Poetry
Cántico
Jorge Guillén · 1928
Synopsis
Poems that celebrate the happiness of existing and the poet's accord with a world held to be well made: light, objects, the landscape and the beloved woman, often blended together, are regarded there with an attentive joy. The language is dense and spare, made of nouns often without articles, sentences without verbs, exclamations and short lines, with a predilection for the décima. The poet effaces himself behind what he describes. “The world is well made”, proclaims one of the best-known lines.
Context
The first edition was published in December 1928 by the Revista de Occidente, with seventy-five poems: the author, slow to publish and concerned with perfection, was thirty-five. The book then grew from edition to edition, one hundred and twenty-five poems in 1936, two hundred and seventy in Mexico in 1945, three hundred and thirty-four in Buenos Aires in 1950, in five parts. The author owes to Valéry the ideal of a pure poetry and of a single book, and to Góngora his rigour. His optimism earned him after the war the hostility of poets marked by its consequences.
Who it is for
Short, demanding poems, to be read slowly; modern editions often follow the expanded 1950 version.
Prizes and reception
The collection on which the author's work is founded, he being the winner of the first Cervantes Prize; a selection translated into French by Claude Esteban.