Monday, February 22, 2010

Antonio Machado and the uses of Spanish history

As I've noted on other occasions (see for instance here and here) the poetry of the Spanish writer and "martyr" for the Republican cause Antonio Machado is both endlessly fascinating and, at the same time, deeply problematic in the way it manages to combine progressive leftist political sentiments with a Romantic attachment to symbols of Spain's imperialist past and ideas of Castillian supremacy. Yet, at the same time there is a powerful argument that poetry is not an exercise in instrumental reason and as such should be judged solely according to political criteria (a fact that I think also makes it hard to dismiss anti-rationalist philosophers such as Unamuno and Zambrano so hard to dismiss).
Looking down the River Dureo towards the Hermitage of San Saturio

I was reminded of this paradox during my visit last month to Soria, high up at the eastern end of the Castillian meseta near the headwaters of the River Duero, where Machado wrote his most famous collection of poems - Campos de Castilla - and where he met, married and then buried his young wife Leonor. While the strident literary nationalism that inhabits much of this collection is disconcerting, when actually physically confronted with the landscape which Machado describes in these poems it is difficult not to feel moved in a similarly irrational, 'Romantic' way... Somehow this desolate, rocky terrain - with its accumulated millenia of ruined cities, fortresses and monasteries - speaks to you in a way that the empty vistas of 'Godzone' can never even hope to aspire to...
The ruins of the 12th century monastery of San Juan del Duero

While the town of Soria itself is perhaps today a little too eager to cash-in on the legacy of its most famous resident (as evidenced by the 'Cervecería Machado' I encountered in the Calle de los Estudios which sold only Belgian beer...) and has lost some of its poetic 'lustre', a short walk across to the other side of the river you find yourself amidst the familiar vistas so beloved by the poet:

He vuelto a ver los álamos dorados,
álamos del camino en la ribera
del Duero, entre San Polo y San Saturio,

tras las murallas viejas de Soria - barbacana
hacia Aragón, en castellana tierra-.

Estos chopos del río, que acompañan

con el sonido de sus hojas secas

el son del agua, cuando el viento sopla,

tienen en sus cortezas
grabadas iniciales que son nombres

de enamorados, cifras que son fechas.
¡Alamos del amor que ayer tuvisteis

de ruiseñores vuestras ramas llenas;

álamos que seréis mañana liras

del viento perfumado en primavera;

álamos del amor cerca del agua

que corre y pasa y sueña;

alamos de las márgenes del Duero,

conmigo vais, mi corazón os lleva!


('Campos de Soria' VIII)

Along the banks of the river it is also possible to see the remains of the monastery of San Polo, which belonged to the Templar military order until their forcible dissolution in the 14th century, and about which the patron saint of Spanish Romanticism Gustavo Bécquer dedicated his gothic tales 'El Monte de los Ánimas' and 'El Rayo de Luna'.
The gatehouse of the monastery of San Polo, which sits astride the old road between San Juan del Duero and the Hermitage of San Saturio

In the midst of all this history, it is hard to begrudge Machado's appropriation of Castile's store of cultural and historical capital in the pursuit of his modernista literary project, even though the nationalist overtones make his poetry difficult to defend from an objective, political point of view. Perhaps the real problem for Machado (and his fellow Republican intellectuals) was not so much their tendency to appeal to nationalist sentimentality and a rose-tinted view of Spain's military past, but rather the fact that Franco's Nationalists were simply more credible representatives of this historical tradition. What was needed therefore was not so much a simple appeal to history but rather, as Juan Goytisolo advocates in his novel Juan sin tierra, a systematic re-writing or re-imagining of the national past, which promotes dissident figures such as Enrique IV (the reputedly - at least according to according to Gregorio Marañon - homosexual and morisco-phile half brother of Isabel 'la Católica') at the expense of the dominant "Golden Age" narrative handed down to us by authors such as Menéndez Pidal.

In this sense then, it might be said that the problem is not so much a surfeit of irrationality or Romanticism on the part of Machado, but rather that in his pursuit of these strategies he simply does not go far enough...

Postscript:

I couldn't conclude this brief soliloquy on Spanish left nationalism without mentioning the website of the Castilian federation of the Stalinist Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España, which amusingly fights for the self-determination of Castile (along with all the other "oppressed nations" of Spain) and 'liberation' from the rule of EU and US imperialism (since they view Spain as essentially an exploited neo-colony of these latter). Somewhat scarily, in large parts of provincial Spain (such as La Rioja, where I spent the majority of time during my recent trip to the Iberian peninsular) these guys seem to be just about the only organised far left force!

3 comments:

  1. Bueno, si "la liberación de los pueblos oprimidos de España" ha de venir de la mano del Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España, la verdad es que entonces faltan miles de años para alcanzarla dado que ese grupúsculo de adoradores de la URSS es tan minúsculo y amenazado por la biología (sus miembros suelen ser muy ancianos), que no habrá más remedio -afortunadamente- que seguir esperando.

    De veras, el estalinismo español es políticamente inane, folklórico y residual.

    Un saludo.

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  2. Gracias por la información sobre el PCPE Joaquim - esta organización me parece muy extraño y curioso como un espécimen ideológico, que combina una admiración por estalinismo del "tercer periódo" con este apoyo idiosincrásico por la idea de una "nación castellana"...

    ¿Supongo que quizás pueda ser la razón por su concentración en lugares que en la historia reciente de España no han sido exactamente "fortalezas de la izquierda", como Logroño y Burgos?

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  3. El origen del PCPE es una escisión del PC español promovida por Enrique Líster, un peón de los soviéticos, cuando a finales de los años setenta Santiago Carrillo impulsa el llamado "eurocomunismo (es decir, la socialdemocratización del comunismo oficial) en compañía del PC italiano de Enrico Berlinguer y también auqnue más reticente, del PC francés de George Marchais.

    Los soviéticos jugaron a fracturar un PCE muy debilitado ya entonces por los fracasos electorales de 1977 y 1979 pensando que los "verdaderos comunistas" seguirían todos a Líster, uno de los mitos comunistas de la Guerra de España. Lo cierto es que la escisión del PCPE no logró más que agravar el estado del PCE sin llegar a articular una organización política seria. El PCPE malvivió del escaso dinero soviético hasta la caída del muro de Berlín, y desde entonces y tras la muerte de Enrique Líster simplemente vegeta. No debe tener más allá de unas docenas de militantes en toda España, gente mayor y aislada de la realidad política y social.

    El pretendido nacionalismo local de sus organizaciones regionales no es más que oportunismo barato, un intento desesperado de pescar entre sectores jóvenes radicalizados por nacionalismos tribales. En las nacionalidades históricas (Catalunya, Euskadi y Galicia)prácticamente ni existe el PCPE, y como decía quizá tenga algunas decenas de militantes en Asturias, Castilla, Andalucía y algunas otra regiones. No es un actor político a considerar, apenas una sigla más en la sopa de letras de los numerosos grupúsculos de la presunta izquierda española de origen autoritario.

    Un saludo cordial.

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