[Ann White]

Originally posted by albert geiser:
[b]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.

Thanks Albert. I found Merwin too (The Nothing That Is) but none of his Lorca translations. And an old review (Dublin Magazine, 1952) that I was able to access, which spoke to the musicality of Lorca, his passion and his identification with the gypsies & the landscape of Andalusia. Then another review somewhere which went further in addressing his darkness, his despair, his homosexuality, his murder by a band of fascists, his sense of isolation, his love/friendship with Dali, his imagery, his language, his prolific career, put to an end at age 38. There's a passage talking about the Andalusian folksongs, which Lorca either used as motifs and patterns or which he may have copied for the first time and reproduced (preserved) in print.

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,

I keep seeing the image of the woman on the darkened, empty stage in a scene from Mulholland Drive, who sang this heart-rending version of "Crying."

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.

What I understood was Lorca asserting the passion of poetry or the origin of poetry as a passionate attempt at expression. Maybe a little similar to Whitman's "henceforth no more books," attitude. That's not so much mystical as it is independent of logic for coherence.

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.

Albert, I saw duende as pre-content, pre-verbal.

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.

nice way of seeing it.


Now, about this duende. Some of what I read gives it a uniquely Spanish life, maybe this is cultural profiling, I don’t know, I’m sorry to say, enough about multiple cultures to distinguish whether it’s a stereotype or not. But I’ve got another question, and it’s woven into this one, and it has lyrical value. What about the fado, this art form described as “a pain that one enjoys and a happiness that one suffers,” this “wild being that must be tamed.”? Are we talking about the same element? Are duende and fado distant cousins?

[albert geiser]

Ann-

I've googled fado. It originated in Portugal and from there took root in Brazil. I had never heard of it before. I'll have to do more research on it. Fado is a genre of guitar music.

Duende is an idea, but not, according to Lorca, any genre. The cultural origin of the idea of duende, and evidently of the word, is Andalusia, which is the southernmost region of Spain, home to the flamenco, gypsy music, and a strong Arabic influence. Now that the concept is in world wide use, it transcends its culture. But it looks like duende still is most often linked to guitar music; blues musicians speaking of duende, for example. Fado is a guitar genre which came to Brazil from the Iberian peninsula so quite possibly the idea of duende was brought with fado players to Brazil, even if they were the only guitar players bringing to the idea to the Americans.

Lorca speaks of the duende's arrival in the work of art. It comes from the pre-content and it enters the content of the work. It has to become a part of the content of the work.



[This message has been edited by albert geiser (edited April 26, 2005).]

[Robin-Kemp]

Albert,

I think Garcia Lorca's duende is akin to Keats' negative capability, but somewhat more darkly nuanced. From the Dicionario de la Lengua Espanola, from the Real Academia Española:

Duende: de duen de casa, dueño de la casa). m. Espíritu fantástico del que se dice que habita en algunas casas y que travesa, causando en ellas trastorno y estruendo. Aparece con figura de viejo o de niño en las narraciones tradicionales. 2 restaño. 3. pl. (And.) Cardos secos y espinosos que se ponen en las albardillas de las tapias para dificultar el escalo. 4. (And.) Encanto misterioso e inefable. Los duendes del cante flamenco. andar alguien como un ~, o parecer un ~. frs. coloqs. Aparecer en los lugares donde no se le esparaba. tener alguien ~. fr. coloq. Traer en la imaginación algo que le inquieta. 2. Tener encanto, atractivo, etc. (855)

In English, as best as I can: 1. Fantastic spirit which is said to live in some houses and that misbehaves, causing disturbance and commotion. (In other words, a trickster/orisha.) It appears in the figure of an old man or of a little boy in traditonal narratives (folk tales?).

I'm having trouble translating 2. restaño, but get the sense it means a particular type of spirit or ghost.

3. Dry, spiny thistles that are placed on the top of a wall to discourage burglars. (In New Orleans and Havana, and many other Eurpoean cities, I'm sure, the jagged points of broken bottles are cemented atop walls for the same purpose.)

4. Mysterious spell too great to describe.

It's the zone, the flow, the It, the thing itself, the undertow that sucks the reader into the poem, then spits him or her out, gasping for air, forever changed by the experience.

It's what makes a poem a poem as opposed to words arranged on a page according to a pattern (or not). My work is sadly lacking in duende of late. Perhaps I need to offer some libations to the orishas.

Robin




[This message has been edited by Robin-Kemp (edited May 01, 2005).]

[Ann White]

Originally posted by Robin-Kemp:
I'm having trouble translating 2. restaño, but get the sense it means a particular type of spirit or ghost.

Robin,
Here's something from American Poetry Review, July 1999 (Hirsch: The Duende)

The duende (the etymology comes from duen de casa, "lord of the house") has generally been considered in Spanish folklore something like a household version of the Yiddish dybbuk, a hobgoblin, a sly poltergeist-dike trickster who meddles and stirs up trouble.

Sounds like a Castaneda character.

4. Mysterious spell too great to describe.

It's the zone, the flow, the It, the thing itself, the undertow that sucks the reader into the poem, then spits him or her out, gasping for air, forever changed by the experience.

Yes, that's very true to Lorca's definition (from the same article): "a mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains."

It's what makes a poem a poem as opposed to words arranged on a page according to a pattern (or not). My work is sadly lacking in duende of late. Perhaps I need to offer some libations to the orishas.

Robin

or as Lorca put it, strip naked.. now that sounds familiar.

The article by Hirsch is very detailed. Another Lorca quote as it relates here:

The duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible.

***
I'm having this wonderful six degrees of duende experience, having come across the term and seeing connections with the musical/lyrical passion of Lorca's duende and the fado of Misia (a contemporary singer) and the creative motivation of Freda Kahlo, who was influenced by her cultures of family and country, and who literally came close to death many times. To some extent, I'm including Anais Nin here too,who was born in Cuba, although perhaps her expression didn't materialize in her writing in the same way. Maybe these leaps are too giant - maybe they are stereotypical.

I'd love to hear what others have to say about all this. Though I don't get the feeling anyone is quite as excited about as I am.

Ann

[albert geiser]

The dictionary definition of duende sounds Japanese! Thanks for finding it Robin!

I'm going to be looking for comparisons to Japanese spirits now.

Also, by the defintion of duende as an actual spirit, it has got to appear in magic realism novels. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargos Llosa....

Anyone know of duende in any novels? I'm tempted to head first for the Spanish language shelf of Borders to see if there's any dual translation with an index.

[This message has been edited by albert geiser (edited May 01, 2005).]

[Robin-Kemp]

Albert,

Doesn't that little New Directions Garcia Lorca book have something on the "actual magical," I think, which sounds like "magical realism" in a purer sense?

Robin

[Catherine Chandler]

Just some thoughts on duende. As someone who has studied Garcia Lorca, I have always believed that he never meant this concept to be construed as restricted to Spanish culture, flamenco, literature, music, etc., nor to any one genre (e.g. magic realism). It is more than "pizzaz". It is difficult to define (some dictionaries actually translate it as an "elf" or "hobgoblin"!!), but simple to recognize in a work of art. It is the Muse made manifest, and you either have it, or your don't. We should not translate this word, but leave it as "duende".

Catherine

[Roger Slater]

It's worth noting that Lorca didn't invent the term duende, although he gave it his own spin and made it his own. Duende also means "goblin" or "elf" as well as "charm or magic" -- diccionarios.com gives as an example, "es una chica con duende" which it translates as "she's got charm". My Spanish language dictionary says it is an "espíritu que popularmente se cree que habita en algunas casas...", i.e., a ghost or spirit that haunts some houses. It has another definition meaning artificial or faked.

I take it from these definitions that Lorca meant that a performer with duende seems possessed by a spirit that takes over mind and body and speaks with the fervor we might expect from a spirit that goes to the length of possessing another's soul.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

My sense of "duende"--and it's is not a quality I can claim, so I don't really know this--is a kind of deep desperation, a raw sensibility to experience that goes deeper than the personal and into the universal, under language. I agree that it's not just Spanish, but can turn up in work from anywhere. I'm aware of it in some poems by Emily Dickinson as the quality that fractures their syntax and produces her characteristic strange, riveting imagery. But it's not the same as surrealism: it's more seriously meant, and has a greater capacity to hurt and remain in the memory.

It's not that it opposes intellect, but that it subverts intellect, threatens it with its own weapons.
For instance, Dickinson's cry to God--"Burglar! Banker! Father!/I am poor once more." That's not just incongruous and frightening in its vehemence and its leap from one association to another, it's also a recognizably human response to what we understand although we may not be able to word it. Her "duende" consists of her rapid and fearless vision, and the force with which she then finds equally fearless words for it.

The "possession" element is inescapable. People talk like that when they are "not thinking clearly," to put it euphemistically. But they're feeling clearly, and they have the nerve to say it, before "the pale cast of thought" does any editing.

[Ann White]

Here's a clip of Soleá por bulería, sung by Dolores Agujetas, called the "daughter of duende."

From an interview at Flamenco-world:

Flamenco is fashionable now, but flamenco isn't my thing. I don't sing flamenco, or 'deep song', I sing gypsy. Flamenco is for Americans, and what my father does is also gypsy cante, not flamenco.