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'Otro punto de arranque': Gerardo Diego’s Hybrid Romances (Article)Title: 'Otro punto de arranque': Gerardo Diego’s Hybrid Romances
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: In his 1932 lecture at Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin, Rafael Alberti explores the tendency toward the popular forms prevalent in the Spanish poetry of the 1920s and early 1930s, particularly in the so-named Generation of 1927. As an integral part of Alberti’s discussion of popular poetry’s reawakening, from modernismo through the Generation of 1927, he considers the romance, Spain’s popular poetic form par excellence, placing special emphasis on its modern transformation. The poets of this romance moderno, include, from Alberti’s standpoint, Moreno Villa, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, Federico García Lorca, Fernando Villalón, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, Emilio Prados and Manuel Altolaguirre. While at first glance Alberti’s list may seem unremarkable, his exclusion of Gerardo Diego (1896-1987), one of the greatest and most prolific twentieth-century Spanish composers of romances, is striking. Diego differs from his contemporaries Alberti and Lorca in what Juan Larrea calls his ‘heterocronismo,’ by which term Larrea gets at the mixing of influences from different moments in literary history that is decisive for Diego’s poetic. For Diego’s romances draw on diverse literary periods and aesthetic waves: the popular and the culto remaking of the popular (‘poesía de tipo tradicional’); the Romantic and neo-Romantic; modernismo; and the cosmopolitan avant-garde. For Diego weaves into his romances elements inspired by the Romantics Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, the modernismo of Rubén Darío and Juan Ramón Jiménez, the exploration of Spanish land and identity in Antonio Machado, and the vanguard movements in poetry Creacionismo and Ultraísmo. Indeed Diego’s romances are hybrid by definition, variously blending the Romantic, modernista, and avant-garde with the popular and traditional. This is the true reason for Alberti’s striking of Diego from his list of modern romance writers: Diego’s ‘punto de arranque’ is always somehow other.
Year: 2018
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Hispanófila
Publisher: University of North Carolina
Gerardo Diego (1896-1987) and the Romance: The Popular and Traditional in Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Gerardo Diego (1896-1987) and the Romance: The Popular and Traditional in Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: Spanish poet Gerardo Diego became reknown during his lifetime for his “classic” style, notably the incomparable sonnet “El ciprés de Silos,” which generations of schoolchildren in Spain learned to recite from memory. Such classic poetry, led in great part to Diego’s induction into the Real Academic Española as well as his receiving the Premio Cervantes in 1979. Before the Spanish Civil War, however, and among students of his work, Diego has also been known as a key figure in the Spanish avant-garde in relation to poetry; his volumes Imagen (1922) and Manual de espumas (1924) set the pace for the poetic vanguard in 1920s Spain, especially the Ultraísmo and Creacionismo movements.
Given both Diego’s level of recognition and his achievement as poet, it remains surprising that another crucial aspect of his work has remained largely unexplored: the engagement with popular poetry and music. Moreover, Diego’s fascination with popular and traditional poetry from the inception of his career augurs the stylization of popular and traditional forms—in the classic or avant-garde mode—which would become characteristic not only of his work, but also that of such Generation of 1927 figures as Rafael Alberti and Federico García Lorca. This paper centers on Diego’s adoption of the at once popular and traditional romance form, from the time of his first poetry volume, El romancero de la novia (pub. 1920), to the various transformations of the romance that he incorporated into many of his subsequent volumes. It also explores the unique characteristics of Diego’s romances in contrast with salient Generation of 1927 texts like Lorca’s Romancero gitano (1928). For, as I argue, the adaptation of popular and traditional forms played a significant part in twentieth-century Spanish poetry, as well as a special role in the development of the Spanish avant-garde and its peculiar identity.
Date: 11/5/2016
Conference Name: Panel on Peninsular Spanish (1700 to Present) II-A, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Jacksonville, Florida, November 4-6, 2016.
Mi Santander, mi cuna, mi palabra (1961): The Crossing of the Popular and Avant-Garde (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Mi Santander, mi cuna, mi palabra (1961): The Crossing of the Popular and Avant-Garde
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: When we think of the Spanish poet Gerardo Diego (1896-1987), what frequently comes to mind is the “classic” sonnet “El ciprés de Silos” or, perhaps, such avant-garde volumes as Imagen (1922) and Manual de espumas (1924). It may then come as a surprise that there existed another side to Diego—one which privileged and celebrated popular poetry and music. Unlike his fellow members of the Generation of 1927 Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti, Diego’s interest in the popular has stayed largely unrecognized. Yet Diego was not only a proud son of his city of birth, Santander, but also, he remained a life-long student of Cantabrian culture and an accomplished concert-level pianist who perfectly understood the region´s musico-poetic production.
From his first poetry volume, Romancero la novia. Iniciales (1917; pub. 1920), to such mature works as Alondra de verdad (1941), Canciones a Violante (1959), Mi Santander, mi cuna, mi palabra (1961), and Sonetos a Violante (1962), Diego has given voice to the music and poetry of Cantabria. At the same time, Diego´s style should not be considered “folkloric”; rather, he articulates Cantabrian culture by mixing avant-garde and popular form. This paper will focus on how Cantabria’s peculiar musico-poetic culture finds expression in Mi Santander, mi cuna, mi palabra, and the way in which Diego transforms and stylizes such music and poetry so that it acquires an abstract and markedly vanguard form, thus combining the popular and avant-garde in an idiosyncratic fashion.
Date: 04/14/2016
Conference Name: Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, April 13-16, 2016
The Poetry and Music of Cantabria in Gerardo Diego (1896-1987): Transformation, Abstraction, and the Avant-Garde (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The Poetry and Music of Cantabria in Gerardo Diego (1896-1987): Transformation, Abstraction, and the Avant-Garde
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: From Gerardo Diego's first poetry volume, Romancero la novia. Iniciales (1917; pub. 1920), to such mature works as Alondra de verdad (1941), the Canciones and Sonetos a Violante (1959; 1962), and Santander, mi cuna, mi palabra (1961), the poetry collection dedicated to his city of birth, Diego gives voice to the music and poetry of Cantabria. At the same time, Diego does not in general represent Cantabrian culture directly, nor should his style be considered “folkloric.” Rather, he articulates Cantabrian culture, and the music and poetry that emerges from this culture, through abstraction and the avant-garde style that constitutes yet another important aspect of his work, from the time of the volumes Imagen (1922) and Manual de espumas (1924), which were inspired by the first Spanish vanguard movements Ultraísmo and Creacionismo, to the mature and highly idiosyncratic Poemas adrede - Fábula de Equis y Zeda (1932; 1943). This paper will focus on how Cantabria’s peculiar musico-poetic culture finds expression in Diego and, in particular, the way in which he transforms and stylizes such music and poetry so that it acquires an abstract and often markedly vanguard form, thus combining the popular and the avant-garde in a unique and surprising fashion.
Date: 11-14-15
Conference Name: Panel on “Spanish II-C (Peninsular: 1700 to Present/In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts),” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Durham, North Carolina, November 13-15, 2015
A Lyric Revival: The Avant-Garde, Popular, and Traditional in Spanish Poetry (1925-1936) (Book)Title: A Lyric Revival: The Avant-Garde, Popular, and Traditional in Spanish Poetry (1925-1936)
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: A Lyric Revival: the Avant-Garde, Popular, and Traditional in Spanish Poetry (1925-1936) analyzes the entwining of the popular with the vanguard in the so-named Generations of 1925 and 1927, as a response to Spain’s felt need to readdress cultural memory, and to modernize conceptions of national and regional identity in relation to this cultural memory. This book challenges the idea that the avant-garde must oppose the recuperation of the collective past: in contrast with the first avant-garde’s “forgetting” in the form of cosmopolitanism, the synthesis between the popular and the vanguard achieved by the Generations of 1925 and 1927 had a positive effect on the reassessment of cultural memory and identity. Three poets of these generations, G. Diego, R. Alberti, and F.G. Lorca, led the way to the rediscovery of the common past by accessing Spain’s rich popular forms of poetic expression, melding them with the technical and aesthetic advances made by the previous avant-garde wave.
Year: 2019
Publisher: Manuscript
Copy sent to NEH?: No
Federico García Lorca, Poet in Harlem: Blending the Modern and Vernacular (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Federico García Lorca, Poet in Harlem: Blending the Modern and Vernacular
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: In 1929, Federico García Lorca left Spain for New York in order to find solutions to his depressed emotional state and artistic crisis. Lorca arrived in time to witness the Wall Street Crash, which emblematized capitalist modernity’s inequalities. Such inequities were nowhere more apparent to Lorca than in Harlem, the refuge of New York’s African-Americans, which he portrayed in a three-poem section of his volume Poet in New York [Poeta en Nueva York; 1929-30]. Lorca encountered modernity’s antithesis in Harlem’s vernacular and ‘high’ art forms, from jazz, blues, and gospel to the Harlem Renaissance. Yet Lorca also found inspiration in the very modernity that he criticized. For not only did Lorca draw on art particular to Harlem—with its own fraught relationship to the modern—but also in forms originating in Spain and other parts of Europe—including Surrealism’s embrace of individual desires.
I examine the way in which, on the one hand, Lorca looks to the vernacular art forms of the oppressed—African-Americans and Spain’s rural and Roma peoples. On the other hand, the Surrealist and Harlem-Renaissance forms that he uses to portray New York are at once skeptical, and part and parcel, of capitalist modernity. Ironically, wrestling with such paradoxes provides Lorca with a means to resolve the tensions underlying his artistic and personal crises. For these paradoxes become paradigmatic of how ‘high’ modernist and ‘low’ vernacular forms may ethically engage each other—resisting the vernacular’s recuperation and neo-Romantic notions of authenticity.
Date: 03/30/19
Conference Name: Panel on Hispanic/Latino(a)/Chicano(a) Literature 2 (Vision and Revision), College English Association
Un poeta jándalo: Gerardo Diego and Andalusia (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Un poeta jándalo: Gerardo Diego and Andalusia
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: Spanish poet Gerardo Diego (Santander, 1896-1987) became renown during his lifetime for his ‘classic’ style, notably the incomparable sonnet “El ciprés de Silos,” which generations of schoolchildren in Spain learned by heart. Such classic poetry, regarded favorably by the Spanish academic and cultural establishment, led in great part to Diego’s induction into the Real Academic Española (1947) as well as the award of the Premio Cervantes to him (and Jorge Luis Borges) in 1979. Before the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), however, and among students of his work, Diego was also recognized as a key figure in the Spanish avant-garde; his poetry volumes Imagen (1922) and Manual de espumas (1924) set the pace for the poetic vanguard in 1920s Spain, especially the Creacionismo movement, although it must be emphasized that Diego should be considered as an essentially idiosyncratic poet who used different styles as he saw fit throughout his prolific corpus.
Given Diego’s level of recognition as well as his achievement as a poet, it remains surprising that another crucial aspect of his work has remained largely unexplored: the engagement with popular and traditional poetry (poesía popular and poesía de tipo tradicional) and music. In actuality, Diego’s fascination with popular and traditional poetry and music from the inception of his career augurs the stylization of popular and traditional forms which would become characteristic not only of his work, but also that of such Generation of 1927 figures as Rafael Alberti (1902-1999) and Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). Diego’s great knowledge of music and gift for the piano informs this affinity for the popular and traditional.
Date: 11/03/18
Conference Name: South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Transculturation and Lorca’s Syncretic ‘Son de negros en Cuba’: A ‘gota de madera' (Article)Title: Transculturation and Lorca’s Syncretic ‘Son de negros en Cuba’: A ‘gota de madera'
Author: Renée M. Silverman
Abstract: This essay examines how Federico García Lorca transforms the musical form son in his poem ‘Son de negros en Cuba’. Significant in this is Lorca’s relationship with anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who regarded hybridity as foundational to post-colonial Cuban identity. For Ortiz and the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, son’s hybridity is analogous to ethnic and cultural syncretism, which Ortiz likens to counterpoint, or the juxtaposition of contrasting lines in music. Syncretism and counterpoint, the core concepts of Ortiz’s theory of ‘transculturation’, become paradigmatic of Lorca’s poem. By writing ‘counterpoint’ into the poem, Lorca creates space for the performance of intercultural dialogue.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2020.1859721Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Bulletin of Spanish Studies
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor & Francis)