Selected Poetry of Delmira Agustini
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Matei Calinescu addresses this struggle in terms of what he calls “the two modernities.” He points out the impossibility of saying precisely “when one can begin to speak of the existence of two distinct and bitterly conflicting modernities” (41). Calinescu believes that
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at some point during the first half of the nineteenth century an irreversible split occurred between modernity as a stage in the history of Western civilization—
a product of scientific and technological progress, of the industrial revolution, of the sweeping economic and social changes brought about by capitalism—
and modernity as an aesthetic concept. (41)12
Iris Zavala addresses the issue of modernismo and the Latin American revolution by discussing an article published by Venezuelan columnist Emilio Coll in the French symbolist journal Le Mercure de France in 1897. This journal had inaugurated a new section called “Latin American News” where Coll’s article appeared as the first column. The Venezuelan writer identified the literary movement known as modernismo with the Cuban struggle for independence: “The first symptoms of the Cuban insurrection have coincided with an intellectual and artistic movement common to all of Latin America”
(qtd. in Zavala, “1898” 43). Coll develops his ideas further by explaining that this insurrection has a double meaning: while in the Antilles this is an indicator for national liberation, in other Latin American countries, which had gained their independence decades before, it means a response to the traditions imposed by Spain.13 Zavala also points out, however, that not all modernista writers were like Coll. Many were “marked philistines who just pretended to be avant-garde and rebellious.” They were those who “created works without contents, without history and future; empty displays of words, without fundamental tension, not destined for significant transformation” (45–46).14
Other authors who give insightful information on the subject are Angel Rama, Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot, and César Graña.15
Saúl Yurkievich summarizes this literary revolution in quite precise terms: To return to the modernistas means to safeguard the option of stylization, of sublimation, . . . as antidotes against alienated existence, as compensatory measures to balance the restrictions of empirical reality. . . . It means to preserve the power of subversion, the capacity for imaginative recreation of factual experience. To preserve what is gratuitous, unexpected and surprising—the chimerical dimension. To fulfill desire through esthetic creation and balance it against the reductive violence of the real world. (7–9)16
When Octavio Paz defined romanticism in 1974 not only as a literary movement but also as “a new morality, a new eroticism, and a new politics”
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(58), he could have been discussing modernismo as well. This comparison is especially evident in the importance of the erotic to both movements. As Cathy Jrade argues, “for virtually all the modernista writers, erotic passion is the most easily identifiable aspect of nature that has been inhibited or destroyed by the social order” ( Modernismo 22).
From a Marxist perspective, Françoise Perus’s study on modernismo and Rubén Darío, as its best representative, constitutes the first part of a larger project of “historical and sociological interpretation of the most significant literary currents of modern and contemporary Latin America” (9). Perus identifies the second part of her project as the study of the “social novel,”
which emerges during the period between 1910–1950, and concludes the third part with the study of what she refers to as the “new narrative” that took place during the 1960’s.17 She also reminds us that “intellectual production does not generate directly from the material base, but rather it always operates over a pre-existing cultural environment, which it perceives itself as autonomous”
(20). Perus also notes as “a fact of the utmost importance” that literature cannot be considered as a mechanical and automatic secretion of the social structure, nor as a simple epifenómeno of ideology. It simply is a process of production socially determined, which operates in a specific manner on a level equally specific, of the system of ideas, images, and social representations, to which literature, however, cannot be reduced. (38)18
In sum, the last three decades of the nineteenth century marked the entrance of Spanish America into modernity. It was a moment of great political and economic upheaval, and writers of the time, aware of these changes taking place in all aspects of society, were making conscious efforts to be a part of the making of this new world order. The old colonial models were left behind, and a new language needed to be created to accommodate the new ways of thinking and experiencing life. Far from being involved in the creation of a superficial form of art standing for its own sake, modernista writers were most honest and sincere in searching for new avenues by which to show their social and political involvement.
Let us see now how the Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini fits into this scenario. Since modernismo is the first Spanish American movement occupied Introduction / 7
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with matters brought along by modernity, states Jrade, it is also the one movement marking “fundamental shifts in the roles assigned to the poet, language, and literature” (2). From modernismo, Agustini utilizes the kind of exotic images that had already been used by the French Parnassians and symbolists: foreign lands, for instance, become points of reference to satisfy that need of lost and desired worlds. As they are in modernismo, princesses, fairies, magicians, and muses also become important figures in Agustini’s discourse. The Far East, with its enigmas and legends, incenses, pearls and perfume, and classical antiquity, with mythological figures such as Aeolus, Venus, and Helen, also appear in her poetry. The element of color, so important for the symbolists, is at times directly mentioned in Agustini’s poetry, (for example, “gray muse,” “blue sail,” “white camellias”) or is indirectly suggested through images which contain it (for example, “honey,”
“fierce of rubies,” or “color of fire”). One can therefore see in Agustini’s production the cosmopolitanism mentioned by Monguió as part of the modernista aesthetics. Starting with the poem “The Statue” (La estatua), Agustini introduces a vocabulary that includes marble figures, monuments of dumb stone, and emperors. It is also in this poem that, for the first time, Agustini introduces the notion of race, which will have a fundamental importance in the poet’s work.19
At the same time, and as the poet slowly moves away from the modernista imagery, a new group of images starts appearing in her discourse. These new images are more subjective and based primarily on an inner dialogue between the poet and her own self, her inner poetic voice. The appearance of this new aesthetic model occurs in the poet’s work as early as in her first book of 1907.
The White Book (Fragile) contains at the end an appendix or subsection that includes only seven poems reunited under the subtitle “Rosy Fringe.” The images in these poems are extremely vivid and powerful; they contain visions of death, in which particularly women’s sexuality and insatiable desire reign supreme in her poetic discourse. In their erotic essence and overtones, Agustini’s images place her close to the ancient Greek lyric poet Sappho, and in their passionate character they remind us of those of the Italian poet Gabriel D’Annunzio (1863–1938). And images of such creatures as black ravens, larvae, worms, and serpents, all used to express Agustini’s burning desire, remind us of the surprisingly metaphorical language (reflecting the Introduction / 8
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continued influence of romanticism) in the naturalist novels of Emile Zola (1840–1902).
In the third and last book of Agustini’s poems, the swan, an emblem of the inspiration of poets from ancient to m
odern times, but symbol par excellence of modernismo, makes its appearance in the poet’s discourse. Agustini’s swan appears as a phallic figure, a lover of the poet in the clarity of an erotic lake that reflects the poet’s thoughts—as she would proclaim in her poem “The Swan” (El cisne). The myth of Zeus and Leda—in which the god disguises himself as a swan in order to seduce Leda, queen of the night—has been recreated by many poets throughout history. In general, the poet acts as a narrator observing and describing the seduction and the love-making occurring in the lake. What is different and important about Agustini’s swan is that the poet symbolically assumes the role of Leda herself, thus incorporating her own voice into the poetic discourse. This results in the creation of a highly sensuous and erotic poem.20
However, Agustini’s poetry also centers around the figure of the male, who appears as the unifying object of both devotion and attention, but who the poet sees as unreachable. This man, who is desired and loved, and who embodies, epitomizes, and represents all men who are desired and loved, makes his appearance in her poetic chamber from very early in her literary production. This man, metaphor of all men, represents in Agustini’s discourse the eternal masculine, the eternal lover, with whom she shares her own sexuality, which she has chosen to be the center of her aesthetics. In The Rosary of Eros, a collection of five poems published posthumously and based upon the mysteries of the Catholic rosary of the Virgin Mary, Agustini reaches the pinnacle in her literary production. In general terms, The Rosary of Eros is the most transgressive of all of Agustini’s works, for the poet subverts the original intention of the Christian rosary and replaces it with a rosary said in praise and homage to Eros, the Greek god of love.
Throughout her literary career, Agustini experimented with different types of verses and of poems, the sonnet being the most frequently used. Nevertheless, as she matured as a poet and as a human being, Agustini progressively abandoned the sonnet and became freer in the fabric of her work. This spirit of total freedom emanating from her poetry, particularly in her later work, the audacious erotic images she employs, which seem to deviate from those Introduction / 9
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accepted by the society of her time, and the clear effort to make conscious the instinct as well as dark forces of the human being, associate Agustini with the avant-garde movement. At the same time, the exaltation of those original images united with the exquisiteness of her metaphors make Agustini a forerunner of ultraísmo. 21
Delmira Agustini was the forerunner of other female poets at the turn of the century who continued with this kind of feminist debate—namely the struggle to place women as equal to men in many aspects, of which the celebration of sexuality is a fundamental one. As could be expected, her erotic message and sexual discourse were silenced or ignored by the society of her time, and for several decades following Agustini’s death, critics systematically attempted to desexualize her work. Since Agustini’s poetry can be read on different levels, critics of the first five decades of the last century tried to convert her erotic message into something metaphysical or mystical, in order to at least acknowledge her talent and pay tribute to her voice. Alberto Zum Felde was the most influential leader in this conscious effort to desexualize her poetry.22 Nonetheless, recent Agustini criticism has contributed to a much better understanding of the poet’s work, and under the influence of recent literary theories and tendencies, such as feminist studies, gender studies, and women’s studies in particular, it is clearer now what she was able to accom-plish with her poetry. Nearly one hundred years ago, Delmira Agustini announced a new kind of woman: a woman equal to men in practicing and celebrating sexuality.
In spite of the ignorance and prejudice of traditional Agustini criticism, the first six or seven decades of the 1900s produced a few positive and useful studies of the poet’s work. The earliest example of insightful criticism on the poet is “Carta abierta a Delmira Agustini,” an open letter written by Uruguayan scholar Alberto Zum Felde in 1914. Ofelia Machado Bonet’s extensive biography and critical analysis of Agustini’s poetry in 1944 is another important early piece of criticism, in which the Uruguayan writer analyzes Agustini’s work objectively for what it is, without any prejudice or attempt to alter the poet’s message. Also very important are Emir Rodríguez Monegal’s contribution in 1969, Sexo y poesía en el 900 uruguayo: los extraños Introduction / 10
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destinos de Roberto y Delmira, book that offers a detailed study of the time and the society in which Delmira Agustini wrote, as well as Alfonsina Storni’s positive evaluation of Agustini’s work, for the Argentine poet was fighting for the same cause as Agustini, and both poets were immersed in a similar feminist debate (44). Noteworthy, too, is Uruguayan scholar Arturo Sergio Visca, who, in spite of his lack of feminist vision, suggests through his writings on Agustini that he did not join the literary generation of critics who believed she was a mystical or metaphysical poet (“La poesía” 5).
In the last decades of the twentieth century, there was a positive change towards the vision and understanding of human sexuality, particularly that of women, as a result, at least in part, of the positive contribution of the feminist movement. This change has helped to bring about fundamental changes in the fabric of society in general and in literary criticism in particular. Thus, recent approaches to Agustini’s poetry have replaced the old mystical-metaphysical ornaments with social realities, in which Delmira Agustini is understood as a provocative and transgressive figure, and as such, now fully acknowledged and accepted. These new critical approaches, not only in Uruguay but also in various other countries, have been giving smoke signals—but with the kind of smoke that cleans rather than asphyxiates—for approximately the last twenty-five years, during which time the language has also dramatically changed and no longer resorts to rhetorical euphemisms.
The New Critical Approach to Agustini’s Work
Taking into account that most contributions to this new critical approach to Agustini have been published in Spanish, I review in the following pages the most relevant criticism in order to give both scholars and students interested in research on Agustini easier access to these secondary sources.
Typical of the new critical approach to Agustini’s work is Argentinian scholar Silvia Molloy’s essay comparing the treatment of the swan in Delmira Agustini and Rubén Darío. The critic analyzes, for instance, Agustini’s eroticism, which she describes as something that “needs to be said, to be inscribed, not as the whimper of a woman vanquished, that gets lost in the winds, but as the triumphant, terrible [cry of] pleasure” (66). Molloy identifies Introduction / 11
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the “erotic vampirism” that causes the “yearning ego to be drained of desire”
(67). And even more important, her criticism does not hesitate to give the poet an active sexual position, in equal terms with the male:
The habitual erotic image—the spilling of the male inside the glorified female body—that appears in Darío in connection with Leda . . . is subverted in Agustini: it is the I [ego], the woman, who has fulfilled the white swan . . .
giving it substance, and using itself up. (67)23
Patricia Varas, in turn, analyzes the poet’s work and defines it as “an effort of creation of the human being, as way to free the poetic I that includes the liberation of the authorial I” (134). Varas maintains that this “calculated effort is a strategy that is not influenced but rather shaped, by the gender of the author, the epoch, and the literary movement of the time: modernismo” (134).
She also argues that Agustini “has chosen the erotic/sexual frame in order to build her poetic and authorial being,” and adds that
hyper-sensitivity in Agustini is the result of a mental struggle against the barriers imposed by society. Agustini experiences in her own f
lesh what men historically have defined as “the essence of the feminine,” and now she wants to make a definition of femininity through her poetry. (148) Uruguayan critic and scholar Uruguay Cortazzo, maintains in his criticism of Agustini that “Spanish American modernismo made of sexuality one of its aesthetic foundations,” and he adds that “Uruguayan modernismo, ” in particular “carried those foundations to an extreme, and made an authentic proposal of a sexual revolution” (195). According to Cortazzo, this revolution was promoted by three representatives of the literary generation of 1900’s in Montevideo: First, Julio Herrera y Reissig, who based his poetic aesthetic in the human body proposing a new approach to poetry which presupposes a reader highly trained in his/her own sensual potential; second, Delmira Agustini, who “elaborates a gigantic myth of sexual freedom, which announces the appearance of a new type of woman” (195); and third, Roberto de las Carreras, who “through his literary pamphlets . . . links his sexual esthetics to a revolutionary theory: anarchic-socialism, philosophy closely tied to anarchic-individualism” (195). In Cortazzo’s view “Delmira Agustini’s poetry questions in a radical manner, the socially valid image of women. . . because Introduction / 12
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by vindicating, in such an exuberant fashion, desire and pleasure,” the poet
“presents herself as a woman sexually active, and in equal position with the male” (197).
Margaret Bruzelius argues that Agustini “took the version of decadence offered to her by modernismo, especially as represented by Rubén Darío, and used it to create extraordinarily intense poetry of explicitly sexual female desire” (52). Bruzelius surmises that “nineteenth-century fascination with the femme fatale may have reached its apogee in the figure of the Vampire[,] that marble white silent woman, with luxuriant hair, heavy lidded eyes and blood red lips” (51). This nightmarelike fantasy, the representation of female power incarnated in the vampire, would be directly related to a literary tradition from Edgar Allan Poe to Charles Baudelarie and then to the French and British decadent authors. Bruzelius considers Agustini to be one of the few women who participated in this decadent literary tradition by making herself a vampire femme fatale noting that “the female vampire, unlike many other seductive women, is firmly associated with the ability to speak, to seduce with language, to write.” Thus, “Agustini creates a poetic persona as a monstrous female, a revenant who summons the male she desires from the grave” (55).