Selected Poetry of Delmira Agustini
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Adopting this poetic persona, Agustini infuses with new life “the worn out images of the symbolists” (59). Agustini’s work is saturated with the image of the femme fatale “the dreamer possessed,” but with the essential difference that “this fatal woman is not the creation of male desire and fear, but of a female desire that authorizes itself ” (59). In her poetry, according to Bruzelius, Agustini “constructs a female voice which gradually frees itself to express female sexual desire” (59).
American critic and scholar Gwen Kirkpatrick explores the literary space in which Agustini is inscribed. For Kirkpatrick, modernista poetry of this period coexists with naturalistic prose, both being forerunners of the avant-garde.
Referring to Agustini as well as Herrera y Reissig, Kirkpatrick notes that the differences and interruptions of the traditional modernista discourse indicate that both Agustini and Herrera y Reissig “reject the weight of tradition through their somewhat anarchic individualism” (“Limits 311). Kirkpatrick identifies “the sonnet” as the favorite poetic form for both writers: “Its rigor, enclosure, and poetic closure issue to them an invitation to shake its structure from within by exaggeration, fragmentation, or elliptical breaks in meaning”
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(311). In Agustini’s poetry, this exaggeration of the limits established by tradition is even more obvious, accentuating her refusal “to mediate between individualistic conscience and an external world” (311). Kirkpatrick also analyzes Georges Bataille ’s work, especially his concept of eroticism, the fascination that eroticism has with death, and its continuous dynamics of dislocation and dissolution. For Kirkpatrick, the play of eroticism in the works of both Agustini and Herrera y Reissig “can make clearer their articulation between two poetic epochs, and between the poetry and the prose of their times” (312). On the surface of their poetry lie “images and exchanges usually reserved for the prose of the period,” and in the interruptions and vagueness suggested by ellipsis, “they suggest the more radical experiments of the poets who will follow” (312).
Asunción Horno-Delgado studies the frequency with which Agustini incorporates “the eyes” in her work, referring particularly to what she calls Agustini’s “own lyric voice.” (101). The critic also notices that, the statue “is the symbol par excellence in Agustini’s poetry, in which the woman suffers from àfear of immobility,’ as expressed, for example by Alfonsina Storni”
(106). Analyzing the poem “Plegaria” (Entreaty), Horno-Delgado speculates on the meaning of one of the verses—”Mirar tan lejos” (Looking far away)—
and suggests that this image “could refer to the repressive situation in which women lived at that time, always putting pleasure aside, for the sake of defending, unwillingly, patriarchal systems which paralyzed them” (106).
Horno-Delgado concludes that “Agustini—being conscious of such a problem—placed her writing in the service of her own liberation, thus demonstrating that both sexual activity and the initiative of desire, are not exclusive to the male” (106). “Delmira Agustini,” Horno-Delgado adds,
“lived her own body with the greatest intensity, thus being capable of perceiving widely what affected or enchanted the psychology of others”
(106).
Using a complex but not always convincing Freudian approach, Gisela Norat explores the topics of vampirism, sadism, and masochism in Agustini’s work. Her hypothesis is that Agustini’s central inner conflict has its origin in the psychotic relation the poet had with her mother, a perception undoubtedly influenced by reading Emir Rodríguez Monegal’s early criticism. Norat’s analysis of the texts, which indeed throw light upon a sadomasochistic Introduction / 14
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tendencies and vampirelike postures, is sophisticated, and the examples she uses are as clear as they are precise. The critic points out that, based on the supposedly sadomasochistic relationship the poet had with the male, the ulterior motive, from the point of view of the unconscious, is the repressed aggression against María Murtfeldt, her mother. However, even if there had been an overprotective relationship between Agustini and her parents, it does not necessarily mean that this relationship was destructive. Instead, just the opposite could be the case, namely: a beneficial influence, a positive impact, which protected the poet against her social environment and allowed her to explore her creative potential.24 For Norat, Agustini’s position “leads her to elaborate a poetic Eros that functions as a wall of resistance against the repression she experiences in a patriarchal society,” using eroticism as “the instrument that the poet chooses for transgression” (153). Nevertheless, this fairly convincing affirmation, and evaluation of the work, is scrutinized under the light of Electra’s complex and of the penis envy women feel toward men during their psychological development and through the diverse stages the female unconscious goes through during its development. Norat’s conclusion is that
Delmira Agustini is the vampire that takes revenge against her mother for having sucked the daughter’s blood, thus paralyzing her freedom under the mother’s vigilant eye, and the excessively possessive love of the mother saps, in a symbolic manner, the daughter’s life. (156)
The subject of beheading in the poet’s work, which is of extreme importance to modern scholars, also acquires with Norat a different significance. It is no longer the conquering of the male by means of obtaining his head—following the Salomé tradition—but rather his beheading is a Freudian symbol of castration. If the “true reason behind the manifestations of violence—
abundant in Agustini’s poetry—lies in an unconscious conflict with her mother,” then by “punishing the male, Agustini, in reality, is defending herself against the mother” as well. (160).
American scholar Doris Stephens makes a unique and valuable contribution to Agustini criticism by closely analyzing the poet’s work and meticulously dissecting and identifying each one of the elements that constitute, according to Stephens, a carefully planned poetic theory with elements such as light, Introduction / 15
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color, strength, beauty, and the idea of the muse. Stephens makes the point that Agustini’s “desire for musicality in her poetry” may have been encouraged “by the modernistas and Verlaine, and also by the poet’s own knowledge of music” (80).25 Mario Alvarez analyzes Agustini’s work from a feminist literary critical perspective. For him,
women have always been, of course, in the center of erotic poetry, but that approach had mostly been addressed, with some few exceptions, from the male ’s point of view, particularly from the point of view of a male certain of his superiority. In that model, women appeared as the object of eroticism, whether purely sexual or integrated into personal and complex feelings.
Delmira’s novelty and contribution was just to present a woman, herself, as an erotic object. Needless to say, the poet’s audacious attitude also reflected what other women were questioning at the time: the recognition of women’s political and civil rights, her dignified role in society, and so on. (38) What is interesting here is that after having speculated something so coherent and possible—which to a certain extent supports Cortazzo’s theory on the subject of sexual-political revolution—Alvarez seemingly contradicts his argument, when he makes the surprising confession:
We could be committing an error, however, if we believed that Delmira’s sexual and erotic poetry is founded and revolves around the challenge to an old and harsh social order imposed on women, or that her poetry reflects an overthrowing of that order and norms on the part of the poet’s conscience.
(38–39)
Of great interest is John Burt’s reading of Agustini based on new render-ings of some episodes of classical mythology. In using mythological episodes, Agustini does not, according to Burt’s essay “The Personalizati
on of Classical Myth in Delmira Agustini,” assume the traditional role of the narrator, but rather becomes one of the dramatis personae during the enactment of the mythological plot. Burt suggests, and sustains his thesis with clear and precise examples, that behind the poem “The Wings,” one can find the myth of Icarus incarnated in Delmira; that in “The Swan” Delmira plays the role of Leda (we should be reminded here of Silvia Molloy’s reading of “The Swan,” wherein the poet assumes the role of Leda, the queen of the night, to be penetrated by the swan’s beak); and that in the poem “Another Lineage,” one can find the Introduction / 16
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myth of Cupid and Psyche, Cupid being to Roman mythology what Eros is to Greek mythology. The poem “Your Mouth” would incorporate the myth of Pygmalion, and finally, “The Ineffable” would suggest the myth of Prometheus. Burt concludes that Delmira,
in the clouded atmosphere of the Gods, offers herself freely on the altar of love with the thought that her lover and she were almost of divine nature.
Unfortunately, no human male could share that clouded foggy atmosphere with her, thus forcing her in the end, to confront that other world alone, which renders her act of self-sacrifice so tragic. (123) Margarita Rojas and Flora Ovares re-examine the relationship between the feminine and the literary by focusing on the topic of eroticism, the transgressive treatment of the religious environment, and the archetypal images of shadow and light. Their analysis of the sonnet “The Intruder” (El intruso) and the poem “Vision” (Visión), both approached from the critical perspective of French structuralism (Barthes, Todorov), concentrates on the observation of the amorous subjects, the double, the hermaphroditic figure, the swan and the serpent, and necrophilia as some ingredients of the sexual themes.
For Spanish scholar Tina Fernández Escaja, the complexity of Agustini’s aesthetics gravitates around a discourse of desire, the desire to have access to the word, its metapoetic effect, and unity both in a sexual and nominal manner, for example, tongue and rose, sex and poem. Fernández Escaja approaches Agustini’s work from a feminist perspective, which allows her to analyze the situation of women at the turn of the century, particularly in Uruguay. She divides Agustini’s production into two distinct periods, which she associates with two myths: the myth of Ofelia, Ofelia lying upon the river of conscience, in an apparently passive and receptive attitude, associating this myth with Agustini’s early production, The White Book (Fragile) (1907); and the myth of Orpheus, most notably in The Empty Chalices (1913). Both poetic spheres—of Ofelias’s reception and Orpheus’s dismemberment—are integrated into the image of God’s head lying in the hands of the poet, in order to incorporate the modern metaphor of desire for both sexual and linguistic unity. Fernández Escaja concludes that the conflict between essential dualities defines the poet’s life and work: Logos and Eros, spirit and flesh, what is human and what is divine. This conflict is neutralized in an intermedi-Introduction / 17
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ate place: the space of desire. This desire for legitimation of both personal and artistic being distinguishes the aesthetics of Agustini’s poetry: the eagerness of reaching with the tongue, with the word, the heart of the rose.26
In her essay “[D]élmira: La representación del hombre en la poesía de Agustini,” Uruguayan critic and scholar Estela Valverde departs from the interpretations of Agustini as “the girl,” “the vampire,” “the masochist,” or
“the sadist.” Noting that Agustini’s work has been accepted in terms of a split of her personality between the innocent virgin, carefully constructed for her mother, and the voluptuous whore, projected in her poetry, Valverde is nevertheless unconvinced by this traditional approach and examines the manner in which the poet creates the figure of the male who inspires and finally destroys her.27
María Elena Barreiro-Armstrong also uses these dialectics of identities and dualities and interprets Agustini’s work as the empty existence for the lyric I (ego) of the woman, her search of the male you, the desire of reaching unity with that you, and the emptiness to which the lyric I returns after having lost that you. To Barreiro-Armstrong, the center of that dramatic tension between the you and the I is Eros himself: He is both threshold and cause and effect of unity, and therefore Eros is the central metaphor of Agustini’s work, the production that the poet conceives in a pendular fashion.
American scholar Linda Key Davis East argues that Delmira Agustini’s poetry “has lasting value precisely because it expresses how all Latin America feels by means of her own mental—not physical—experience” (10). She adds that Agustini’s “place in literary history and proper criticism of her poetry rest on the appreciation of this fundamental point” (10). For Davis East, Agustini’s images contain archetypal symbols, and the critic identifies “light”
not only as an image but also as a concept. Contrary to traditional criticism on Agustini, which “has centered its observations on the body and the apparently erotic elements of her poetry—relating them to the poet’s life,” Davis East centers her own study primarily “on the mental processes that these elements symbolized” (26). Davis East argues that Agustini’s poetry suggests an obsession with the mind and knowledge. Although she does not advocate the theory of the double personality, Davis East does believe that “the poet can only express herself when she has managed to disassociate herself from the exterior world” (65). To Agustini “the poetic act is a path of conscience that Introduction / 18
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leads to knowledge” (74). Davis East identifies Agustini’s lyric I, the relation to the you, and the search of her own identity, as major points in the poet’s discourse. She also comments on the personification of Leda in “The Swan.”
Roberto Lima analyzes the meaning of libido as sexual appetite and the way in which society has traditionally respected, or not respected, its expressions.
“If the male has to abide by moral norms which are restrictive of his sexual instinct, he has always found the way to subvert and free himself from those norms and the bonds of marriage, in order to satisfy the urges of his libido”
(42). In contrast, “the expression of a woman’s sexual appetite outside marriage has been forbidden by a hypocritical attitude, which tolerates the evasion of the single or married male, but which condemns as adulterous that of a married woman and as prostitution that of a single one” and labels a woman, but not a man, dishonest (42-43). Lima contends that “this unjust lack of balance has fostered the development of a subversive trend among those individuals who need to give a vital expression to their libido” and singles out the contemporary feminist movement, which “has as one of its goals the sexual freedom of women” (43). It is in this context that Lima analyzes Agustini’s work, identifying Delmira’s libido as it appears in representative poems and themes. The idea of a “vaginal delirium”—the critic says—
is what best characterizes Delmira Agustini’s attitude regarding her own libido. “Fierce of Love” offers Lima the opportunity to see that delirium manifested in a bestial context, from which emerges a male statue that, according to Lima, does not inspire in the poet aesthetic or historical admira-tion, but rather a desire for the “phallic object she has to possess” (45).
“The decisive shift that actually signals an essential reorientation away from the modernista agenda,” notes Cathy Jrade, “comes when the overall optimism of modernismo gives way to a more pervasive doubt and the abiding faith in a divine order is eroded by penetrating anguish” ( Modernismo 94).
According to Jrade, this creates a “corrosive skepticism,” and, moreover, the search for beauty and logic becomes secondary, as “art focuses on and aggressively confronts what is interpreted to be an increasingly hostile environment” (94). In Jrade ’s view, this fundamental change is what defines la vanguardia, the avant
-garde. Like Gwen Kirkpatrick, Jrade considers Delmira Agustini, as well as Leopoldo Lugones and Julio Herrera y Reissig, as writers who “drew upon the modernista impetus toward change and pushed Introduction / 19
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further the expansion of the poetic repertoire in Spanish” (94). She argues that these poets anticipated “the movement’s transformation,” thus making them forerunners of the Hispanic avant-garde; “whether she intended to or not, Delmira Agustini . . . explores the limits of the modernista conceptions of existence and poetry” (133).
Finally, Diane E. Marting, in her discussion of female sexuality as a dangerous topic linked to themes of social justice for women, agrees with Angel Rama, who notes:
That is what happened with Delmira Agustini: women’s arts are beginning to exist in Uruguay due to her. She died when two disparate functions, both imposed by the new society of the 1900s, entered into conflict inside her: the mystification of the conventional bourgeois woman and her independence as a being of amorous sensuality.28 (Prologue 4)
“Murdered by her ex-husband, the poet Agustini represents”—according to Marting—“an extreme case of victimization by Montevideo high society’s particular juncture of patriarchal values”:
The ferociousness of the attack against Agustini was not typical, but her brave writing and tragic death illustrate in broad outline some of the difficult choices and negative consequences for women authors and artists who before the 1960s flaunted strictures regarding the woman writer and female sexuality. (4) Like other great women artists of the twentieth century, for example the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, the American poet Sylvia Plath, and the American dancer Isadora Duncan, Delmira Agustini has come to be seen as representative of the difficult and conflicting roles a woman must play when she finds herself ahead of the society into which she was born. Some may disguise their true identities under male pen names; others may need to soften their message to avoid appearing too outrageous to their audiences; others may compromise in order to be gradually accepted; but, in fact, many creative women become victims, because society is often not prepared to accept them.