The Siren and the Seashell: And Other Essays on Poets and Poetry by Paz Octavio

Author:Paz, Octavio [Paz, Octavio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

3. THE SOUND OF THE HEART

Soul, inseparable sibyl, I no longer know where you end and where I begin; we are two turns of the same refulgent knot, of the same knot of love.

Ramón López Velarde

We lack a truly complete study of López Velarde’s beliefs. I say beliefs, not ideas, because except in exceptional cases, like that of his denial of the value of existence, his convictions were more felt than thought. As he frequently observed, his Catholicism was not without its doubts and vacillations. He never lived out those doubts as a drama of the intellect. In moments of crisis he resorted to the power of grace, not to the consolation of theology. He founds his orthodoxy on the purity of his feelings; his sins are sins of love and only love can pardon them. His childhood religion forms his vital base; it is nourishment for his spiritual life: its rites are a kind of superior aesthetic, a ceremonial for souls; its mysteries are a theater without time whose symbols represent the passion of truth. But López Velarde is his own audience; his fervor seems to him lightly comic, and he treats his beliefs with a certain ironic tenderness. He does not believe, but he cannot stop believing. He scorns the fanatics of the new cult, the “measly journalists” who clutch in their fists “the torch of progress” and rail against the “hydra of obscurantism.” He asserts: “My heart is retrograde.” The adjective is double-edged: he is Catholic to the rationalists, idolater to the Christians. It does not embarrass him to confess that he is superstitious—and as he makes his confession a skeptical smile touches his lips.

Ever since Villaurrutia used it to define López Velarde’s poetry, all possible meanings have been wrung from the following celebrated sentence: “The synthesis of my zodiac is the Lion and the Virgin.” It is amazing that no one has remarked on the first and most obvious meaning of this declaration. Instead of rushing to psychology manuals, commentators might have leafed through any astrology tract. Phillips touches on this theme, commenting that astronomical motifs are frequent in López Velarde’s poetry and prose, “especially those of the signs of the zodiac.” It would have been more accurate to say astrological motifs. It cannot be denied that López Velarde was interested in the occult sciences, an inclination shared with several modern poets. It is his second love, teaching him to breathe in this atmosphere of exalted spiritualism mixed with apocalyptic visions—as we glimpse in El don de febrero—to whom he owes this vision of his being ruled by the dual and contradictory influences of the sun and Mercury. Symbols of the cabala, astrology, and alchemy also appear in his poems. One of the most perfect compositions, from a certain point of view perhaps the most accomplished, in Zozobra is titled “Día trece” [The thirteenth day] and ends with an invocation to the dark powers: “Superstition: help me hold the radiant vertigo of the everlasting moment . .

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