LUIS CERNUDA
Decía:
Lo real para ti no es esa España obscena y deprimente
en la que regentea hoy la canalla,
sino esta España viva y siempre noble
que Galdós en sus libros ha creado.
De aquella nos consuela y cura ésta.
Pero la España real (la de tierra)
a todas horas lo perseguía
con el aullido insistente de su lengua.
Y él:
¿Puede cambiarse eso? Poeta alguno
su tradición escoge, ni su tierra,
ni tampoco su lengua: él las sirve,
fielmente si es posible.
Entonces, ¿la solución era esta muerte
en el exilio, o era la tradición
generosa de Cervantes
heroica viviendo, heroica luchando
o el combate incesante con su idioma
a toda carne, a toda lealtad?
Pero la poesía
se le hizo terriblemente arisca,
fue a esconderse en las patas
de las muٟlas de España como una Égloga.
Y a la hora feroz de la nostalgia
cuando —ya sabemos — Garcilaso aparece
con sus asaltadores de caminos,
hora de los recuentos, hora de seducción
y de emboscada,
él (Cemuda) oía aquel sonido seco
como en el fondo de su alcancía la moneda de cobre.
¿Volver —gritó— Vuelva el que tenga,
tras largos años, tras un largo viaje,
cansancio del camino y la codicia
de su tierra.
Mas, ¿tú? ¿Volver?
Y dijo adiós a su querida
que le nutrió la angustia y el sarcasmo,
la forjadora de consolación
que lo salvó en la hora inminente de los cadalsos, ;
que le otorgó el dominio estricto de su lenguaje,
pero él, de todos modos, y hasta la muerte, adiós.
LUIS CERNUDA
You used to say:
For you the true Spain is not that obscene and depressing
country lorded over by goons,
rather the vivid and always noble Spain
created by Galdós in his novels.
Let the one console and remedy the other.
But the essential Spain (Spain made of earth)
pursued the poet night and day
with the insistent howling of its language.
He said:
Can that be changed? No poet
chooses his tradition, his birthplace;
not even his language. He is their servant,
and a faithful one, if possible.
So, was everything resolved
by death in exile, or was it in the
spirited tradition of Cervantes,
living heroically, struggling heroically
or in the incessant wrestling with the language,
hand to hand, in all loyalty?
But the poetry he wrote
turned surly on him,
it scurried into the hooves
of the mules of Spain like an Eclogue.
And at the fiercest moments of nostalgia,
when—how easy it was—Garcilaso appeared
with his highway bandits,
the hour for accounting, the hour for seduction and ambush,
he (Cemuda) heard that dry sound
like a copper coin at the bottom of his money box.
“Return?” he shouted. “Let him return who senses,
after long years, after endless journeyings,
a weariness with the road and a desire
for his native land ...”
But you? Go back?
And he took leave of his beloved,
who had nurtured his anguish and sarcasm,
the begetter of comfort
who had saved him in the hour before the scaffold,
who gave him the strictest mastery of his language;
but he bids goodbye till death, as it happens.
Translated by Alastair Reid and Alexander Coleman
A Fountain, A
House of Stone. Poems. New York, 1991
