Mystical Symbolism and the Posthuman in the 20th and 21st Century Poetic Voice of Ana Rossetti: The Purple Gladiolus and the Mystic's Map 9781666900101, 9781666900118, 1666900109

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Mystical Symbolism and the Posthuman in the 20th and 21st Century Poetic Voice of Ana Rossetti

Batres Cuevas, Izara. “Soneto a Rabindranath.” El fuego hacia la luz, Grupo Sial Pigmalión, 2011. 55. Used with permission. Chacón, Jordi Maíz. “Retroceder.” Los suculentos quejidos de la turba, Baile de Sol, 2003. Used with permission. Janés, Clara. “Soy la abeja.” Creciente fértil, Ediciones Hiperión, 1989. 24. Used with permission. Rossetti, Ana. “El gladiolo blanco de mi primera comunión se vuelve púrpura.” Indicios vehementes, Ediciones Hiperión, 1985, 25. Used with permission. Rossetti, Ana. “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” Yesterday, Ediciones Torremozas, 1988, 51. Used with permission. Rossetti, Ana. Deudas contraídas, La Bella Varsovia, 2016. 1–8, 11–12, 16–17, 27, 42–44, 61–62, 74–75. Used with permission. Rossetti, Ana. El mapa de la espera, Ediciones Polibea, 2010. 12, 26, 40, 50, 52. Used with permission. Rossetti, Ana. La ordenación: retrospectiva (1980–2004), Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2004, 17, 18, 267–268, 278, 286, 324. Used with permission.

Mystical Symbolism and the Posthuman in the 20th and 21st Century Poetic Voice of Ana Rossetti The Purple Gladiolus and the Mystic’s Map Robert Simon

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Simon, Robert, 1976- author. Title: Mystical symbolism and the posthuman in the 20th and 21st century poetic voice of Ana Rossetti : the purple gladiolus and the mystic's map / Robert Simon. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023009343 | ISBN 9781666900101 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781666900118 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Rossetti, Ana, 1950---Criticism and interpretation. | Mysticism in literature. | Symbolism in literature. | Posthumanism in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PQ6668.O858 Z89 2023 | DDC 861/.64–dc23/eng/20230406 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009343 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: A Summary of Literary Theory and the Poetry of 21st-Century Spain, Context and Content

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Chapter One: Ana Rossetti and Her Poetry from “la movida” to “la crisis” and Beyond, 1975–1995

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Chapter Two: Transition from the Transition: La ordenación: retrospectiva (1980–2004) (2004)

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Chapter Three: Love Lost, Light Gained: Llenar tu nombre (2008)

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Chapter Four: The Geography of the Binary Opposition: El mapa de la espera (2010)

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Chapter Five: The Posthuman, Mystical Voice in Deudas contraídas (2016) 89 Conclusion

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Bibliography Index

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About the Author



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Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude to: • Kennesaw State University’s Librarians and Inter Library Loan employees, whose tireless efforts to aid me in finding more obscure volumes, contact far away libraries across the globe in search of texts short and long, and keep my spirits high through the most humane approach possible to their work, deserves a volume of its own. • Dr. Olaf Berwald, Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures (2013–2022) at Kennesaw State University, for his support of my research through these most challenging years. • Ana Rossetti, for the decades of poetry that have inspired generations of readers to view the world as it was, is, could be, and should be. • Lexington Books, for your faith in my work via the publication of this second study with you. To my friends and family, thank you.

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Introduction A Summary of Literary Theory and the Poetry of 21st-Century Spain, Context and Content

Se ha ido la luz llevo tres días sin cargar mis teléfonos ahora cuando me encuentro con la gente desconozco su nombre les pido desesperadamente que me tarareen sus melodías para saber quiénes son1 Jorge Maíz Chacón, “Retroceder,” Los suculentos quejidos de la turba (2013)

The poetic movements of the early 21st century characterize a motion away from the overt experimentalism of the mid to late 20th century. The deconstructive forces of literary postmodernism, in essence, had completed the task of revealing the false master narratives within their respective cultural matrices by the mid-1990s: The posthuman is the irreducible ‘fact’ deriving from the process of changes in cognitive states that, during the twentieth century, triggered a ‘revolution’ in the possible paradigms that can be used, among other things, for a new and necessary definition of the image of man and human identity. Because of these changes, this ‘fact,’ which the term posthuman primarily designates, derives from the dissolution of the overall modern anthropocentric humanistic paradigm and from the emergence of an anthropodecentric [sic] paradigm that is called posthuman. (Masullo, 113) 1

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From this perspective, the notion of a post-postmodernity that could lend itself to almost immediate classification from the perspective of Paradigm Shift Theory as well as postmodernism itself. From that point, the literary world inquired within itself what future this decentered, anthropophobic, socioliterary environment may bring. Soon enough, critics realized that the trajectory of literature passed from a specifically context-based expression toward one based on extra-contextual influences and the fluid relationships between those. We may qualify this passage as that toward what critical texts have called “transhumanism”: Transhumanists share some core humanist values and aspirations . . . but they maintain that the xtraditional methods and ideas employed by humanists are limited in their scope by the material constraints of human biology . . . (Vitelli, 21)

From here, the step that followed was one which took this transhumanism into the bifurcating realm of the posthuman, “Critical Posthumanism and Speculative Posthumanism” (22), similar to transhumanism in the desire to open literary discourse to a realm beyond the anthropocentric experience, yet less saturated in the ideal of maintaining limitations on knowledge based on human limitations: Although both criticize human-centered (anthropocentric) ways of understanding life and reality, the latter opposes human-centric thinking about the long-term implications of modern technology, [while the former], on the contrary, is a broadly based attack on the supposed anthropocentrism of modern philosophy and intellectual life. (Vitelli, 22)

In this sense, literature, in its response to the need for continued deconstruction of master narratives after the context of the postmodern, has done its best to remove various anthropocentric hierarchical structures from its own ontology. Within such a transformative matrix, literature has succeeded in decolonizing itself, and in so doing, it has allowed for a variety of mutually beneficial symbioses between the essentialism of Modernity, the deconstruction of postmodernity, and the utter decentralization of contemporary posthumanism to occur. In this context, the poetry of Ana Rossetti has moved from its poetic study of an antihegemonic, deconstructed series of purposeful symbolic anachronisms in the 1980s toward a transcultural expression on contemporary personal, collective, and societal issues within a posthuman socioliterary framework. Simultaneously, the presence of a symbolism less based on the rewriting of Greco-Roman mythology over time, reveals itself to follow the path of several of Rossetti’s contemporaries in the Iberian poetic community.

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This new symbolism, born from the mystical symbolism of 15th century, itself an imitation of the 12th- and 13th-century Iberian Sufi mystic Ibn-Arabi, illuminates Rossetti’s intertextual and trans-literary verses leading into, and continuing throughout, the early 21st century. By way of our analysis of this unexpected, yet evident, appearance of Sufi mystical thought via an evolving symbolism in Rossetti’s poetry of the late 20th and early 21st centuries on the one hand, and on the other, posthuman and post-postmodern tendencies, the reader may make a series of extrapolations that lead to a greater understanding of a less observed, yet influential, socioliterary discourse and series transliterary thematic foci during this period. Insofar as we have established the present study’s focal nexus, we may return to the establishment of our critical framework, and in so doing find a working relational definition of transnationalism that could serve as a point of pause and beginning for the purposes of our discussion: Transnational Studies [advances] the claim that the global, regional, national, and the local can be analyzed through transnational methodological, theoretical, and epistemological lenses; that is in contrast to traditional perspectives, which see transnational phenomena and dynamics as a subset of those occurring somewhere between the national and the global. . . . What are assumed to be bounded and bordered social units are understood as transnationally constituted, embedded, and influenced social arenas that interact with one another. . . . By transnational, we propose an optic or gaze that begins with a world without borders, empirically examines the boundaries and borders that emerge in particular historical moments, and explores their relationship to unbounded arenas and processes. (Khagram and Levitt, 4–5)

In this vein, this study will view the notion of transnationalism as a philosophically empirical construct through which a comprehension of the spectra of literary and extra-literary symbols and occurrences does not adhere to a constricted contemporary Spanish context. Rather, the diachronic and synchronic processes at play will inform the analysis of Rossetti’s poetics. Literary arts lend themselves evermore to a reflection with the contemporary time and space, less concerned with the metaphorization of the local and more with the crossing of geopolitical borders on the grand scale: Scholars in transnational studies have sought to explain their field of inquiry by establishing a stark contrast with processes of social and cultural globalization in terms of scale. Generalized approaches to the global emphasize a spatial paradigm that would encompass all kinds of movements beyond the political borders of nation-states. However, the distinctiveness of transnational scholarship has focused on crossings of national boundaries as determined by specific levels of gradation and dissemination. (Álvarez, 2)

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As seen in Khagram and Levitt, the notion of national boundaries becomes a meaningless one. Yet, the reading of texts under this guise must also take into account extra-literary factors posterior to a work’s creation and publication. Intra-national politics and political movements have a notable effect on the poetics of this period. Alberto García Teresa’s collection of anti-capitalist poets of the postmodern and posthuman periods, for example, look to offer a voice which both transcends the nationalist, neo-liberal push toward a capitalist democracy, and deconstructs it through a symbolism easily recognizable to the contemporary reader. “Junto a la eclosión de la ‘poesía de conciencia crítica’ . . . [se ha] empleado el poema de distintas formas como espacio de confrontación, de denuncia, de indagación impugnadora de la construcción de la realidad que el capitalismo nos presenta” (9). Seemingly general in nature, when taken in context this statement’s significance cannot be overlooked. From an unexpected, concomitant trajectory we see the reappearance of the Muslim and Sufi in Contemporary Spanish letters. Menocal’s focus on the core intertwining of issues of national identity in Medieval Spain and contemporary issues of Spain-Middle East relations reflects one of many areas of overlap. “Medieval Spain has become relevant, even chic. A field that was a backwater in literary studies until not so long ago—indeed, until the very beginning of the twenty-first century—has come out of its traditional obscurity and into the limelight” (242–43). Within this critical reshaping of the transhistorical and transnational nature of Spanish identity, and concomitantly to it, the work of more recent poets has focused on defining and sharpening their expression of critical issues in Iberian societies. These literary and cultural studies critics often, as seen above, focus on the presence of neoliberalism as a point of departure for poetry’s (as well as their own) approach. Bezhanova mentions this in a summary of post-crisis and post-15-M poetic production in Spain. “The poets subvert the language of fluidity and progress that masks the transnational goals of global capital and write poetry that rescues language from the advances of neoliberal economic colonization” (15–16). “Dissident” (1) poets as a voice against the optimistic globalization and transnational movements of the 21st century, usually working against the will of those who bear the brunt of their consequences. Yet, as Sierra states and as mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, the criticism of this “new normal” has taken the form of a highly transnational, borderless, and fluid literary universe: Writers who are creating new metaphors, possibilities for narrative innovation, interdisciplinary border crossings, hybrid networks, and capacities for establishing new connections. Who are absorbing and processing information from traditional and electronic media, market dynamics, science and technology, philosophy, metacreation, and the avant-gardist tradition of modernist,

Introduction

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postmodernist, and avant-pop literature, in order to exit the “manifest image” of the human. (504)

It becomes evident in this and other statements in recent criticism that the desire to recreate the human experience, borne from a slow deconstruction of our notion of humanity within a technologically driven framework of the abject, draws from synchronic, diachronic, and syncretic sources in its attempt. The poetic of the early 21st century must then respond to this, as we will see below as well as throughout this study. One question which deserves focus, and one which I have fielded on numerous occasions, is why the discussion on poetry, a seemingly secondary genre in the 21st century. The reasoning has as much to do with personal preference as it does the high symbolic density of poetry. This translates, on the macro level, to a higher overall expression of thematic content per page. Along with the resonating beauty of language in its undulating ebb and flow, one which conveys its own level of semantic discourse: We should not play the role of normative exegetes to mystical poetry, trying to make poetry adhere to the rules set by the lawmakers. Sometimes laws reflect the values and the normative realities of a society; but sometimes poetry does a better job of it, telling a very different story and one which is at least as true. Much of the challenge and the pleasure of our work is to be able to dwell on these contradictions, rather than attempt to reconcile them or imagine that only one of them can really be true. (Menocal, 248)

In this approach, the reader may observe that the changing nuance of meaning found in the repetition of specific symbols indicates its own mode of evolution of each poetic trajectory, these having surged forth from a specific sociopolitical and artistic context. The Spanish context is unique in that it exists both as part of the approximation of literature and society to a dependence on technologies (Calles Hidalgo, 2) and appears to have fallen on the losing side of a north-south socioeconomic framework in Contemporary Europe. The socioeconomic binary has engendered a sharp division between these two spheres within the Western European context. Indeed, the dependence on newer technologies, many of which did not grow out of Spain’s own development but were brought in (we could even say, imposed) from more industrialized countries, has resulted in the othering of the Spanish self into a superficial, dehumanized being. “[La] tensión [que] se crea por el fracaso en el intento de la modernización de España; esta tiene lugar desde la Ilustración y llega . . . como un proyecto que se debe revisar y reformar desde la posmodernidad, pero nunca renunciar a él” (Gámez Pérez, 45) (Eng., “[the] tension created by the failure

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in the attempt to modernize Spain; it has taken place since the Enlightenment and comes to us . . . as a project which must be revised and reformed based on postmodernity, yet never renouncing the former).” As we will see, the references to inanimate objects as a symbiotic part of the human experience in the mundane world, and not simply within a traditional symbolic vocabulary, serve to illustrate this point. The two principal tendencies of contemporary poetry, as revealed in my own research over the past two decades, seem to tackle the same thematics, albeit with vastly differing strategies. The more direct in terms of social and political criticism would be the so-called generación nocilla. Critical perspective on social superficiality. As Ilasca states, “Leur écriture se caractérise par la fragmentation, l’intergénéricité, l’interaction avec d’autres disciplines (allant des sciences aux arts) et l’exploration de nouvelles technologies en tant que techniques narratives.” (par.1) (Eng., “Their writing is characterized by fragmentation, interchangeable genericness, interaction with other disciplines (from science to art) and the exploration of new technologies as narrative techniques”). The newness of this aesthetic approach to multidisciplinary literatures may not necessarily seem so impactful. In this, Barker puts it another way: While representing different influences and aesthetics, these and other texts published around the same time signaled a resurgence of experimental language and narrative forms: non-linear and symbolic structures; an emphasis on spatial rather than temporal organization; opaque language that calls attention to itself rather than acting as a mere vehicle for story. They also embrace technology and mass media as an integral part of personal consciousness and contemporary culture. (237)

Both Barker and Ilasca point to the open and unfettered presence of technologies, metalanguage, and a focus on the “here and now” to transform the Spanish literary universe. This change takes the reader from a temporally locked space, such as in the case of the critical, nostalgic works of the 1990s, into a discussion of present-day issues related to the neo-liberal space. In her review of Javier García Rodríguez’s book, Literatura con paradiña: hacia una crítica de la razón crítica, Noelia García analyses the symbolic use of the soccer metaphor as well as the ironic use of a real-world anxiety medication, “Lyrica,” to highlight the dislocation of the reader’s spatial-temporal awareness in the narrative. According to the critic, the work “ . . . parte de la teoría literaria y genera una ficción con la propia teoría, dando el salto definitivo a la metaficción y generando un artefacto narrativo tan innovador que su propia naturaleza hace que sea inclasificable genéricamente” (282) (Eng., “ . . . begins with literary theory and with theory itself generates fiction,

Introduction

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leaping definitively to metafiction and creating a narrative artefact so innovative that its nature makes it generally unclassifiable”). Literary, technological, and human artifact become a single, inseparable unit, capable of either trapping or transcending the condition of each individually. Posthumanism’s use of the technological as a mere aspect of a society caught in the throes of a globalized dystopia for the younger generation of workers also finds its place in these works. A los cambios que el nuevo siglo introdujo en el horizonte político y social peninsular se sumó la aparición de los denominados Mileuristas . . . (término acuñado y desarrollado por María Laura Espido Freire para designar a aquellos jóvenes muy interesados en el ocio y la cultura de masas que a pesar de una formación académica de excelencia obtenían del mercado laboral trabajos por debajo de sus capacidades e ingresos mensuales que no superaban los 1.000 euros) y nuevas tecnologías de las que estos autores se apropiaron e hicieron buen uso. . . . Si en la década de 1990 el problema era, como proponía Ray Loriga, que se escribía como si no existiera la televisión, en el nuevo siglo el problema es que se escribe como si no existiera internet. Más allá del uso de blogs como laboratorio de escritura, el cruce entre literatura y tecnología produjo tensiones a partir de la incorporación de la imagen al lenguaje literario la cual excedía la simple inclusión referencial de fotografías e ilustraciones o las alusiones a productos de la industria cultural (cine, TV). (Brina, 28–29) (Eng., The appearance of the so-called Millennials (a term coined and developed [in Spanish as “Mileuristas”] by Maria Laura Espido Freire to describe those youth interested in pastimes and culture of the masses which, despite their excellent academic preparation, earned jobs below their capabilities in the job market and their earnings never exceeded 1,000 Euro per month) was added to changes that the new Century introduced in the Iberian social and political horizon, and new technologies of which these authors made good use. . . . If in the 1990s the problem was, as Ray Loriga proposed, that [writers] wrote like television never existed, in the new Century the problem is that they write as though there were no internet. Beyond the use of blogs as a laboratory for writing, the crossing of literature and technology produced tension starting with the incorporation of the image to literary language which exceeded the simple referential inclusion of photographs and illustrations, or allusions to cultural industry’s products (film, TV).

The presence of science and technology in literature, and specifically in poetry, has notably increased in recent decades, and, in particular, during the first decades of the 21st century. According to Lanseros, in her analysis which includes poems by Agustín Fernández Mallo and Ana Tapia (122):

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. . . cuando examinamos la producción poética española de finales del siglo veinte y los años transcurridos del siglo veintiuno, encontramos que continúa una inclinación mayoritaria al tratamiento de temas tradicionalmente líricos y, por tanto, una propensión limitada al uso de temas del campo estrictamente científico. aun así, existen notables y cada vez más abundantes ejemplos de poetas de diversos orígenes, edades y concepciones estéticas que trabajan hoy en día en España los asuntos propios de la ciencia e incorporan a sus obras el lenguaje científico-tecnológico, suponiendo un nuevo ángulo creativo para la poesía española. (120) (Eng., . . . when we examine Spanish poetic production at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, we find that a majority inclination toward the treating of traditionally lyrical themes continues, and thus, a limited propensity toward the use of strictly scientific themes. Nonetheless, notable and evermore abundant examples of poets of diverse origins, ages, and esthetic concepts who nowadays work on typical scientific issues and who incorporate scientific and technological language in Spain exist, assuming a new creative angle for Spanish poetry.)

As stated in the beginning of this chapter, technology and the application of it have moved from the periphery of poetic technique and thematics to the forefront. This has taken the shape of an overall artistic preoccupation with the overpowering of our humanity for the sake of a growing influence of, and reliance on, technology, not for its own sake but as part of a larger concern for the conservation of the human condition as necessarily human. The writers of the “generación nocilla” have taken this challenge as a vital one in their work. Fernández Mallo, in fact, serves as the best recognized (if not one of the first recognized) poets of the “generación nocilla.” His perspective as both a literary critic and as a novelist/poet has led him to write on the dearth of critical focus on the most recent works and tendencies in Spanish poetry. In his review of Fernández Mallo’s essay/novel Postpoesía, Zambra summarizes the author’s perspective: “La lucha de Fernández Mallo es regional: esta querella entre antiguos y modernos . . . se da en el interior de una literatura nacional . . . ” (Zambra, par. 3) (Eng., “The struggle for Fernandez Mallo is regional: the quarrel between old and new . . . becomes apparent in the center of national literature . . . ”). He goes on to describe the “estancamiento español” (par. 7) (Eng., “Spanish standstill”) which Fernández Mallo makes apparent in his work. This launching point for the intended poetic dismantling and subsequent reconstruction of a world lost to its own literature serves as a fundamental note for the chord the poets of this generation have played in recent years.

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Ya nadie se llamará como yo (2015), the first part of his collected works from 1998 to 2012. . . . In his introduction to the work, Antonio Gamoneda states (with quotations from the work itself in italics) that: [Fernández Mallo] ha entrado o está a punto de entrar en un bosque, dado que dice Veo en un bosque y algo más vivo dentro; lo dice 45 veces, más o menos Pero el bosque no acaba de aparecer aunque, podría ser, esté ya casi aparecido. Mientras tanto, [Fernández Mallo] ha decidido hacer numerosas anotaciones . . . o en el peor de los casos, que pudiera ser el mejor, apenas empíricas, rigurosamente científicas, plausibles todas ellas . . . , aun siendo mentira y verdad al mismo tiempo, como está ya anunciado y es natural . . . (Fernández Mallo, 19) (Eng., [FM] has entered, or is about to enter, into the forest, given that he says I see in the forest and something more alive within”; he says it 45 times, more or less But the forest doesn’t ever appear though, perhaps, it has almost appeared. Meanwhile, [FM] has decided to make numerous annotations . . . or at worst, what could possibly be best, only empirical, rigorously scientific, all of it plausible . . . , even being a lie and the truth at the same time, as has been announced and is natural . . . )

Here Gamoneda takes note of Fernández Mallo’s various, ironic uses of direct and indirect quotation in the work, giving his verses a doubtfulness and simultaneous scientific rigor. García Casado, in his prologue to the same work, supports this notion. “La obra de Fernández Mallo abre campo, desdibuja las fronteras de la poesía. Actualiza el concepto posmodernidad . . . [no] desde la sustitución, sino desde la yuxtaposición, porque una cosa puede ser válida y también la contraria” (11) (Eng., “Fernandez Mallo’s work opens the way, undoing the limits of poetry. [His work] updates the postmodern concept . . . [not] based on substitution, but rather on juxtaposition, because a thing may be valid and also its contrary”). The poem cited below expresses the ideal of a spatially oriented poetic, one in which the world has transformed into a nothingness of matter and that which does not matter: Desde que en 2013 se confirmó la existencia del bosón de Higgs, el vacío no es la nada, sino un lugar lleno de partículas. Queda así la nada reservada para el lenguaje de la poesía, las religiones, el ámbito de lo que algunos llaman lo difuso. La realidad, por mediación del lenguaje, como un río se ha creado a la vez que escindido. Ello me plantea un problema, radical duda que se hunde en el lodo de mi lenguaje aprendido: buscarte en el vacío o en la nada, en cuál

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estás tú ahora. (34) (Eng., Since the existence of the Higgs Boson was confirmed in 2013, emptiness is not nothing, but rather a place full of particles. Nothing then remains reserved for the language of poetry, religion, the environment some call the vague. Reality, brokered by language, like a river has been created and at once split. This proposes a problem, a radical doubt that is sinking into the sludge of my learned language: seeking you out in the emptiness or nothingness, which are you in now.)

The poetic subject has engendered a paradox created through the repetition, and subsequent development, of the notions of “emptiness” and “nothing.” Language presents itself as both an expression of the universe and as an unrelated, separate entity, and thus incapable of expressing that universe without destroying it (“La realidad, por mediación del lenguaje, como un río / se ha creado a la vez que escindido.”). The reader perceives the stark irony of attempting to cross the uncrossable threshold between worlds to find the “tú” of the poem. When the poetic subject finally does so, the reader, also poetic object, is nullified through the objective logic of the poem’s subjective lens. In this, Mallo’s poetic object reminds the reader of the participatory nature of poetry, the need for a reader in that the poem may exist at all. The poetic subject insists that science, in its power to reveal the physical universe in all its mysteries and when incorporated into poetic interpretations of interpersonal relationships, fails to stop the human condition from vanishing into its own epistemological contradictions. Ana Merino teaches Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and has won the 1995 Premio Adonais as well as the Premio Fray Luis de León in 2003. Her poetry expresses a commitment to taking a critical perspective on contemporary social and personal issues such as immigration and the break between reality and the false messages we receive from outside forces (Cullell, 119–20). One of Merino’s best known poetry collections, Curación, takes the reader on a journey into a hopeful, yet ruined, world: “Vengo a ser testigo” Vengo a ser testigo de un milagro,

Introduction

la resurrección de las palabras emergiendo del mar con ansias de justicia. Vengo vestida con el disfraz de la penumbra para escuchar el murmullo de las cosas que habitan en cada casa de madera y chapa. Pensamientos prohibidos que llegan a la orilla y mecen la basura que vomitan. No hay caminos de conchas ni arena transparente sólo plástico fino y grasa de motores como una capa más sobre la tierra, como una mascarilla que ahoga a las gaviotas y envenena a los niños que salen a buscar erizos en las rocas. Vengo a ser testigo de las contradicciones con las que fraguan el cemento de los grandes edificios que nunca se terminan y acaban cobijando en sus rincones las venas de los chicos que se inyectan escamas de serpiente triturada. Vengo a desesperarme porque no encuentro a Dios en la miseria. (11–12) (Eng., “I am become witness” I am become witness to a miracle, the resurrection of words emerging from the sea anxious for justice.

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I come dressed in a costume of gloom to hear the murmuring of the things that inhabit each wooden and tin roof house. Prohibited thoughts that reach the shore and cradle the trash they vomit out. There is no seashell path or clear sand just thin plastic and motor oil as another layer upon the Earth, like a mask that chokes the seagulls and poisons children who go out looking for urchins on the rocks. I am become witness to the contradictions with which the cement of great buildings is set those that are never finished and end up covering the veins of boys with their nooks those injected with ground serpent scales. I become desperate because I do not find God in misery.)

The poem’s form reflects a notion of building tension and focus, from a general notion of justice toward more specific topics of pollution and drug abuse. Images of ruined landscapes and hints at the ruined lives which inhabit them populate the poem, lending to an acute critical perspective on the consequences of contemporary life in the industrial world. The parallel process of becoming witness, then active participant in the desperation to find “a Dios / en la miseria,” brings the poetic subject directly into the world described in the poem. As such, the active and concomitantly critical lyrical voice the reader encounters also figures within the poetic of the “generación nocilla” and their need to only to identify the vapid, but to resolve it. Jorge Carrión is known both as part of the “generación nocilla” for his intertextual and transdisciplinary approach to writing, as well as his

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apparently rich internal references as a way of fragmenting what could be otherwise a very plain discourse. Una de las peculiaridades de sus obras viajeras es la red de referencias internas que ha ido estableciendo entre ellas a lo largo de los diferentes procesos de escritura. Al igual que en el cuento de Julio Cortázar el mismo fuego abrasa a través del tiempo y el espacio, los viajes de Carrión persiguen diferentes destinos pero responden a una sola inquietud que trasciende las dimensiones temporales y espaciales. El hecho de que unos viajes hayan sucedido a otros o los hayan generado, propicia la ilusión de un continuum que es posible reconstruir a partir de las pistas que el autor va diseminando en sus libros, aportando información sobre la gestación de los mismos. De este modo, se puede esbozar una cronología que, si bien no pretende ser exhaustiva, sí resulta fundamental para comprender la imbricación de viaje, escritura y vida en esta poética en movimiento. (Pastor, par. 3) (Eng., One of the peculiarities of his traveling works is the web of self-referencing he has established between them over his various processes of writing. As with Julio Cortázar’s short story, the same fire burns over time and space, Carrión’s travels pursue different destinies yet respond to a singular unquietness which transcends temporal and spatial dimensions. The fact that some travels have surpassed others or have generated these, promotes the illusion of a continuum which may be reconstructed based on the hints the author intersperses in his books, providing information on their creation. In this way, one may outline a chronology which, even if it does not intend to be exhaustive, will readily prove fundamental for the comprehension of how travel, writing, and life overlap in this poetry in motion.)

Carrión has shown the ability to incorporate technology and social issues in confluence, rather than as separate entities. This does not mean an outright acceptance of technology as some kind of panacea, however, as noted in critical study of his work: “ . . . en Crónica de viaje, Jorge Carrión puso en juego una solución interesante a lo que en su momento (primera edición, 2009) supuso una tensión entre formas y formatos de escritura a propósito de la exploración de las nuevas tecnologías como materia (y no solo como soporte) de escritura” (Calles, 308). (Eng., “ . . . in Crónica de viaje, Jorge Carrión brings into play an interesting solution to what in its moment (first edition, 2009) assumed a tension between form and writing style, with the purpose of exploring new technologies as a subject (and not just support) for his writing.”) Concomitantly, and as Ilasca has noted in her study of his novel Crónica de viaje: Dans le cas de Jorge Carrión, la forme lui permet de transfigurer, d’une part, l’outil

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Google en technique littéraire et, de l’autre, l’objet-livre Crónica de viaje en oeuvre d’art hybride, comme nous le verrons au point suivant. Cette forme qu’il trouve pour narrer l’histoire de son aïeul paternel remplit la fonction de ce que Genette dénomme paratexte, un terme qui désigne la frontière entre l’oeuvre et le hors-oeuvre et qui comprend, entre autres, le support. (par. 21) (Eng., In the case of Jorge Carrión, form permits him to transfigure, on the one hand, Google search into a literary technique, and on the other, the book-object Crónica de viaje into a hybrid work of art, as we shall see in the following point. The form that he found in order to narrate the biography of his paternal grandfather replaces the function of that which Genette denominates as “paratext,” a term which designated the frontier between the work and non-work that encompasses, among other things, support.)

The paratextual relationships between metaphorical objects in the work function, then, as an overarching thematic placement device, as well as a moment of extra-textual critique, enriching the technical and semiotic aspects of the work’s structure. This Russian doll effect holds true for the majority of Carrión’s fictional works. In a 2020 interview and in reference to the retelling of Classical and Renaissance works via television programming, Carrión stated that: Yo diría que lo que está ocurriendo en este cambio de siglo, y que empezaría en los años noventa, se puede leer como una vuelta de tuerca a la cultura posmoderna. Como una post-posmodernidad, si se puede decir. . . . Nace otra forma de relacionarse con la información o el arte, igual que en los siglos XIV y XV ocurrió con Petrarca, Dante, Miguel o Leonardo. En ese momento también cambió globalmente la manera de leer, que luego la imprenta terminó de catapultar. . . . Es un momento de afirmación, de una nueva cultura. (Núñez Sabarís, par.8) (Eng I would say that what is occurring in this turn of the century, and which would have begun in the 1990s, may be read as a turn of the Postmodern, cultural screw. Like a post-Postmodernity, if one may say. . . . It bears another way of relating to information or art, as occurred with Petrarca, Dante, Michaelangelo or Leonardo [da Vinci] in the 14th and 15th centuries. In that moment, the way the world read also changed, since the printing press ended up launching. . . . It is a moment of affirmation, of a new culture.)

This new way of relating to the world through art from an explicitly diachronic approach adds both an air of nostalgia and a touch of novelty to Carrión’s works. In his novel, Barcelona. Libro de los pasajes (2017), Carrión utilizes a variety of techniques, such as direct quotation, narration of movement, and personal commentary to create a diachronically rich description of the various places and peoples residing in modern Barcelona. Although not necessarily

Introduction

15

realized within a stream of consciousness narration (such as that found in Joyce’s Ulisses), the overall narration feels fragmented, highlighting disparate themes and elements centered on each neighborhood and street in the city. This adherence to an older, recognized narrative model in the macro sense, while also keeping with formal sentence and paragraph structure in the micro scale, gives a definite feeling of objective travel narrative, as though the narrator resided outside of the intimate emotion the reader may wish to infer. Certain moments, however, do lend themselves to a more critical perspective on the past’s influence upon the present, and thus in keeping with the expected criticism of superficiality to the “generación nocilla” writers strove: Durante décadas el barrio de la Satalia estuvo condenado a muerte, afectado, porque el Plan General Metropolitano lo contemplaba como parte de la montaña de Montjuic, es decir, como derribo pendiente, es decir, como espacio verde, es decir, como parque o cementerio de una desaparición. Cómo calibrar el sufrimiento de las doscientas familias que durante tanto tiempo sintieron que su permanencia en casa era temporal, que tarde o temprano serían desalojadas: aunque suene ingenuo, tal vez sólo pueda ser mediado en la escala de la lucha. Porque fue la insistente actividad reivindicativa de la Asociación de Vecinos de la Satalia la que logró la salvación de la barriada a finales de 2013. Hasta entonces no se reconoció el valor arquitectónico y urbanístico de esas casas con huerto, jardín y hasta mirador que florecieron entre ambas exposiciones internacionales, de esos vestigios de ciudad jardín que conectan con los siglos cuando lo que ahora llamamos Barcelona era una policromía de bosques mediterráneos, de pinos, algarrobos, encinas, robles, con arbustos como el madroño, el lentisco o la aladierna, recorridos por los caudales de riachuelos y torrentes. (21) (Eng., For decades, the Satalia neighborhood was condemned to death, concerned, as the General Metro Plan viewed it as part of the Montjuic Mountain District, in other words, as a pending demolition, in other words, as green space, in other words, as a park or a cemetery of a disappearance. How to measure the level of suffering for the 200 families who thought for so long their place in their homes was temporary, who sooner or later would go homeless: though it may sound naive, it may only really be measured by the scale of their struggle. Because it was only for the assertive, insistent activity of the Satalia Neighbors’ Association which achieved the neighborhood’s salvation in 2013. Until then, no one had recognized the urban, architectural value of these homes with their orchards, their gardens, and even a lookout which flourished between the two international exhibitions, these vestiges of a garden city which connect the centuries, when what we now call Barcelona was a polychromatic place of Mediterranean forests, pines, carob trees, white and English oaks, with bushes like strawberry trees, mastics or buckthorn, running along the flowing creeks and streams.)

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Here it is possible to envision a city existing in four dimensions, in an ironic space in which time is both moving for some and visibly static for others. The salvation of two hundred families and their homes happened solely for aesthetic reasons, making evident the lack of humanity in decisions affecting the urban space of the city despite its evidently more nuanced history. Nature’s timeless beauty seems to contrast with the description of a political and bureaucratic process of saving an older neighborhood that houses it. Toward the end of the book, the narrator makes the following critical commentary: El infierno de Barcelona y de todas las grandes ciudades: su ecocidio. Domesticar, neutralizar, controlar, absorber, transformar, anular, matar la naturaleza y el campo, el biotopo circundante: convertirlos en jardines de ocio, terreno agrícola, provisión, almacén, producción de energía, cantera, mina, terreno edificable, parque, reserva natural o ecológica, feria, museo, horticultura, paisaje. El triunfo absoluto de las ciudades sólo puede significar -está en el adn [sic] de la máquina en red- el exterminio de la idea más extendida de lo natural. La paradoja es que sólo la metrópolis puede detener, parcialmente, ese proceso que la constituye -y que no cesa de convertir en monumento. (312) (Eng., The hellhole of Barcelona and all other great cities: their ecocide. Domesticating, neutralizing, controlling, absorbing, transforming, annulling, killing nature and the countryside, its surrounding habitat: converting it into leisure gardens, agricultural lands, supplies, warehouses, energy production, quarry, mine, land for construction, parks, reserves, fairgrounds, museums, horticulture, landscapes. The absolute triumph of cities can only mean—it’s in the network machine’s DNA—the extermination of a wider idea of nature. The paradox is that only the metropolis can stop, partially, that process which constitutes it—and which it does not cease to make into landmark.)

This ironic symbiosis of the urban and natural worlds finds itself both under scrutiny as a mark of human destruction and subsequent appropriation of the later, and yet also appreciated for its possibly positive outcome as savior of a dying natural world. Again, this critical moment does not simply attack the former as a worthless evil; rather, it finds a nuanced way to observe and transcend the superficiality of the one vis-à-vis the inherent value the other brings to it. Hence, Carrión’s work fits well within his noted generation of novelists. Mario Cuenca Sandoval (1975) is a Catalan poet and professor at the University of Córdoba, known for his participation in the Postdigital literary landscape as an author whose work questions the utter humanity of human memory (Sierra, 505). These aspects of his work place him well within the poetic arm of the “generación nocilla.”

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The poem “Madrugada” (48–49), from the 2006 award-winning work El libro de los hundidos, is the final of the collection and serves to summarize the feelings of entrapment and hopelessness expressed throughout the work. The collection in its entirety explores the feelings of humiliation and loss due to the 2004 Tsunamis which consumed a large part of the Japanese coast, and a year later, the destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina that ravaged all of New Orleans: Madrugada Mi amigo JM y un servidor fumando un cigarrillo (poco más que una excusa) Contemplamos el cambio de las luces de un semáforo Apenas pasa nadie por la calle Yo juego con las llaves de casa entre los dedos JM me dice Yo quisiera funcionar como aquel semáforo tan frío simplemente hacer algo sin conciencia de hacerlo algo repetitivo Permitir solamente que la noche traspase mi costado mientras que parpadeo y parpadeo y sólo parpadeo Existir de ese modo desmemoriado y hueco eso quisiera El ruido de un motor parte de dos el hilván de las complicidades Nos quedamos callados Yo recuerdo una cita de Nietzsche que leí en algún sitio algo sobre la piedra la piedra como imagen de la sabiduría en su desangelada intimidad Y de un modo mecánico desmemoriado y hueco le ofrezco otro pitillo a JM y le hablo de Epicuro (Eng., Early morning My Friend JM and I, your attendant, smoking a cigarette (little more than an excuse) We contemplate the changing lights of a stoplight Just no one walks down the street I’m playing with my house keys between my fingers JM tells me I would like to be like that stoplight so cold simply doing something without being conscious of doing it something repetitive

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Simply to let the night pierce my side while I blink and blink and just blink Existing in this way empty and without memory I would like it The sound of a motor the thread of complicity based on two We remain quiet I remember a quote from Nietzsche that I read someplace something about the rock the rock like an image of wisdom in its soulless intimacy And in a mechanical way forgetful and empty I offer JM another drag and tell him about Epicurus)

The poem seems to express a feeling of ennui on the part of the three personages present, their conversation staying at the level of a superficial activity. Yet, the dialog on which it reflects discusses their combined wish of less awareness of their world than what they apparently feel. In other words, these characters understand so terribly the world in which they live, they prefer to remain on the surface, advocating for less awareness on their own part. The indirect citation of Nietzsche, that of a rock and wisdom, may refer to various images brought forth in his seminal work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Yet, no point of reference is given, nor a full quote reached, only the fragment of an undesired and thus lost memory. “Desmemoriado y hueco,” the speaker has lost their philosophical depth in favor of forced ignorance. The irony of the final verse, in which the poetic subject offers a smoke and talk on Epicurus, founder of Epicureanism, refers clearly to the pursuit of pleasure through simplicity and moderation that this philosophical school emphasized. This sudden depth of thought, an almost sarcastic slap at the attempt on the part of the reader to abstract a sense of seriousness previously in the poem, seems then to contrast the previous statements. Unless taken as another vapid motion in a context of hopelessness, the poem ends with the only profound movement being one away from tragic understanding and toward an even more tragic hedonism. Having now established an abbreviated understanding of posthumanism and the “generación nocilla,” it is time to look more closely at a concomitant tendency in Spanish poetry, that of the Mystical within a deconstructionist context. As noted above, the work of Menocal regarding the presence of Muslim and/or Sufi influences in Contemporary Spain, an evident myriad of socioliterary influences still flow between the cultures of North Africa and the

Introduction

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Iberian Peninsula. To add to this, previous scholarship has identified a clear mystical process in Iberian poetics of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the works of Clara Janés, Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo, Blanca Andreu, as well as several Portuguese poets such as Joaquim Pessoa and Vergílio Alberto Vieira. Such a process is based largely on the symbolism present in Saint John of the Cross’ and Saint Theresa of Avila’s poetry and prose. These, in turn, find their root in the Sufi mystical writings of the 12th- and 13th-century Iberian philosopher Ibn Arabi. “[Con base en los comentarios sobre su misma obra poética] . . . Ibn-Arabi exhibe una concepción del lenguaje muy próxima a la de San Juan de la Cruz; se sale de su propio sistema de concordancias; cae en constantes incongruencias gramaticales; tiene versículos totalmente independientes entre sí; infla hasta el infinito los posibles sentidos de sus vocablos” (López-Baralt, 200) (Eng., “[Based on comments on his own poetic work] Ibn-Arabi exhibits a concept of language very similar to that of Saint John of the Cross; he leaves his own system of concordances; he falls into constant grammatical incongruencies; he has verses totally independent from one another; he inflates the possible meanings of his lexicon infinitely”). Symbols we as critical readers may take as commonplace, such as the heart, fire, water, and darkness, also find a resonance in the Sufi mystical process (238–41). The mystical process in question, rooted in the writings of the earlier mystic Suhrawardy (whose focus on the symbolic as a starting place for illumination has its basis in “the Gandharvas of Hindu mysticism” (Falconar, 147), places the mystical seeker in a position to recognize the binary oppositions which make up the mundane world, and thus becomes capable of surpassing them. Once achieved, the poetic subject may then, by way of love for a “guide,” create an intermediary space in which to unite as a single entity and then find illumination in divine knowledge (61). To summarize the elements of the search for illumination, both in Golden Age writings (such as those of Saint Theresa and Saint John of the Cross, the former having served as teacher and mentor for the latter) as well as in those of the postmodern and anti-essentialist tendencies of the contemporary period, share a commonality with the pseudo-Platonic notion of a binary division between the mundane and divine worlds. The mystical seeker, in this process, leaves the former and moves toward the latter. This cannot happen in isolation, however, as the seeker must join with the “guide,” of the opposite gender (Corbin, 162–64), with whose spirit one joins in a space, designated as a “garden” (López-Baralt, 276–77) or a “house” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. IV, 74), depending on the particular text (and representing the “heart,” or space for divine mystical contact (Simon, Understanding, 106)). The idea of gender at this point becomes moot, an aspect of this particular Sufi, literary mystical path which may serve to counteract the gendered norms of the phallocentric hegemony. At this point in the process, the now united, and genderless,

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mystical seeker may reach mystical illumination through direct contact with the divine presence. In the poetic expression of such a process, “[un reconocido símbolo de la iluminación] . . . es la del alma en estado de unión concebida como jardín” (López-Baralt, 276). In any case, and to reiterate on the point, it is this genderless state which has given the mystical process such a prominent stance in recent years; Rossetti’s poetry takes advantage of the symbolism involved in such a process so that, and in particular, when compared with that of Janés, the same notions of equality and relativized master narratives make apparent their transcultural fluidity. Beyond this heavily studied resonance, the 1960s “poesía del silencio” of writers such as Gamoneda and Valente exercise a tangible and unmistakable influence. As Machín Lucas states in his introduction to José Ángel Valente’s work in a 2010 article: Su arte se inscribe en la estética del rechazo del realismo social y testimonial y de la referencialidad poética como forma de representación literaria de la realidad contingente. La secuencia entera de sus poemarios se estructura paulatinamente desde esa negación de la realidad envolvente hasta la creación de un universo de carácter esotérico pero profano, con un dios en minúscula, personal e individual, que es más inmanente que trascendente, más laico que religioso. Asimismo, esta obra es la asunción del fracaso del proyecto ilustrado de la razón positiva y de cualquier intento de abarcar, acotar o definir lo que ha sido arbitraria y convencionalmente denominado como lo real. (Machín Lucas, 1–2) (Eng., His art is inscribed in the aesthetic of the rejection of social and testimonial Realism, and of poetic referentiality as a form of lyrical representation of contingent reality. The entire sequence of his poetic works is structured gradually, from that negation of the surrounding reality to the creation of universe of an esoteric yet profane character, with God in lower case, personal and individual, which is more immanent than transcendent, more secular than religious. In this way, this work is the assumption of the failure of the positive reason’s enlightened project and of any attempt to encompass, enclose, or define that which is arbitrary and conventionally known as the Real.)

This novel approach, in which the divine is brought to bear as part of a larger contestation to Structuralist guarantees of a better reality in which to live, has exercised a symbolic as well as philosophical pressure on contemporary Spanish poetic discourse. As we will see below, such a combination of essentialist rejection of a view of existence as only that suffered in mundane world will appear in the work of various Iberian poets. Janés’ (Barcelona, 1950) poetic, novelistic, and intellectual works have helped to define the mystical and the postmodern, antihegemonic tendencies in contemporary Spanish letters. In working through the death of her father

Introduction

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and brother in a vehicular accident from her youth, she created a poetry whose mystical resonance helps the reader to view, and as such treat, the body as both a source of physical pleasure (engendered by two equal participants, much against the phallocentric views of her time) and extra-corporeal illumination. Much of the criticism surrounding Janés’ poetry stems from Keefe Ugalde’s interpretation of her work. In her analysis, the idea of the “chora,” or origin of life and creation, informs both trajectories of her poetic work (Huellas, 203). Janés herself has stated that her chosen symbolic system is that of Iberian mystical origin, which according to her began with the mystical poetry of San Juan de la Cruz (Ugalde, Conversaciones, 45) and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, among many other poets (Conversaciones, 45–47), as well as the stages of “purgation,” “illumination,” and “union with the Absolute” which coincide with mystical illumination as Santa Teresa de Ávila experienced it (Marson, 245). Later in her poetic path, works such as Tres poetas persas contemporáneos (2000) and Fractales (2005), presented verses translated and poetically interpreted from Middle Eastern, and specifically Arabic and Persian, poets. Such a transnational approach to her poetry both distinguishes her poetic voice as more inclusive and, as is the case for Rossetti, creates a new, critical space from which to reinterpret gender and other social norms. To reiterate, the unique mystical symbolism present in Janés’ poems serve also as a criticism, and possible solution to, the patriarchal and phallocentric hegemony surrounding her in late 20th- and early 21st-century Spain. As we will see, this point of commonality between Janés and Rossetti will guide our understanding of the presence of the mythic and mystical in their work as part of a larger process of a contestation, through literary expression, of the aforementioned phallocentric hierarchies present in this period. The poem “Soy la abeja,” from an earlier collection titled Creciente fértil, the female protagonist intends to sting, and then dominate, the male object. This deconstruction of the traditional male/female dichotomy presents itself within a mythological framework: Soy la abeja enviada en pos de ti, ¡oh Telipinu! En ebrio vuelo emprenderé el acoso; tomaré cera y lavaré tu cuerpo melado como el ámbar; te picaré en las manos y en los pies, despertaré insolente tu capullo y podré al fin libar. Y de una gota desataré una fuente con labios deslizantes, cubriéndote a batidas

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hasta enjutar tu orto, para que te sometas exangüe a mi dominio. (Creciente fértil, 24) (Eng., I am the bee sent in search of you, Oh Telipinu! In drunken flight I shall undertake this pursuit; I will take wax and clean your body honey-colored like amber; I will sting you in your hands and feet, I will insolently awaken your bud and will finally sip of you. And from a droplet I will unleash a fountain with slippery lips, covering you in thrashings until I dry your rise, so that you may submit bloodless to my power.)

The female poetic subject takes the metaphorical form of the bee, which, as an active participant in process of the floral fertilization tradition would demand present as the masculine role. Telipinu, mythical son of the Goddess Auriga aforementioned in the work (Creciente fértil, 11), takes the passive role. The intersection of love and pain (i.e., the poetic subject’s act of stinging him) as the path to purification (as clean, dry, and bloodless to her dominion over him) also stems from Santa Teresa de Ávila’s designation of the major steps in mystical illumination in that, in order to reach illumination, the body must have pleasurably suffered to reach spiritual purification, again, as studied previously. Although the sample above does not reveal a poetic subject within the mystical framework which later collections would, it is evident that the mystical and mythical symbolisms in Janés’ poetry embed themselves into a larger discourse of her time. Janés’ future and contemporary writers would follow a similar transhistorical process. Izara Batres Cuevas (1982, Madrid) is an essayist, poet, and literary critic. Her writings reveal a critical perspective on the posthuman and a strong adherence to notions of mystical illumination and, concomitantly, religious fulfillment. This places her within the wider discourse of mystical poetics of the 20th and 21st centuries. Batres Cuevas’ verses bridge a gap between the generation of poets whose resurgence in the 1970s and 80s brought with it multiple facets of deconstruction and pre-Civil-War tendencies, and the poetic trajectories of the poets such as Fernández Mallo and Cuenca Sandoval. Her verses bear the markings of a process of growth, spiritually as well as metaphorically, away from a world whose evident vacuity not only

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comes under severe criticism, but it also sets the stage for the poetic subject’s escape from it. Batres’ poetry, then, converges with the work of various Iberian poets whose work either references, or adopts, a similar process for seeking an essential meaning in a postmodern (decentralized), posthuman (as noted above, a dehumanizing and simplifying) and deconstructed (essentially meaningless) world (Simon, Blanca Andreu, 1–3). The following example, from her 2011 collection El fuego hacia la luz, reveals the degree to which Batres’ verses fit within the framework of contemporary mystical and posthuman literatures: “Soneto a Rabindranath” Qué azul caminabas entre las flores; por saber tu nombre, te deshojaba, y te iba observando, mientras te hablaba, y, en la mirada, tenías colores. Tu voz dibujaba los interiores, el halo de luz se difuminaba y, entre las letras escritas, jugaba a instaurar pasajes y resplandores. Todos los mundos llevaban a ti: el homenaje del tiempo a tu esencia. Inventaste un sol, residiste allí; prendió tu llama genial la cadencia de cada verso que, un día, leí. Sólo tú hacías de la magia ciencia. (55) (Eng., “Sonnet to Rabindranath” How blue you walked among flowers; your petals he pulled, to know your name, and observed you he did, while to you he spoke, and, in your look, your colors you contained. Your voice these interiors it designed, blended in was a halo of light and, it played, among the written letters, at founding passages and splendor. All the worlds lead me to you: in your essence the tribute of time. You invented a sun, there you lived;

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The cadence of each verse that, one day, I read, ignited your genius flame. Only you could turn magic to science.)

The poetic object, Rabindranath, most likely refers to Rabindranath Tagore, first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for his work Gitanjali. This work is famed for its delicate spirituality and devotional symbolism, as well as its adherence to the mystical process found in many Iberian poets. In keeping with this process, “ . . . much of the poetry talks about an [sic] union with the supreme, but the union also has in it much of the discourse of two earthly lovers” (Paul, 29). As such, the references to colors and to nature, as a symbolic gateway into the poetic object’s inner world, seems logical. Mystical elements, such as taking up residence in the sun (a possible reference to the space which the mystical seeker creates, and which serves as the place of contact with the divine (Nurbakhsh, Vol. IV, 74)), enhance the poetic subject’s view of Rabindranath as not only a devotional figure, but an illuminated one, as well. Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo, a Navarrese poet whose work spans two decades, has focused his thematic development on issues of social injustice and a subsequent lack of awareness on the part of the individual to their plight. Two of his works, La mística del fracaso (2002) and Los útiles del alquimista 2010), delineate this trajectory in detail. “Tránsito del yermo,” a poem from the former, describes the failure of the mystical seeker to attain illumination in a social and societal context which prizes superficiality and meaninglessness over depth of thought and emotion. This ceremony’s goal, then, does not reflect contact with the divine, but quite the opposite: Desaconsejado vagué sombrío por las catedrales proteicas de Europa: fatigué las piedras seculares escrutando arcos tan tensos como tus brazos de alabastro y fieltro. En los acordes de las congregaciones sumí los sedimentos de la inquina a tus añagazas turbulentas: los salmos monocordes trasladáronme a tus voces de pentagrama y lucero. Taciturno purgué la conjura de los enajenados, bebí el mosto acedo de la bacanal pública: lloraba luego

Introduction

la insípida memoria de tus besos de vinagre y veneno. Con ascetas y místicos conviví, en los filósofos de la renuncia busqué consuelo: y no hubo paz lejos de ti, de tus ideas de pan y velero. Diligente escapo de ti hacia desiertos que no alcanzaste, y descubro en la piedra de mármol, en el salmo, en el vino, en el libro de todos los libros, tu amor de vacío y centeno. (32) (Eng., I ambled unadvised somber from the protean cathedrals of Europe: I fatigued secular stones scrutinizing arches as tense as your arms of alabaster and felt. In the chords of congregations I added the sediment of dislike to your turbulent ploys: toneless psalms moved me toward your voices of pentagram and star. Taciturn I purged the plot of the insane, I drank this bitter juice of the public bacchanal: then I wept the insipid memory of your kisses of venom and vinegar. With hermits and mystics I lived, with philosophers of abdication I sought comfort: and there was no peace far from you, from your ideas of bread and sail ship. I escape diligently from you Toward deserts you have never reached, and I discover in the marble stone,

25

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Introductio

in the psalm, in the wine, in the book of all books, your love of emptiness and rye.)

A detailed analysis of this particular poem may allow the reader to observe how the poetic subject traverses such a delicate, dual context. The first stanza presents an allegorical crossing of the lover’s body as symbolic of the mystical path. The attempt will not succeed, however, due to seemingly profound, yet ultimately vapid and non sequitur impediments. For example, the arch, a symbol that could have represented the lover’s body as a religious sanctuary, not only distracts the poetic subject, but serves to dilute the experience and prevent further progress in a mystical sense. The second and third stanzas emphasize the connection of the satisfaction, in both the spiritual and corporeal sense, that the poetic subject does not experience. For example, the toneless Psalms (“los salmos monocordes”) take the poetic subject from heaven to hell in a passionless and pained state; the juice symbolizing the blood of Christ is acidic and bitter like vinegar. Again, there is mystical love present, such as that experienced in a religious excitation, but without that expected salvation at the end. The fourth stanza reveals that the poetic subject cannot seem to make sense of the world without the lover, even after having consulted with differing sides of the various mystical arguments. The final stanza, as a last-ditch effort to make some sense of the situation, remits to the mythical figure of Majnun in his search for solace from Leyla in Clara Janés’ Diván y el ópalo de fuego, a rewriting of the ancient Sufi story (Simon, “An Iberian Search,” 151). Yet, it becomes clear that the same intense feeling of love that brought the poetic subject to the stage in which we find him in the poem is also the single most superficial and meaningless entity present. “In that sense, the mystic’s failure is one caused not by an inherent ignorance of the obvious mystical epistemology, but of committing himself precisely . . . to a failure to see beyond the mundane and view the universe from a more sublime and illuminated perspective through a self-imposed egotism and ignorance” (151). In other words, the poetic subject chooses to remain distanced from the mystical world in having chosen a love that cannot move him beyond it. “There is deconstruction of this world, but only insofar as the poetic subject pertains to his own deconstructive, and thus self-destructive, process. Any attempt to leave this mundane anti-illumination, such as the intertextual presence of other mystical poetries and systems, remains nothing more than the shadow of itself in other contexts” (152). In this sense, escape is impossible. This unfortunate path will also reveal itself in the writing of Ana Rossetti, as we will see over the course of this study.

Introduction

27

The dual trajectories evident in contemporary Spanish poetry, unlike in past historical contexts, do not seem to exist in competition. Rather, they create a unique confluence of the decentered, deconstructive, and critical poetic apparatus of the late 20th century with the ubiquitously traditional spirituality present over the span of centuries in Iberian cultures and letters. As we will see here, this unexpectedly fluid poetic makes its presence known in the symbolism and, in some cases, in the overarching metaphoric structure, of the poetry of Ana Rossetti. 1. “The light has left I’ve gone three days without charging my phones now when I find myself with people I don’t know their name I desperately ask them that they hum their songs to me so I know who they are”

Chapter One

Ana Rossetti and Her Poetry from “la movida” to “la crisis” and Beyond, 1975–1995

Ana Sofía Pérez-Bustamante Mourier stated in the introduction to her analysis on magical symbolism in the poetry of Rossetti that the poet’s verses do not always fit the mold into which it is usually understood. In fact, in Rossetti’s own view, her poetry expresses more than a space for post-Francoist subversion: En la recepción de la poesía de Ana Rossetti se ha valorado su mezcla de erotismo, seducción, transgresión, culturalismo refinado y espíritu lúdico, irónico, teatral y posmoderno. Se la considera como una de las alma mater de una potente poesía neo-erótica que da voz al deseo femenino y al deseo homo y bisexual, lo que la proyecta sobre la línea feminista y de género, y sobre la línea de la teoría “queer.” Esta doble subversión bastaría para explicar el lugar que ocupa Rossetti en nuestra lírica actual, un lugar fronterizo entre las estribaciones de los novísimos de los años 70 y los poetas de la experiencia, sentimentales y figurativos de los años 80. (71) . . . De amor y muerte [ha dicho Rossetti en una entrevista que] el amor místico, incomprensible, se convierte para ella desde los años del colegio en paradigma amoroso insuperable . . . (75) (Eng., The reception of Ana Rossetti’s poetry has seen valued a mix of eroticism, seduction, transgression, refined culturalism, and a ludic spirit, ironic, theatrical, and Postmodern. It is considered as one of the alma mater of a powerful, neo-erotic poetry which gives a voice to feminine desire, and to homo/bisexual desires, which projects her poetry upon the feminist and gender-based thematic, and onto that of “Queer” Theory. This dual subversion would be enough to explain the place Rossetti occupies in our modern lyric, a liminal space between the foothills of the 1970s “novísimos” and the 1980s poets of Experience, sentimental and figurative. (71)

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. . . of love and death [Rossetti said in an interview that] mystical love, incomprehensible, for her since her adolescence becomes an unsurpassable, amorous paradigm . . . )

Ultimately, this idea of combining the deconstruction of our contemporary world’s push toward superficiality with the depths of the mystical search for essential meaning in an ever more meaningless physical world serves as the conceptual basis for this study. It also, and in part by Rossetti’s own admission, offers the opportunity to examine her poetry in a light not necessarily recognized in many of the more cited contemporary critical texts on her work. Since the early 1980s, the prose, poetry, and other written works by the Spanish author Ana Rossetti have called to task a liminal space between the neo-classical and the postmodern avant-guarde in order to rectify the erroneous and limited masculine, hegemonic discourse of the pre-“movida” period. So-called “high” and “low” arts would find a place for recombination and, as such, for a removal of the boundaries between the acceptable and unacceptable in terms of female bodily and intellectual empowerment. A renovation of re-initiation of the Spanish capital as the site of “the creation of new forms of collective identity based largely on a culturally vibrant present” (Stapell, 346) allowed for the rupture with the past to coincide with the critical, yet always hopeful, outlook toward the country’s future. It is in this context that Ana Rossetti began her literary career. Nonetheless, more recent works of Rossetti’s have begun to reveal two philosophical and esoteric tendencies which, although present in previous works, take center stage. In particular, the three more recent poetry works, Llenar tu nombre (Eng., “Filling your Name”) (2008), El mapa de la espera (Eng., “The Map of Waiting”) (2010), and Deudas contraídas (Eng., “Contracted Debts”) (2016) have made the avid reader of Rossetti’s earlier poetry question the veracity of the plainly hybridized and deconstructive voices of those works. These works in particular take on a growing apocryphal tone, with, at times, a combined violence of self-awareness that could have roots in the same mystical voice as that found in the poetic voice of José Ángel Valente’s “poesía del silencio,” or even that of the 1990s works of Clara Janés. As this short study will suggest, a more appropriate approximation may come in the form of viewing these works as part of a larger, “transhistorical” or “trans-literary” framework, in which the essentialist movement of mystical poetics and the continued relativism of poets such as Ana Merino and the “generación nocilla” encounter a moment of reconciliation. The poetry of Ana María Bueno de la Peña, known by her pen name as Ana Rossetti, one of the members of the now famed “movida madrileña” movement in early 1980s Madrid, utilized a unique combination of classical references to the female body and contemporary contexts of sexual liberation



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and freedom of expression in order to deconstruct the discourse of male hegemony prevalent in Spanish societies of the time. “Since the mid-1980s, the Spanish poet has had an interest in images, ranging from consumer icons to classical figures, and she has used such visual texts to subvert traditionally male-centered erotic poetry” (Demeuse, 203). This deconstruction of the male poetic body then served as a basis for a newly found female physical and social empowerment: La unión de voz femenina, erotismo, mitos clásicos y tradición católica conforma el sello rosetiano en relación con la línea más amplia de intervenciones al canon asociadas a las estéticas marginales que desde el declinar del franquismo hacia finales de los años sesenta, con las replicaciones peninsulares de la generación beat, hasta la explosión cultural de la Movida madrileña y barcelonesa, habían venido articulando el homoerotismo y las identidades genérico sexuales no heterocentradas con las distintas expresiones artísticas, incluidas las incursiones en los géneros considerados “altos,” como la poesía. (Bonatto, 26) (Eng., “The union of female voice, eroticism, classical myth, and catholic tradition form the Rossettian stamp in regard to the widest range of interventions against the cannon associated with marginal aesthetics that, since the decline of Francoism and toward the end of the 1960s, with Peninsular replication of the beat generation, up to the cultural explosion of the ‘Movida’ movement in Madrid and Barcelona, had been articulating homoeroticism and non-heterocentric gender identities with distinct artistic expressions, including incursions into so-called ‘high’ genres, such as poetry.”)

Thus, in deconstructing one body, Rossetti manages to reconstruct the ideal of the body via new, non-traditional norms. These serve to bring a critical eye toward the antiquated ideal of the cisgender male as dominant and active, the cisgender female as passive, and the non-cisgender population as erred, heretical, or non-existent. “By presenting the eroticized body as a coded of ambiguous gender, Rossetti . . . heighten[s] our awareness of the artificiality of the gendered and heterosexual erotic stimulus . . . ” (Kruger-Robbins, “Andalucía,” 167–68).1 As such, it is evident that Rossetti’s poetry moves beyond the better recognized feminist message into a more broadly defined notion of artistic and social rewriting of gender norms. Her work Indicios vehementes, in particular, is one which many consider a more telling work. In this volume poems such as the well-studied and recognizable “Chico Wrangler” reveal the inversion of the male-female, or dominant-submissive, relationship model in the context of a foreign advertisement. Yet even the “cultural models” may not conform in what the existing iconographic or cultural hierarchy would expect. Within Rossetti’s poetry it is possible to view another tendency, one which the work of other Iberian poets

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such as Clara Janés, Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo, Joaquim Pessoa, and Vergílio Alberto Vieira has revealed. Indicios vehementes (1985) is, in actuality, a compilation of several shorter poetic collections whose primary antihegemonic epistemology reveals itself as evolving within and around a neoclassical poetic core. Debicki states that Rossetti’s verses from this collection strive to express “a lack of historical perspective, uncertainty regarding the future” (179). The thoughtful and explicit incorporation of motives and structures from Spanish Golden Age poetry reaches out to the reader, offering a familiar path from which to begin the process of deconstruction. In fact, her poetic voice’s ironic undermining of cultural “master narratives” concerning the phallocentric through carefully utilized sexual imagery (211–212) allows for a deconstruction (through carnivalesque inversion) of a culture of male-dominated hegemony (213). As such, Rossetti’s approach to a multifaceted and encoded poetic expression shows also the marking of an absence of universal meaning (Moreiras Menor, 108). Simultaneously, her work also demonstrates the emphasis on Spanish culture as having become one of the “spectacle,” where one searches out appearances but not meaning (108). Ultimately, it is this emptiness that points toward, according to Rossetti’s work, a mark of Spanish cultural identity in the wake of the Franco’s death (111). Such a rich and nuanced approach to social criticism through a poetic lens may take on a plethora of thematic foci, as Kruger-Robbins has noted: the seductiveness of the bodies in Rossetti’s poetry derives from their conformity to cultural models of eroticism, even when their gender or sexual orientation departs from the norm of these models. (“Andalucía,” 171)

In this vein, stating that her poetry unlatches toxic masculine hegemonic thought from its artificially bolstered structures of power, deconstructs it, and bolsters any and all other normativities from within those structures. Poems from this collection utilize a myriad of Classical and Neo-Classical images within a contemporary and explicitly erotic context. Deconstruction of the male hegemony feeding off of this imagery happens due to the change in perspective (from the traditionally cisgender, heterosexual male to the pansexual woman’s) and the inversion of roles. The poem below exemplifies this tendency: El gladiolo blanco de mi primera comunión se vuelve púrpura: Nunca más, oh no, nunca más me prenderá la primavera con sus claras argucias. Desconfío del tumescente gladiolo blanco, satinadas pastas



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de misales antiguos. Parece una mortaja de niño, su apariencia es tan pura que, sin malicia, lo exponemos a la vista de muchachas seráficas. Y sin embargo, qué hermoso señuelo, jamás halló Himeneo instructor más propicio. Ya visita, de noche, silente, las alcobas, se introduce en los sueños y despierta a las vírgenes con dura sacudida. Nunca más, oh no, nunca más me prenderá la primavera con sus claras argucias. (25) (Eng., The white gladiolus of my first communion turns purple: Nevermore, oh, nevermore Spring may capture me with its transparent schemes. I distrust the tumescent white gladiolus, the glossy cover of old prayer books. It looks like a child’s shroud, its appearance is so pure that, without malice, we expose it to the sight of Seraphic maidens. And yet, what a lovely lure, Hymen had never found such a favorable instructor. It visits, at night, silent, bedrooms, It introduces itself in dreams and awakens virgins with a hard jolt. Nevermore, oh, nevermore Spring may capture me with its transparent schemes.)

The structure of the poem seems rather contemporary (free verse with internal rhyme), yet the confluence with neo-classical symbolism does not escape the reader’s attention. References to “la primavera” and a host of flora create an intertext with the clear description of the poetic subject’s encounter between “Hymen,” Greek god of weddings (and from whose name comes that of the flap or flaps of skin surrounding the opening of the vagina) and the “instructor,” or the lover with whom the poetic subject experienced the loss of virginity. The mention of “Seraphic maidens,” in their representative function as both quintessentially feminine and excitedly, divinely innocent, highlights the contrast between the sublime nature of the poetic subject and the physicality of the object’s actions. The circular framework of the poem then emphasizes the contained memory of the experience, while both

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Chapter One

celebrating and lamenting the end of the innocence of love before the first sexual act. There is also a notable alliteration which pervades the poem, the repetition of the words “jamás” and “más,” which in their respective contexts serves to emphasize the uniqueness and striking nature of the encounter. In any case, the regaining of agency in a sexual encounter and the description of the phallus as, among other things, “like a child’s shroud,” take the reader to a space where male attributes are appreciated only insofar as they may leave behind their “schemes.” The lack of maturity or conscientiousness on the part of the masculine strikes the reader. This moment of accusation empowers the female poetic subject. Although Rossetti’s poetry is most noted for the type of deconstruction shown above, her poetry develops in various and enriching directions over the following decade. Punto umbrío (1996) marks a significant turn in Rossetti’s poetic evolution toward a notably less eroticized introspection. Critical analyses of the work have compared its deeply philosophical exploration of love and loss to the type of sentiment found in Saint Augustine’s Confessions (Navarrete, 226). It is not lost that Rossetti begins the work with a citation from this early work: “He hecho de mí un enigma a vuestros ojos. Ésta es mi trágica dolencia” (Punto umbrío, 17) (Eng., “I have made an enigma of myself in your eyes. This is my tragic malady”). The critical introduction of the 2018 edition states in more specific terms that “[e]n esta caída se busca la comprensión y, por ello, estos versos nos retan a que seamos capaces de construir un relato sobre nosotros mismos. O, en otras palabras, a que iniciemos una confesión para y con unestra intimidad. La confesión es un acontecimiento límite” (12) (Eng., “[i]n this cascade-effect one seeks out understanding, and for this, these verses challenge us to be capable of constructing an account of ourselves. Or, in other words, of initiating a confession for, and to, our own intimacy. The confession is one limiting occurrence”). In this sense, an Augustinian confession recombines with the symbolism from previous collections of Rossetti’s verses in order that the focus may shift from an externalized process of deconstruction to an internalized exploration of love. A poem from the work aids in elucidating the presence of the body as a point of contact for the themes of mystical union and deconstructive eroticism: Y así, cada minuto, se alarga en lentos túneles flotando en el vacío y la raya que marca el término del día es un infranqueable y elástico tabique. Y el diablo, con su lengua vibrante, inducente, su lengua aljofarada de insidias y tristezas,



Ana Rossetti and Her Poetry from “la movida” to “la crisis”

su lengua fulgurante como un lirio escarlata, como una onda, dúctil, pero tan decisiva como la trayectoria de un arpón; su lengua, me enloquece. Si esto es lo que te espera, si esto es ya para siempre, él me dice, si esto es lo que le resta al resto de tu vida, él me dice, ¿merecerá la pena? año tras año, así, ¿resistirás?, me dice. Pero mi voluntad no consiente en plegarse a la razón del tiempo y su artificio ni se deja atrapar por las prórrogas que estiran pesadillas, por feroces pantanos de la imaginación, por convenios impuestos al destino, por esta incautación de toda mi existencia. Mi albedrío, consiste en poder desertar. (Punto umbrío, 17–18) (Eng., And so, each minute, lengthens in slow tunnels floating in the emptiness and the line which signals the day’s end it is an impassable and elastic partition. And the devil, with his colorful tongue, forceful, his pearly tongue of maliciousness and sadness, his shining tongue like the scarlet lily, like a wave, soft, yet so decisive like a harpoon’s path; his tongue drives me mad. If this is what awaits you, if this is forever, he tells me, if this is what remains of the rest of your life, he tells me, is it worth it? year after year, like this, will you survive?, he says. Yet my will does not consent to submit to time’s reason and trick nor will it be trapped by its deferral which stretches nightmares, by fierce swamps of the imagination, by covenants imposed on destiny, by this confiscation of my entire existence. My free will, consists of the ability to abandon)

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Despite the work’s evident distancing from the explicit eroticism of Rossetti’s earlier poetic collections, expressive moments such as this one serve to remit to this universal topic in her poems. Here the poetic subject finds sadness and betrayal in what was thought to be a lasting love. In terms of poetic discourse, the poem above takes advantage of a variety of symbols, these having been taken directly from the lover’s body, to concretize the feeling of potential abandonment (whether on his or her part) on the part of the poetic subject. The crazed, ecstatic state of the poetic subject in reference to contact with the male lover’s body (ex., “su lengua, me enloquece”), coupled with the unmarked changes between the first, second, and third person subject positions in the same statement (“Si esto es lo que te espera, si esto es ya para siempre / él me dice”) creates both an expressive tension and a space in which the body serves two distinct functions. One function seems to be that of point of reference for the metaphoric explanation of the link between the erotic act and the eroticized body; the other may then be as a referential space for deconstruction of the male lover’s questionable hegemonic position. Hence, the reader may also feel the resonating spatial relations from a mystical discursive construct. By utilizing the body of the lover as a place for greater understanding, the poetic subject finds a comfortable moment in which to seek out comprehension of her dual role as seeker of knowledge and seeker of freedom. In this manner, the poetic subject retains the ability to “poder desertar,” or abandon, the situation whenever she feels the need or desire. The notion of desertion as part of a mystical context is always a secondary consideration in, for example, Saint John of the Cross—the first stanza of his “Dark Night of the Soul” (“La noche oscura del alma”) states the intentionality of the act of leaving for the famous encounter, rather than the necessity of such an encounter. As such, the poem offers a multifaceted, transhistorical expression of a very intimate and profoundly impactful personal experience. To summarize, the first decades of Ana Rossetti’s poetic trajectory reveal an emphasis on specific themes and approaches. The most salient, in view of existing critical encounters with the poet’s work, is the deconstruction of masculine hegemony in Spanish society. The basis for that deconstruction is a rewriting and parody of Baroque and Neo-Classical era poetic tropes. After that, the reader begins to see others—the creation of a space for what today we would denominate as LGBTQ+ voices, and the appearance of symbolism based not upon a Derridean sense of “différance” but from earlier Iberian models, namely, the essentialist translation of extra-religious mystical symbols. Works such as Indicios vehementes (itself a collection of various works from the 1980s) encapsulate the former, while Rossetti’s 1996 collection Punto Umbrío incorporates elements of the latter. Moving toward the 21st century, a new motif begins to emerge based in what Punto umbrío’s symbolic shape revealed. The mystical evolves in her work from a secondary



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series of enriched symbols within the reconstruction of the denatured abject, a point from which to explore the now removed essentialism in Spanish sociocultural discourse, toward that of a function of post-humanism’s critique of an utterly vapid world. It is from this moment that the present study will reveal the development of a clearly mystical symbolism in the late 20th- and early 21st-century poetry of Ana Rossetti. We will begin with a contextual, thematic, and formal analysis of the most recent poems from various shorter collections published in the tome titled La ordenación: retrospective (1980–2004), moving on to Rossetti’s 2008 collection Llenar tu nombre, followed by analyses of poems from her children’s collection El mapa de la espera (2010) and culminating with a study of Deudas contraídas (2016). At each step we will focus on specific poems which, besides moving the poetic plot along in each work, also reveals how the antihegemonic, deconstructive tendencies in Rossetti’s first two decades of poetic writing incorporate both a critical view of what Batres refers to as the “vampiros” of our world, and a simultaneous search for a more profound understanding of the world around the poetic subject. This approach will lead us down the path toward a fuller understanding of how contemporary Iberian literary mysticism has shaped the worldview and experience of the poet and her poetic subject in the Spain of the early 21st century.

Chapter Two

Transition from the Transition La ordenación: retrospectiva (1980–2004) (2004)

In the previous chapter, our study of the poetry produced during Rossetti’s first period of creative publication from c. 1980 to 1988, focused on general notions of the rewriting of phallocentric hegemonies in post-Francoist Spanish society. As stated there, these tendencies have received volumes of attention over the past several decades. Rossetti’s poetic approach in the first years of her known writing combines ideas of the kitsch, intertextual and diachronically remixed epistemologies, and transhistorical referencing, all which have enhanced the reader’s focus on the roots and state of the abject and the transformation of the poetry subject from abject to a voice of essential knowledge, in works from this period. The works analyzed in the previous chapter have supported this approach. Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, however, Rossetti’s verses continue to enrich the readers’ collective experience by way of a novel, thematic agglutination of existing tendencies in her work with ones of a broader scope. The thematic shifts away from the embodiment of singular identity and more toward the self as contextualized within a newly born, democratic, era. In essence, the metaphorization of this approach (within context and taking into account relatively new, social epistemologies) here will take center stage. In this vein, the present chapter will focus on works republished in the overarching collection titled La ordenación: retrospective (1980–2004), in which the works Yesterday (1988), Apuntes de ciudades (1990), Virgo potens (1994), and various published poems from 1990 to 1999 will serve as point of artistic and historically significant focus. These works serve to highlight the process of movement from the erotic deconstructive mode of Rossetti’s 1980s poetic toward a more socially aware and outwardly focused poetic 39

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methodology of the late 1990s and 21st century. Mystical symbolism also begins to surge forth from the previous symbology in Rossetti’s work, making their way from secondary to part of the primary symbolic vocabulary of her poetry. Yesterday serves to represent the first sign of this dramatic shift in Rossetti’s work, as Paul Viejo states in his introduction to La ordenación, “a manera de antología, por una parte una selección de los libros anteriores, lo pasado, y por otra, poemas inéditos, escritos tras los libros iniciales donde se muestra las vías en las que está experimentando la autora, lo futuro, en búsqueda por encontrar nuevas formas de expresión” (Rossetti, La ordenación, 20) (Eng., “[i]n the form of an anthology, on the one hand, a selection of previous books, that which is past, and on the other, unpublished poems, written after his initial books in which the paths through which the author is experimenting, that which is future, in search of new forms of expression, are shown”). Makris places Rossetti’s collection squarely within the “culturalismo” tendency of the post-novísimos (279), as well as within a discourse of denaturalization and recontextualization of contemporary song lyrics as applied to a personal crisis. “[Poems in the work] constantly play with intertextuality by alluding to other texts and contexts as they juxtapose cultural references drawn from high and popular cultural sources” (290). This aspect of the work should not surprise the reader, as it mirrors previous poetic approaches by Rossetti. Makri’s comment on Rossetti’s search for new poetic expressions, when combined with such experimentalism, birth a novel poetic discourse within a post-deconstruction seeking of new semiotic foci, as will become evident below. Beginning with the title, the poem “Killing Me Softly With His Song” fits well into the description above: No quisiera llorar si su música, mientras mi habitación invade, la desborda, y en los balcones yergue sus mástiles de oro. No quisiera llorar. Con su gozo se exalta mi tristeza: la música es tu nombre pronunciado que te devuelve el niño, que te florece en mí y en mi carne te habita y te detiene. Asalta Mozart mi memoria inquieta y tórnase tu ausencia en nomeolvides, las lágrimas descorren sus cortinas y el sol se precipita como una cimitarra. Me sobresalta Mozart cual si un saludo tuyo me trajera. Mozart, arcángel, salta,

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vierte sus azucenas en mis manos y con su espada incendia los cristales. No quisiera llorar, ya no, mientras su júbilo abre una dulce herida en mi ternura, no sé si de esperanza o de desasosiego —oh, niño mío, oh Mozart—. Yo quisiera, tan sólo yo quisiera, suavemente morirme si él está cantando. (Yesterday, 51) (Eng., I would not like to cry if this music, while it invades my room, overflows it, it raises its golden masts on the balconies. I wouldn’t like to cry. It exalts my sadness in its pleasure: the music is your name spoken so to return the child to you, the one which flourishes in me and inhabits you in my flesh and stops you. Mozart attacks my restless memory and turns my absence into forget-me-nots, the tears draw back the curtains and the sun plunges like a scimitar. Mozart startles me as if your hello had brought me. Mozart, archangel, leaps, he pours his lilies in my hands and with his sword lights up the glass. I would not like to cry, not anymore, while his happiness opens a sweet wound in my tenderness, I do not know if it is out of hope or unease —oh, my child, oh Mozart—. I would like, I would only like, to die softly if he is singing.)

Title from contemporary North American 1973 Roberta Flack hit song (remade later by the Fugees in 1996) “Killing me Softly.” Lyrics1 concern the poetic subject’s feeling that a song she hears at a concert reflects her innermost emotions. Rossetti’s poetic subject begins with a similar reaction to a song she hears on the radio while in her own room. The song she hears does not come from a contemporary; rather, we discover in the second stanza that it is a piece by Mozart. Again, the reader confronts an intertextual relationship between the present and the Neo-Classical past, a reminiscing of the events based on an object of affection, whether that be a Wrangler advertisement or a song. The poetic subject also struggles to contain her emotions as the music overtakes her (this occurs also in the poem’s namesake). Makris’ study of the

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phallic imagery in the poem (283) should also be noted as it ties into previous, similar imagery in Rossetti’s earlier verses. Where Rossetti’s poem takes an even more original turn, one which allows the reader to see this poem as part of a bridge between the poet’s first works and her works after 1996, are the particular symbols which the poetic subject uses to describe her changing condition. In the first stanza, the poetic subject describes how the music “ . . . the music is your name / spoken so to return the child to you, / the one which flourishes in me and inhabits you in my flesh / and stops you” (v. 5–8, my translation). The notion that music gives identity to one whose existence happens only within the body of the other, beside a possible reference to pregnancy (with the child giving an identity to the absent lover from within the poetic subject’s own flesh) does not appear frequently in poetry. The more likely option holds that this uncommon metaphor may hold a secondary meaning. As suggested previously, one interpretation draws not from postmodern models but from more essentialist ones, namely, the presence of Sufi mystical processes apparent in the poetry of several of Rossetti’s contemporaries, including Blanca Andreu, Clara Janés, and in Portugal, Joaquim Pessoa. Within this context, then, we must shift our critical lens toward existing documentation regarding mystical symbolism. According to Nurbakhsh, author of the most multifaceted and complete study of Sufi mystical symbols (as stated previously), the symbol of the house or room represents the space in which the mystical seeker may find union with the divine (Vol. IV, 74). Despite the presence of other examples of similar roots, that of the space for mystical union should suffice to make evident this alternative symbolism’s nascent presence in the poet’s verses. In essence, the poetic subject presents a surface-level collage of contemporary and early Modern images, moving quickly into a deeper search for a meaning found only from a recognition of the poetic subject’s multilayered, sociocultural literary and philosophical history. As critics, we tend to focus on works published in larger collections. However, shorter poetic works published in journals and/or presented alongside other, seemingly unrelated artistic forms also reveal particular aspects of a writer’s overall evolution. One excellent example is the poem “Poética” (1990), republished in Ordenación under the heading of “poemas sueltos: 1990–1999,” and in fact having appeared in the catalog which accompanied artist Antonio Belmonte’s 1990 exposition, while collaborating with Belmonte on Apuntes de ciudades, also from 1990 (Demeuse, 204): A qué noche exacta pertenece el jardín que recordamos, a qué agua temblorosa nos referimos para explicar la luna, a qué labios, para dibujar sonrisas cómplices. Cuántas noches de entre tantas noches han sido necesarias,

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cuál ha fijado sus luciérnagas, cuál sus dondiegos entreabriéndose, cuál sus cristales iluminados y sus cenefas de cobre entre los pinos, para instalar su escenario personal, su intransferible imagen, su inmutable referencia. Cuántas noches de entre tantas noches han sido precisas para acallar la alarma estridente de los escaparates asaltados, y detener el centelleo de las marquesinas, y prohibirle la entrada a los vehículos, e ignorar las atestadas barras de los bares, y el sobresalto de las urgencias nocturnas, y poder mostrar su recinto inmóvil y silencioso . . . Y sin embargo, no siempre en la quietud se posan las estrellas como insectos alegres, ni sirve de consuelo que un muro plateado cobije nuestro insomnio, ni que el galán de noche llame al balcón insistiendo en su ofrenda. A veces no ha sido fácil resistir al ciprés, obligarle a enterrar su puñal de melancolía. Ni pretender de la oscuridad el sosiego. Ni impedir que el silencio sea un sorbo de amargura intolerable. A veces no ha sido fácil refrenar el acoso de la noche con sus lenguas de látigo, su fiebre, sus persistentes moscas oscuras y sus túneles sin salida. Por eso, a medida que el sol extingue su llamarada y la lona del toldo va tornándose opaca y dura como el yeso un ritmo preciso picotea en los pulsos como el pájaro obsesionado en una fruta. Pues es la noche un cofre lleno de bocallaves y no sabemos si estaremos dando paso al miedo o a la música, porque no es posible apoderarse para siempre de la llave maestra. Podemos elegir una noche de entre todas las noches; adentrarnos en su paisaje, y aprendérnoslo, pero eso no quiere decir que la próxima vez nos sorprenda con su maravilla ni nos acorrale con sus tretas. De la noche nunca puede uno estar seguro. (267–68) (Eng., To which night does the garden we remember belong, what tremulous water do we refer to when we speak of the moon, to what lips, so to draw complicit smiles. How many nights among so many were needed, which has affixed their lightning bugs, which their four-o-clock flowers half-opening, which their lit glass and their copper friezes between the pines,

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in order to set their personal stage, their untransferable image, their immutable model. How many nights among so many have been essential to stifle the stricken window displays’ strident alarms, to halt the sparkling of the marquees, to prohibit vehicles from entering, and ignore the bars’ packed counters, the fright of nighttime emergencies, and be able to show their immobile and silent enclosures . . . And yet, not always in calm do stars perch like happy little insects, nor does a silvery wall cover up our insomnia give consolation, nor does the Casanova, night-blooming jessamine call to the balcony insisting on his gift. At times resisting the cypress is not easy, making it bury its melancholic dagger. or attempting to make peace from the darkness. Nor keeping silence from becoming a mouthful of intolerable bitterness. At times it has not been easy to stop the night’s relentless pursuit with its whip-tongues, its fever, its persistent black flies and inescapable tunnels. Due to this, to the extent that the sol extinguishes its flares and the shade’s canvas keeps turning opaque and hard like plaster the precise rhythm picks at wrists like a bird obsessed with a fruit. Well it is night a trunk full of keyholes and we do not know if we will be clearing the way for fear or music, because it is not possible to take control over the master key forever. We may choose a night among all nights; enter deep into its landscape, and learn of it for ourselves, but that doesn’t mean that the next time its marvel surprises us nor that it may corral us with its tricks. One can never be sure of the night.)

This poem may read as one of the most symbolically complex, multifaceted, and philosophically dense poems Rossetti had written to this date. It makes sense, then, that its title would hint at the poem’s function as a sort of poetic manifesto. The poem utilizes a thesis/antithesis/synthesis structure so common in Golden Age and Neo-Classical poetry, presenting an idea or conceit for study, a dismantling of its argument, and finally a stylized joining of the two in order to present a complete and well-articulated concept. The poem

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begins by questioning the notion of exactness in memory, of objects remembered, of the repetition of life’s action. By asking “how many nights . . . have been necessary,” (v. 9) Rossetti’s poetic subject calls to question the nature of human effort in the retaking of agency, or the comprehension of memory’s ability to witness for us a past action. The second stanza summarizes a logical consequence of this, that memory’s imperfection cannot save us from the world’s difficulties, implying as such that the agency sought out cannot be won within our current reality. The final stanza, then, suggests to the reader that the solution is neither the dream world of memory nor the terrors of an unstable reality, but the act of entering wholly “ . . . in the landscape” so we may “ . . . [learn of] it for ourselves” (v. 36). Perhaps purely by accident, this poem establishes a new approach to Rossetti’s poetic creation. When before the ideal of deconstruction of the phallic hegemony took center stage, now other aspects of the reality of late 20th- and early 21st-century Spanish life may do the same in her work. A differing critical lens will also come into play, one through which patterns of hegemonic deconstruction guides the reader to an understanding of the lack of essential unity on which arguments and structures of power. This lens seeks not necessarily to invert hegemonies, although it does so clearly, but to create a new artistic epistemology from which to explore a variety of social and personal themes. Certain symbols in the poem also lead the reader to a secondary, yet potentially impactful path of interpretation. The idea of a “noche” repeats throughout the poem, which on the surface refers to a “locus amoenus” for the poetic subject and her interlocutor. However, it begins as a well-known space, “exacta,” a place of security for the poetic subject. This space becomes fragmented, however, losing ground as a unique and singular space, becoming “una noche de entre todas las noches,” one of many similar and yet unsatisfying spaces. If we turn from traditional notions of postmodern deconstruction and denaturalization, and focus on a mystical symbolism, we may reinterpret the poem in a vein approximating that of the Golden Age poet Saint John’s “Dark Night of the Soul,” in which the night is not a singular space, but one whose multifaceted parts (like those of Rossetti’s night above) make the reader question the veracity of the physical, dark space presented in the beginning of the poem. As sight of some sort is still possible in this darkness, in Sufi mystical symbolism we would call this “tangible darkness,” comparable to the “gloom of the ways of human misery” (Nurbakhsk, IV, 20), an indication that the poetic subject observes the mundane world as one of suffering, in contrast to its opposite, the light (22). Thus, if we were to follow this interpretation, we could call this a moment of recognition of the falsity of the mundane world as the space of the real, observing the possibility of a different, deeper reality. This, in mystical terminology, is called “Ma’rifat,” or recognition, an idea rooted in what the Sufi refer to as “the gnostic’s sight”

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(Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 18), one of whose other recognized symbols is the cup or bottle of wine (138–39). The reference to “bars” in the first stanza of Rossetti’s poem, as well as the criticized false certainty of the “immutable image” from the same stanza, could lend support to this idea. Finally, the lack of certainty which marks the poem’s end creates both a space for ambivalence (befitting previous comments on Derrida’s notion of “différance” within a postmodern, critical lens) and for stepping away from the suffering, mundane world which a mystical interpretation provides. In this way, shorter works may provide as much insight into Rossetti’s poetic and thematic evolution as with her longer works. Another example, published shortly after the previous poem, continues this trajectory. Virgo potens (1994), a short work whose title translates as “Virgen most powerful,” presents a series of six poetic scenes during which the poetic subject seems to seek penance for sin, yet, in reality, retakes her agency through the exultation of supposedly taboo acts. “The major taboos involve sex, death and sacrilege; these are violated in . . . Virgo potens through the simulation of transgressive acts of physical eroticism, including voyeurism, incest, homosexuality, adultery, necrophilia, rape, and the seduction of priests or seminary students” (Robbins, “Seduction,” 57). The original collection, a collaboration between Rossetti, Jorge Atajo, and Victor Pagán (Demeuse, 204), included artistic samples which unfortunately do not appear in later editions. The poems themselves, nonetheless, bring a curious sample of the continued changes noted in Rossetti’s work, as well as further possibilities when looking at the mystical symbolism even more present in her poetry. “Primero” Oh, Dios mío. Oh, Dios mío. Oh Dios mío, tened misericordia de mí, pues el enemigo ha conseguido entrar en la ciudadela; cautamente, ha derribado hasta el último bastión, como cera ha fundido toda vigilancia y ha alcanzado mis ojos para asomar sus oriflamas desde ellos. Mi mirada ha conducido sus anzuelos veloces, sedal han sido, segura trayectoria de su reclamo. Oh, Dios mío. Oh, Dios mío, tened misericordia de mí. (278) (Eng., “First” Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh my God, have pity on me, as my enemy

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has been able to breach the citadel; cautiously, he has taken down to the last bulwark, he has melted away like wax all vigilance and has reached my eyes so poke his banner out from them. My look has guided his swift lures, they have been his lines, sure path for his scheme. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, have pity on me.)

This opening poem seems, on the surface, to function as both a prayer for salvation and as a declaration of possession by some unseen, villainous force. The poetic subject expresses the latter in terms of a siege which the defender has lost, that defender begging for aid from the interlocutor. Yet, there is also an element of what appears to be collaboration in the poem—it is the poetic subjects gaze which has brought others to them. Furthermore, although the poetic subject appears to ask God for forgiveness, “tened misericordia de mí” repeated at the end creates an image of a divine figure as part of a larger structure of entrapment. The poetic subject then finds themselves intertwined with both the assumedly diabolical and the heavenly, simultaneously, through self-contradicting action and thought, unwittingly creating an in-between space in which the semantic relevance of each may come into question. This space feels reminiscent of Derrida’s “différance,” in which a “system of difference and contradiction” inhabits the space between seemingly unrelated semantic fields (Derrida, 44). In this way the poem sets the stage to fulfill Jill Robbin’s interpretation of this and related works as “ . . . [h]er transgressions of taboos engage readers in the exploration of [the] boundaries [of sexuality and taboo] even as they implicate us in the maintenance of them and in the consequences our acquiescence to and/or imposition of cultural authority” (“Seduction,” 63). As informed readers, then, we need note that the simplified good/evil boundary does not exist in this space, rather, the poetic subject begins the description to the reader as a liminal place in which both ambiguity and the questioning of absolute moral borders may flourish. This tendency becomes much more explicit throughout the work, culminating in the final of the six poems of which it is composed: “Sexto” Pero acúsome también de ser tribuna de orgullo. Acúsome de toda la vangloria [sic] que me asiste al comprobar que vos, capaz de convocar con una divina fórmula la Carne

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y la Sangre de Nuestro Señor, jamás poseeréis la palabra que hiciera nacer el tacto de mi cuerpo entre vuestros dedos consagrados. Y acúsome, reverendo padre, del sentimiento de rebeldía y de triunfo con que me embriaga esta crueldad. Amén. (La ordenación, 284) (Eng., “Sixth” Yet I accuse me of being a platform of pride. I accuse me of utter vanity which aids me when I prove that Thou, capable of summoning with divine formula the flesh and blood of Our Lord, never shall Thou possess the word that would make my body’s touch be reborn between thy consecrated fingers. And I accuse me, revered Father, of the feeling of triumph and rebellion with which this cruelty intoxicates. Amen.)

Here the poetic subject focuses not on the supplication of aid against the presence of an assumed evil, but on the notion of falsely applied culpability for that evil’s presence. That fault, seen here in a connotative fashion, comes from the conceit that the female poetic subject somehow called the evil upon herself. This harkens to the previous poem’s idea of collaboration and, to repeat Robbin’s words above, the poetic subject’s “transgressions and taboos” as a root cause of the coming of darkness within a light/dark dichotomy popular in a pseudo-religious, phallic hegemony Rossetti’s poetry has deconstructed time and again. In this vein, the reader may perceive an evidenced agency against the patriarchy to which the poetic subject had, on the surface, begged for mercy in the first poem of the collection. The voice we see here charges forth against the same “consecrated fingers” that had both repressed and attempted to control the body of the poetic subject. This use of an ecclesiastical lexicon in rebellion against the socioreligious system it represents may, then, also express the poetic subject’s repossession of language. This approach makes sense given Robbins’ critical perspective on the work as a whole, and also lends credence to the notion that Rossetti’s verses in this period maintain links to the poet’s previous decades of writing. As the

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focus of this study approaches a poetics of the 21st century, the possibility of this metaphorical imagery’s indication of a mystical symbolism will become more apparent. Notas para un blues (1996) appears as a short collection of two poems. This micro-collection was not published widely, in fact appearing only available publicly as a five-page section of La ordenación. Despite the miniscule range of poems quantitatively, the collection marks one of the fundamental turning points in the passage of Rossetti’s thematic focus from that of the 1980s to that of the 21st century. The first poem, substantially more extensive than the second and final one, describes the “note of Blues” as “disidente. / La que desconcierta. / La que se infiltra” (321). Blues music then reveals itself as beyond the confines of traditional, Western (and thus phallocentric and hegemonically guided) musical tradition, and into a realm where art serves as both critical and creative. Both of the poems in this work transition from speaking on a musical style to building the synecdochic representation of the critical lens which, once established in the self, quickly removes the traditional gaze’s innocence and transforms the poetic subject’s perspective: “Una vez que comprendas lo perturbador, / lo distinto, lo fuera de norma / es indivisible de su contrario, / será para ti lo imprevisto ley, lo inseguro referencia / y la desobediencia salvación” (322) (Eng., “Once you understand that the unsettling, / the distinct, the unusual / is indivisible from its contrary, / law will be for you the unexpected, reference the unsure / and salvation, disobedience”). The poetic subject clearly delineates the process of “disobedience” which leads to a deconstruction of hegemonic structures, or the “salvation” that follows. As this study moves forward, it should be noted that the capacity to view the contradictions of a false world works in favor of the critical perspective of the “generación nocilla” writers, as we have seen. It will also allow the reader to observe that this overt recognition of the universal binary oppositions of tradition/novelty, authority/criticism, etc., serve as a starting point for the deeper comprehension of a true reality. This moment, known in mystical parlance by the term Ma’rifat, marks an explicit incorporation of the same mystical vein seen in the poetry of Clara Janés from this period. The final poem of this rather short collection, of the same title as the work itself, preserves the steps seen in the first poem, while adding a less affirmative, yet still essential, thematic of failure to this new poetic. It does so in what for Rossetti’s formal poetic approach would seem to the reader a novelty, that is, by musical intertext: Dolor por estar contigo en cada cosa. Por no dejar de estar contigo en cada cosa. Por estar irremediablemente contigo en mí.

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Recordar que mis monedas no me permiten adquirir. Que mi deseo no es tan poderoso como para taladrar blindajes, ni mi atrevimiento tan hábil como para no haber soltado la alarma. Recordar que sólo debo mirar los escaparates. Miedo por no llegar a ser, por ni siquiera conseguir estar. Fácilmente lo hacen: clavan sus espinas invisibles, abren la puerta del temor, hacen que reniegue de mí misma cuando menos se espera. Y quisiera saber cuántos han sacado copia de mis llaves. Sólo he logrado el punzón de la pica, la lágrima del diamante o los caprichos del trébol. Quizás no existan los corazones. Quizás es que sea imposible elegir. Labios sellados, custodios del mejor guardado secreto, del recinto en donde las palabras reanudan sus batallas silenciosas, sus pacientes y refinados ejercicios de rencor. SI crees que es paciencia, resignación, inmunidad o anestesia te equivocas. Es que he procurado cortar todas las margaritas para no tener que interrogarlas. (La ordenación, 324) (Eng., DOlour for being with you in every thing. For not keeping from being with you in each thing. For being irremediably with you in me. REmember that my monies do not allow me to acquire. That my desire is not strong enough so to pierce armor, nor my daring so capable as to have sounded the alarm. Remembering I need look only toward the shop windows. MIsgiving2 for not succeeding in being, for not even being here. FAncily they do so: they latch with invisible spines, they open the door of fear, make you deny me when I least expect. And I would like to know how many have made copies of my keys. SOlo I have earned the spade’s punch, the diamond’s tear, or the club’s whim. Perhaps hearts do not exist. Perhaps it is impossible to choose. LAtched lips, custodians of the best guarded secret, from the facility where words resume their silent battles, their patient and refined exercise of resentment. TI, IF you believe it’s patience, deference, immunity, or anesthesia you’re wrong. It’s that I’ve cut down all the daisies so as not to have to quiz them.) By way of commencing each stanza with the syllable representing steps in the major diatonic scale, the poetic subject succeeds in commenting on how the physical act of self-harm aids in avoiding the much deeper pain of the loss of that poetic subject’s beloved. In formal terms, the poem follows

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what in music is called “solfège,” or the order of notes on the diatonic major scale: do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do (in many English-speaking countries, “si” is replaced with “ti,” and while in said countries the do-do scale may represent any major scale in traditional, diatonic harmony, in Spain this scale represents the C-major scale, generally understood as starting with “middle C,” notated as C4, on a standard piano or keyboard, a tone at 461.63 Hz, and ending on C5, or 523.25 Hz). This scale then gives a defined sense of directionality to the poem, with the poetic subject’s growing sense of fear and dread serving as a sort of musical crescendo to highlight the simultaneously increasing sensation of pain and loss. In this vein, musicality functions as a metalanguage expressing a parallel process, that of unending cycles of pain. It should be noted that the poem ends at “si,” never reaching the end of the musical, and healing, cycle. Rather, it indicates the cyclical nature of suffering, one which the poetic subject experiences in terms of both emotionally charged symbolism and the C-Major scale culminating in a subtonic tone, or what in musical terms we would recognize as an unresolved leading tone, or the maximum point of musical tension which longs for resolution. Here the poetic subject cannot find a resolution that would not loop back into the cycle of pain. We can then see this poem as reminiscent of many verses from Punto umbrío, although the blatant musicality carries with it not only a symbolic weight but, in fact, informs the poem of its own structural and metaphoric moments of emphasis. As with the previous poem and other poems of this period, beyond the first level of meaning within a context of circular suffering, if the reader were to take certain elements of the poem, such as the presence of symbols like the heart (“los corazones”) or the diamond (“el diamante”), although on the surface symbolic of a game of cards (and, metonymically, any game of chance which the poetic subject cannot win), serve also as indications of a nascent mystical resonance in the poem from which the reader could extrapolate yet another layer of interpretation. The heart in this symbolic vocabulary represents “the name of transformation . . . a convent” (Ibn ‘Arabi, from Taryuman al-Aswaq trans. in Falconar, 69) while the diamond, according to Sufi poetic texts, comes to mean “conjecture and penetrating scrutiny” (Nurbakhsk, Vol. 4, 141). As such, this space should represent a place of deep intellectual exploration, spiritual solace, and illumination; however, the space Rossetti’s poetic subject traverses in the poem does not allow any sort of reach beyond the mundane world’s suffering. The cycle of growth does not complete, building a tension through its musical structure between the desire for progression and resolution, and the constant tension that disallows such growth. This process of mystical failure appears similar to that which we may read in the work of Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo, in particular poems such as “Ciudad ideal” (14) his collection La mística del fracaso.3

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Agoniza la última noche de feria. Entre barrancas sucias y destartaladas, el reverendo Dogson retrata a la niña semidesnuda, calcinada por el aliento baboso de viejos deformes y rubias fulanas desdentadas. Nocturno aliento tan caliente que escuece, ahógase la pobre Alicia en una atmósfera densa y húmeda. ¡Quién habitara la casa de la risa, el salón de los espejos, hasta deformar los límites de la carne, hasta no parecerse a la carne mórbida retratada en la noche! (Eng., The last night of the fair agonizes. Between dirty and run-down gullies, Reverend Dogson draws the half-naked girl, charred by the slimy breath of deformed old men and toothless, blond nobodies. Nocturnal breath so hot it burns, poor Alicia suffocates in a dense and humid atmosphere. Who would inhabit this house of laughter, this room of mirrors, even deforming the limits of flesh, even looking nothing like the sickly flesh drawn in the night!)

The poem title, “Ideal City,” immediately finds itself betrayed by the “dirty and ruinous tents” of the slums described. Alicia, an unfortunate figure similar to that of the demystified Wendy from his now well-known poem “Ronda tierna” (13) or Blanca Andreu’s innocent rural immigrant turned big-city drug addict, the “niña” from her De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall (1981), the female figure is presented as a victim of worst of a destroyed world.4 What should present as a celebration even in the first verse turns into a desperate, unanswered cry for help, not just on the part of the protagonist (the poem’s “Alicia”) but also of all beings found in the space. The descriptions of physical deformities not inherent, but aggregated onto each of the “old men and . . . blond nobodies” tells of a timeless, hopeless geography

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of pain. In mystical terms, the female protagonist, a guide for the mystical seeker, is trapped in a cycle of sexual violence. Symbols such as the “mirror” or the “night” become shadows of their full meaning, revealing a universe of failed vision and, to reiterate, utter hopelessness. A cycle opens, yet unlike that which leads to revelation and illumination, this cycle never leaves the mundane world’s fealty and obscene abuses. In this sense, and despite the brevity of the collection, La nota del Blues serves as a bridge between the thematic and intertextual literary critics have traditionally highlighted in Rossetti’s poetic texts, and trajectories which will become more salient as the 1990s move forward. The ability of the poet to reflect on sociocultural changes, the evolution of literary trends, and her own overall growth as a writer submerged in the profound significance of the context in which she exists cannot be overstated. Rossetti’s 1998 collection La ciudad irrenunciable seems to follow a thematic path laid down by the author’s poetry from the early 1980s, that is, a poetic of antihegemonic empowerment via the retaking of sexual agency, as well as the pattern of more intimately painful poems from the early 1990s. However, it is in the final two poems that the reader may observe a continuation of the same transitional moment from the former poetic focus to the apocryphal, mystical symbolism which the reader has observed above, and which will hold a more prominent role in her 21st-century verses. These poems may serve as examples of how Rossetti builds clear, diachronically visible links between her works: Exaltación de la preciosa sangre: Desvelado el espejo -dosel del costurero saqueado- tantos dones magníficos excesiva duplica. Y, no obstante, sólo tiene su cómplice e incitante señal la madeja encarnada. Oh, tomémosla. Rasguemos las vitolas, las hebras desprendiendo con esmero, y en las tensadas palmas de tus queridas manos laceolados [sic] estigmas bordaré diestramente . . . Tan frágiles cutículas, la sangre al traspasar su rúbrica brillante va prendiendo. Mas si al sedoso hilo la sangre verdadera ha querido emular agolpándose cárdena a su orilla, no te asustes, amor. Pues presurosamente mi estremecida boca a tu herida será vaso propicio. Labios míos temblando, del precioso regalo

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de tu mano, tiñéndose. Tu sabor penetrando mi inviolada saliva, comulgándome, y el fervor confundido en delirio de besos. (17) (Eng., The Passion of Precious Blood: The mirror awakened -canopy of the sacked sewing room- so many magnificent talents excessively it doubles. And, nonetheless, only the flesh-colored skein has their accomplice and provocative sign. Oh, let us take her. Let us tear apart the cigars, the threads painstakingly detaching, and in the tense palms of your dear hands I will skillfully embroider lance-tipped stigmas . . . Such fragile cuticles, blood flowing through ignites their shining signature. Yet if true blood has wished to emulate the silky string, piling purple at its shore, then do not be frightened, love. As hastily my shaken mouth will be the propitious cup of your wound. My lips trembling, from the precious gift of your hand, becoming stained. Your taste penetrating my unviolated saliva, offering me communion, and confused fervor in a whirlwind of kisses.)

The poem is alive with a symbolism reminiscent of Surrealist imagery. The mirror image of a broken world from the first verses harkens to the notion of seeing with different eyes, while the notion of blood doubling itself “excessively” expresses this world’s hyperbolically violent nature. Love and sex are, as seen in poems such as “El gladiolo blanco . . . ,” an intrusion on purity and innocence, the introduction of violence with violence. The color purple becomes intertwined with the bloody, yet creative and productive (referring to the notion of sewing and the reapplication of “string” from a notion of broken innocence to one of pleasurable “wound”), sexual encounter. Yet the poem also, and importantly for this study, conveys a clearly mystical resonance on par with the symbolism noted above. For example, the “hilo de sangre verdadero,” an image whose meaning in principle may harken to a connection between the Greek-inspired thread of life and the flowing nature of existence, also contains within it a dual, mystical semantic. The thread may remind the reader of this Greco-Roman mythological symbol, while blood’s direct symbolic relationship with mystical tendencies could signify the origin of the corporeal with the divine flowing through it. As such, the ubiquitous “heart,”

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known via the Arabic word “qalb,” may symbolize the intermediate realm of “Alam Al-Mithal,” the place which the mystical union between seeker and guide creates in order to unite and, once unified, make contact with the divine (Nurbakhsh, Vol. IV, 6). These potential changes modify the meaning of text from the carnivalization of a sociophallic ideal of divine, feminine chastity to that of the mystical seeker’s illumination through union with the guiding other. As in the poetry of Clara Janés, that other is not identified as female as more traditional forms of mystical illumination would assume (Falconar, 61); rather, it conforms to a gender fluid interpretation of the mystical process (Simon, Understanding, 83). As readers, we observe an evolution of the loss of innocence from one of unilateral assault to one in which both parties (the “cigars” and the “saliva,” synecdoche for the mouth, or other bodily orifice) to one in which these symbols do not necessarily correspond clearly to one or the other, but to both figures. In this vein we see that the poem continues to express its ideas in a variety of symbolic trajectories and traditions. The final poem of the collection, a prose poem, moves further into this new discourse by bringing the poetic voice into a larger, changing artistic universe: Ciudad irrenunciable: En la suntuosidad de los crepúsculos y en el tumulto de los mendigos. En el azul balanceo de los árboles y en la lepra rosa de las fachadas. En la naranja compartida con un desconocido y en el collar regateado a un comerciante. En el café perfumado con canela y en el azafrán enguantando una mano con su filigrana. En la serpiente desenroscando su sueño. En el frío de las pensiones y en las hospitalarias alfombras, están las pruebas de lo que realmente fue. Aun cuando tú te niegues a figurar en acta. (18). (Eng., Inalienable City: In the opulence of twilight and the turmoil of beggars. In the blue rocking of the trees and in the pink scourge of façades. In the orange shared with a stranger and in the necklace haggled over with a merchant. In the coffeeshop perfumed with cinnamon and in saffron gloving a hand with its watermark. In the serpent unraveling its dream. In the cold of the boarding house and in the hospitable carpets, we find the proof of that which really was. Even when you refuse to appear on record.) This prose poem, a description of the urban, external world, does not seem to match the imagery of other poems in the collection. This rare occurrence will become more common in the imagetic discourse of 21st-century poets, namely, the “generación nocilla” writers. The poetic subject expresses a series of binary oppositions, combining images of fullness with others

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of suffering in motion, such as “la suntuosidad de los crepúsculos” with the “tumulto de los mendigos,” for example. (In our discussion of Deudas contraídas we will discuss further this type of metonymic inversion.) The color blue, or the representation of “the blending of loving-kindness (mahabbat) with whatever is other than loving-kindness” (Nurbakhsk, Vol. IV, 54), may also deepen the significance of the act described above of balancing between oneself, the “trees” (themselves a symbol of a being who “controls the universal bodily form because he embraces reality . . . [and whose] roots [are] firmly planted in the lowly earth and its branches raised to the heavens above” (43–44)) and in the color of the wall. The latter serves as a symbol of limitation and barriers. In this, the poetic subject finds themself in a state of ontological transition, beyond the interpretation of movement in a flawed, physical environment. The notion of saffron as both an object of focus and as one “gloving a hand with its watermark” holds two distinct moments of symbolic expression. The first, that of the color that saffron leaves on objects (including marks on hands), yellow, may symbolize “weakness in the travelling of the Path” (53), perhaps referring to the feeling of uneasiness the poetic subject suffers in this poetic moment. Secondly, the flower from which saffron is extracted may represent knowledge (39), while the hand in which it appears “is said to represent the divine attributes of power” (Vol. 1, 55). The serpent, a Sufi symbol of the “wayfarer” (Vol. 4, 152), only adds to the potential semantic nuance of a poem which exists as an expression of instability. Inasmuch as observable to the present moment, these and other symbols may carry the weight of both their more common symbolic meanings (as a lyrical study of a poetic subject’s meandering through a timeless cityscape of memory and action) as well as that of a less recognized, yet still visible, mystical undertone of a moment of transition for a seeker between the world of superficial understanding and profound realization.5 In sum, the poetry of Ana Rossetti in what we may refer to as a “transitional period” from 1988 to 2004 brings the poet’s thematic foci from the astutely antihegemonic and transhistorical poetic of the “movida” into a dual trajectory. On the one hand, the roots of what may later be seen in the poetry of the “generación nocilla” and their criticism of a superficial society appears evermore explicitly in Rossetti’s poems of the late 1980s and early 1990s. On the other, and concomitant to this anticipated posthuman poetic trajectory, the reader may view a push toward a symbolism of mystical illumination, present in other writers of the time, and which may look to fill the void left by the former. In this, the 21st-century poetry of Ana Rossetti will meander along each, and, like a river which narrows at its spring, take the reader closer to a metaphorical arrival at the point in which the two become one.

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NOTES 1. The lyrics to the original version of the song, at first titled “Killing me Softly with his Song,” without the 1996 breakdown section, are as follows: Strumming my pain with his fingers Singing my life with his words Killing me softly with his song Killing me softly with his song Telling my whole life with his words Killing me softly with his song I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style And so I came to see him, to listen for a while And there he was, this young boy, a stranger to my eyes Strumming my pain with his fingers (one time, one time) Singing my life with his words (two times, two times) Killing me softly with his song Killing me softly with his song Telling my whole life with his words Killing me softly with his song I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd I felt he’d found my letters and read each one out loud I prayed that he would finish, but he just kept right on Strumming my pain with his fingers (one time, one time) Singing my life with his words (two times, two times) Killing me softly with his song Killing me softly with his song Telling my whole life with his words Killing me softly with his song 2. The word “miedo” more properly translates to “fear.” I have chosen a synonym in order to conserve the Do-Ti structure on which the poem’s semantic development sits. The same goes for “solo” (more properly “only”) and “TI, If,” translated only to “if” in a less purposeful context. 3. The reader may refer to the more thorough discussion of Jiménez Reinaldo’s work in the Introduction of this study, as well as in: “The Mystic that Nagged Last: Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo’s La mística del fracaso, Anti-illumination and the Paradigm Shift.” Hispanic Journal, Vol. 31, No.1, Spring 2010, p. 93–104. 4. We may note that the reference to Dogson, a bastardized form of Dodgson, is the real last name of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, based on

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a story he told to Ms. Alice Liddell, namesake of the above-mentioned protagonist, Alicia. 5. The reader will note a high frequency of citation from Javad Nurbakhsh’s multivolume encyclopedia. This is a purposeful use of the most highly regarded collection of Sufi symbolism, present in Iberian as well as North African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian mystical texts and practices, representing over four decades of research and compiling.

Chapter Three

Love Lost, Light Gained Llenar tu nombre (2008)

Arriving at this moment in the present study, we have delineated our transnational and transhistorical approach to the study of Ana Rossetti’s poetic work. We have also explored the author’s thematic and formal poetic opening during the period between Rossetti’s first recognized work of poems and her poetry leading up to the 21st century. In collections such as Punto umbrío and Rossetti’s retrospective La ordenación, the reader observes an evolution in the symbolic epistemology of the antihegemonic rebellion that characterizes her early works. We have also seen, to date, the first breath of mystical symbolism in Rossetti’s poetry, in both its unforeseen appearance and its potential to aid in guiding the poet’s verses into a new century of posthuman thought and a possible balancing force for that novel trajectory. In other words, beginning in the 21st century, then, Rossetti’s focus leans less toward the overtly deconstructive, aligning more closely with a critique of the extra-liminal realities that define the period. Concomitant with the newer generation of poets and writers from this period, namely, those aligned with the so-called “generación nocilla,” her poetic voice recombines the collage techniques from her earlier work (and in particular with regard to the early Modern intertext) with a critique of contemporary social structures. Symbolism, both in its traditionally antihegemonic and potentially mystical charges, and which already has revealed a tendency toward a multifaceted expressive semantic direction, will continue to evolve down this path within the new socioliterary framework outlined previously in this study. Llenar tu nombre (2008), as indicated in the title, is a poetic journey through the pain of intimate, personal loss. The poetic subject seeks to explore the creative process while actively processing a moment of unexpected and traumatic difficulty. Within this context, the collection serves to highlight some of the more prevalent thematics in Rossetti’s work, such as the pain of silence and critical view toward a loss of agency to external forces, 59

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as already mentioned. The metapoetic expression of acts of poetic creation also becomes a theme, new for this author yet befitting a poetic voice in the process of recognizing the power of such a focus within the larger context of other themes described above. Taken to its logical, prognosticating end, and as Rendón Infante also makes clear, in this collection that act of poetic creation becomes itself apocryphal, that this “exhaustivo y prolijo recorrido por el proceso creativo . . . o sobre la arbitrariedad de la tecla que de pronto activa la emoción” (254–55). Given the crescendo in mystical significance of the symbolism present in the poems we will analyze below, it is clear that the poetic subject’s described process of creation may also outline more than that of the composition of poetic verses. The poem “¿A quién sino a ti?” (9) reflects on the possibilities described above: Tú cimientas la imaginación verificando sus asombros y recreas las emociones transformándolas en infinitas experiencias. Sobrepasas los signos otorgándoles inagotables claves y fecundas la forma desplegándola en maravillosa versatilidad. Decretas que ningún subterfugio de la mente impida lo intuido por el corazón; que sean manifestados con idéntica verdad, presencia o presentimiento, conocimiento o viaje; pues proscribes fronteras y rubricas lo extraño y avivas los rescoldos y edificas los sueños y usas los renglones como alas extendidas. Por eso a ti, libertadora de astros y de rutas, ariete contra toda duda y muro, conciencia y vaticinio, toda fuerza creadora te nombra soberana y entona tu alabanza agradecida. (Eng., “Who if not you?” You strengthen your imagination verifying your surprises and recreate emotions transforming them into infinite experiences. You surpass signs bestowing upon them never-ending keys and you fertilize form unfurling it into marvelous versatility. You decree that no subterfuge of the mind hamper what to the heart seems intuitive;

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that these be made manifest by identical truths, presence or premonition, knowledge or travel; as you ban borders y leave your signature on the strange and you stoke the embers and build on your dreams and use verses as widespread wings. For this to you, liberator of stars and routes, battering ram against all walls and doubts, conscience and prediction, all creative forces call you sovereign and sing your thankful praise.)

The poem directs its interlocution precisely to the poetic word. The poetic subject presents this essential element of written expression as the only true solution to the various difficulties and tribulations which reveal themselves over the course of the collection. The almost infinite possibilities for communication and profoundly layered, versatile semantics lay at the heart of the poem’s surface message. The poetic subject describes the word itself as fertile, honest, and creative. Although not necessarily unique to Rossetti’s poetry, this particular poetic subject’s concise, yet highly symbolic, expression of the power of the poetic word absorbs the reader into a metalanguage of ontological growth. On a more mystically oriented level, the symbolic oppositions such as that between “stars” and “routes,” or the celestial and terrestrial worlds, as well as the consistent view toward the infinite, hints at the wish for the creation of a space in which the attainment of a greater knowledge of self and the universal is possible. In this sense, we may posit that the mystical in the dense symbolic as part of a path toward an essential knowledge makes itself known while simultaneously in keeping with the primary theme presented. As observed in La nota del blues and La ciudad irrenunciable, the recognition of the mundane world’s binary oppositions orients the poetic subject away from both elements of that opposition and toward the “Alam-al-mithal,” or the middle space from which that poetic subject may part to divine knowledge in the “true world” (again, as summarized in chapter 1 and reiterated here). It is evident, then, that a trajectory toward a more profound sense of the mystical has happened in Rossetti’s work, even if the poetic herself does not express this explicitly. In turning to another important aspect of this new, multifaceted symbolism, the power of the name in mystical symbolism harkens not only to an ancient belief in the sacred and very personal nature of a person’s name, but also to the symbol of the name as “guides to divine attributes” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. IV, 225) in both a religious and extra-religious sense. In contemporary Iberian poetics, Joaquim Pessoa’s 2001 work titled Nomes (Eng., Names)

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explores this notion of the mystical and theophanic in a deconstructive and pre-established mystical poetic context in poems such as “Alexandre” which takes us in a somewhat different direction in terms of focus, but not necessarily in terms of theme: Um nome conquista-se. E é preciso pagar a dívida que temos por ele a vida inteira. Todos os nomes estão preparados para a vitória, todos carregam com eles dúvidas, ansiedade, temor e um pouco de bravura. O nome que te deram é o de um hino à coragem, nome com raízes no sol, sonoro como o galope dos exércitos do oriente, alto e belo como o mais belo e alto dos guerreiros do mais audaz de todos os exércitos jovens. Recebe esse nome como uma aposta em ti. Recebe-o e ama-o como o nome de um grande príncipe A quem temiam os leões. Faz por ele o que ele espera de ti: que sejas forte, audacioso, pleno de vertigem, mas como a sabedoria de um general, a capacidade de sofrimento de um soldado, a generosidade de um vencedor e o orgulho que resta aos que foram vencidos. O que por ele fizeres, farás por ti. Honras o nome que a brisa eterna viu ser levado aos ombros de outros nomes, que iluminou a terra com a lembrança dos vivos, dos sobreviventes, daqueles que hoje te legaram a extraordinária herança. O ouro das abelhas cobre de grandeza as sílabas do teu chamamento. Por ele permanecerás jovem toda a vida. Com ele serás um dia sábio. E mestre. E soberano. (17) (Eng., A name conquers you. And one must pay our debt to it for the whole of our lives. All names are ready for victory, all bring with them doubts, anxiety, fear, and a little bravery. The name that they gave you is a hymn to courage, a name with its roots in the sun, sonorous like the gallop of Eastern armies, tall and beautiful like the tallest and most beautiful of warriors from the most audacious of all young armies. You receive this name like a bet in your favor. Receive it and love it like the name of a great prince whom the lions feared. Do for it what it expects of you: may you be strong, audacious, full of giddiness,

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yet with the wisdom of a general, the capacity of a soldier to suffer, the generosity of a winner, and the pride that remains for the vanquished. Whatever you may do for it, you will do for you. Honor the name that the eternal breeze saw to be carried on the shoulders of other names, that illuminated the Earth with the memory of the living, the survivors, those who bequeathed you today with an extraordinary inheritance. Bees’ gold covers the greatness of syllables of your calling. You will stay young your whole life because of it. With it, one day you will be wise. And a master. And supreme.)

From a diachronically charged, semiotic point of view, we find it difficult to ignore this name’s historical value, in both academic and popular culture via the figure of Alexander the Great. The notion of the famed and insatiable conqueror then acts as a counterpoint (or, as I have come to state, as the binary opposition) to other mystically or otherwise multifaceted and symbolically enriched poems we have studied to this point. In fact, it is through the notion of inheritance (or “dívida,” [Eng., “debt”]) as stated in the second verse), and thus the power inherent in the poetic word, that we find the similarities between this and previous poems. The use of the “nomes” (Eng., “names”), beyond the idea of the inherited historicity of a name, appears in the third verse as an object “preparados para a vitória” (Eng., “ready for victory”). The bellicose significance is obvious; however, it is not at all obvious that the following verse would state that all those carrying the name also carry with them “doubts, anxiety, fear, and a little bravery.” These traits would characterize not the classical hero, but the more complex person whose mortality becomes evident during battle. Yet, the poem does not lose the mythos of this ancient name: in the verses 16, 17, and 18 we find the allegorical structure of the wind that has created this name from what it took of other men. This implication is that, in terms of the notion of inheritance, the name Alexandre connotes not only that historicity as associated with the individual but also with the collective. The name then becomes the property (and, thus, inheritance) of all men. This ability of the name to take its meaning, both synchronically and diachronically, from the universe gives its keeper an eternal youth, coupled with the wisdom of a mythical warrior. It is the theme of wisdom that connects the poem with both the next in our study here and with previous works. In Vou-me Embora de Mim, for example, Pessoa’s poetic subject applies Parmenides’ ideals about wisdom which had appeared in one of his transition works between the second and third phases, À Mesa do Amor. The work begins with a quote from Parmenides on wisdom

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(Simon, Understanding, 123). As has been analyzed previously, this quote represents the definition of self as a function of language, symbolism, and memory which becomes a central theme in Vou-me Embora de Mim (124). A later poem in the collection, “Helena,” reflects this notion of wisdom in its mystical and illuminating relationship with the poetic word, and thus, with the power of the name: À beira do abismo és a luz. Lençol que tem O teu nome bordado e se estende para acolher os amantes ansiosos, Aqueles que por alguma razão desconhecem a serenidade. Procuro há muito o teu nome como quem procurou as Índias ou as nascentes dos rios, e quer escrevê-lo agora como o exacto dever de quem escreve a crónica de um monarca. Este nome está na nossa vida desde sempre. Por ele cresceram ciúmes e traição, por ele o coração e o cérebro muitas vezes se envolveram e por causa dele alguns corpos se confundiram com a terra. De quantos suicidas se construiu o teu nome? Quantos fogos se acenderam em vão esperando uma palavra tua? No entanto, a alguns o silêncio bastou-lhes para abrir caminho. Quer negues ou aceites o teu nome é uma poção que pode oferecer a destruição ou a felicidade. Nele nunca houve melancolia ou abandono. Tu tens um nome altivo como o do guerreiro que ao longo da vida te buscou e se prepara agora para disputar-te até à morte. Também em ti os deuses depositaram confiança. Por isso te têm guardada e prisioneira porque nada pode ser escolhido que possa ser mais livre. (Nomes, 43) (Eng., You are light at the edge of the abyss. Shroud that has Your name embroidered and reaches out to receive the anxious lovers, Those who for some reason know not of serenity. For a long time I’ve searched for your name like one seeking out the Indies or the river’s headwaters, and wants now to write you like the precise task of one who writes the chronicles of a monarch. This name has been in our life forever. For it grew jealousy and betrayal,

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for it the heart and mind were many times enveloped and because of it some bodies became confused with the Earth. How many suicides was your name built from? How many fires were lit in vain, awaiting your word? Nonetheless, for some silence was enough for them to breach. Whether you negate or accept your name is a brew that can offer destruction or happiness. In it was never melancholy or abandonment. You have a proud name like that of a warrior who sought you out over a lifetime and who now prepares to defend you to the death. In you the gods also placed their confidence. Because of this, they keep you and imprison you, since nothing can be chosen that could be more free.)

The poem takes advantage of the literal meaning of the name Helena, whose meaning, “light,” takes center stage. The physical reference to light or lighthouse is reminiscent of the Sufi mystical tradition of the light as a point of focus for meditation as well as of the divine spirit (Simon, “An Iberian Search,” 222). Of course, that light becomes a “lençol” (Eng., “sheet” or “shroud”), referring to the mythological Helena of Troy, the woman who “se estende para acolher os amantes ansiosos” (Eng., “extends out to receive the anxious lovers”). The notion of the name is again invoked in its presence as “bordado” (Eng., “embroidered”) onto the sheet from the previous verse. This reference to the written, and not simply spoken, name as encoded onto the sexualized light serves as a reference to the poetic word’s power not just as an oral medium but as a written one as well. It in fact emphasizes that the name is inscribed on the divine power, just as it contains that power in previous poems of this and other later collections from Pessoa. The third verse of the poem describes the men attracted to this light as those who “desconhecem a serenidade” (Eng., “know not of serenity”). Of course, poetry from Vou-me Embora de Mim speaks directly to those ignorant of illumination that they may attain it through the process described in Pessoa’s 2nd phase works such as Os Olhos de Isa. Unfortunately, following this description are several of the calamities that have befallen those who have loved Helena as seen in verses 6 through 10. In fact, Pessoa’s poetic subject recounts that some bodies “se confundiram com a terra” (Eng., “became confused with the Earth”). The poetic subject then asked how many bodies were used to make this name. This questioning of the purity that the first verses implied may be a reference to the notion of the Siren, the mythological femme fatale whose beauty enchanted sailors to their deaths. Suddenly we find ourselves up against a deceiving power, one that seems to promise redemption for the unhappy yet brings only death and defeat. We may consider this name, thus,

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as an anti-name, one whose empowerment has existed as the point of binary opposition to the other names in the collection, particularly those studied here (with a certain preference toward the “Alexandres,” or the mystical warriors for whom this “Helena” serves as a counterpoint). Yet, this countering means that the structure of the binary oppositions as the simultaneous existence of Haqq, or the pure world, and Khalq, or the mundane and impure world of the Sufi mystical process, has been maintained. In following this argument, the final two verses of the poem, which explain why “Helena” must be contained, serve to symbolize the “qalb,” or the sacred heart into which the mystical lovers’ spirits must enter to unite and ascend to illumination. This climactic moment of the work reflects the consistency with which Pessoa’s poetic subjects treat the topic of mystical illumination, as a consequence of the deconstructive process. The poem also remains loyal to the historicity of the name as a function of its empowerment. Returning to our study of Rossetti’s Llenar tu nombre, the prose poem “El designio” (Eng., “The Plan”) serves to highlight the notions of mystical creation, union, and illumination drawn from the brief summary above on Clara Janés’ and Joaquim Pessoa’s similarly oriented poetic approaches: Desde el instante en que la luz, la rigurosa luz, palpitara en la bóveda y las constelaciones enhebraran su geometría; desde que se derramase el apretado enjambre de los astros en senderos translúcidos o remolinos; el movimiento, la continuidad y la duración iniciaban su devenir en el espacio. La legión de los cuerpos celestes lo inauguraba con su empuje. Partículas expulsadas en la conflagración avanzaban hasta instalarse en sus derroteros como en un surco. Cada una se sabía planeta vagabundo o globo llameante. Cada una traía sus provisiones de tareas designadas. Por eso, antes de que el ocaso sajara el precipicio de la esfera, de que los paralelos separaran los climas y los paisajes, antes de que las aguas se apartasen de los confines de los mapas, ya existías. Aún no había palabras ni quién para decirlas, cuando tu nombre, en todos los idiomas de siglos y países, estaba ya inscrito en las inagotables probabilidades de la Tierra. (10) (Eng., From the moment in which light, rigorous light, blinked into the dome and the constellations strung together its geometry; since the squeezed swarm of stars poured out in translucent paths or gyres; movement, continuity, and duration began their evolution in space. The legion of celestial bodies inaugurated this with its energy. Particles expelled in the conflagration advanced until being placed in their paths as in a track. Each was known as a wandering planet or a blazing globe. Each brought with it its provisions from designated tasks.

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Because of this, before the twilight could slice the chasm of the sphere, before parallels separated climates and landscapes, before the waters could split from the confines of maps, you had existed. There were still no words nor anyone to say them, when your name, in all of the languages of centuries and countries, was already inscribed in the Earth’s unending possibilities.)

The poem, in its surface meaning, mirrors an ultimate act of creation, the engendering of a new world. The play between the opposing forces of light and darkness reveals a movement of elements whose finality is the growth of particles into planets, dust into stars, and the power of the divine makes present its name. The poem seems to combine the first lines of the Biblical book of Genesis with a generalized sense of the process of star and planet formation, all within the expansive possibility of poetic language and the designations that language gives to all things. What looks to be the Platonic notion of the play of light and shadows seems evident in the beginning of the poem. This moment of realization, known in the Sufi mystical process as “Ma’rifat,” or “gnosis” related to the knowledge of the divine (Nurbakhsh, Vol. III, 48), happens when the falsehood of the mundane world collides with the vision of the process of mystical, otherworldly illumination (this can also be symbolized by the presence of a mountain, the extreme upper limit of the Earth (116)). The first destructive, and then highly creative poetic word, reminiscent of earlier poems in the collection, becomes a universal world building and expanding force. (This notion will become that much more salient in our analysis of El mapa de la espera; for now, its epistemological function should suffice.) The idea of surging forth from nothingness in nascent light is reminiscent of the first poems of Clara Janés’ Arcángel de sombra: Empozado el silencio surge la nieve en la sima. Una suave oleada de claridad la adormece. Luego, desde otro plano, un gesto puntual y anguloso ara el aire y propicia el latido del corazón hasta que prende el junco arrancado del juncal. No me separa del silencio la lengua de fuego. Tampoco el acento que me rapta. (Janés 9) (Eng., Silence pooled snow surges

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from the depths. A soft wave of light lulls it. Then, from another plane, a punctual and angular gesture plows the air and fosters a heartbeat until it lights the reed pulled from the reedbed ablaze. The fire tongue does not take me from silence. Nor does the accent which abducts me.)

In Janés’ poem above, a poetic reflection on the creation myth (one which combines Biblical and Zoroastrian symbols and mythologies), the contrast between the white of snow and red of blood and fire make up two parts of what we recognize as a mystical process. The symbol of fire appears, a Sufi symbol of the spirit manifested in flesh, (Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 24), as well as the poetic subject’s acceptance of its arrival. The power of the poetic word, particularly at the end of the poem, appears as a fecund figure whose place it is to guide the spirit through the mystical process. The “junco” (which suggests a phallic shape reminiscent of earlier works by Janés as well as, concomitantly, in the first decade of Ana Rossetti’s poetic writings), the poetic voice has noted does not aid in achieving the attempted separation of the poetic subject from silence. Yet, in this context, the notions of fire and silence, or the binary opposition of light and darkness, exist enharmonically, approaching the poetic subject from above and below, meaning the same yet opposed in direction (summarized from Simon, “An Iberian Search,” 178). Returning to Rossetti’s “El designio,” the final verses of the poem take the reader to the enlightenment of the poetic subject in the work Os Olhos de Isa by Joaquim Pessoa. “Tu ensinaste-me a fazer uma casa: / com as mãos e os beijos. / Eu morei em ti e em ti meus versos procuraram / voz e abrigo. . . . Construí a minha casa” (Pessoa, 125 Poemas, 123) (Eng., “You taught me to make my house: / with my hands and kisses. / I lived in you and in you my verses sought / voice and refuge”). The poetic word, by giving names to all elements of the universe, also gives an encapsulating structure from which those elements may relate to one another, and from which they find a safe haven to progress in their own way toward an illuminated existence. Here then, Rossetti’s poetic subject begins a path that, while encompassing the critical and antihegemonic stance of previous poetic works, is also free to pursue a trajectory of creative enlightenment whose basis in mystical symbolism works within a space similar to that of Derrida’s ideal and universal space of “différance.” In this way Rossetti’s poem above reflects a transnational, transhistorical, and mystical poetic while also fulfilling the

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more critical mission of antihegemonic critical poetic expression for which Rossetti’s poetry is known. As the collection continues forward, the poetic voice becomes more entranced by the process of illumination and the engendering of a greater, perhaps better, world than the one found in the physical realm. “La percepción” (13) speaks on the duality of vision and extra-physical perception. In this poem, we observe a sudden change from a process-driven focus to one whose introspection offers a view on the process of healing from a personal loss: El texto que el sol le arranca al estanque quién lo recibe, ¿los ojos o la mente? Cuál de ellos lee las indicaciones trasmitidas. Cuál de ellos inventa un nuevo código o se obceca en la reverberación de sus deseos. Cuál de ellos define el perímetro de la realidad o lo enmaraña con su provisión de sensaciones. Cuál de ellos lo traduce, lo entiende y lo posee. Ojo y mente: una misma puerta por donde entra el mundo para asistir a la insurrección de su visita, para transformarse en sangre y en conciencia, para constatar que el incendiado mensaje fue entregado en su destino. (Eng., The text that the sun pulls from the pond who receives it, the eyes or the mind? Which of them reads the transmitted instructions. Which of these invents a new code or becomes obsessed with the reverberation of their desires. Which of these defines the perimeter of reality or tangles it in its stock of sensations. Which of these translates it, understands or possesses it. Eye and mind: a single door through which the world enters to aid in the insurrection of their visit, to transform into blood and consciousness, to establish that the inflamed message was delivered to its destination.)

This duality finds itself resolved via a markedly Hegelian dialectic process of thesis and antithesis melding into a universe-building synthesis. Sensation,

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borne from the text, fills the empty spaces within the poetic subject’s body. Other symbols, such as the eyes and mind, fulfill a dual role. The first and most evident appears as the passage for textual meaning from the page, through the eyes, and into the mind. The more profound epistemology stems from what we may interpret as the mystical symmetry of the two symbols, as seen in the work of Rossetti’s contemporaries such as Clara Janés. For example, in the verses: “El que abre / una ráfaga de luz / en los ojos . . . ” (Janés, Fractales, 41) (Eng., “That which opens / a burst of light / in the eyes . . . ”), a similar mystical symbolism becomes visible to the reader. In this tradition, the eye symbolizes not vision, but “the quality of the mystery” of divine vision by way of the human experience (Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 24–25). This may aid in explaining much of the poem’s seemingly odd question of which, eye or mind, “define el perímetro de la realidad / o lo enmaraña con su provisión de sensaciones . . . ” (Llenar tu nombre, 13) (Eng., “Which of these defines the perimeter of reality / or tangles it in its stock of sensations”). The question does not problematize the physical attributes of the eye or the notion of the eye as a window to the soul (a common symbolic thread in Western literatures); rather, it wonders if, in the provisioning of sensation, the mystically oriented eye supersedes the superficial, physical eye’s limitations. Subsequently, the mind, a symbol of logic and reasoning in the Western tradition, cannot compete with the multifaceted semantic charge of the former. This poem, then, morphs into a representation of the binary opposition between the mundane and the true worlds that Sufi-inspired mystical literatures in 20th and 21st-century Iberian context has evolved. Beyond this duality, the notion of obsession, found in the poem’s 6th verse, “se obceca en la reverberación de sus deseos,” (Eng., “becomes obsessed with the reverberation of their desires”) has to do directly with the mystical seeker’s need for focus on the process of recognizing binary oppositions as a gateway into the spiritual movement away from the mundane world and toward the “true” world, where illumination may take place. The desire surrounding this obsession expresses both focus and, somewhat ironically, “a movement toward one’s origin” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. II, 9). This makes sense in the context of the poem as, while the seeker’s “message” in the penultimate verse is both destroyed and received (yet another binary opposition, this time in a spatial, and not merely static, sense), the seeker themself is reborn within the self through the pain of losing the assumption that “eye” and “mind” serve the same finality. Once it becomes clear to the poetic subject that these two parts of the physical self-represent an opening away from the imperfect, physical world, the poetic word (from the text, that being the root of the poem’s epistemological and mystical process), the “insurrection” its presence signifies, and the transformation “en sangre y en conciencia” (Eng., “in blood and consciousness”) (or the opposed elements of the universe, the fluid physical and

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the dynamically extra-physical pieces of the self) becomes inevitable. The poetic subject, now a seeker on the path, may move toward deeper spiritual understanding and illumination. At this point in the study, it should be clear to the reader that this turn feels utterly unexpected in the poetry of a recognizably anti-hegemonic, postmodern, anti-centrist poetic voice such as that of Ana Rossetti. Her unanticipated place within a poetic trajectory of mystical, albeit not necessarily essentialist, should surprise the reader, revealing a side to Rossetti’s work that transcends her earlier poetic expression while always respecting that earlier (and still present) wish to deconstruct, and now to rebuild, her poetic (and perhaps contextual) world as a space where the possibility of a more enlightened existence has the potential to come to fruition. Poems such as “La palabra” (14) and “el concepto” (15) dig deeper into the temporal and spatial representations of this process of opening and, in a secondary plane, mystical illumination. Verses such as these from “La palabra,” “[a]ncestral hilandera de nuestro acontecer: / el cabo que conduce, el sedal que fascina, . . . la hebra que define el cuadrante / del hielo boreal, / y puntea el perfil de la noche / y el ojal de la magia, . . . (14)” (Eng., “ancestral spinner or our happening: / the rope that directs, the line that fascinates, . . . the thread that defines the quadrant / of the boreal ice, / and knits the night’s profile / and the eyelet of magic, . . . ”) make this dual process evident. Movement in the poem parts from an act of creation (superficially, spinning yarn and knitting) to one of recognition of the “contour of the night,” a Sufi mystical symbol encompassing “the realm of divine power” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. 4, 74). In this way, the nature of the poetic object, the poetic word described as “interminable,” draws strength from the “germen” (Eng., “germ (of grain))” from which it sews the world. From “El concepto,” we may find a novel recombination of symbolisms and epistemologies in verses such as: “Las lenguas son telares, entramados / que crean la estructura de las letras, / la estructura del pájaro y del bosque, / del volcán y la fruta, del glaciar y el desierto: / la estructura del mundo. / Se pronuncia, se concibe, se crea el mundo” (15) (Eng., “Tongues are looms, lattices / that create the structure of letters, / the estructura of the bird and forest, / of the volcano and fruit, the glacier and the desert: / the structure of the world. / The world is spoken, conceived, created”). Here, language again reveals its creative capacity in that sounds transitions to structure, which then transforms into a sublime, symbolic universe. The notion of the desert not only contrasts with the frozen glacier, in its more profound semantic charge it also symbolizes the “realm of contingency” in which the seeker may begin their journey toward enlightenment (Nurbakhsh, Vol. 4, 34). Fruit retains its Biblical significance within a mystical framework as a spatial reference for the absorption of knowledge; however, that knowledge

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depends solely on the “tree” from which it came, be that human nature, emotion, or logic (44–45). Besides the evident mystical side analyzed above, the collection also presents the beginnings of the type of contextual criticism the reader will note in Rossetti’s collections from this point onward. It is here the reader perceives of the first glimpse of a poetic voice hinging as much on a poetic similar to that of the “generación nocilla” as it does to traditionally postmodern and simultaneously Iberian mystical tendencies. In “Nombre común,” for example, what seems to take the reader to ideals of truth and love, in reality “ . . . prometen horóscopos, donjuanes, / agencias y libros de autoayuda” (25) (Eng., “ . . . promise horoscopes, ladies’ men, / agencies, and self-help books”). The duality seen in previous poems also holds a place of importance here. However, the superficiality of the external world comes not from any anti-poetic word, but from the mentioning of the horoscope, classified section, and ads for books from the self-help genre. The latter, a very popular, commercialized prose genre, in terms of its comparative depth to the other sections listed, appears as vapid, mundane, and available for scrutiny by the more informed reader. It also takes the symbolism from the esoteric into a more visibly recognizable realm, an element which takes center stage in later works. The penultimate poem of the collection, “Propósitos” (54–55) summarizes well the book’s overall intentions, and in moving beyond a singular topic, opens the discourse further toward the type of socially oriented poetry to which Rossetti’s poetic voice will soon turn: Deshacer las maletas, comprobar cuánto lastre se arrastra todavía e imponerme de ahora en adelante, desligarme de normas y dogmas adquiridos, romper itinerarios visitados, el plano subjetivo de las expectativas y las líneas de fuga; la bitácora inútil de las adivinanzas ya resueltas, los horarios de tanto tren perdido, el silencio pactado y las reglas del juego. Olvidar los prospectos, la experiencia y su herramienta dócil, los resguardos pendientes, las cuentas por saldar, las islas invitadas y la lista de citas. Cortar nudos y amarras a corbatas y estrellas. Vaciar las papeleras de gestos extinguidos, los cajones de besos desechables, los tarros de palabras, conservadas

Love Lost, Light Gained

en el acíbar del remordimiento. Abrir la avara jaula de la obsesión cautiva. Soltar los abalorios de símbolos inertes. Sacudir los zapatos y el árbol de la ciencia. Volcar la caracola de los interrogantes inservibles, el jarrón de las dudas disecadas, los ficheros de culpas y de insomnios domados, la pecera de la felicidad con sus resbaladizas lentejuelas, la engañosa bandeja del constante espejismo, la caja de Pandora y el cántaro de leche. Borrar todas las líneas de autobuses; trizar certificados, muestrarios de trofeos, albaranes por las voces debidas y los roces furtivos. Estallar las redomas de las penas de amor, de celos retumbantes como bombas y de agravios rumiados. Las rutinas logradas con pericias y trucos, la fábrica de excusas, el jardín de los premios, la ciudad Esmeralda, la carroza del baile y el castillo de arena, al fin desbaratados, antes que la marea, los alcance y los lleve. Postdata: Dictar entre mi Yo y yo una orden de alejamiento mientras dure la mudanza. (Eng., Unpacking luggage, proving how many scraps it still drags and imposing myself from now on, disconnecting myself from acquired norms and dogmas, breaking old itineraries, the subjective plane of expectations and paths of escape; the useless log of riddles already resolved, schedules for so many missed trains, agreed-on silence and the rules of the game. Forgetting the prospectus, experience and its docile tool, pending receipts, account to pay,

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invited islands and the list of citations. Cutting knots and moorings to neckties and stars. Emptying the bins of extinguished gestures, the drawers of disposable kisses, jars of words, conserved in the bitterness of remorse. Opening the miserly cage of captive obsession. Freeing the trinkets of inert symbols. Shaking shoes and the tree of science. Upturning the shell of useless, unanswered questions, the jar of preserved doubts, misdemeanor files and tamed sleeplessness, the fishbowl of felicity with its slippery sequins, the tricky tray of constant illusion, Pandora’s box and the milk jug. Erasing all bus routes; destroying certificates, samples of trophies, delivery notes by due voices and furtive grazes. Exploding the flasks of love’s pain, of resounding jealousy like bombs and brooding affronts. Routines reached with skill and tricks, factory of excuses, the garden of awards, Emerald City, the carriage to the ball and the castle of sand, ruined in the end, before the tide, reaches and takes them. Postscript: Dictating a restraining order between my I and myself while the move happens)

Relative to the collection taken as a whole, this poem’s length and overall shape call attention to its slightly quicker flow, less like the denser prose poems preceding it and more akin to a waterfall of words. When analyzed in sections, the reader notes that the poem is composed of sentences beginning with the infinitive. This tense may find use as a way to reflect on a depersonalized present in motion, in other words, the partial erasure of the human presence in the poem reveals a reordering of a world whose past is lost and whose future remains an eventual new state of being. This removal of the self

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from the narration, although detrimental to the poetic subject’s agency on the surface, allows for the rebuilding of that poetic subject’s reality as one based on an allegorical movement through various superficial aspects of life (“los resguardos pendientes, / las cuentas por saldar,”) (Eng., “pending receipts / accounts to pay”) and the eventual arrival in a place where we may “[b]orrar todas las líneas de autobuses; / trizar certificados, muestrarios de trofeos, / albaranes por las voces debidas / y los roces furtivos . . . ,” (Eng., “Erasing all bus routes; / destroying certificates, samples of trophies, / delivery notes by due voices / and furtive grazes”) arriving at the Emerald City, “desbaratados” (“ruined”) and fragile, yet still aware. The symbolism in the poem runs the gambit from sensorial to mystical, much of it presenting as metonymic in nature. One reading leans toward a yearning on the part of the poetic subject to realize a moment of transcendence of the superficial self. For example, in the verses “Abrir la avara jaula de la obsesión cautiva. / Soltar los abalorios de símbolos inertes,” the poetic subject expresses a wish to break its own “captive obsession” free from its entrapment, a statement which could potentially remit to the kind of deconstructive thought present in Rossetti’s poetry of the 1980s, as well as to the notion of breaking free of the vapid nature of the mundane world. The somewhat contradictory statement which follows, or the freeing of “trinkets of inert symbols” may actually amplify this effect. The symbolic charge of the object of obsession forms a binary opposition with the “trinkets” that follow, a clear intuiting of a more profound process of seeking. In reference to the “Postdata,” the statement regarding the poetic subject’s “Yo” and “yo” as two entities kept separate while the “change” happens, the interpretation may take two distinct paths. These paths, the ontological and the epistemologically mystical, trace the same dichotomy observed in the work to this moment. On the one hand, it could represent a clear split between ego and id, part of a process to which Lévinas describes in a treatise on the subject. “The temporality of time [escapes] . . . from the threshold . . . by virtue of [the I’s] lapse, all activity of representation” (20). This stopping of self-representation as an action of the ego/id signifies a notable temporal / spatial confluence through which “[n]ot being-in-theworld, but being-in-question . . . in memory of which, the I that already posits itself and affirms itself [becomes] hateful in the very manifestation of its emphatic identity as an ipseity . . . ” (21). On the other, the split between the mundane and divine worlds so prevalent in mystical poetics has made itself evident in the poem. From this bifurcated, transitional perspective, then, the conceit which has allowed transformation of the self has also forced the poetic subject, now cognizant of their own simultaneous duality as part of the physical world’s binary oppositions (themselves a crude representation of the divine perfection which the mystic seeks), requires that the self also fall into opposition, and thus may continue on a path of illumination. This

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does not need to follow the same trajectory as other writers, since Rossetti’s poetic voice (unlike those of several of her contemporaries) has not traced a mystical path as a primary motif; rather, its presence in the work, alongside epistemologies more recognizable to most literary critics, means the tendencies of her contemporaries within the Iberian context have truly exercised an influence on her work. It is possible to establish a more concrete comparison with Clara Janés’ mystical geometries, Vergílio Alberto Vieira’s mythical poetic voice, and the epistemology of critical mysticism in the poetic voice of Ana Rossetti. One example may be found in poems “52” and “53” (26) from Vieira’s O Ilusório Ponto do Geómetra (2014): Ardem ainda de paixão as cinzas mornas do amor. No caminho onde ninguém passa só a neve viu de branco a noiva da floresta. (Eng., Love’s embers warm with passion still burn On the path where no one goes only the snow saw white the forest’s bride)

These short and rhythmic yet free-rhyme poems, when taken as a single, narrative unit, avail themselves of the same type of general and mystical symbolism as Ana Rossetti’s verses on love and loss (such as those found in Llenar tu nombre). Forest, the white of ash, and the idea of heat all reflect on both the loss of someone for whom the poetic subject still feels love and the burning away of the mundane world on the “caminho,” or path, toward a greater knowledge. Within this vein, verses from Clara Janés’ “Líneas” (65), from her collection Fractales (2005), lend to a similar symbolic resonance: Una vez más el paisaje fugitivo, el lago, los valles, los árboles que corren como ríos. Llega una nube y ciega la mirada; luego descubre

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un mar, un fuego. (Eng., Once more the fleeing landscape, the lake, the valleys, trees that flow like rivers. A cloud arrives and blinds sight; then it discovers a sea, a fire.)

This poetic fragment utilizes an approach to nature as an ekphrastic study of the trail left for the poetic subject when that which they know becomes blurred, unseen, and untouchable. The mundane world becomes nothing more than sublime trajectories based superficially on worldly object. These “lines” then lead the poetic subject to “a sea, a fire,” both being mystical symbols analyzed previously, so that the path from the mundane to the divine clearly makes itself known. Rossetti’s fundamental questioning of the certainties presented to her poetic subject in the context of total loss mark a moment of poetic rebuilding, also a path toward something greater than the world surrounding them. Beyond this transcultural, mystical interpretation, there exists also a temporal criticism of contemporary superficiality, similar to that which we would find in the poetry of the “generación nocilla” artists of 21st-century Spain. The themes present in works analyzed in the introduction to the present study also appear in poems such as “Nombre común,” as we have seen above. Beyond those words, other poetic moments also link Rossetti’s poetic voice with that of Jorge Carrión or Ana Merino. One example may be found in the aforementioned poem “Propósitos” (54–55), “la ciudad Esmeralda, la carroza del baile / y el castillo de arena, / al fin desbaratados.” Here the image of the Emerald City, one with roots in North American cinematic culture whose denotation of idyllic living and salvation for the lost soul is “at the end unhinged” implicates the image with a sharp, ironic criticism of such a vapid promise in the modern world. Although offering the reader only a limited number of critical moments, the presence of a denatured symbolism which differs in scope and socioliterary context from that of previous, markedly antihegemonic moments of deconstruction merits recognition as part of a larger tendency. This runs concomitant with that of the mystical and parallel to the rise of a posthuman poetic, in as much in Rossetti’s work as more generally in literary works from Spain. In sum, Llenar tu nombre represents several facets of Rossetti’s 21st-century poetic voice. On the surface, the work serves as a metapoetic expression of the process of literary creation. On a more profound semantic stage, we

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may intuit a continuation of the antihegemonic criticism of her 20th-century poetry. The reader also perceives of the presence of a mystical symbolism invoked from within the posthuman, critical apparatus, as well as an approximation to newer forms of socio-poetic critique found in works by the “generación nocilla” authors mentioned in this study.

Chapter Four

The Geography of the Binary Opposition El mapa de la espera (2010)

The unique combination of symbolic and extra-poetic matrices observed so far in Rossetti’s 21st-century poetic production engender a singular perspective on what transliterary expressions may find their realization a possibility. To stop at this point, however, would leave questions of further suitability in the poet’s continuously developing contemporary voice. As such, by focusing on her poetic expression in a different genre, children’s verses, the evolution of the critical, posthuman, mystical voice in Rossetti’s poetry may become clearer. Rossetti has published, in fact, several volumes of children’s literature since 1997, such as Viela, Enriqueto y su secreto (2000, based on a play with the same title authored collaboratively from 1999) and Antes de que nacieras (2008). Her literary production in this area, in fact, has been both copious and in line with the epistemological constructs found in her work for adults. As Jill Robbins notes in the Preface to Pher/versions, regarding Sylvia Sherno’s remarks on Rossetti’s corpus of children’s literature: Sylvia Sherno observes another manifestation of doubling in her analysis of Rossetti’s children’s book, Una mano de santos. Noting the pedagogical function of juvenile literature, the inferior reading skills of the child, and the age difference between the author and the intended reader, Sherno asserts that: “the processes of generation, reception, and transmission of children’s literature are politically suffused. Children’s texts, almost always conceived from the confluence of genre and gender, child and adult, invariably involve issues of power.” To the extent that Rossetti as author must perform the pedagogical adult role even in a book that imagines and encourages resistance to adult authority, her persona is once more divided and doubled. What is more, the texts she rewrites as postmodern morality tales in Una mano de santos are the same saints’ lives 79

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that fascinated her as a child, suggesting an attempt to resurrect the transgressive reinterpretations she performed as a child. The gap is bridged, Sherno tells us, through the “carnivalesque deployment of humor, irony, and parody.” (Robbins, Pher/versions, 12)

For Rossetti’s part, she has stated, for example, that she had wanted her book to become part of a “bibliobús” project for the Saharawi people of the Sahara (Fernández, pár 3). Such an overt, hands-on participation in the extension of literary and charitable works to a variety of populations has its precedent (such as Lorca’s work with the Roma people of Spain). Indeed, a marker of Rossetti’s artistic work in the 21st century seems to be one of extending the poetic into the world, making it accessible to all people of all ages, and allowing it to flourish in the hope that others may take a path of knowledge and awakening in the face of so much suffering. El mapa de la espera (2010), from its layout, seems meant more as a book of poetry for children than one for adult readers. The work seems, at first glance, to utilize a simplified, direct style of language concomitant with children’s literature. Yet, as Juan Velasco Moreno in his introduction to the work explains, the symbolic weight of the map itself lends to a deeper analysis of the work. “Desde el mapa de la espera, se evoca y se teje el futuro; tras la realidad de la palabra, se reconstruye esa otra, la nueva, emergente semilla, en la que vivir” (8) (Eng., “From the Map of Hope, the future is evoked and weaved; after the reality of the word, that other, the new, emergent seed, in which one may live, is reconstructed”). As indicated here and as we will soon discover, the descriptive world of the map quickly finds itself in infinite expansion, via the poetic subject’s creative, poetic word which evokes first the three-dimensional world, then leads the reader beyond that physical world into one of symbols and semantic multiplicity.1 We may begin our analysis with a closer look at the first two “poems” of the work. The collection opens with the following poetic statement and accompanying illustration of a flock of migrating birds on page 12 and ocean waves in the style of an ink engraving on page 13: El mar en los mapas son orlas que van desde el celeste claro al oscuro. Pero el que yo me imagino es como un cielo fruncido lleno de charcas de plata. (12) (Eng., The sea in maps is a frame that moves from the clear sky to the darkness. Yet the one I imagine is like a frowning sky full of pools of silver.)

The poetic voice steps away from the simple, two-dimensional geospatial representation of water toward its revisioning as a force opposing the sky in both position and coloring (with the “charcas de plata” in opposition to the

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clouds above). This repositioning serves to express multiple meanings, imagination as a space not just of supposing a new reality but of truly creating one. The opposition of sky and land appears in much earlier, non-mystical works, such as Rosalía de Castro’s En las orillas del Sar, while the opposition of sky and sea elicit notions of self-reflecting realities in works such as Federico García Lorca’s “Romance sonámbulo.” In this sense, then, we may interpret the opposition from an historicist perspective at first glance. However, the poem itself, as part of a poetic collection with the aim of creating reality in opposition to the simplified description of that reality, utilizes imagery in its creative aspects. As seen in the work of Clara Janés in the concluding poem of her 1996 Arcángel de sombra, the poetic word, in its function as an oppositional force to another image aligned along the same metonymic axis, creates a new reality: Grita una urraca el punto de su disolución, el rojo impone su ley crepuscular, los metales fecundan las rocas con herrumbre, desgranan vida las entrañas del fruto. Undosos se estremecen los alientos desde el alma. Mi amado en mí respira. El árbol blanco nace en nuestra boca y eleva con su luz la eternidad. (81) (Eng., A magpie cries out its moment of dissolution, red imposes its crepuscular law, metals impregnate rocks with rust, the entrails of fruits peel away life. Waving breaths quake from within the soul. My lover breathes in me. The white tree is born in our mouth and raises eternity with its light.)

The poem unites a series of geographic, physical elements with the act of illumination in the late stages of the mystical process (as outlined previously and in previous research). The poetic subject’s environment has conjoined

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mystical, symbolic elements such as the bird, the white tree, and the light emanating from the united mystical subject (or the subject and the guide combined into a single, genderless entity in contact with the divine), with earthly metals and the red of lava as it pours out of a newly destroyed and resurrected poetic world. In that sense, what could seem like a life/death dichotomy on the (literal) surface takes a deeper meaning; it is from this new symbolism that Rossetti’s collection seems to draw its inspiration. The ontological utility of this poetic collection may be organized in a chronological sense. In this, if the reader were to divide the work into sections, while the first would focus on the sea, the second would focus on the desert: “La extensión parda de los mapas es el desierto” (24) (Eng., “The dull extension on the map is the desert”). Immediately following this very evident declaration of the type of color distortion seen in most modern maps, the poetic voice begins to highlight what this “extensión parda” does not reveal about the true diversity present in the desert, beyond its superficial representation: y no da idea de su misterio ni de su majestad ni de sus falsos espejos ni de sus remolinos de estrellas pulverizadas ni de la fresca fiesta del pozo. (26) (Eng., and it does not offer any idea of its mystery nor its majesty nor its mirages nor its whirlwinds of pulverized stars or its refreshing celebration of the well.)

The binary opposition between representation and profound truth in these verses should remit the reader’s attention to the same type of opposition seen previously in Rossetti’s work of mystical resonance. Symbols in El mapa such as the desert or the bazaar remind the reader of the trials of Majnun in the story of Leyla and Majnun, a well-known Sufi mystical parable. A contemporary version of the story may be found in Janés’ Diván y el ópalo de fuego. Here we find the spiritual trajectories of the two main characters, “Leyla” and “Majnun.” (These characters first appear in Ibn Árabi’s work, the Taryuman al-Aswaq, which forms the basis for Janés’ Diván.) Majnun, a young man, falls in love with Leyla, the daughter of a local elite. Unlike many Western love stories, however, the two do not meet in the physical world. Rather, Leyla and Majnun, existing in removed physical spaces, move spiritually toward each other. Their meeting in the Divine space leads them to the construction of “qalb,” or the “heart,” a space of the union of the seeker and the guide. Although movement happens for Majun in a physical sense, via Majnun’s wandering in the desert in a somewhat recognizable direction toward Leyla’s home, and spiritually (through Leyla’s desire for mystical union with Majnun), their meeting in the space beyond indicates the two inhabit both the world of Khalq, or the mundane world, and Haqq, or the true

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world. In this sense, the mystic (Majnun) and the lover (Leyla) may build their “house,” or “qalb,” and thus ascend to contact with the divine presence in Haqq. The two energies of the characters may then inhabit the same space by working simultaneously toward the goal of union within “qalb.” As an example, the fifth section of Diván, “Vida en el desierto,” (60) continues the image of Majnun’s wanderings on the geographic fringes of his world, both physically (in the desert) and mystically (as a (Janesian) illuminated lover). The desert also contains many subterranean roots and rivers, all invisible on the map (El mapa, 30). The idea of an underground layer of life where the onlooker would not conceive of such life is nothing new in literature. However, the current perspective sheds light on potential interpretations in that, insofar as vertical movement as a representation of spiritual escape from the superficial is concerned, the poetic voice allows for the freedom of the reader, not only from reductive understandings of nature, but from the artificial and false world surrounding them. The next section of prose poems expands on the significance of those structures, and their corollary celestial elements, insofar as these pertain to the reader’s understanding of the former. For example, colors of blue and gold outline the constellations in their “rutas secretas” (34) in the following poem: “Está surcado por rutas secretas que solo se muestran cuando el sol se va y la Osa Mayor hace brillar su brújula.” (Eng., “It is ploughed through by secret paths that only make themselves seen when the sun goes down and Ursa Major makes its compass shine.”)

Here, day and night converge into a myriad of colors and points of light which orient the seeker. In order to view the path to understanding, the seeker must first leave the closed perspective of the land behind, look in the opposite direction, and see a light out of reach illuminate the path. This fits cleanly with a mystical reading of the text, rather than only a geographically oriented view. The fourth section refers to the poetic discussion on human populations, represented as mere dots on maps (38) but with a plethora of natural and constructed elements which the artist’s eye seeks out. Pero yo sé que significan mercados y bazares; animadas calles y plazas con fuentes; escuelas y cines y estadios y hospitales y tráfico de vehículos. Los colores rebosan en las aceras. De vez en cuando, se alza una torre muy alta desde donde un clamor desplegará su ovillo transparente hasta el lugar más recóndito del laberinto. (40)

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(Eng., Yet I know what markets and bazaars mean; lively streets and plazas with fountains; schools and theaters and stadiums and hospitals and vehicular traffic. Colors overflow into sidewalks. Sometimes, a very tall tower is erected from where a cry will unfold its curled-up ball stretching to the most hidden spot in the labyrinth.)

The poem brings the eye of the reader through a spectacle of human movement, from walking through a bazar to fountain-laden plazas, places of diversion and finally traffic. The poetic subject seems to guide the reader from the highest level of direct human contact to the lowest level, and in gradations. This seems to counteract the notion that the human endeavor of the city may be reduced to a simple point on a piece of paper. In terms of the individual symbols, two types appear in the poem. The aforementioned elements of urban life may each represent a different aspect of human life and human interaction: the “regateo” of the bazaar, the constant movement of people and machines, the care to life and death, passive, and active visual performance, etc. In this sense, the poem looks to contest the machinations of the posthuman condition and reduction of our humanity by rehumanizing action withing mentioned spatial limitations. This highlights, then, the timelessness of the endeavor, rather than its forgetting. Yet another layer of symbolism exists, that of the mystical, which yields even more profound significance to the reader. The mention of colors, then the passage to the “very high tower” from which a clear ball is borne, when taken as metaphor relates to the Sufi symbol of the minaret, “the promotion of oneself in any form . . . which establishes oneself as a worshipper of form or self” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. III, 162). From this perspective, the reader may wish to interpret the idea of the tower as a symbolic place from which the self extends from within to the physical space surrounding it. An analysis of the ego and id in this context will not yield any measurable results since the poem does not delve into the split, nor its possible consequences, in any readable form. Rather, if the reader falls to mystical symbolism to interpret the second half of the poem, the notion that the metaphorical cityscape may reveal a whole self whose spiritual power reaches the furthest corners of that space. The mundane world of the city is then both sufferer of the ontological affectations of the enlightened self, and site from which the self may choose to move beyond that mundane world toward the divine world of truth. The symbol of the city as a labyrinth is not new, yet the idea of influencing, effecting, and finally escaping the confusion of the mundane world is a well-known one in contemporary mystical literatures. Izara Batres, in her 2019 collection Sin red: el derecho a ser, speaks on this notion when in her poem “LV” she writes: “Mucho tiempo deseé volver a ver la ciudad / como la veo ahora, / y que el suelo se deshiciera / dejando ver un mar de óleo y crisol. / Besa

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conmigo esa primavera sencilla / y nacerá un nuevo nombre para las cosas” (81) (Eng., “For a long time I wished to see the city again / as I see now, / and for the ground to undo itself / allowing to see a sea of oil and crucible. / Kiss that simple Spring with me / and a new name for things will be born”). Here, the city as a metonym for a society blind to its own superficiality becomes “renamed” in the eyes of the mystical seeker. The final section focuses on the poet’s art as an illustrator of images through words, and, in this case, a drawing. This artistic imagining, with accompanying illustrations, will serve as excellent examples of this idea (50–53). “Nunca he estado en el mapa que se marca constantemente en mi corazón. No he atravesado sus fronteras ni conozco las orillas de su playa. No he recorrido sus caminos ni he visitado sus ciudades ni me he hospedado en sus edificios.” (50) (Eng., “I have never been in a map that has left its mark constantly in my heart. I have not crossed its frontiers, nor do I know the shores of its beaches. I have not traversed its paths, nor have I visited its cities, nor have I stayed in its buildings.”)

The presence of the “corazón” from the poem seems to refer to a space from which illumination is possible. This mystical motif has appeared frequently in the poetry of Clara Janés and Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo (as discussed in previous scholarship on the topic). As studied previously, the symbol of the heart refers to the space in which the mystical seeker may make contact with the divine force, this being knowledge or actual touching of the divine. In the poem above, however, Rossetti’s poetic subject indicates an opening of the heart, which reflects an additional meaning. “‘Heart-opening’ is said to represent the attribute of the opener of the heart at the station of intimacy . . . to symbolise (sic) the station of concentration (jami’yat), which is the fullest expanse of the heart, encompassing all levels of theophany . . . ” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. II, 87–8). (It should be noted that the stage of “jam’iyat,” or concentration, is one of the major steps in Sufi mystical illumination as described in previous criticism on the topic). As such, we can postulate that Rossetti’s poetic subject negates this stage of mystical enlightenment while simultaneously negating such statements. By beginning the poem with a singular negating adjective and a statement of contact between the poetic subject and object, “[n]unca he estado en el mapa que se marca . . . ,” (author’s emphasis) the poetic subject ironically removes doubt that the map truly has left its mark. A coded message then appears, looking on the surface to negate a volume-long trajectory while at a slightly deeper level revealing exactly that. Anaphor also plays a large part in the idea of creating this space—the “lápiz” from the second of the two short referred to here emphasizes this:

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“Mientras, con lápiz rojo señalo el tapiz de los sueños. Lápiz negro para la caja donde guardo mis rutas. Lápiz verde para la hucha de la esperanza. El papel es blanco, porque lo tiene todo por decir.” (52) (Eng., “All the while, I mark the tapestry of my dreams in red pencil. Black pencil for the box where I store my routes. Green pencil for my piggy bank of hope. The paper is white because it has everything to say.”)

The various colors and objects all have both intimate and mystical symbolic charges. Again, the mystical in the dense symbolic becomes apparent also in this work, as seen in previous analyses here. The mention of dreams, routes, and spaces in which to keep and secure hopes has, on the surface, to do with the perspective of a child, for whom the lines on a map can represent a future of knowledge and adventure. In a more epistemological framework, these red dreams, black routes, green piggy bank, and white paper all create an image of various stages in a process of illumination represented symbolically. In these analyses the reader may begin to form a narrative structure which feeds both from the mystical search as well as from the thematics inherent in contemporary, artistic criticism on sociocultural phenomena. Beginning with the latter, according to the criticism stemming from posthuman literatures as seen previously in this study, the semantic charge lent to language surrounding geospatial notions of identity formation have tended recently toward the superficial, necessitating the artistic reply readers come to know from the “generación nocilla” writers. Although more typically grounded in contemporary spatial and temporal ekphrastic imagery, even the reawakening of the map itself from a reduction to an extra-linguistic signifier to a point of embarking toward the possibility of representing a more profound signified hinges on the critical moment present in the work of that generation. In this, El mapa de la espera designs itself as part of that movement, despite the obvious difference with the majority of literary works found within. In terms of the mystical resonance in the work, as we have observed through our analysis these tendencies reveal themselves vis-à-vis the concomitant presence of other approaches nascent from the postmodern era, such as posthumanism. The symbolism of the map appears to the reader first as part of that reawakening, and only afterward as part of a more profound search for extra-physical meaning. On the macro-artistic level, it is evident that El mapa de la espera serves, in part, as a continuation of several themes, symbolic representations of those themes, and epistemological moments from Llenar tu nombre. In its transcultural, mystical, and posthuman approaches and poetic analyses, the former extends the epistemological reach of the latter from that of an internal strife within a localized context to a global reimagining within a universal context.

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One could argue that this stems from the notion that the work was meant for a pre-adolescent audience. However, in terms of artistic evolution, the abject nature of the more recent work would indicate less of a simplification and more of an abstraction, as the idea of a creative, and not limitedly descriptive, poetic word does not diminish between the two works. NOTE 1. It should also be noted that, although Rossetti has indicated in correspondence that the work “es un único poema” published as such in a later volume (email 14 July, 2022), in this study I will refer to the verse or verses in each page as a separate “poem.” This nomenclature will, I hope, allow for the parsed analysis of the processes to which the verses contained within refer.

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The works studied here to this point have revealed an implicit duality in Rossetti’s overall poetic oeuvre. On the one hand, the reader may encounter the development of antihegemonic themes, many of which we have discussed previously both in summarizing the work of other critics and in the present poetic analyses. These themes, on their own, present a focus evermore on the self-referentiality of the poetic word within an extraliterary context of a society whose preconceptions shift with other, sociopolitical forces. On the other hand, the reader observes a less imposing presence, that of a search for an essentialism which the first tendencies would, in principle, ward off. Yet we feel its presence as part of the critical apparatus Rossetti’s various poetic subjects have applied in engendering their dismantling and subsequent restructuring of the poems’ context. This creative functionality of the poem becomes more evident as we approach the third decade of the 21st century. Rossetti’s 2016 collection, Deudas contraídas, turns the reader’s perspective from that of an observer of the poetic subject to that of the poetic subject themself. “Rossetti busca al lector que se reconozca no en ella, sino en su poesía” (Carvajal, pár 2). The themes, on the surface, tend toward a reflection on personal failings with which the readers may associate themselves. Those supposed failings open the reader to a host of social ills and other larger issues that have taken center stage in Spanish society as the country moves out of the Global Recession of 2008, nonetheless. This more socially oriented poetic voice, rather than as an extension of the neoclassical and deconstructive verse we have come to expect in Rossetti, is made up of “versos que se adentran en nuestro día a día, de forma siempre lírica, pero palpable” (pár 4) (Eng., “verses that penetrate our day to day, always in lyrical form, yet palpable”). This most recent work of Rossetti’s is a collection of prose poems. In this work’s focus on life during and following the 2008 economic crisis, this poetic subject reveals a dystopic 89

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landscape of loss on a national level. “Ana Rossetti dirige su ironía amarga contra una realidad cruel: las calles con muebles abandonados y personas que vuelcan su angustia sobre las aceras. La escritora prevé que la derrota del futuro consistirá en un paisaje de casas vacías” (Irazoki pár 4) (Eng., “Ana Rossetti directs her bitter irony at a cruel reality: streets with abandoned furniture and people who pour their angst into the sidewalks. The writer foresees that the failure of the future consists of a landscape of empty homes”). Here the hopeful gives way to the comprehension of the apocryphal (and at once apocalyptic) once more, as both a function of current societal stresses and the poetic history of the self. This is evident in the prose poem titled “IV” (27): En el mundo aislado e innombrado de los pobres. En el mundo espectral de los autobuses de la madrugada. En el mundo sin horas de la maquila que vomita y engulle, incesante, enjambres de niñas fatigadas que agotan su futuro a destajo. En el mundo devorado por el mundo al que nutre. En el mundo excluido de la conciencia del mundo que lo enajena. En el mundo silenciado por el mundo que lo amordaza. En el mundo al margen del mundo que equilibra con sobornos la balanza de la justicia y cimienta en la esclavitud de muchos, su artificio de libertad. Lo que importa es el momento en el que la paloma sale del pañuelo arrugado, o la liebre salta del brocal de la chistera. Lo que importa es que están vivas, y no que son capturas. (Eng., In the isolated and unnamed world of the poor. In the spectral world of early morning busses. In the hourless world of the toll that vomits and swallows, incessantly, swarms of tired girls who use up their future with job to job. In the world devoured by the world this one feeds. In the world excluded from the conscience of the world that alienates it. In the world silenced by the world that muzzles it. In the world at the edge of the world that balances out through bribery the scale of justice and founds its artifice of liberty in the slavery of the many. What is important is the moment when the dove leaves the wrinkled handkerchief, or the hare leaps from the cap of the top hat. What is important is that they are alive, and they are not captured.)

The list of miseries the poem describes, and the falsehood on which the social structures that cause those miseries is built, takes center stage for the

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reader. The second stanza, in italics so as to distance the voice from that of the previous stanza, expresses hope in that life exercises itself as freedom and peace, allowing a limited, yet noted, space for dreams of an improbable, though better future. There exists in the poem a repetition reminiscent of Sartre’s protagonist, Roquentin, from his seminal novel, Nausée. “Anton Roquentin is such an individual who surveys, analyzes and records in a detached, phenomenological manner the actions, events and surroundings of his world, as if they were happening to him . . . ” (Flynn 142). The Sartrean approach creates a vertiginous sensation, one of a loss of agency of one’s surroundings, and even one’s own life. The reader then becomes absorbed in that feeling of spinning out of control which the poem’s internal circularity (via the anaphor of “En el mundo,” “In the world”) engenders. The dehumanization of the poetic subject’s experience, in an early 20th century, Lorquian sense, leads us to the recognition of the physical world’s vile limitations. In short, the anaphoric nature of the “nausea” the poem expresses should be evident to the reader, as is the deconstructed world surrounding the poetic subject. This reimagining of the human experience as less than the experience itself fits well with the notion of decentered living that posthumanism has presented. As part of this post-essentialist interpretation of the poem, the reader could follow a contemporary, musically oriented recontextualization, an artistically synchronic approximation. The difference in lexical repetition here, as compared to the singular poems from El mapa de la espera, may also evidence the necessary change in thematic focus, and thus, tone. In taking a broader, artistic view of the poem, it is possible to see that the same sort of repetition found both in critical work (in this I refer to Derrida’s prosaic style in Glas) and Phillip Glass’ ad nauseum repetition of musical themes from popular culture. It is denatured in his music and, thus, proven apocryphal (his “Violin Concerto #1,” adapted to the Soprano Saxophone by Amy Dickson, or his “Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, Movement 1” are excellent examples). Such transnational references, whether intentional or simply taken from general tendencies of our time, offer the informed reader a unique contextual framework from which to reinterpret the poem’s deeper significance. In that vein, and in a mystical sense, this moment represents the moment known as “Ma’rifat,” or the moment in which the mystical seeker sees the binary oppositions of the physical world as the key to breaking away from that world, the contemplation of a greater knowledge (Koovackal, 81). In the poem, the hint comes in the form of the second stanza, in italics, in which the moment is not static but a fluid state of transition. Such a passage into that state of transition happens at the moment at which knowledge and certitude meet. That certitude “ . . . may be defined as the appearance of the light of Reality in the state of the unveiling of human nature through the testimony of

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ecstasy . . . confirmed by intellectual proof” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. III, 173–74). The unveiling of the “dove” that “leaves the wrinkled handkerchief” refers, then, to the “Universal Soul which is the heart of the world” (Vol. IV, 146) escaping darkness into the “moment,” into life, and thus, into freedom. When taken as a moment of ecstasy, viewed and understood intellectually, the moment at which the poetic subject observes the possibility of divine knowledge, and as such, begins a process of distancing from the mundane world (that which appears in the first stanza), finds its more profound meaning. Other references, such as titles of collections or individual poems and verses, fill the collection. One example from “Desarraigo” (45), “[e]ntre la realidad y el deseo,” is also the title of a 1936 collection by Luis Cernuda in which the secret desires of the heart become stamped out by the stark reality of the poetic subject. Poems such as “Traficante de sueños” (40–1), in which the Rossetti’s poetic subject penetrate this stark reality by way of the narrative of an abduction as part of the well-known yet silently accepted human trafficking market realizes both a critique of contemporary social issues and a moment of palimpsest with Cernuda’s work. The collection does not present a coherent progression in the sense that its critique of socioeconomic and sociopolitical phenomena reveals itself as a perpetual poetic scream in the ear of the reader. This desperate call for salvation never lets up throughout the book. However, when looking beyond the epistemology traditionally applied to Rossetti’s work and toward a search for essential meaning, one which the presence of a mystical symbolism would imply, the reader may begin to perceive a sensation of linear movement. The reappearance of references to music indicates an adherence to a similar sensory experience, one which in principle attempts to remove the poetic subject from the trappings of the mundane. The poem “A pie de obra” (16–7) (Eng., “At the job site”) holds a particularly telling reference: La andanada de interrogantes como maniobra de distracción. Como método para dispersar y confundir. Como una turbulencia a la medida. Como todas las posibles variaciones de una música disonante y atronadora. (Eng., The barrage of questions as distraction ploy. As a method to separate and confuse. As tailor-made turbulence. As all possible variations of a dissonant and deafening music.)

The poem in its totality wishes to comment on the moment at which the poetic subject’s frustration with the world in which they reside begins to boil over. In this prose stanza, the poetic subject comments in particular on the “barrage of questions” the unseen evil behind certain types of queries meant not to inquire but to “separate (literally, ‘disperse’) and confuse.” In this, the

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poetic subject sees that, in a false world, what may seem to be an inquisitive move toward a deeper understanding of the world serves, in reality, to solidify the vapid, to ruin the attempt at stability or a reaching of the essential meaning of the universe (such that a mystical seeker would desire via the questioning of their apparent reality). The music which, in other contexts (such as that found in Janés’ retelling of the story of Layla and Majnun) could symbolize the discovery of the greater, divine force, here becomes “dissonant and thunderous,” a destructive element to the seeker and an impediment to that seeker’s spiritual movement away from the mundane. Further on the reader finds a poem whose symbolism follows the multifaceted, metaphorical path to which previous poems have hinted, “Hacedoras de ciudades” (Eng., “Makers of Cities”) (42–4, Stanzas 1–8 and 11–12): Como sucede en los sueños, los tiempos se aúnan en un único presente. El recuerdo es recurrencia vivida; un presente dilatado, la espera indefinible. También el espacio es una realidad inmóvil que ellas hacen vibrar con todas las alternancias del anhelo. En la nada de la nada, resetean hogares, refugios y alacenas. Ellas, artesanas de una patria en terrenos prestados, descubren un oasis en la desolación, bombean en manantial de sus inagotables corazones y sus dedos, hospitales que curan y consuelan, continuamente enceitan [sic] bisagras de sonrisas sobre la despiadada mueca del hambre. Pase lo que pase, sus dedos, trenzan alfombras en la arena para ocultar el turbio color de los designios. Sin descanso se alzan en la noche para desempeñar estrellas; retumban en el vientre tirante de la luna para espantar a la desesperación. Bailan sus dedos. Domestican el viento en la quietud de la jaima y abren sus inexistentes puertas para invitar al mundo. Como quien vuelve de la despensa y suelta sobre la mesa las provisiones del delantal, ofrecen el idioma de los antepasados como único y seguro baluarte. . . . De este modo, lo pasado y lo venidero se entrelazan indisolublemente, como el día y el lugar alcanzados.

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Y cuando esto llegue, cuando ellas hagan coincidir geografía con mapa, entre las cicatrices de la resistencia emergerá la dignidad como una flor intacta y poderosa. (Eng., As happens in dreams, time unites into a singular present. Memory is a living recurrence; a dilated present, an undefinable waiting. Space is also an immobile reality that they make vibrate with all the alternation of yearning. In nothing’s nothingness, homes, refuges, and cupboards are reset. They, these artisans of the mother country on borrowed lands, discover an oasis withing desolation, pump the spring of their inexhaustible hearts and fingers, hospitals that cure and comfort, they continuously place smiling hinges over despicable grimaces of hunger. Whatever happens, their fingers, they weave carpets in the sand to hide the muddy color of their plans. They rise restless at night to create stars; they resound in the tense belly of the moon to scare away desperation. Their fingers dance. In the stillness of the canopy they tame the wind and open their inexistent doors in order to invite the world. As one who returns from the pantry and drops the contents of their apron onto the table, they offer the language of the ancestors as a unique, safe bastion. . . . In this way, the past and future are permanently intertwined, like the place and the day reached. And when this happens, when they make the land and the map match, from among the scars of resistance dignity will emerge, like a powerful and intact flower.)

The reader will note mystical symbolism and images reminiscent of El mapa, including a reference to a day when the map and the landscape may represent each other bilaterally. We may understand this idea as a sort of resolution offered for the issues faced in the beginning of El mapa, those of the counterproductive relationship between superficial representation of a geographic space and its potentially more profound ontology and meaning. The “Makers

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of Cities” have created this space of knowledge in order that hope may exist in a corrupt world. The present poem reveals a space in which we find very evidently a universe bursting forth from its own binary oppositions, trapped yet limitless. If the reader focuses on dichotomies such as “nothing” and “home,” it is possible to see that binary oppositions form a basis of the poem’s symbolic structure. The oasis / spring connection with the “hearts” also leads to a symbolic undercurrent for knowledge as the root of love and enlightenment. Symbols such as the “night” and “stars,” with their celestial placement, accompanied by the “moon” that “scare(s) away desperation,” emphasize this possibility. The makers of cities as “artisans” whose fingers “tame the wind” in the solitude of the canopy” removes time from the equation, thereby making the notion of a moment of creation non-existent. The opening of their calm to the world may also enjoy a polysemic interpretation. On the one hand, the calm wind may offer the world a physical manifestation of the same calm needed to attempt to resolve the world’s various problems, as seen in previous poems in this collection. On the other, it could also be one of many “safe bastion(s)” from which people feel they can escape from the world, in a false yet comforting illusion of peace. This atemporal, spatially focused and critical approach is apparent in the works of several “generación nocilla” writers, as noted in the introduction to this study. Returning to the oppositions (while leaving further discussion of mystical resonance in the poem for a later comment), “bisagras de sonrisas” and “mueca del hambre” reveal the horrific duality of the human space emerging, on the one hand, as a place in which the recognition of hidden beauty creates a junction with a peace that is just out of reach, and on the other, the terror of living in the destructive, human, physical space surrounding us. Thereby, hope does exist, yet the impediments to its realization seem as insurmountable as the intangible presence of the greater world to the poetic subject. Another poem, “Ley de las proporciones definidas” (61–2), utilizes a language that at first seems to reference Satanic symbolism (the “pentagram”) within the geometric context of a changing room, to describe the forced limiting of the self from enlightenment: El despiadado espejo de los probadores, no sabe que tus dedos, tus veinte dedos, tocan los vértices de la estrella. Que tu cuerpo contiene el pentagrama y define la perfección el círculo. Que el número sagrado segmenta tus medidas como los intervalos de una música. O quizás no le importe.

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Qué puede importarle la proporción áurea, el veloz bucle del halcón, el nacarado refugio del nautilius [sic], la sección trasversal de una manzana, la sucesión infinita del uno coma seis dieciocho que está en ti como en la corola de las flores. Qué le importa. Lo que le importa es la feroz simetría del noventa-sesenta-noventa. No le importa que tu sangre fluya sin obstáculos ni impurezas, que tus órganos cumplan su tarea con eficiente perseverancia, que tus huesos resistan como la arboladura de un navío, que tu piel sea una firme y elástica coraza. No le importa que las enfermedades no te frecuenten y que ningún dolor se abra camino por tu ruta neuronal. Lo que le importa es el cuerpo preceptivo del momento. No le importa que en ti se adscriban las cinco líneas del pentágono sino que puedas entrar en la talla establecida. Ya puedes desplegar ante él la variada paleta de tus cualidades, tus éxitos, las alegrías con las que la vida te sorprende; a él no le importa. Los implacables espejos de los probadores te harán sufrir. (Eng., The changing room’s despicable mirror, it doesn’t know that your fingers and toes, all twenty fingers and toes, touch the corners of the star. That your body contains the pentagram and the circle defines perfection. That the sacred number divides your measures like musical intervals. Or maybe it doesn’t care. How can it care about the Golden Mean, the swift loop of the falcon, the nacre refuge of the nautilus, the transversal section of an apple, the infinite succession of one point six one eight that is in you like the flower’s corolla. What does it care. What it cares about is the ferocious symmetry of ninety-sixty-ninety. It doesn’t care whether your blood flows without impediments or impurity, that your organs fulfill their task with efficient perseverance, that your bones may resist like the rigging of a ship, that your skin be a firm and elastic shield.

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It doesn’t care that you don’t get frequently ill and that no pain may pave its way through your neural pathways. What it cares about is the prescriptive body at the moment. It doesn’t care that the five lines of the pentagon hold fast in you, but rather that you fit into the right size. You can unfurl the various qualities of your palette before it, your successes, the joys with which life has surprised you; it doesn’t care. The changing room’s relentless mirrors will make you suffer.)

The scene the poem delineates in the first stanza, a simple look into the mirror of a changing room in a store, leads immediately into the uncomfortable revelation of the self and the failure of the self to tear away from a superficial and meaningless world that judges a woman not by her abilities but by the shape of her flesh. In this sense, the moment serves the ultimate goal of the collection. The expansion of the “Golden Ratio” of 1.618 which leads into the flow of bodily liquids into the infamous pentagram—as its only viable conclusion—appears not as way of evil to expand outward, but to keep the poetic subject trapped inward, unable to reach the path to illumination which they have not only noted previously, but which seems (as in “Hacedoras de ciudades”) just out of reach. This expansion of the self becomes a flexible, yet aged and worn, reminiscent of the “riggings on a ship.” The maritime image as synecdochical to the poetic subject’s perception of self-image appears as an appropriately ironic anachronism, harkening back to a past time and space, no longer existing yet simultaneously reflected through the body’s condition. This unjust self-abjection carries through the rest of the poem, the hope of “successes” and “joys” ripped away by the omni-present mirror. The public nature of the poetic subject’s gaze creates then the sensation of social microcosm. Thus, despite the possibilities of self-actualization that exist for the poetic subject (again, via the maritime and mathematical imagery), the reader vicariously confronts a society that values only its own understanding of youthfulness and strength. This world then disallows the pursuit of a deeper search for self-acceptance and enlightenment. This poetic tragedy reminds the reader of poem “XXVIII” (41) from Izara Batres’ Sin red: el derecho a ser (2019): En la red quisiste el cobijo de una planta que crecía al calor de los demás, buscando sus letras y sus coros . . .

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Los demás, un mismo lenguaje, una misma idea. . . .  (Eng., In the net you wished for the cover of a plant that would grow in the heat of others, seeking out its letters and choirs . . . The others, one language, one idea. . . . )

The conjugation of “quisiste” implies a failure on the part of the seeker, due evidently to a world in which the notion of a greater knowledge or action cannot exist. Here as in Rossetti’s poem, then, the process of self-alienation in the early 21st century, transliterary context becomes clear. The final poem, “Atrévete y sucederá” (74–5). This poem serves to contrast the feeling of entrapment expressed in the collection’s opening poem, “Sunt Lacrimae Rerum” (11–12), a Latin phrase meaning “There are tears for things.” The phrase occupies half of the following verse from Vergil’s Aeneid, “sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt” (Aeneid, Book 1, Line 462). The literal translation reads (in English) as “there are tears of—or for—things (rerum) / and human things (mortalia) touch the mind”; however, the connotative translation, taking into account the verse’s context in the larger work, reads more like “the world is a world of tears and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.” Rossetti’s poem, in keeping with the Virgilian spirit set forth in its title, laments the total intimacy of a loss. Here, however, the loss is not an epic one in the sense of a loss on behalf of a nation’s forging, but one whose cause stems from a world so brutal that the poetic subject filters out its own awareness: Qué has hecho de ti, disfrazando la existencia para no ver su desamparo, narcotizándola para no sentir su crueldad, embruteciéndola para no reconocer el fracaso del mundo. Te has desprendido de la familia humana como un fragmento aborrecido que no encuentra donde asirse. Un fragmento de contradicciones y dilemas; así, así eres tú. . . . Qué ha sido de mi hermano, de mi hermana, imágenes mías, sangre mía, mis iguales en estirpe. Qué he hecho de mis hijos, de mis hijas, de mi linaje, de mi herencia. Qué ha sido de mí. Qué he hecho de mí. (st. 2 and 6, p. 11–12) (Eng., What have you done to yourself, disguising existence so not to see its helplessness, drugging it so not to feel its cruelty, stupefying it so not to recognize the failure of the world. You have detached yourself from the human family

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like a hated shard that finds nowhere to grab hold to. A shard of contradictions and dilemmas; like that, that is you. . . . What has become of my brother, my sister, images of mine, blood of mine, my family. What has become of my sons, my daughters, my lineage, my inheritance. What has become of me. What have I done with myself.)

The gradual change in focus from “tú” to “yo” (“he hecho”) speaks to the intimacy of this violent act of self-brutalizing and self-censuring. The poetic space is both unbound and limiting, engendering an abject, marginalized identity for the poetic subject, and by extension, for the reader. As though the poetic subject attempts to discover the already visible, the complexity of the self becomes reduced to simple pain through self-isolation and pity. As a way of opening the collection, the tone and thematic of the poem set the stage for perpetual movement between recognition of the process of healing and the constant suffering which impedes that process. Returning to the work’s final poem, “Atrévete y sucederá” (74–75) summarizes the themes presented throughout the collection. Yet, after our reading of the first poem, the reader may now perceive the messages to which it is responding, while also understanding the possible solution it offers: Imagina la oscuridad. El horror dispara sus minutos a la velocidad de la metralla. Las sirenas crecen como aullidos de chacales, los gemidos retumban entre los escombros, clavan sus esquirlas. Imagina tus lágrimas como bayonetas, desahuciadas de todo consuelo, de toda piedad. Refugios rebosando de miedo, temblando de miedo, mientras los bombarderos gotean constelaciones en las aceras. Imagina el aire entrándote, invadiéndote de muerte. Se pulverizan árboles y bibliotecas; se desgarran cuerpos y muros; se mutilan recuerdos y palabras; se siembran minas, terrores y esqueletos de pájaros. Imagina la orfandad de las cosas. El llanto de las cosas. Imagina cómo los héroes se envuelven en capas escarlatas. Cómo los verdugos despliegan alfombras escarlatas. Cómo las víctimas se ahogan en manantiales escarlatas. Y cómo el espanto, la venganza y el odio ganan batallas en tu corazón sobrecogido

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Estás en medio del recinto inexpugnable del pánico. Y eres tú quien orquesta los crímenes. Porque has sido tú. Tú, que eres capaz de imaginar, de sentir todo lo que imaginas, de fabricar todo lo que sientes, de construir realidades con los sueños quién [sic] ha dado vida al horror. Por eso, atrévete a cambiar la estructura del mundo y donde dices temor di esperanza porque las lágrimas también son de alegría. Porque la sangre también es nacimiento. Porque la belleza también es sobrecogedora y el amor un potente estallido. Por eso, atrévete. Apacigua tu mente, ilumina tus ojos, imagina justicia, imagina consuelo, imagina bondad. (Eng., Imagine darkness. Horror discharges its minutes at machine gun speed. Sirens grow like jackals’ howls, The wails eco among the rubble, they drive in their splinters. Imagine tears like bayonets, Emptied of all comfort, all pity. Shelters overflowing with fear, trembling with fear, while the bombers drip constellations onto the pavement. Imagine air entering you, invading you with death. Trees and libraries are pulverized; bodies and walls are torn up; memories and words are mutilated; mines, terrors, and birds’ skeletons are sown. Imagine all things’ orphanhood. The weeping of things. Imagine how heroes are wrapped in scarlet capes. How the executioners unfurl scarlet carpets. How the victims are drowned in scarlet springs. And how fear, vengeance, and hate win battles in your overwhelmed heart. You’re in the middle of panic’s impregnable precinct. And it is you who are orchestrating crimes. Because it was you. You, who are capable of imagining, to feel all you imagine,

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to create all that you feel, to construct realities from dreams, the one who has given life to the horror. Therefore, dare to change the structure of the world and where you say fear, say hope because tears can also be of joy. Because blood is also birth. Because beauty is also overwhelming and love is a powerful burst. Therefore, dare. Calm your mind, enlighten your eyes, imagine justice, imagine comfort, imagine goodness.)

The poem begins in a dazzling progression of violent images, the passage of time as both quick and brutal. Sadness itself is seen as destructive (“imagina tus lágrimas como bayonetas”). The poetic subject confronts their own anger and self-loathing from within such a vile context with hope. The movement, then, from the world’s short-sightedness and life in fear to “justice . . . comfort . . . goodness” represents an opening into a greater, happier, and fulfilling existence. The contrasting images of “victims” and “heroes,” “fear” and “hope,” all show the raging battle between these forces in the life of the poetic subject. These lead to symbols such as “blood” and “birth” as both opposed and allied, as “blood” in the more widely recognized context may signify both blood spilled and blood as life, the latter of which gives rise to new life, or birth. These are borne of “la oscuridad,” a common symbol for death and/or the absence of hope. The poem then shows the poetic subject reaching toward the light. This would look to be a common trope in literature as well as in religious texts, as “seeing the light,” when in reference to the darkness as previously noted, may be interpreted as a non-mystical, theological recognition of the divine. Yet, when seen from the perspective of a mystical symbolism, outside of the confines of the theological and expanded into the realm of the theophanic, such an opposition signifies that these references to shadow, light, blood, eyes, and the heart may hint at something greater. The eye, with its meaning as “the quality of the mystery of God’s vision” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 24) and blood, whose reddish color signifies “travelling the [mystical] Path” (Vol. IV, 53), in context tell a story of following a trajectory that leads to divine vision, an ultimate knowledge beyond the darkness of the mundane world. In particular, it is that reaching out from the darkness of the mundane to the recognition of the mundane world’s contradictions which reveal this secondary, yet

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still essential, symbolic trajectory in the poem. The process, documented in previous studies as “Ma’rifat,” or gnosis, as well as in the works of other contemporaries of Rossetti, shows itself as the first steps to mystical illumination. The reader will then see the journey to the “heart,” or qalb, from within the system of Iberian mystical symbols as that representing the “Alam-al-mithal” or space from which true illumination begins. This symbolic movement reminds the reader of the final verses of Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo’s collection La mística del fracaso (2002). Los ojos de Isadora Psicótropos dudosos nos trajeron la “belle époque,” nosotros muertos y azules, insectos bajo la torrentera hipnótica del marino sin suerte: se cubrió la galaxia de lienzos como rayos que pintaban amores arrojados a los hielos del Ártico. Fue el huracán, fue la línea imaginaria que separa cúmulos y cuásares, cuando los llantos del “blues” cortaron nuestros ojos vacíos de mirar opacas entrañas de leones. Balcón del blanco corazón informe mecía el agua, desabrigados los amargos licores de las ingles, en un girar de alas sin gaviotas. ¡Cómo desentrañar quisiera la arqueología del bronce funerario, una vez se condena la tierra al polvo del milenio! Reflejó un compás, un círculo, un instante: “la memoria es la vida.” La vida es memoria de un ángulo recto que se ha torcido, memoria de cielos ya no transparentes, un amor triste que se baila. (65) (Eng., The Eyes of Isadora Doubtful psychotropics brought us the “belle époque,” we blue and dead, insects under the hypnotic gully of the luckless sailor: the Galaxy covered itself in canvas like lightning that painted love thrown on Arctic ice. It was a hurricane, it was the imaginary line that separated cumulus and quasars, when cries from the “blues” sliced open our eyes emptied from gazing on darkened entrails of lions. A balcony of the shapeless, white heart rocked the water, removed the bitter liquors of the groin, in a turning of wings

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without their seagulls. How I would adore unraveling the archeology of funerary bronze, once the Earth is condemned to millennial dust! It reflected a rhythm, a circle, an instant: “memory is life.” Life is memory of a straight angle that has been bent, a memory of skies no longer clear, a sad love that one dances.)

An unexpected parallel, the title of the work mirrors that of Joaquim Pessoa’s 1986 poetic collection Os Olhos de Isa, itself a work which diverges from Pessoa’s sociopolitical revolutionary poetic and toward a more inwardly focused study on love as the gateway to illumination (Simon, Understanding, 92). As in Jiménez Reinaldo’s poem, Rossetti also presents what would look like the poetic subject’s failed attempt at self-rescue from a desolate world via a series of intersecting, sexualized, self-referential and violent images. (One may note Jiménez Reinaldo’s mention of the “blues,” perhaps an allusion to Rossetti’s own 1996 collection). Unlike the poem above, however, Rossetti ends the poem in a moment of hope, when seen through either the critical lens of the “generación nocilla” or that of the mystical process. It is now possible for the reader of the collection to observe that a mystically charged symbolism pervade the collection, not residing simply in poems “IV” and “Atrévete y sucederá.” In “Hacedoras de ciudades,” for example, the dichotomy of the desired world versus the physical one clearly represents the excision between “khalq” and “haqq,” represented as the distance to or from the space for illumination “ . . . the realm of Divine Power is the Eternal Essence . . . [whenever] the light of theophany becomes distanced . . . the effects of human nature return . . . ” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 110). Ibn-Arabi, in the commentary provided to his own verses, “O grief for my heart, / O grief! O joy for my mind, / O joy,” also made clear such a split when he stated “ . . . Although most souls desire to be stripped [of their mundane bodies] and to return to their elemental world, yet . . . abstraction from the body should only be sought through ecstasy and self-annihilation” (trans. in Falconar, 79). In this, not only should the dichotomy between the two worlds be fluid, rather than absolute, the binary opposition which feeds into the mystical process also needs another, more intimate opposition, that of pleasure versus suffering. Rossetti’s poem completes this cycle of movement between these two pillars, not as a finality, but as a spectrum of possibility. In this vein, the critical and the essentialist arguments within the poem (and, in fact, throughout the work) do not contradict each other; rather, they become part of a much larger and more profound process of evolution for the poetic subject. This explains how the verse “En la nada de la nada” does not act in self-negation,

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since by annihilating nothing with nothing, rather than more of nothing, the process of mystical creation takes place. Speaking of which, in “Hacedoras de ciudades” the idea of the “artesana” may reference directly the act of creation. In highlighting the creative feminine, the poetic subject’s image also resonates within a mystical framework. “The Eternal Sophia . . . and Dante’s Beatrice, who were theophanic figures—figures in which G-d is manifested” (Falconar, 54–5). This figure becomes essential in the seeker’s process of illumination from the perspective of feminine “beauty as the manifestation of the divine”: “[this], and mystic love, . . . are both to be discerned in Alam-al-Mithal [,] the intermediate world which can be penetrated by Theophanic visions” (57). This feminine presence also creates the space into which the mystic enters, and from which that mystic finds illumination, in other words, “[s]he is creator” (60). This summary of the Sufi mystic Ibn-Arabi’s intellectualist philosophy on mystical illumination forms the basis of contemporary Iberian mystical symbolism, as shown in the work of López-Baralt (as cited previously), among others. In any case, and returning to the poem at hand, this metaphorical approach takes place within the space of Rossetti’s larger and more widely recognized poetic discourse, supporting it while also providing a solution to that discourse’s apocryphal tone. In the poem “Ley de las proporciones definidas,” the symbol of the mirror takes on several meanings. The most obvious interpretation is that of the judging external eye and forced self-criticism that lead the inner self to become as critical as the voices of others. However, according to Sufi mystical tradition, the certainty of one’s righteousness must be based on “visionary revelation and witnessing” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. III, 175), rather than on a notion of common sense in the mundane world. The eye of the poetic subject as a mystical symbol, then, contests this false certainty with the uncomfortable reality of a vision that exceeds and surpasses that of the other. “Because . . . vision . . . operates in a way which transcends our understanding, we are constantly disturbed and unsettled by it . . . ” (Vol. I, 25). Contextually within the poem, the final verse follows an affirmation of one’s achievements, despite “his” lack of recognition for these. In a mystical sense, the “suffering” described in the final verse could also refer to the body’s suffering as the spirit, now cognizant of the opposition between the mundane world’s superficial focus and the depth of the unseen, begins to abandon it in the hope of enlightenment. The spirit then sheds its physical manifestation, as the poet Rumi describes, “[t]hrow your self away, for your self is the torment!” (in Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 202–03). Here, the torment of Rossetti’s poetic subject unexpectedly expresses this notion. The idea of viewing illumination’s potency through one’s own reflection, or a sort of “espejismo” present in the poetic subject’s experience of

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growing, extra-mundane self-awareness, appears in works of other poets in this period and follows a similar pattern of revelation. One example comes from the poem “La danza del indio” by Izara Batres. “La danza del indio es un pasaje y un sistema, / el humo concedió el acceso al espejismo” (Batres, El fuego, 44) (Eng., “The dance of the Indian is a passage and a system, / smoke conceded access to the vision”). In these verses the poetic subject’s reflection on a cultural practice of self-awareness and realization also presents to the reader. Even from the poem’s title, as well as from the first cited above, the notion of a dance harkens to a mystical symbol of “rapture of the spirit” (Nurbakhsh, Vol. I, 179), a phenomenon which Falconar also refers to poetically as “mukti,” (153), or “mystic death,” (154). The image of smoke bringing clarity acts then as a binary opposition, one whose acknowledgement brings about the passage away from entrapment in the mundane, leading then to the removal of oneself from the false world and into the true, divine world. This newer analysis then leads the reader back to the opening poem of the collection. Similarly to Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo’s La mística del fracaso, what should drive a progression (from submerging into the mundane world to exceeding its limits via a cathartic process of symbolic raising) in this context forces the poetic subject to continue its suffering. The image of self-numbing via a “narcotic” appears not only in poems such as “Ronda tierna” (Jiménez Reinaldo, 13) but also in the earlier works of Blanca Andreu, such as in the poem below published in one of her early, award-winning collections, De una niña de provincias que vino a vivir en un Chagall (1981): POLIDROGODEPENDIENTE de láudano del sueño y no de las almenas más altas, vendrá la muerte entre melancólicos palimpsestos que fueron los poemas, vendrá sin las estrellas lácteas y sin tiranosaurios de luz, maroma umbilical para niños marítimos que se ahorcaron con algas y cabellos oceánicos huyendo en hipocampos de sueño de aquel parto, entre jarcias y vértebras. Pues somos una saga. Oleaje escarlata en delito, y cimas de cianuro, y golpes de cerezo. Pues somos, en mi cuerpo, una saga con luna abdicante, que recuerda colegios, mapas del mundo en otoño, complicadísimas hidrólisis, pero nunca marfil y mediodía.

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Colegio: niña que bebía los pomelos directamente en labios de la noche, que juraba acostarse con el miedo en la cama de nadie, que juraba que el miedo la había violado hasta doscientos hijos. Amor, la niña rusa que comulgaba reno asado y bebía liquen. Amor, la niña rusa que leía a Tom Wolfe. (De una niña, 13–14) (Eng., POLYDRUGADDICTED of dream’s laudanum and not of the highest battlements, death will come among melancholic palimpsests that were once poems, it will come without milky stars and without light’s Tyrannosaur, umbilical cord for marine children who hang themselves with algae’s and Ocean hairs fleeing in hippocampus of dreams of that birth, among riggings and vertebra. As we are a saga. Scarlet swells in crime, and cyanide summits, and cherry tree punches. As we are, in my body, a saga with a renouncing moon, who remembers high schools, maps of the world in Autumn, overly complicated hydrolysis, but who never remembers ivory and noon. School: girl who drinks grapefruits into nighttime lips directly, who swore she’d go to bed with fear in nobody’s bed, who swore that fear had raped her up to her two hundred children. Love, the Russian girl who ate baked reindeer as her communion and would drink lichen. Love, the Russian girl who would read Tom Wolfe [in Simon, Blanca Andreu, 64])

A summarized analysis of this poem will aid us in observing the point of comparison at hand. The concept of a self-imposed isolation through drug-induced numbness may serve as a sort of antecedent to the similar distancing the poetic subject perceives in Rossetti’s collection. Here Andreu’s

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poetic subject finds themselves very much trapped in a universe made up of surrealist forms and movement between different and contrasting metonymies (“una saga con luna abdicante, / que recuerda colegios, mapas del mundo en otoño, / complicadísimas hidrólisis, / pero nunca marfil y mediodía”), unable to escape the nightmare of their own mind. By comparison, “Sunt Lacrimae Rerum” serves as a good example, in that the numbness both protects and limits the poetic subject from their own awareness of the world that surrounds them, as commented previously. When taken into the larger, literary context in which Rossetti’s poetic work resides, then, the reader sees proof that the mystical symbolic tendencies and parabolas in Deudas contraídas and other collections do not occur in isolation. Rather, they surge forth as part of a transcultural and transliterary process of reimagining the place of the poetic word in a literary context more befitting of the issues of individual, essentialist ontology and sociocultural, posthumanized epistemologies of the early 21st century. In sum, Deudas contraídas stands at the technical, thematic, and epistemological pinnacle of Ana Rossetti’s more recent poetic work. This unique, novel, and dense collection reflects more than 40 years of artistic evolution of both the individual poet and the society surrounding her. The poems contained within approach contemporary individual questions of autochthony, sociopolitical and socioliterary challenges, and more traditional topics of love and loss with a combined posthuman, after-pop, and mystical discourse that engages its readers from within the verses and within themselves.

Conclusion

This study has proposed a longitudinal restructuring of the variety of critical lenses applied to the poetry of Ana Rossetti according to the idea that mystical symbolism in poetic works functions as part of a larger movement in literature. In this, the literary work retains elements of what critical texts call Literary postmodernism and adopt new forms and observational angles from which the reimagining of the human experience of the world may take place. In contextualizing Rossetti’s poetic evolution from the 1980s to today, the reader will perceive a clear trajectory from the antihegemonic, deconstructed series of purposeful symbolic anachronisms toward a transcultural expression on contemporary personal, collective, and societal issues within a posthuman socioliterary framework in the mid to late 1990s. This at first bases itself on the evident ascribing of Greco-Roman and Greco-Roman-based early Modern social and literary mythologies. Yet, in this period the reader observes a new symbolism in Rossetti’s poetic work. This clearly mystical symbolic system, rooted in that of Santa Teresa de Ávila and San Juan de la Cruz, mystical poets of the 16th century, was based almost exclusively in the poetics and commentary from the 12th- and 13th-century Iberian Sufi mystic Ibn-Arabi (whose work found many of its own symbolic content in that of his earlier contemporary, Suhrawardy). During this period and into the early 21st century, Rossetti’s intertextual and trans-literary verses felt the ever-growing presence of this symbolic network. At first, in works such as Punto umbrío, its presence was subtle and seemed almost decorative when taken alongside more easily recognized antihegemonic thematics. At the same time and into the middle and end of the 1990s, however, in Notas para un blues this tendency becomes more distinct and palpable. By the beginning of the 21st century, and most notably in the works Llenar tu nombre, El mapa de la espera and Deudas contraídas, the mystical has become an essential part of the critical and expressive poetic apparatus which Rossetti’ poetic subject would utilize, and through which this subject would thrive. Although Sufi mystical thought may seem a non 109

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sequitur for some readers, the analysis this study offers has proven that, via an evolving symbolism in Rossetti’s poetry of the late 20th and early 21st centuries on the one hand, and on the other, posthuman and post-postmodern tendencies, the reader has the opportunity to gaze into a changing socioliterary landscape from within. A variety of themes in Rossetti’s poetry have remained constant, while other, more timely ideas surge forth in her newer works. Those that have repeated while in keeping with context include, as noted earlier, the question of the female/woman subject’s agency in the areas of sexual and existential liberty. These themes appear from within a social context of masculine, heteronormative hegemony, and thus receive a high level of acerbic criticism on the part of the poetic subject via techniques such as denaturalization and deconstruction, all part of the overall approach of Literary postmodernism as discussed previously. This is evidenced in collections such as those contained in the larger volume Indicios vehementes. Beginning with Virgo potens and Punto umbrío, the focus of these themes remains, although the decentering of traditional, hegemonic sociopolitical structures no longer seems the desired end result of the works’ thematic development. By the 21st century, the poetic subject no longer seems as keen on dismantling hegemonies related to gender and more focused on attacking and rewriting those involved in the ever-growing superficiality of the contemporary social landscape. Issues of personal responsibility and the loss of depth of thought in the world becomes the themes from which Rossetti’s critical lens bears fruit. Specifically, an adherence to the inversion of social discourse while also seeking out novel approaches to an utterly decentered and meaningless existence find a point of juncture in her verses. Particularly in the poems of Deudas contraídas, the poetic subject’s despair contests itself via the hope for a reimagined present where the light may return to the posthuman machining of humanity’s collective ontology. In this, the reader views a new epistemological approach to the ever evolving thematics of Rossetti’s poetic subject. Rossetti’s assertive poetic voice began to take on a hopeful approach in more recent years, with respect to three collections in particular, Llenar tu nombre and El mapa de la espera, culminating in the final verses of Deudas. This perspective does not impede the questioning of notions of subjectivity, agency, or abjection which the poetic subject suffers and through which they, emboldened by hope, set forth on a journey toward a brighter future. The mystical process which appears as ever more fundamental to Rossetti’s poetic study of the human condition also reinforces this notion. Rossetti’s poetry has delineated the broader socioliterary trajectory of Spain in the period of 1980 to 2020. While the concerns of the post-Franco period hinged on a reaffirmation of liberal ideals and the process of deconstructing

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the male-dominated hegemony, with the approach of a new century came new issues. The rise of the neo-liberal, oligarchic state within both a more heavily integrated, superficially democratic Europe, and a new generation whose labor and financial opportunities could not stay in step with the empty promises of a better tomorrow, and in the context of one major (2008) and two smaller (2004 and 2014) economic and social upheavals, prompted Rossetti to move her poetic subjects’ foci toward what may be read as a more socially compromised position. The Spain of Rossetti’s literary beginnings, in essence, is unfortunately more ontologically similar to that of her literary present. The resulting epistemological shift, and growing call to a reimagined essentialism, from the mid-1990s to the second decade of the 21st century, has been gradual yet has now clearly evidenced itself. In composing this study over the twelve-month period from June 2021 to June 2022, I have been struck by at least two possible modes for future research that have revealed themselves, as well as the need for an expanded study of this nature, both in breadth and depth, beyond that of the diachronically oriented poetic analysis offered in this short book. The approach that has caught my eye most is that of what has been called “Parallax Theory.” As the name suggests, it is based on the idea that, which traditional critical texts have read literary works from fixed perspectives, the critic should consistently reposition themself with regard to the position of the poetic/narrative subject. Žižek’s summary of Karatani’s perspective offers a readable and useful working definition of the theory insofar as the present study would be concerned: “confronted with an antinomic stance in the precise Kantian sense of the term, we should renounce all attempts to reduce one aspect to the other (or, even more so, to enact a kind of ‘dialectical synthesis’ of opposites); on the contrary, we should assert antinomy as irreducible, and conceive the point of radical critique not as a certain determinate position as opposed to another position, but as the irreducible gap between the positions itself, the purely structural interstice between them” (Žižek, 18).

In this vein, the kind of reinterpretation may be presented as a reconfiguration of the relationship between subject and object, between these and the observer, in such a way that critical literary discourse becomes subject-context dependent. If we were to align the present study in such a manner, for example, then both the posthuman, “generación nocilla” elements of recent writings and the post-deconstructive, transliterary critical techniques applied to them would avail themselves of each other, rather than the unilateral, interpretive mechanism currently applied. Although somewhat present in this study, a

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more fluid relationship of this nature could lead the reader toward a more self-aware mode of reading and post-textual rewriting. In a blatantly comprehensive sense, a definitive study of contemporary mystical literatures in Iberia is far overdo. A longitudinal, context-driven approach to the last six or seven decades, beyond that which may be found in the introduction to this book, could lead to a more profound understanding of the philosophical strains from which contemporary societies suffer. The development of a more concise and transdisciplinary socioliterary framework, one which proves mystical literature’s place as an expression of late 20th- and early 21st-century anxieties, would reveal the search of something greater than the posthuman, decentered, transcultural reality left in the wake of a world reshaped by late 20th century postmodernism and literary/critical postmodernity.

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Index

“Alam-al-Mithal,” 55, 61, 102, 104 Andreu, Blanca, 19, 23, 42, 105– 106, 113, 119 Antihegemonic. See Hegemony Barker, Jesse, 6, 113 Batres Cuevas, Izara, ii, 22–23, 37, 84, 97, 105, 113 Binary (opposition[s]), v, 5, 19, 49, 55, 61, 63, 66, 68, 70, 75, 79, 82, 91, 95, 103, 105 Blues (music), 49, 53, 61, 102, 103, 109 Body, 21–22, 34, 36, 42, 48, 96, 97, 103, 106; eroticized, 31, 36; female, 30; lover’s, male, 36; of lover, 26, 36; poetic, 31; poetic subject, 70 Brina, Maximiliano, 7 Calles Hidalgo, Jara, 5, 13, 113 Carrión, Jorge, 12, 13, 14, 77, 113 Carvajal Ayala, Blanca, 89, 113 Castro, Rosalía de, 81 Cernuda, Luis, 92 Crisis, 29, 40; economic, 89; post-crisis, 4 Cuenca Sandoval, Mario, 16, 22, 113 Cultural Hierarchy, 31 Debicki, Andrew, 32, 113

Deconstruction, 2, 5, 21–22, 26, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 45, 49, 77, 110; post-deconstruction, 40 Dehumanization, 91 Demeuse, Sarah, 31, 42, 46, 113 Derrida, Jacques, 47, 113; (derridean), 36 Dickson, Amy, 91 Falconar, A. E. I., 19, 51, 55, 103–105, 114 Fernández, Javier, 80, 114 Fernández Mallo, Agustín, 7, 8, 9, 22, 113–114, 117 Flack, Roberta, 41 Gamoneda, Antonio, 9, 20, 114 García, Noelia, 6, 114 García Lorca, Federico, 81 García Teresa, Alberto, 4 “generación nocilla,” 6, 8, 12, 15–16, 18, 30, 49, 55–56, 59, 72, 77–78, 86, 95, 103, 111 Glass, Phillip, 91 Gnosis (Ma’arifat), 67, 102 Golden Ratio(/Mean), 96, 97 Hegelian (dialectic), 69 119

120

Index

Hegemony, 36, 110; antihegemonic (criticism) 2, 15, 20, 32, 37, 56, 59, 68–69, 77–78, 89, 109; phallic/ phallocentric/male-dominate 19, 21, 31, 32, 45, 48, 111 Iberia, 112 Iberian, 2, 4, 7, 19, 20–21, 23, 24, 26–27, 31, 36, 37, 58, 61, 65, 68, 70, 72, 76, 102, 104, 109, 116, 119 Ilasca, Roxana, 6, 13, 114 Janés, Clara, ii, 19, 20, 21–23, 30, 32, 42, 49, 55, 66–68, 70, 76, 81–82, 85, 93, 114–116 Jiménez Reinaldo, Jesús, 19, 24, 32, 51, 57, 85, 102–103, 105, 114 Karatani, Kojin (via Žižek), 111 Khagram, Sanjeev (and Peggy Levitt), 3, 4, 114 Koovackal, George, 91, 114 Kruger-Robbins, Jill, 31–32, 114 López-Baralt, Luce, 19–20, 104, 114 Machín Lucas, Jorge, 20, 115 Maíz Chacón, Jordi, ii, 1, 115 Makris, Mary, 40, 41, 115 Ma’rifat (gnosis), 67, 102 Medieval Spain 4, 115 Menocal, María Rosa, 5, 18, 115 Merino, Ana, 10, 30, 77, 115 Moreiras Menor, Cristina, 32, 115 Movida (madrileña), v, 29, 30–31, 56, 116 Mystical, v, 18–23, 26, 30, 36, 42, 45–46, 49, 51, 53–56, 58–62, 64–66, 70–72, 75–77, 79, 82–86, 89, 91, 101, 104, 107, 109, 112, 119; elements, 24; illumination, 20–22, 55, 66, 71, 85, 102, 104; process, 19, 20, 24, 42, 55–56, 66–68, 70, 81, 103, 110; resonance, 51, 54, 82, 86, 95; subject(s)/seeker(s), 20, 24, 82,

85, 91, 93; Sufi (thought/writing), 3, 19, 82; symbol(ism), 2, 21, 36, 37, 40, 42, 45–46, 49, 53, 59, 61, 68, 70, 71, 76–78, 84, 86, 92, 94, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 109; union, 34 Mysticism, 19, 76, 115, 119; literary, 37 Núñez Sabarís, Xaquín, 14, 115 Nurbakhsh, Javad, 19, 24, 42, 46, 55, 61, 67, 68, 70–71, 84–85, 92, 101, 103–105, 115 Pastor, Sheila, 13, 115 Pérez-Bustamante Mourier, Ana Sofía, 29, 116 Pessoa, Joaquim, 19, 32, 42, 65, 68, 116, 119 Poetry/Poetics/Poets, Arabic, 21,; contemporary, 6; golden-age, 19, 32, 44–45; mystical, 5, 21, 22, 26, 30, 62, 68, 75; neo-classical, 44; “of silence”/“del silencio,” 20, 30, 67; Persian, 21; Portuguese, 19, 117; (Ana) Rossetti’s (of Rossetti), 3, 20, 27, 29, 31–32, 34, 37, 48, 56, 59, 61, 69, 75, 79, 109–110, 115–117; social(ly aware), 72; Spanish, 8, 18, 32 Postmodernism (literary), 1, 109–110, 112 Postmodernity (sociocultural), 1–2, 6, 14, 112 Post-novísimos, 40 Rendón-Infante, Olga, 60, 116 Saint John of the Cross, 19, 36, 45 Saint Theresa of Ávila, 19 Sartre, Paul, 114 Sherno, Silvia, 79–80 Solfège (diatonic musical scale), 51 Spain, 4, 6, 8, 37, 51, 77, 80, 111, 113– 115, 119; contemporary, 18, 21, 77; medieval, 4

Index

Tagore, Rabindranath, 24 Transcultural, 2, 20, 77, 86, 107, 109, 112 Transhumanism, 2 Transnational, 3–4, 21, 59, 68, 91, 114, 119 Ugalde, Sharon Keefe, 21, 116

Valente, José Ángel, 20, 115 Vergil (Aeneid), 98 Vieira, Vergílio Alberto, 19, 32, 117 Vitelli, Roberto, 2, 117 Zambra, Alejandro, 8, 117

121

About the Author

Robert Simon is professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Kennesaw State University. His publications include: From Post-Mortem to Post-Mystic: Blanca Andreu, Galicia, and the New Iberian Mysticism (2019), To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry (2017), The Modern, the Postmodern, and the Fact of Transition: The Paradigm Shift through Peninsular Literatures (2011), and Understanding the Portuguese Poet Joaquim Pessoa, 1942–2007: A Study in Iberian Cultural Hybridity (2008). He has also published journal articles and book chapters discussing transnational mystical tendencies between Angola, Portugal, and Spain, along with several collections of poetry, including Poems from an Airplane and Graveyard (2007), The Traveler / el viajero / o Viajante (2010), and Poems of a Turning Professor: A Collection in Two Epochs and Five Parts (2015).

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