly in which "despite the integrity of the perceptual and mental functions, the social behavior of the individual is pathologically altered. suffers ".

According to the poem, the values ​​that society prefers are inclined to positive and productive values. The poem thus begins with a completely idyllic landscape and lyrical language. It is important to note that the literature prior to Silva was focused on entertaining, educating and establishing the values ​​that they wanted to associate with Colombia as a nation. Even today the festive and joyful identity of the Colombian is in force in the verses: "Reíd! Sing! Love! Life is party! / It's heat, it's passion, it's movement! ".

The melancholic is related to the genius that tends to madness and illness, precisely because it is not in harmony with society. Productivity is the great value promoted by bourgeois society, and it is satirized in the poem by means of the woodcutter, potter and sailor, whose work seems mechanical and contributes to the idea that the workers are servile and docile before a condition.

Avant-propos

Physicians prescribe
when the stomach is ravaged,
to the patient, poor dyspeptic,
fat-free diet.

Sweet things are forbidden,
they advise roast beef
and they make him take as a tonic
bitter drops.

Poor literary stomach
that the trivial tires and tires,
don't keep reading poems
full of tears.

Leave the foods that fill,
stories, legends and dramas
and all the sentimentalities
semi-romantic.

And to complete the regimen
that fortifies and that lifts,
try a dose of these
bitter drops.

The title of the poem comes from French and means prologue. It is the first poem of the book Bitter drops, and serves to present the aesthetic proposal of the other poems in the book.

From the positivist discourse that dominated at the end of the 19th century, exemplified by scientific discourse, and especially, the discourse doctor, a critique is made of the literary fashions of the moment, in particular of the romantic excesses that fell into a sweet, corny and maudlin.

Silva takes a critical stance towards his own poetry, and uses deliberately ugly words that have no literary prestige, such as "ravage" or "dyspeptic."

Evil of the century

The patient:
Doctor, a discouragement from life
that is rooted and born deep within me,
the evil of the century... the same evil of Werther,
of Rolla, Manfredo and Leopardi.
A tired of everything, an absolute
contempt for the human... an incessant
deny the vile of existence
worthy of my teacher Schopenhauer;
a deep discomfort that increases
with all the torture of analysis ...

The doctor:
—That's a matter of diet: walk
in the morning; sleep long, bathe;
drink well; eat well; Take care of yourself,
What you are hungry! ...

The title of the poem refers to the crisis of principles and values ​​associated with existentialism and describes the spirit of the end of the century.

Through dialogue, a distance is created, both from what the patient and the doctor say, and this allows us to observe both positions with a critical eye.

On the one hand, the patient finds himself in a radical pessimism: "A weariness of everything, an absolute / contempt for the human... an incessant / denying the vile of existence". On the other, the doctor's answer is so simple that it falls into absurdity.

He criticizes the pragmatism that discards the questions about existence and spirit, and that is still valid today.

Humor, through irony, concludes the poem and gives the tone of bitterness that characterizes Silva's later poems.

Capsules

Poor Juan de Dios, after the ecstasies
of Aniceta's love, he was unhappy.
He spent three months of serious bitterness,
and, after slow suffering,
he was cured with copaiba and with the capsules
by Sándalo Midy.

In love after the hysterical Luisa,
sentimental blonde,
he got emaciated, he became consumptive
and a year and a half or more
he was cured with bromide and with the capsules
of Clertan ether.

Then, disenchanted with life,
subtle philosopher,
Leopardi read, and Shopenhauer
and in a while of spleen,
was cured forever with the capsules
lead from a rifle.

The poem shows a disillusionment with romanticism. If before the beloved was a distant, protective and especially one who finally managed to redeem, in the poem the beloved is the one who makes one sick both physically and spiritually. Phthisis (tuberculosis) is frequently associated with cursed poets and prostitution, and Midy Sandalwood capsules were an ancient remedy for venereal diseases.

Implicitly refers to the vision of love created by the literary tradition, especially the one that creates the great exponent of Spanish romanticism, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, who influenced the initial poems of Silva. It is a criticism and disenchantment with this type of literature.

The poem inevitably refers to the suicide of its author, José Asunción Silva, who shoots himself in the heart. Finally, neither poetry nor philosophy manage to give any answer to the disenchantment that the poem denounces.

Capsules that apparently solve all kinds of problems related to love, except rescuing the notion of love itself, are just as inefficient as the lead capsules in the face of disenchantment: apparently they solve a practical matter, but they leave the questions about the existence and the spirit.

It is curious that the quote that Silva makes days before he dies, by Maurice Barrés: "Suicides kill themselves due to lack of imagination ", highlights precisely the idea that suicide is not the only possible answer.

José Asunción Silva and modernism

The modernist movement (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) was a critique of pragmatic values ​​and productive activities promoted by bourgeois thought, as well as the weighting of the reason of thought positivist.

Modernist poetry stands out because it ignores some of the functions imposed on the art of being didactic, formative, exemplary, entertaining, or even having something necessarily beautiful as its object. In Colombia, Silva was the first poet to write poetry that was not edifying.

Latin American modernism is characterized by its cosmopolitanism: being a modernist was equivalent to being a citizen of the world. Silva's poetry was strongly influenced by his stay in Paris, where he became familiar with the cultural climate and the writers and philosophers of the time:

"The City of Light is the center of exquisiteness, doubt and pessimism. Read the renowned authors of the moment, drawing your attention Charles Baudelaire, Anatole France, Guy de Maupassant, Paúl Régnard, Emile Zola, Stephan Mallarmé, Paúl Verlaine, Marie Bashkirtseffy, Arthur Schopenhauer. Also read about philosophical, political and psychological issues. Acquiring dandy manners and customs, he frequently attends the best restaurants, salons, galleries, museums and concert halls, giving themselves to the enjoyment of luxury, as far as their money allows it "(Quintero Ossa, Robinson).

In modernism the absolute values ​​previously established collapse and subjectivism prevails: what the individual thinks, feels, perceives and the experience of him.

Modernist aesthetics: the ephemeral and the fleeting

Influenced, in part, by Baudelaire, Silva's poems stand out for the beauty of the ephemeral and passenger: in particular objects that were once beautiful but never will be again, such as a flower withered.

The quintessential beautiful woman, in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe, was a pale adolescent to the extreme of showing some disease. Paleness, generally associated with consumption, beyond being a physical disease, is associated with this aesthetics with great intelligence and a delicate sensitivity that can make you sick on contact with the society.

They are women who evoke a completely platonic love, without any carnal interest. The beloved is a distant being, impossible to reach. In this sense, Silva's poetry sings of women who have died just when their beauty reaches its fullest. This is the case of Silva's most popular poem, "Una noche", also known as Nocturno III and dedicated to his sister Elvira, who died at the age of twenty.

Biography of José Asunción Silva

He was born in Bogotá in 1865 in a wealthy family. His father was the manners writer Ricardo Silva. In 1884, at the age of 19, Silva traveled to Paris in order to continue his studies. During his stay, he becomes familiar with the cultural and cosmopolitan climate.

In 1887 his father, Ricardo Silva, died, leaving José Asunción in charge of the family's business at the age of 22. In 1892, at age 27, 52 court orders were raised against the writer, he declared bankruptcy and sold all his assets and businesses.

He is appointed as a deputy in Caracas. At the age of 30, back in Bogotá, the steam that was transporting him was shipwrecked off the coast of Barranquilla. He loses the manuscripts of his novels Love, Desktop and much of his poetic work.

Before the age of 11, the author had lost 3 of his siblings. The poem "Crísalidas" was written in memory of his sister Inés who died at the age of 5. His sister Elvira Silva had contracted pneumonia and died at age 20. His father had also passed away.

On May 23, 1896, before reaching his 31st birthday, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart. The day before, he had visited his childhood friend, the doctor Juan Evangelista Manrique, and asked him to mark with an X where the heart is. He didn't leave a goodbye note.

He died without having published a single book. The writer and critic, Robinson Quintero Ossa, includes at the end of his biography of Silva this quote that shows the great character of the poet:

"Days before his last will, he commented to his friend Baldomero Sanín Cano, quoting Maurice Barrés:" Suicides kill themselves for lack of imagination "".

Works by José Asunción Silva

Poetry

• Intimacies
• The book of verses
• Bitter drops
• Various poems

Novel

• Desktop