Lorca: In Search of Duende, New Directions paperback translated by Christopher Maurer, copyright 1995, 1998
This is an excellent book. Every poet should own it.
Lorca says the most genuine, perfect prototype of deep song is the Gypsy song, the siguiriya. The name deep song is given to a group of Andalusian songs.
Deep song is "a stammer, a wavering emission of the voice." Lorca makes clear that deep song is distinct from the flamenco. Lorcas says that flamenco, unlike deep song, does not proceed by undulation but by leaps.
Deep song is the oldest song in all Europe, Lorca says, The Gypsy siguiriya begins with a terrible scream that "divides the landscape into two ideal hemispheres. It is the scream of lost generations, a poignant elegy for lost centuries, the pathetic evocation of love under other moons and other winds."
My notes: So, if one is looking to be influenced by deep song in poetry, it appears not to lead to a contemporary feeling. However, it's a guitar music that came with the guitar to Europe. So, deep song and the depth of the poet's art can bring the poet into a relationship with the guitar that ordinary songwriting and pop music can't do.
The question then is what can the poet do with this idea of primitive sounds which don't have words or written phonetics.
The book includes translations of Lorca's deep song poems, among them several translations by W.S. Merwin.
Duende is more than the deep song itself. Lorca calls duende "the black sounds."
Lorca turns mystical when he describes duende. I think there must be a way to bring this idea out in poetry without assuming it is mystical. However, one shouldn't worry about the usual assumptions of craft for an emotion like this. Lorca says that an artist has to fight his duende. I'm not sure I agree with this. "He rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned... smashes the styles, leans on human pain with no consolation..."
I would argue that duende can easily be defeated if the poet doesn't want more than craft. Robert Frost has no duende in his poetry, and his work is adored. Duende can be closed out by the strict iambic.
Lorca speaks of a singer who "...had an exquisite audience, one which demanded the marrow of forms, pure music, with a body lean enough to stay in the air."
He says, "The duende's arrival always means a radical change in forms."
Lorca makes a distinction of the duende with the angel and the muse. "Angel and muse escape with violin, meter, and compass; the duende wounds. In the healing of that wound,which never closes, lies the strange invented qualities of a work."
The duende comes in the content. Looks to me like a good way to put it is when the form falls away like your clothes before you jump into a hot spring under a full moon. The form, whether it's a sonnet, a nonce, just a rigid iambic, or some complex form like a ballade, whatever it is, it will be there on the ground by the spring when you get out of the water, and then you will have duende with you from the spring when you put your clothes back on.
[This message has been edited by albert geiser (edited April 26, 2005).]
|