Mario Benedetti: 6 essential poems by the Uruguayan poet
Mario Benedetti is a Uruguayan writer who has marked several generations through his lyrics. He was undoubtedly a controversial writer. His political positions would cause him a life of exile and permanent mobilization.
Still, or perhaps because of that, his literary work, especially his poetry, would become a fundamental reference. His themes, as in any poet, would go through love, the nature of human existence and politics, among many others.
Let's see some of the essential poems of the author.
Let's make a Deal
In this poem, Benedetti represents love as a commitment that is offered. The lover is the offering. He asks nothing more than to be recognized in this way, as an offering of surrender, of solidarity, as a loving presence that he supports. The term "companion" is surprising. He does not refer to the loved subject as a lover, but as an equal with whom there is a pact of complicity, something that transcends eros and is established as a value.
Partner
you know
you can count
with me
not up to two
or up to ten
but count
with me
if ever
warns
that I look into her eyes
and a streak of love
recognize in mine
do not alert your rifles
nor think what delirium
despite the streak
or maybe because it exists
you can count
with me
yes other times
He finds me
sullen for no reason
don't think how lazy
you can still count
with me
but let's make a deal
I would like to tell
with you
he is so cute
know that you exist
one feels alive
and when i say this
I mean count
even up to two
even up to five
no longer to come
hurried to my aid
but to know
for sure
that you know you can
count on me.
Tactic and strategy
The lover describes his love methods and pretensions in this poem, as if it were a military campaign. He outlines two concepts: tactics and strategy. Love is a battlefield, the only battle worth living and celebrating. As a lover, the lyrical subject's voice has one goal: to become needed by the loved one.
My tactic is
look at you
learn how you are
love you as you are
my tactic is
talk to you
and listen to you
build with words
an indestructible bridge
my tactic is
stay in your memory
I do not know how
i don't even know
with what pretext
but stay in you
my tactic is
be frank
and know that you are frank
and that we do not sell ourselves
drills
so that between the two
there is no curtain
nor abysses
my strategy is
instead
deeper and more
simple
my strategy is
that any other day
I do not know how
i don't even know
with what pretext
finally
you need me
I love you
This is perhaps the most famous poem by Mario Benedetti. Not only has it been read by many, but it has also given rise to the most beautiful songs in the Latin American repertoire. Benedetti reviews the reasons for his love, which is not limited to the unconscious spell.
It is a love that looks at the heart of the other, and examines the fibers of their commitment, ethics and universal loving capacity. Lover and beloved meet in the struggles of life, share their efforts, look at and love their country. It is a love that is not content with the internal world, but rather expands in belonging to a whole.
Your hands are my caress
my everyday chords
I love you because your hands
they work for justice
If I love you, it's because you are
my love my accomplice and everything
and in the street side by side
We are much more than two
your eyes are my spell
against the bad day
I love you for your look
that looks and sows the future
your mouth that is yours and mine
your mouth is not wrong
I love you because your mouth
knows how to scream rebellion
If I love you, it's because you are
my love my accomplice and everything
and in the street side by side
We are much more than two
and for your sincere face
and your wandering step
And your tears for the world
because you are a people I love you
and because love is not halo
nor candid moral
and because we are a couple
who knows that she is not alone
I want you in my paradise
that is to say that in my country
people live happy
even if I don't have permission
If I love you, it's because you are
my love my accomplice and everything
and in the street side by side
We are much more than two.
Man looking at his country from exile
Besides his wife, Benedetti had a confessed love: his country. He lived in exile during the time of the military dictatorship in Uruguay because of his political convictions. He walked through Argentina and Spain. But Cuba would also have an important weight, since it gave him shelter and work as director of the Casa de las Américas.
Beyond all support, any link in his career, those years were of pain before the distant country, which he is lost on the horizon, which has distorted his face, but still awaits a true transfiguration. His love for the country that he longs for from exile is, in a way, a universal love.
Green and wounded country
region of truth
poor country
hoarse and empty country
girl grave
blood on blood
country far and near
executioner occasion
the best to the stocks
country violin in bag
or silence hospital
or poor artigas
shaken country
hand and letter
dungeon and grasslands
country you will arm yourself
piece by piece
people my people
Vice versa
After waiting, the anxiety about the meeting turns into a jumble of emotions. The expectation generated by the possible meeting becomes a question, and each question travels the geography of a restless heart. What dominates the lyrical voice in confusion. Fear has its other side: hope... or vice versa.
I'm afraid to see you
need to see you
hope to see you
uneasiness to see you
I want to find you
worry to find you
certainty of finding you
poor doubts of finding you
I have an urge to hear you
joy to hear you
good luck hearing you
and fears of hearing you
I mean
summarizing
I'm screwed up
and radiant
maybe more the first
that the second
and also
vice versa.
That battle
In this poem, the lyrical voice no longer questions itself about love, but about the nature of human existence. How to understand this abyss of living knowing that death is approaching? How to pay off the debt with life, so ephemeral, so fragile? Let the poet be the one to ask ...
How to combine
the annihilator
idea of death
with that irrepressible
eagerness for life?
How do you flatten the horror
before nowhere that will come
with the invading joy
of provisional love
and true?
How do you disable the tombstone
with the field?
The scythe
with the carnation?
Could it be that man is that?
That battle?
About Mario Benedetti
Mario Benedetti was born on September 14, 1920 and died on May 17, 2009 in Uruguay. He was part of the generation of 45 in that country along with names like Juan Carlos Onetti, Ángel Rama and Ida Vitale.
See also Ida Vitale: 10 Essential Poems.
He studied elementary school in a German school. There he learned this language, thanks to which he was able to work as a translator for Kafka for years to come. He was removed from that school when the Nazi ideology began to spread.
The narrow family economy would lead him to work from the age of 14, forcing him to drop out of high school and study on his own. Since then, he has worked in different trades as a salesman, stenographer and accountant, as well as a translator.
In 1946 he married Luz López Alegre, with whom he had a marriage of 60 years. He was finally trained as a journalist and gradually gained notoriety in the intellectual scene of the country.
As a result of the military coup that occurred in Uruguay in 1973, he placed his position as head of the Department in order. of Hispano-American Literature, at the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences of Montevideo, and went to live in the exile. For ten years he lived in countries like Argentina, Cuba, Peru and Spain, circumstantially separated from his wife.
His work, translated into more than 25 languages, encompasses genres such as poetry, novels, short stories, critiques and essays. In addition, his style has been docile to musicalization, so that his lyrics have been immortalized in the voices of the singers Joan Manuel Serrat, Pablo Milanés, Soledad Bravo and many more.
He has received numerous awards, among which we can name: the Félix Varela Order (Cuba, 1982), the Llama de Amnesty International Gold (Brussels, 1987), the Gabriela Mistral Medal (Chile, 1995) and the Pablo Neruda Medal (Chile, 2005). He also received the Honoris Causa distinction at the University of the Republic in Montevideo (2004) and the VIII Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry (Spain, 1999).
Listen to the musicalization of the poem I love you composed by Alberto Favero, performed by the soloist Mariana Jolivet together with the Neuquen Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Reinaldo Naldo Labrin. Arrangements and piano by Daniel Sánchez.
