Poetry
Tardes de oro
Not translated into English
Alfonso Cortés · 1934
Synopsis
Poems in which the world is perceived as space, time and sound, in which things have a secret life and in which the poet's word becomes a “spoken silence”. In “Moi”, he opposes to those who believe they grasp the world the certainty that everything in it is an unspeakable rite, in which man engenders the infinite; in “Au-delà”, written as early as 1918, the poet walking along thinks in spaces and writes as he thinks. The self, the senses, time and immensity, which obsess all this poetry, recur from piece to piece.
Context
The book appeared in Managua in 1934, seven years after the crisis that had left its author confined, the very year in which the young founders of the avant-garde, José Coronel Urtecho, Pablo Antonio Cuadra and Joaquín Pasos, hailed him as their precursor. Some of the poems dated from before that crisis. Cortés continued to write during his confinement, often in the margins of newspapers, in handwriting so small that a magnifying glass is needed to read it.
Who it is for
Poems in Spanish, not translated into French. The abstract vocabulary, space, time, infinity, calls for slow reading, one piece at a time.
Prizes and reception
Critics rank its author, with Pallais and Salomón de la Selva, among the three great Nicaraguan poets who came after Darío.
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