The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe: Separating the Craft from the Discourse (Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia) 303081615X, 9783030816155

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HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA

The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe Separating the Craft from the Discourse Randy Muth · Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe · Shigeko Mato

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia

Series Editors Ignacio López-Calvo, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA, USA Kathleen López, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

This series is devoted to the diversity of encounters between Latin America and Asia through multiple points of contact across time and space. It welcomes different theoretical and disciplinary approaches to define, describe, and explore the histories and cultural production of people of Asian descent in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also welcomes research on Hispano-Filipino history and cultural production. Themes may include Asian immigration and geopolitics, the influence and/or representation of the Hispanic world in Asian cultures, Orientalism and Occidentalism in the Hispanic world and Asia, and other transpacific and south-south exchanges that disrupt the boundaries of traditional academic fields and singular notions of identity. The geographical scope of the series incorporates the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Pacific Rim and the Caribbean region. We welcome single-author monographs and volumes of essays from experts in the field from different academic backgrounds. About the series editors: Ignacio López-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California, Merced, USA and director of the UC Merced Center for the Humanities. He is author of several books on Latin American and US Latino literature. He is co-executive director of the academic journal Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. Kathleen López is Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Department of History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA. She is author of Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History (2013) and a contributor to Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought (2015), Immigration and National Identities in Latin America (2016), and Imagining Asia in the Americas (2016). Advisory Board: Koichi Hagimoto, Wellesley College, USA Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University, USA Junyoung Verónica Kim, University of Pittsburgh, USA Ana Paulina Lee, Columbia University, USA Debbie Lee-DiStefano, Southeast Missouri State University, USA Shigeko Mato, Waseda University, Japan Zelideth María Rivas, Marshall University, USA Robert Chao Romero, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Lok Siu, University of California, Berkeley, USA Araceli Tinajero, City College of New York, USA Laura Torres-Rodríguez, New York University, USA

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15129

Randy Muth · Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe · Shigeko Mato

The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe Separating the Craft from the Discourse

Randy Muth Faculty of Education Kio University Nara, Japan

Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe Politics and Economics Sciences Waseda University Shinjuku City, Japan

Shigeko Mato School of International Liberal Studies Waseda University Shinjuku City, Japan

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia ISBN 978-3-030-81614-8 ISBN 978-3-030-81615-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81615-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Louis and Christa and in loving memory of Sharon

Foreword by Teresa and Enrique Watanabe

José, Peru, The Peruvian North, Laredo, Our Home What made José a poet? What were the circumstances that produced his artistic sensitivity? Why did he write the poems that he so painstakingly elaborated? How did he find the way to express himself the way he did? These are some of the questions that we, his siblings, ask ourselves every so often but rarely openly talk about with each other. Nor do we attempt to determine why he was the strange one, the one that was designated by who’s know which god of art. Maybe the first thing that we should point out is his propensity to all artistic expression, neither painting, sculpture, music, handicrafts, architecture, theater, nor cinema were foreign to him. José chose poetry, but he was always involved in some project designed to stimulate minds through his peculiar sensitivity. José grew up as a survivor of the terrible epidemics that caused the deaths of countless children prior to the spread of vaccines. In Laredo, children died by the dozens, among them two of our siblings. Whether it was because of the fevers, or because of the trauma that followed the deaths of two of their children, our parents were particularly protective of José, to the point that those of us who followed him in age felt compelled to take care of him, to make sure that nothing disturbed his health or his weakened heart. As kids we loved to listen to our father’s stories. He was very much a storyteller, and he always came home with some story, sometimes about Japan. We came to know a Japan idealized by our father: a country of vii

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vast beaches, huge fruits, mountains, snow, and natural hot springs with flower petals. Other times he would tell us fables populated by rabbits, foxes, sea turtles, demons, and the great Momotaro, that good boy born out of a peach. There were also our mother’s stories. The stories, in her words, were valuable testimonies: the revolutions of the beginnings of the twentieth century, the trade-unionists, the bandits who wore machetes on their belts, the relatives in the military who were killed or politically persecuted, the rains and the floods, the earthquakes, the crimes, the epidemics; whether they concerned real people or were fabricated out of ghostly matter, it didn’t matter: All of them were heightened to mythical dimensions in her mouth. There was no shortage of imagination in our home, both when we were in Laredo and in Huanchaco; but this imagination co-existed with our reality, and all the while our father would tell us about the necessity of volition and care when carrying out any task. This always remained present in José’s mind. When he was writing and he felt that he had come up with the idea, the phrase or the word he was hoping for, he would read it and ask if the old man would have approved. He said that he couldn’t help himself from telling tall tales when he wrote. His greatest obsession was to say something, to find the exact place for his idea of a poem, and then little by little bring about the best way to say it. Throughout all his endeavors, whether graphic compositions, scenography, historical investigations, the treatment of texts, or poetry, the rigor obsessed about transcending mediocracy and the anguish at the uncertainty of not knowing whether he was doing it right were always present. And then, as a decisive trace in his judgment of his works and of people, there appeared his intolerance, and at the same time, his greatest fear: that of being considered vulgar or ridiculous. It was not only sensitivity— he would say—but also talent, the ability to observe, to find the best solutions in matters of duty, as in art. Surely as something he learned from architecture or from the visual arts, he said that poems unveil unfathomable connections, but that in the end these can be understood and can be seen because they strike nerves. That is why he equally admired Le Corbusier, Aalto or Gaudí, and also Van Gogh, Cézanne and Tilsa [Tsuchiya]. His poetry is thus filled with what José used to call visual culture, but also with territory and space, where there are the omnipresent sun and the desert, the sand, the stone and the hills of the northern coast of our country, bare of vegetation, and,

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of course, Laredo, the register of his poems is Laredo. The rest is a certain lyrical poetry, a musicality that he often insistently searched for humming around the house potential melodies, which he later refused to turn into songs when Rafo Ráez suggested it. And there’s politics as well. Little has been said about José’s commitment to society and his activism in favor of the causes of the dispossessed and marginalized people of Latin America. There are few societies as unequal as Peru. Sometimes, when we talk about his poetry, we clearly identify facts or images that shot out of family conversations on social or political issues. And not to forget how deliberate and determined he was to make sure that his poems did not become just social denouncements without poetry, or just pamphlets. Lima, Peru May 2021

Teresa Watanabe Enrique Watanabe

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following for their support and collaboration during the process of researching and writing this book: Tilsa Watanabe, Teresa Watanabe, Ignacio López-Calvo, Yuri Alithú Sakata Gonzáles, Keiko Shimizu, Jaime Arequipeño Sifuentes, José Li Ning Anticona, José Canziani, Camilo Fernández Cozman, Diego Alonso Sánchez, Alonso Belaúnde Degregori. We would also like to express special gratitude to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for their generous financial support: Grant No. 17K02668.

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The coup d’état led by General Velasco on October 3, 1968, which deposed the democratically elected presidency of Fernando Belaúnde, commenced a military dictatorship that would impose authoritarian rule on Peruvian society until 1975. Characterized by a fierce suppression of any degree of political dissent, the military administration instituted strict censorship on the media, a situation that culminated in 1974 with the expropriation of newspapers, television and radio. This social landscape, coupled with the long list of political and ideological upheavals that defined the late 1960s, cultivated the fertile conditions that later produce prominent Peruvian literary circles such as Hora Zero and Estación Reunida that would play a paramount role in uniting influential poets that eventually formed the poetic movement known as Generación del 70. The proponents of this generation shared a common dissidence toward the dictatorial government that manifested itself in a politically charged poetry that sought social and political transformation. The poets of these circles were also bonded by similar experiences of dislocation, the majority having relocated to Lima from provincial regions. Authors like Antonio Cillóniz (1944), Abelardo Sánchez León (1947), Tulio Mora (1948–2019), Enrique Verástegui, and Carmen Ollé (1947) would sow the seeds of a poetic movement whose central figure was the chaotic, urban life in the capital. The desire for social and political reform led to the development of a colloquial poetry more capable of reaching the

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masses than previous classical styles characteristic of Cesar Vallejo (1892– 1938) and Carlos Oquendo de Amat (1905–1936). Tulio Mora sums of the atmosphere of the period: The provincials wrote about the Lima they had invaded, and about not finding in Lima a place where they believed, theoretically, that their personal problems would be solved. They believed Lima continued to be a landscape of doubt and uncertainty. Consequently, their vision was somewhat pessimistic, especially due to the treatment these provincials received. The important thing is that this was mutually nurtured and deliberately thought out by the members of Hora Zero. In addition, it was meant for provincial poets to write not only to speak about Lima, but also to question their place of origin. Subsequently, provincial poets appeared dealing with similar issues on style, as well as a common interest in incorporating the everyday into poetry from their own sector.1

Proponents of this movement adamantly rejected the exclusivity of literature as a professional vocation, advocating that poetry was for anyone with strong convictions. This gave rise to a completely novel concept in poetry that utilized colloquial, less refined language to depict the “unpleasant” and “ugly” reality of life in Lima. This notion that poetry could be an impetus to social change was a driving force in much of the poetic production of this generation. In his comprehensive anthology of the Generación del ‘70 entitled Estos 13, José Miguel Oviedo recounts the social and political circumstances that would unite these young Peruvian poets under one ideology, and highlights the historical events that most fomented their literary activism. José Watanabe (1945–2007) was undoubtedly a unique presence in this context. Although being actively involved with these literary circles, he maintained a side-line position with respect to the more radical aspects of the movement labeling himself as a “izquierdista no orgánico” (nonorganic leftist) (De Paz 96). However, what most distinguished him from other proponents of this literary movement was his particular conceptualization of poetry which insisted on the dissociation of literary production and political ideology. Coinciding with the idea of a colloquiallanguage accessible to the masses, Watanabe was not inclined, however, to fixate on the urban spaces that predominated Lima. He preferred to use visual references from provincial settings, focusing more on scenes found in nature and less on political statements. This contrasting perspective to the literary

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objectives of his generation, along with his unique predilection for poeticizing about scenes in the natural world, would result in 1971 in his first book Álbum de Familia (Family Album) which won him the prestigious award of Young Poet of Peru that same year, and would later contribute to positioning him among the most important authors of contemporary Spanish poetry. Much has been written about the biography of José Watanabe, the influence of his childhood on his poetic creativity, and especially his Japanese ancestry. It is not our intention, as the saying goes, to beat a dead horse by reiterating the much repeated discourse that identifies Japanese elements and Oriental sensibilities in the Peruvian poet. This book intends to do just the opposite. Our study here aims at de-orientalizing the figure and poetic creations of José Watanabe. The underlying purpose that serves as a cohesive glue binding the essays in the following pages is twofold: 1) establish that orientalizedperceptions prevalent in Western views of Japan have shaped public discourse on the figure and poetic works of Watanabe and 2) demonstrate that the literary quality of Watanabe’s poetry does not reside in an inherent “Japaneseness”, but can be located in the masterful manipulation of poetic devices and the skillful usage of language that evokes particular sensorial and emotional responses. The first chapter explores popular discourse which traces Watanabe’s meditative style to his paternalAsianheritage demonstrating how orientalizedperceptions of “Japaneseness” have predominated discussions on the poet’s figure and artistry. The analysis also highlights the role Watanabe himself had in proliferating stereotypical notions of “Japaneseness” that shed light on how the poet projected a personal identity that appealed to orientalized discourse. In addition, a discussion on the prevalence of haiku in discourse related to Watanabe underscores exoticized interpretations of this poetic genre and how these have shaped perceptions of the poet and his works. The second chapter is dedicated to an analysis of rhetorical and stylistic characteristics, as well as rhythmic bases prevalent in Watanabe’s poetic creations. This analysis, developed around the concept of “realist” poetry, emphasizes the interweaving of stylistic-rhetorical, and rhythmic-metric constituents that are characteristic of the poetic cosmovision of Watanabe. This exploration uncovers the diverse literary devices that have gone unnoticed by the great majority of literary critics and underscores the complexity of the creative process of this profound lyricist. The analysis

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hopes to open the door for future studies of a technical nature that have until now been neglected. The third chapter offers an approach to understanding Watanabe’s poetry that goes beyond theories and methodologies aligned to specific, rather rigid, schools of thought and disciplinary orientations. Drawing on Rita Felski’s “postcritical reading” (not uncritical reading) and the notion of affect articulated by Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, this chapter aims to articulate how Watanabe’s poetry matters to us, which contrasts largely to conventional readings that propose “digging down” in order to uncover hidden meanings behind poetic works (Felski Limits 56). The examination intends to demonstrate how his poetic creations stimulate our sensory and perceptual pathways to invite us to become co-partners who interact with his dexterous words in order to illuminate unprecedented ways of reading, thinking and existing. This exploration sheds light on the affective interminglements and networks of Watanabe’s poetry, readers’ engagement and beyond. Finally, by dismantling orientalist discourse that has surrounded the figure and poetry of José Watanabe and by demonstrating that the genius of his artistry is not the by-product of an essentialistnotion of Asian sensitivity, but the result of his particular and personal creativity and artistic talent, this book hopes to impel studies of a more diverse nature on the cosmovision of this extraordinary poet. Randy Muth

Notes 1. López, Ana Espejo. “Entrevista a Tulio Mora” in Ciudad Letrada, 2001, May, 7. “Los provincianos escriben sobre la Lima que ellos han invadido y no encuentran en Lima el lugar donde teóricamente creían que iban a resolver sus problemas personales; creen que Lima sigue siendo un escenario dudoso, incierto. En consecuencia, es una visión un poco pesimista. Sobre todo por el trato que reciben los provincianos. Lo importante es que hubo una retroalimentación de esto y eso fue deliberadamente meditado por la gente de Hora Zero y consistía en que los poetas provincianos no solamente escribían para hablar de Lima sino que llevaban este cuestionamiento a su lugar de origen. Entonces aparecen poetas provincianos tocando temas muy similares en cuanto al estilo y al interés de incorporar lo cotidiano a lo poético en su propio sector.”

Contents

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Poetry, Identity and Being “Japanese” Randy Muth “Japaneseness” and Nihonjinron Identity and Poetry José Watanabe and Being “Japanese” Haiku and Nihonjinron The “Spirit” of Haiku in Watanabe Conclusion Rhetorical Approaches to the Poetry of José Watanabe Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe Semantic Analysis and Figurative Language Metaphor Visionary Image Vision Simile Comparison Symbol Homogeneous Symbols Heterogeneous Symbols Conclusions Metapoetic Approaches Meter and Rhythm Conclusion

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CONTENTS

José Watanabe’s Poetic Capacity and Energy Beyond Critique for Critique’s Sake Shigeko Mato Introduction Attunement Between Watanabe’s Poetic Vision and “Postcritical Reading” “Prayer Before My Mother’s Cadaver:” Not Just a Dead Body? What Does “Prayer Before My Mother’s Cadaver” Do? “Laughing and Clouded:” Proof of the Living Around the Dead Feel the Vitality of “Laughing and Clouded”! “Flags Behind the Fog:” Walking and Pausing “Visceral Forces” in “Flags Behind the Fog” “The Algarrobo:” “Hooked on” a Tree in a Dessert Entangled “Visceral Forces” in “The Algarrobo” Conclusion: Starting to Walk, See, and Cuddle

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Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Poetry, Identity and Being “Japanese” Randy Muth

Growing up in a Southern California suburb during a time when public transportation was virtually non-existent, driving was more necessity than luxury. As a young adult with a recently acquired driver’s license preparing to make my debut into society, I was very much interested in TV commercials which flashed expensive new cars I knew I would never afford. The Volkswagen commercials were especially intriguing because the strange foreign word “fahrvergnügen” was constantly repeated to explain the unique German sensibility to driving. The idea that the particular notion of driving enjoyment found in German culture was impregnated in the engineering of Volkswagen cars completely fascinated me. Years later on a family trip in Frankfurt, I innocently asked a middle-aged taxi driver who, sporting a dapper tweed blazer and listening to Bach, emitted a presence I thought surely to be “fahrvergnügen”, about this refined notion of driving. To my embarrassment, he laughed and explained that the word I thought manifested exotic cultural sensibilities to driving was no more than a neologism compound created specifically for advertising.

R. Muth (B) Faculty of Education, Kio University, Nara, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Muth et al., The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81615-5_1

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During university, and still a young, impressionable adult, I needed a few more credits to complete my degree and decided to enroll in an elective course on Japanese society. Throughout the entire semester, I was utterly captivated by the descriptions and explanations of this exotic culture so foreign to my own. The students were expected to learn a long list of Japanese vocabulary buzz words that supposedly expressed unique artistic sensibilities and superior notions of integrity and moral conduct. The cultural specificity of these words was later reinforced when I initiated studies in Japanese literature and expressions like “wabi”, “sabi”, and “mono-no-aware” would often appear in literary anthologies. Shortly after graduation, and armed with an intense desire to experience this exotic culture, I left for Japan where almost 30 years later I still reside. My first years were characterized by intense efforts to learn the language and comprehend in the most experiential way possible its unique culture and spirituality. Around this time, and confident that my linguistic skills had facilitated a better understanding of the vocabulary that explains uniquely Japanese sensibilities, I was introduced to José Watanabe. In September of 2003, and convinced that his poetry embodied these unique notions I was trying to understand in my adopted Japan, I set off for Lima to meet the man who would occupy my reflections for many years to come. My analysis of his poetry and of our conversations would eventually result in one the first books dedicated to examining the “Japaneseness” in the poetic creations of this Peruvian author. However, since then the escalated popularity of José Watanabe and his poetry, especially after his unfortunate passing in 2007, has generated numerous studies on his writings, many of which refer to those Japanese buzz words in their analysis of his poems. With a less idealistic and more holistic perspective of Japanese society and its culture, I began to question many of the associations between Watanabe and Japan made in these studies, including my own. Many of the notions attributed to Japanese sensibilities in Watanabe were frankly absent in my surrounding reality, or rather, were present in any other society I could think of. These reflections led to a reevaluation of my approach to understanding the poet and his artistry. I began to understand that the “Japaneseness” that so infamously accented Watanabe’s figure, as well as his literature, was less inherent and more socially constructed. A more objective review of Japanese history and literature, coupled with a profound interest in identity studies, resulted in the present analysis, which in the end aims to

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contribute to the ever-increasing body of academic studies intended to better understand the artistic genius of this Peruvian poet.

“Japaneseness” and Nihonjinron While modernity paved the way for the development of the Japanese industrial machine and the resulting economic affluence that has placed Japan among the most economically solvent nations on the planet, it left an ontological vacuity that induced a desperate search among its people for a “Japanese” identity. This pursuit to define “Japaneseness” manifested itself in a binary paradigm that situated Japan in direct opposition with the West and evolved into what would be known as Nihonjinron, or theory of Japaneseness. Nihonjinron, in its aim to delineate the identity of the Japanese people, has propagated a discourse characterized by essentialist notions of cultural and racial uniqueness. Disseminated by intellectuals, politicians, and cultural figures, Nihonjinron has systematically projected stereotypical imagery related to the idea of Japanese ethnic homogeneity, as well as, cultural and racial superiority. The continued popularity of books like “Amae” No Kouzou (The Structure of Amae) by Takeo Doi (1971) and Tate No Shakai No Ningen Kankei: Tan Itsu Shakai No Riron (Human Relationships in a Vertical Society: Theory of a Homogeneous Society) by Chie Nakane (1967) attests to the interest the Japanese population shares in the construction of a unified identity. Other proponents of Nihonjinron such as Tetsuro Watsuji (1935), who proposes an essentialist relationship between the “unique” Japanese character and the climate, and Sukehiro Hirakawa (2013), who proclaims Japanese identity can be traced to the “uniqueness” of its language, attempt to highlight physiological and environmental factors that supposedly explain the nature of “Japaneseness”. The nationalist project of Nihonjinron is not limited to convincing the Japanese of their own exceptionalism, but also to enlighten the West on their singularity in hopes of forging a legitimate place among Western hegemonic powers. The publication of Bushido by Inazo Nitobe in 1905 would become one of the most emblematic and influential works of Nihonjinron in the West and would impact Japanese cultural representations for generations to come. Bushido appeared at a time in which fierce anti-Japanese movements, stirred by Japan’s imperial expansion, spread throughout North America and culminated in the U.S. ban on Japanese immigration in 1907. It has been suggested that its publication was not necessarily

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motivated by the desire to educate Westerners on Japanese culture, but rather it was meant to gain Western sympathy for the “highly ethical” Japanese colonialization of Asia (Suzuki 2005). Contemporary Western representations of Japan invariably associate the idea of “bushido” with supposed sensibilities of Japanese culture and the high ethical code of its people. However, in Japanese academic circles, the authenticity of Nitobe’s Bushido has been highly criticized as being little more than nationalistic propaganda based on essentialist notions of Japaneseness (Aoki 1999; Kanno 2004; Okubo 2003; Suzuki 2005). One of the most comprehensive studies that refute the validity of Bushido as being an accurate depiction of the ethical and philosophical tenets of the ancient warrior class is Bushido No Gyakushu (Counter Attack on Bushido) by Kakumyo Kanno (2004), professor emeritus of Ethics at Tokyo University. Kanno explains that the moral code as depicted by Nitobe is far from accurately representing the reality of the medieval mercenary soldiers, or bushido, and that bushido as depicted in cultural representations in the West as well as in contemporary Japan itself is an invention of the Meiji Restoration and its nationalistic discourse (10–14). Another influential Nihonjinron publication is Zenand Japanese Culture by Daisetsu T. Suzuki (1959). This popularized interpretation of Zen philosophy as a universal element in Japanese culture, like Bushido, was originally written in English for Western readership and is still considered a reference into Japanese thought. However, Suzuki has been highly criticized for his essentialist exaltation of Asian sensibility and spirituality that he claims predispose the Japanese to Zen teachings (Faure 1996; Hu Shih 1953; McMahan 2008; McRae 2003; Sharf 1993). Suzuki explains: “Very likely, the most characteristic thing in the temperament of the Eastern people is the ability to grasp life from within not from without. And Zen has just struck it” (24). The proliferation of Nihonjinron discourse has not only been a Japanese exercise in identity reconstruction following the trauma of being brutally awakened to Western military and economic superiority, but has also served to reinforce the orientalization of this exotic “other” ever present in Western discourse and cultural representations. The end of the nineteenth century would produce innumerable fantastic stories and exotic travel accounts of a Japan beyond Western comprehension. Classic works by such authors as Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), Pierre Loti (1850–1923) and Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) would reinforce orientalized perceptions of a paradoxical Japan in its essential contrast to the

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West. However, it was the 1946 publication of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict that would institutionalize wartime orientalized discourse of the Japanese enemy. Often resorting to stereotypes and essentialist notions in its characterization of “Japaneseness”, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword exemplifies the popularized binary paradigm of “Japan and the rest”: Sleeping is another favored indulgence. It is one of the most accomplished arts of the Japanese. They sleep with complete relaxation, in any position, and under circumstances we regard as sheer impossibilities. This has surprised many Western students of the Japanese. (180)

The Japanese translation of Benedict’s infamous book allowed the readers of Japan to see Western acceptance of their “uniqueness” and thus reinforce the notion of Japanese exceptionality propagated by Nihonjinron discourse. The effects that Nihonjinron publications and discourse have imbued on the notion of “Japaneseness” would become a contentious issue for those whose identity it has most impinged upon, namely the descendants of Japanese outside Japan, or Nikkei. For example, the Peruvian writer Fernando Iwasaki has openly expressed his disdain for critics who stereotypically trace aspects of his writings to his Asian ancestry. In works such as Mi poncho es un kimono (My Poncho is a Kimono) (2005) and España, aparta de mí estos premios (Spain, Get These Awards Away From Me) (2009), Iwasaki addresses his attempts to avoid himself and his writings from being “ethnified” by orientalized categorizations. In the foreword to Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru, he reiterates being constantly exoticized by contending that as a Nikkei writer it is presumed “that we should be more influenced by Tanizaki, Akutakawa, or Kawabata than by Borges, Proust, or Tolstoy” (xxii). José Watanabe, on the other hand, maintained a quite contrasting relationship with Western discourse on Japan. In fact, Nihonjinron discourse played a fundamental role in the image he projected as a “Nikkei” writer and public figure, as well as in the perceptions, literary critics have constructed about his poetic artistry. In interviews, biographical anecdotes, and even in his poetic works, Watanabe often embraced notions that appealed to essentialist concepts of “Japaneseness” to explain the nature of his personality, and consequently his literary vision. The biographical background of this Peruvian poet has taken center stage in

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much of the discourse related to his character and how this is reflected in his artistic creations. Watanabe himself had a hand in constructing much of the narrative regarding the influence childhood memories and his cultural heritage had on his creative process. The discourse that has been elaborated around the figure of this poet provides a glimpse into the workings of his own identity construction. This chapter intends to explore the way in which the identity of José Watanabe has been narratively constructed, not only in his poetic works, but also in the various discourses that surround the figure of this Peruvian author. In particular, the text aims at examining the concept of “Japaneseness”, a notion that has been systematically associated with the figure and artistic creations of Watanabe, and how orientalist categorizations rooted in Nihonjinron have perpetuated stereotypical perceptions of what it means to be Nikkei. An analysis of his poetic works, as well as of declarations made in interviews and writings, intends to elucidate how the Peruvian poet himself has constructed a Japanese identity based on notions of “Japaneseness” inspired in the memory of his late father, and how these concepts have been reinforced by literary critics inclined to orientalize his Asian ancestry. In addition, an exploration of the discourse surrounding the presence of haiku in the poetic works of Watanabe intends to reveal how generalizations concerning this Japanese poetry have been associated with the figure of the poet and his literary vision. Specifically, the analysis of Watanabe’s declarations about early childhood memories in which his father exposed him to haiku, and how these narrated anecdotes have impelled stereotypical associations among critics, hopes to shed light on the orientalized discourse that has associated the poet with haiku and Buddhism, and how the poet’s personal interpretation of this concise poetry has not only shaped his poetic artistry, but also played a fundamental role in the construction of his personal identity. The objective of this chapter is, by no means whatsoever, to discredit in any way shape or form the figure or the artistic quality of José Watanabe. Rather, it intends to underscore the intimate bond Watanabe felt for his father and explore the various outlets he exteriorized this sentiment in his process of identity construction. In addition, it aims to highlight the prevalence of orientalized notions of Japan and its culture in Western discourse, and how these have influenced perceptions of this Peruvian author and his poetry.

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Identity and Poetry It could be considered quite presumptuous to think possible the idea of extrapolating something as personal as another’s identity in order to attain objective conclusions about that person’s psychology. The present analysis does not intend to uncover Watanabe’s identity in its entirety, nor does it proclaim to be able to objectively unfold the convoluted psychological mechanisms rooted in experience and environment that make up the figure publicly known as José Watanabe. It proposes, rather, that by utilizing credible theoretical tools found in the concept of narrative identity we may shed light on particular aspects of the poet’s self-concept that are projected in his dialogues as well as in his poetic writings. The numerous theoretical approaches on identity that have inundated social sciences in last decades have made narrowing down a definition of identity a difficult task. However, Burke and Stets (2009) provide a comprehensive conceptualization that defines it as “the set of meanings that define who one is when one is an occupant of a particular role in society, a member of a particular group, or claims particular characteristics that identify him or her as a un unique person” (3). Although invariable elements, such as biological characteristics, may also play a role in determining the concept of the self, narrative identity proposes that it is through dialogue, internal and external, that the emergence of identity becomes distinguishable. The connection between dialogue and identity has been extensively examined by Hubert J.M. Hermans and Thorsten Gieser (2012) in their theories on the dialogical self which aim to explain identity as tensions from the continual dialogue between the multitudinous internal voices that make up the self. They explain that the dialogical self is characterized by diversity and differentiation between the various identity positions, or voices, that constitute the self, and that notions of otherness are not limited to opposition to an actual other but may be experienced between these different internal voices within the self (8–9). The alterity of these voices does not exist in a social vacuum, independent from power relations, established positions and societal rules, and therefore should be understood in the sociocultural contexts in which they developed, explaining why certain identity positions maybe accentuated or others deemphasized in determined social contexts. Narrative identity theorists propose that concepts of the self formed through these external and internal dialogues ultimately take form in the innumerable acts of narrating experiences, intentions, hopes, fears, and

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memories in the accounts we give about ourselves in everyday life. Molly Andrews explains: The construction of self and other is ongoing, and draws equally on (situated) knowledge and imagination, reaching out not only to the future (aspirations and feats), but deeply rooted in our past (sometimes acknowledged and sometimes hidden). (8)

The narration of personal anecdotes not only perpetuates the past through the reconstruction of lived experiences, but also serves to interpret the past in a way that makes sense in the present. In this way, memories and recollections from the past are the raw materials from which individuals use to construct their own notions of self. Janelle L. Wilson summarizes the link between identity and the past in the following: [S]ociologists emphasize that lives are narratively constructed and made coherent and meaningful through the biographical work that links experience into circumstantially compelling life courses – a process which is locally informed and organized. We see here the relevance of drawing upon the past and remembering former selves in the ongoing process of identity construction. (56)

For Fred Davis, the intimate connection between the remembered past and the construction of identity is expressed in the form of nostalgia. In his book Yearning for Yesterday (1979), Davis explains nostalgia as a strategy to filter positive recollections from negative ones allowing for the reconciliation of the past and present within a meaningful and coherent context (48). Subsequently, the selection and reconstruction of memories bring to light the most important episodes in one’s life and the way in which they are narratively incorporated into one’s biography. Jefferson A. Singer utilizes the term “self-defining memories” to denote those anecdotal episodes that facilitate the construction of identity and helps explain to others who you are (22). In this sense, one’s identity is not something “discovered”, but is better explained as a notion that is dialogically constructed out of struggle and crisis. In his poetry, José Watanabe symbolically narrates the multicultural nature of his identity as a Nikkei bringing to the surface his struggle to negotiate his position as “other” within Peruvian society. In an interview with Maribel De Paz, Watanabe confirms his search to define himself through his poetic voice:

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Can we say that through your poems you search for your own identity? In all of them. Yes, to know myself. I want to know what I am, how I am. Do you ever wake up thinking that you will never know who you are? No, because I keep writing. If you said I was going to die tomorrow, I would be desperate, I would say “I am going to die without knowing who I am”. I hope that I will live a few more years and hopefully during those years I can arrive at a definition of myself, although it’s fictitious, because I know it’s a lie. (232)1

A large number of the poems in Watanabe’s published repertoire depict reflections of his childhood, exemplifying this process of narratively elaborating a sense of self through the recollection of past experiences. In addition, narrated anecdotes about his lived past shed light on how he interprets his childhood experiences to be meaningful in the present, and in particular, the way in which he explores a sense of “Japaneseness” in the reconstruction of memories of his father. In this way, narrative identity provides a theoretical framework which allows the formulation of conclusions regarding aspects of the poet’s identity he projected in his internal (poetic voice) and external dialogues. Finally, narrative theory demonstrates that poetry can serve as a space of identity construction in which questions about culturally conflicting values and norms can be externalized and problematized by negotiating in symbolic terms the tension between the various voices of the self.

José Watanabe and Being “Japanese” The diverse cultural influences of his upbringing prevalent in his writings and poetic artistry illustrate how Watanabe psychologically negotiates the various facets that comprise his identity. Many of these cultural elements take the form of poetic reconstructions of childhood memories that elucidate his identification with the diverse cultural heritage of his parentage (Japanese and indigenous Andean). In his informative study, José Li Ning Anticona quantitively summarizes references to family members in the poetic works of Watanabe, pointing out that the Peruvian poet refers to his Andean mother in nineteen of his poems, while mentioning his

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Japanese father in only seven (124–126). These findings are curious considering that attention by literary critics tends to underscore the presence of his paternal heritage in his writings. In fact, much of the discourse related to Watanabe and his poetry centers on his Japanese legacy and the profound influence it has exerted on his personal and literary development. The poetic artistry of this Peruvian poet is subsequently often portrayed as emblematic of Japanese sensibility, an attribute allegedly passed down from his father who exposed his future poet son to haiku from an early age. However, because his father only spoke Spanish with his family, Watanabe never learned Japanese, nor did he ever visit the land of his Asian ancestors. His principal contact with Japanese culture was through his father, with whom he shared a close relationship until his death when José was still very young. The unique, contemplative style of Watanabe’s poetry has often been attributed to his Japanese ancestry by critics eager to categorize him as a “Nikkei” poet. For this reason, analyses of his works commonly highlight cultural subtleties and influences which are traced back to his paternal Asian ancestry (Bustillo 2018; De Paz 2010; Li Ning Anticona 2014; López-Calvo 2013; Muth 2009; Tsurumi 2012). For example, in The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature, Rebecca Riger Tsurumi proclaims that in the poetry of Watanabe the “Images of the Japanese are striking in clarity and depth”, and later ascribes these Japanese qualities to his oriental heritage declaring that “[He] also shares an intrinsic Japanese character that sets him apart from other writers” (151). In addition, in an interview with De Paz, the renowned Peruvian literary figure Marco Martos summarizes this essentialist notion of “Japaneseness” which automatically associates Watanabe with his paternal ancestry: In the poetry of Watanabe there is a Japanese ingredient. (…) [H]e is bearer of an oral tradition passed down from his father, who is Japanese. There always appears a chrysanthemum, a vine, there is always a shadow, the ability to concentrate. (De Paz 139)2

And on another occasion, he asserts that the Nikkei poet “incorporates an oriental sensibility […] into Peruvian poetry and this was only made possible because one fine day his father left his native Japan to settle in Laredo” (200).3 In this way, automatic associations that link the figure of Watanabe to his paternal ancestry have invoked a discourse on an inherent

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“Japaneseness” which characterizes his poetic creativity. More often than not references to the poet are shrouded by an orientalized discourse which portrays Watanabe to the likes of a Japanese sage. For example, Camilo Fernández Cozman provides the following imagery: It seems to me that Watanabe was an oriental master bearing the three verses of a haiku with the wisdom and prudence of a man that, at the break of dawn, has meditated on the everydayness all humans are force to bear, and like this bestows a lesson without the vane garb of solemnity. (14–15)4

Allusions such as these to essentialist notions of “Japaneseness” have converted Watanabe into a porter of traditional Japanese values to Peruvian poetry. As demonstrated in the above citations, literary critics purport that Japanese culture and sensibility are indirectly reflected in the poetic creations of the poet through his oriental heritage. Watanabe has recognized this tendency to be the subject of orientalized categorizations and has publicly criticized these notions that associate him and his poetic artistry with his paternal ancestry. On one occasion in an interview with Enrique Higa Sakuda, the Peruvian poet attested: A lot of people try to stereotype me, they try to Japanize me. There are a lot of studies being done in the United States on my poetry where they stereotype me considerably. They say I am the product of the two great cultures, the Japanese and the Andean. I don’t feel like I represent two great cultures. I just write.5

In an interview with De Paz, the Peruvian poet responds to this tendency contending that “It makes me uncomfortable when people say that I could be a wise man. There is a proclivity to shower my figure with orientalism, Zen Buddhism, Japanism” (214).6 And on another occasion, the Watanabe expresses more fervently his disdain toward this propensity asserting that, “Yes! I am not Zen. The Zen Sambenito. No, I am emphatically not Zen. I am not Zen, damn it” (243).7 However, categorical dismissals of essentialist associations such as these which connect the poet to Japan are contrasted by assertions in which Watanabe himself appeals to his oriental roots and has even proclaimed that “sometimes I am more Japanese” (De Paz 188),8 reaffirming the profound identification he shares with the country and culture of his beloved father. Allusions to his own “Japaneseness” have highlighted

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much of the discourse Watanabe has cultivated about his biography and has been a recurring element in his poetic works. However, given that the Peruvian author never learned Japanese, nor had he ever visited the native country his father, a great deal of the concepts and notions Watanabe embraced about being Japanese are deeply rooted in the childhood memories of his father. It is through these recollections that the poet would construct a “Japaneseness” in which he would associate his father with positive stereotypes typically correlated with Japan and its culture. His poem “La impureza” (The Impurity) reflects this struggle for self-definition and the search for embedded meaning in past memories. This poem was conceived in 1986 during a hospitalization in Hannover, Germany, after Watanabe was diagnosed with advanced-stage lung cancer. Fighting for his life, the poet suffered clinical depression which eventually proved detrimental to his memory. During his prolonged convalescence, Watanabe turned to poetry in an attempt to rehabilitate his failed memory, often utilizing lyric exercises to explore his own notion of self-hood in childhood recollections. In “La impureza” (The Impurity), the Peruvian poet clearly reveals his personal notion of “Japaneseness” rooted in the memory of his late father, and its relationship with the psychological construction of his own identity: Again and again you awaken with your body ailing, ailing. Again, your life oscillates on the cardiac monitor but more so on your fear. It’s no longer hypochondria. The one and only creature has vaulted. But don’t be melodramatic. You’re the son of a. Don’t dramatize. Look, your fear is the only impurity is this aseptic room. But will I ever really be the son of a? The Japanese ended up “bitten by cancer more fierce than eagles”, without money for morphine, but with such elegance, listening with such elegance to the notes from the koto on the Japanese Colony Radio Hour, at first measured and later like one thousand unleashed. And the provincial who if she catches you pitying her agedness

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protests in the mestizo Spanish from Otusco that she kept inside “There are more wrinkles on your balls than on my head, damn it”, as she surprisingly continues killing, chickens, guinea pigs, goats without any sign of compassion and saying, as if she were mandating the supreme moral lesson: “Leave the pot over the flames, son, so it heats up better”. You see, they won’t come to take you by the hands and perhaps you’re on the verge of not being son to anyone. Then the impossible thought comes and goes making it more and more possible. Embrace it, fear it, fear it, and with just that fear maybe you’ll return to being the son of a, like before, a boy, when they still cradled you with certain compassion. (Poesía Completa 112)9

In this poem, Watanabe explores his identity and the concept of “Japaneseness” as he experienced through the memory of his father. His personal notion of what it means to be Japanese dictates the cultural and behavioral expectations he set for himself as the son of a Japanese immigrant. This is clearly illustrated in the first stanza: “But don’t be melodramatic. You’re the son of a. Don’t dramatize. / Look, your fear is the only impurity is this aseptic room! / But will I ever really be the son of a?”.10 In this self-reflection over the physical and psychological struggle of coming to terms with his illness, the Peruvian poet defines his particular notion of “Japaneseness” as learned through memories of his father. In this internal dialogue, Watanabe compares himself with an idealized version of a “Japanese” self in which supposed oriental values triumph over weakness of character. For Watanabe, this stoic posture in the face of adversity is the central theme of his discourse on “Japaneseness” and a recurrent topic on his discussions about his father. In an interview, the Nikkei author qualifies in concrete terms the direct representation of archetypical “Japaneseness” in his father stating that, “My father was Japanese, as we say, really Japanese, that is, quiet with gentle mannerisms” (Muth 114).11 According to the poet, emotional continence and a reserved demeanor are principal characteristics of being Japanese, and, as son of a Japanese, are behaviors that he should aspire to. In his book Elogio de Refrenamiento (A Tribute to Restraint 2003), Watanabe discusses the impulse to adhere to the guidelines of “Japanese” conduct as he saw represented in his father: “Sometimes I get a hidden impulse that points me toward the responsibility of being like my father”

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(146).12 Consequently, the behavioral patterns of Watanabe’s father, Harumi, would have a determining influence on his son’s personality and self-concept. De Paz underscores the indelible impression of his father’s conduct and how this influence became an integral element of the discourse on his biography: Harumi was, however, the principal model of emotional restraint, with his docile behavior, free of gesticulations and charged with silence, and without a physically demonstrative relationship with his wife in front of the children. The poet, as with his brothers and sisters, would adopt this type of subdued conduct. (38)13

On numerous occasions, Watanabe has associated this suppression of emotions and a stoic posture to the notion of dignity. Often present in discourse on Japan and “Japaneseness”, the idea of dignity plays a significant role in the construction of identity for this Nikkei. In the following stanza, the poet clearly demonstrates this correlation: The Japanese ended up “bitten by cancer fiercer than eagles”, without money for morphine, but with such elegance, listening with such elegance to the notes from the koto on the Japanese Colony Radio Hour, at first measured and later like one thousand unleashed.

The stoicism and self-control his father displays on his death bed are emblematic of the qualities the Nikkei poet considers characteristic of the notion of dignity. This correlation in Watanabe’s concept of “Japaneseness” is made evident in an interview with Tsurumi in which he states: Restraint is not the same as suppression; it means self-control and maintaining dignity. My father and mother were like that out of their own volition because they believed that people should be discrete. The Japanese word is enryo … “a dignified posture”. (243–244)14

In this way, the Peruvian Nikkei substantiates his discourse on dignity within a Japanese cultural-linguistic context. By applying Japanese terminology to a behavior, he characterizes in a Japanese idiosyncratic framework, he authenticates his relationship to his Asian ancestry. In other

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words, the idiosyncrasies of his character are rooted in his “Japaneseness”. In an interview with De Paz, he further develops this essentialist notion of dignity within a Japanese cultural-linguistic context by alluding to his own stoicism as testimony of his Japanese roots: “I try to maintain my dignity, enryo, which has to do with one’s posture. Enryo is staying seated while everyone else runs off when the ground trembles” (189).15 The poet repeats the usage of the Japanese term to describe his personal restraint of emotions and to highlight his father’s insistence on teaching his children to avoid unnecessary sentimentalism consolidating dialectically a relationship between his identity and his Asian ancestry. However, in Japanese language, the term “enryo” does not correspond to any reference to dignity, but is better defined as a word related to proper etiquette. In the prestigious Japanese encyclopedic dictionary known as Kojien, “enryo” is defined in the following ways: 1) The restraint of language or actions in consideration of others, ex. tabaco wo enryo kudasai (Please refrain from smoking). 2) Refuse or reject a request or invitation in an indirect manner, ex. Shotai wo enryo suru (reject an invitation). (791)16

Although there may be some who advocate a relationship between proper etiquette and dignity, the meaning Watanabe ascribes to the term as fortitude in the face of adversity does not correspond with the general usage of this term in Japan. On the other hand, the impact Nihonjinron discourse has forged on Western perceptions of Japan has facilitated to a large extent the credibility given to this erroneous narrative on the notion of “enryo”. In fact, the present argument on “enryo” and Watanabe has received considerable backlash by scholars who prefer to stand by tenets that depict Japanese culture in an essentialist light. Academics insisting “enryo” is rooted in samurai moral conduct, or has evolved into a localized lexical phenomenon in the Latin American Nikkei context are blinded by a desire to see Japan through the orientalized lens that has conditioned Western academia. The concept of “enryo” is not particular to Japanese culture, but the fact that many Western languages lack a specific term for the same conduct has been utilized by Nihonjinron discourse to present it as an integral element in Japanese unique behavior patterns. This discourse originated by Watanabe which associates Japanese “enryo” with the notion of dignity has been perpetuated among Western

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critics who appear to have limited direct experience with Japanese language and culture. Assuming the unlikelihood of such a mistake from someone of Japanese descent, critics have not questioned the accuracy of Watanabe’s definition and, as a result, have reinforced the idea of “Japaneseness” based on this innocent misinterpretation. One example can be seen in the interpretation of “La impureza” (The Impurity) by Ignacio López-Calvo in his book The Affinity of the Eye: Writing in Nikkei Peru in which he makes the following observation: The poem ends by conveying the idea that perhaps by openly accepting his own fear, he will again become the child who always counted on his parent’s protection. Ironically, this thought is a clear departure from his intention, in the poem’s first lines, of imitating his father’s self-discipline, courage before death, and enryo (restraint, diffidence, reserve, as depicted in the Bushido). (177)

As in the above citation, many critics have attempted to highlight the poet’s inherent “Japaneseness” by associating imagery and symbolism in his writings with supposed tenets of Zen Buddhism and Bushido, the ancient samurai code of conduct. (Bustillo 2018; De Paz 2010; Li Ning Anticona 2014; López-Calvo 2013; Muth 2009; Tsurumi 2012). For example, in the Affinity of the Eye, López-Calvo asserts that: Following Bushido, Japanese Peruvians underscored the importance of an honorable death, one that did not leave the corpse in a shameful position. The poet indirectly reflects this notion in “La piedra alada” (The Winged Rock), (...) where a pelican chooses to die on a desert rock, looking for “dignity in his final pose.” (178)

Analyzing the same poem in an exploration of the “Japaneseness” in the Nikkei poet’s work, Tania Favela Bustillo arrives at a similar conclusion: Watanabe briefly notes down the events, avoiding reasoning and emotional comments; towards the end there is no moral, as in the traditional fable. What is revealed behind the story is precisely the spirit of bushido (the way of the warrior) and Zen cosmovision. The search and the final posture of the birds are charged with the dignity that embodies Buddhist moral and philosophy. (114)17

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In The Closed Hand, Tsurumi reinforces this essentialist connection when she interprets the reserved disposition of the poet’s father as a result of his relationship with Bushido proclaiming that: Harumi Watanabe’s ‘imperturbable serenity’ was guided by the tenets of Bushido, the Japanese code of moral and religious doctrines prescribed for the warrior nobility that governed Japan for centuries. (160)

As discussed earlier, the success of Bushido has largely distorted Western perceptions of Japanese culture and has been an influential element in Nihonjinron discourse on the virtues of Japanese conduct. The notion that bushido teachings are a common thread in the ethical education of the Japanese population is categorically rebuked again by Kanno who asserts: Bushido, being a philosophy of one particular class, is not a “national ideology” born out of the consciousness of a foreign other. Consequently, bushido cannot simply be equated to “the representation of a national ideology” that includes some nuanced comparison between the “Yamato Tamashi” (Soul of Japan) and foreign cultures. (19)18

As to whether Harumi’s dignified behavior has its origins in the ancient samurai code, it is virtually impossible to substantiate this connection objectively. Considering that, from a historical perspective, the political consolidation of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867) left the samurai class carrying out more administrative roles than mercenary duties, and with the establishment of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912) it ceased to exist all together, it would appear unlikely that bushido was an influential aspect of Harumi’s upbringing. To further substantiate this on a more personal level, my 80-year Japanese father and mother in-law who live with me and who both claim their respective samurai lineage can be traced back to the Heian Period (794–1185) agree that they have never been exposed to bushido teachings, nor are they familiar with anyone who has. With regards to the origins of José’s father, there is scant information about the circumstances which led to his migration to Peru. When asked about the reason of his father’s emigration the Peruvian author asserted: I never knew. I researched later and found out that he came to work on a sugar plantation near Lima. But on the other hand, he used to tell us

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another story. That’s why I don’t know what is true and what is a lie and I prefer to keep that ambiguity. (Muth 119)19

The Nikkei poet himself has ascribed to these essentialist associations when describing his own nature. For example, in various occasions, he has attributed idiosyncrasies of his personality to the influence of Buddhism as he supposedly learned from his father. In an interview he claims the following: When I came to live in Lima it was customary to kiss girls on the cheek and it took me years to feel comfortable doing it. It felt really forced. My father really influenced me in that respect and in my way of thinking and the way I am. For that reason I am somewhat Buddhist, but I learned it watching my father. Later I read a book on Buddhism. (Muth 115)20

Although the relationship Watanabe attributes to his personality and Buddhist teachings may be difficult to substantiate, these assertions do, however, underscore the profound identification that the poet felt towards his father and the perceived “Japaneseness” rooted in the image and memory of his beloved progenitor. The portrait the poet paints of his father in the symbolic imagery of his poetic works sheds light on the qualities and elements that he supposes to be characteristically Japanese. The discourse on his father’s character and “Japaneseness” is reinforced in interviews and declarations about his biography and is legitimized by critics who take these claims at face value seeing in the author the manifestation of Japanese cultural conduct. In the chapter entitled “Un peruano muy japonés” (A Very Japanese Peruvian), Bustillo exemplifies this tendency when she states: “Watanabe received the cosmovision of Buddhism and Zen philosophy through the living example of his father: his posture in life, his ethics and stoicism in the face of pain and adversity” (112).21 Unfortunately, we cannot confirm to what extent Watanabe’s father was a practicing Buddhist nor his relationship with Zen teachings, and although a strong moral ethic and a stoic attitude in the face of pain and misfortune are undoubtedly commendable attributes, it is objectively difficult to claim these are particular to Buddhist teachings, or Japanese culture in general. To illustrate this point, I would like to end this section on a personal note. Three years ago my mother passed away from liver cancer alone in her small California home. In spite of being diagnosed two years prior leaving ample time to undergo possible

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life-saving chemotherapy, my mother decided to keep her ailment a secret and endure the excruciating pain alone without morphine. In a posthumous letter to her two sons she explained that she didn’t want to burden us or have to face the undignified effects of chemotherapy. My mother was neither Japanese, nor a student of Buddhist or Bushido teachings, but yet her stoic posture reminds us quite vividly of the image of Harumi Watanabe in “La impureza” (The Impurity).

Haiku and Nihonjinron The Japanese haiku made its way into Western literature through the frenzied search for the exotic that characterized much of the Modernist literary movements. One of the earliest proponents of haiku was the British Japanologist, Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935), who was one of the first to translate these concise poems into English. Other early contributors to Western haiku include, Wilhelm Gundert (1800–1971) in German, Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879–1959) in French, and of course José Juan Tablada (1871–1945) in Spanish. Subsequently, haiku would become an influential element in the poetic conceptualization of works by the renowned Imagist movement in early twentieth century AngloAmerican literature, and would eventually become an integral presence in contemporary Western poetry. Haiku is often associated with Buddhism, in particular Zen. Western discourse has propagated notions that result in haiku becoming synonymous with Zen spirituality and cultural sensibilities unique to Japan. The Buddhist scholars, Daisetsu T. Suzuki (1870–1966), and Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982), attributed as being instrumental in propagating Western interest in Zen in the early twentieth century, profess that haiku is intimately bound to Zen tenets and the spiritual disposition of the Japanese people. In his acclaimed book Zen and Japanese Culture, originally written for a Western readership, Suzuki suggests this relationship is epitomized in the haiku master Matsuo Basho (1644–1694) (229). However, R.H. Blythe (1898–1964), the distinguished British Japanologist also known for popularizing Zen and haiku in the West, appears to contradict his mentor Suzuki asserting that: What was it that made Basho suddenly realise that poetry is not beauty, as in waka, or morality, as in doka, or intellectuality and verbal wit as in haikai? Some say it was the result of his study of Zen, but this seems to

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me very unlikely. Basho does not seem to have urged his disciples to do zazen, and seldom speaks about Zen an its relation to haiku. (110)

Discussing Basho’s biography, Robert Aitken, in his book A ZenWave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen, appears to agree with this exaggerated association stating that: [W]e do not seem to find him recommending zazen to anyone, even as an adjunct to the writing of poetry. He wore the robes of a Zen Buddhist monk, but that was no more than a convention of haiku poets of his period. It would be clearly wrong to claim Basho as a Zen poet in the sense that George Herbert was a Cristian poet. (xvii)

In his comparative analysis of Zen and haiku, Suzuki associates the composition of these concise poems with satori, or spiritual enlightenment. He likens haiku with Zen exclamations that transcend unconsciousness elevating this poetry to a type of spiritual exercise, albeit only for the “intuitive” oriental mind. Suzuki explains: “We can also see that the haiku is a poetic form possible only for the Japanese mind and the Japanese language” (253). His essentialist notions of Zen and Japanese culture, which he perceived as superior to Western thought, have been subject of fierce criticism and have put into question his authority on the topic (Faure 1996; Hu Shih 1953; McMahan 2008; McRae 2003; Sharf 1993). Referring to the essence of haiku, Octavio Paz (1914– 1998), in his infamous translation of Basho’s Oku No Hosomichi, confirms Western perceptions that intimately associate Japanese artistic forms with Buddhist tenets stating that: “We are not only impassioned by Japanese artistic forms, but the religious, philosophical and intellectual trends of which these are an expression, in particular Buddhism” (9).22 On the other hand, the contemporary haiku scholar, Kenkichi Yamamoto (1907– 1988), in his Haiku to ha Nanika (What is haiku?) attempts to elucidate the essence of haiku through a general review of the historical development of this poetic modality and proposes three elements common throughout its history: (1) humor, (2) greeting and (3) improvisation (11), departing greatly from the transcendent image that this Japanese poetry has forge in the West. At this point, a brief summary of the various tendencies of haiku throughout its historical development may shed light on the diversity of the schools of thought and philosophies that have characterized each

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trend and demonstrate the extreme difficulty in pinpointing a supposed essence or spirit of this concise poetic style. As it is well known, haiku, which originally meant “comical”, was a humoristic parlor game popularized during the Muromachi Period (1333–1568) comprised of 3 lines containing 5-7-5 syllables, respectively. Besides its concise structure, haiku is traditionally characterized by its use of seasonal references, kigo, and an indicator of two juxtaposed images known as kireji. However, adherence to these conventions has widely varied among haiku schools and individual poets. Originally known as haikai, it derived from the opening stanza, or hokku, of a renga, or collaborative linked poem. However, it was not until the publication of Enokoshu during the Edo Period (1600– 1868) that haiku forged a place in Japanese literary tradition. Haiku poetry during this period, known as Teimon Haikai, is characterized by its references to classical Japanese literary works, and thus being educated in the classics was a strict requirement for anyone hoping to be recognized as a haiku poet, or haikai shi. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, a new trend in haiku poetry, named Danrin Haikai, which advocated the portrayal of ordinary scenes of city dwellers in a style less restricted by formal literary conventions, rivaled the Teimon school. Basho originally belonged to the Danrin school but later developed his own school after living in hermitage. A clear break from previous trends, his style emphasized the use of colloquial language to express subjective emotions evoked upon experiencing phenomenon in nature. However, this school was later eclipsed by Buson (1716–1784) who established the Tenmeicho school which advocated for a return of haiku to its classical roots. Toward the end of the 18th century, Issa (1763–1828), who belonged to the Kaseichou school, introduced another new tendency in haiku which identified with poetry that depicted everyday scenes in society in subjective, often humoristic, language. In the 19th century, Shiki (1867–1902) was highly critical of Basho claiming that his depiction of subjective emotional states ran the risk of falling into superficiality (Akamatsu 394). Being influenced by realism in Western literature, Shiki advocated a reform of haiku that favored the realistic depiction of nature. Contemporary haiku in Japan has witnessed a dramatic diversification, from poets like Sumio Mori (1919– 2010), whose haiku repertoire largely consists of poems that deal with marital love and scenes of everyday life in contemporary society, to Ryuta Iida (1929–2007), whose poems depict nature in abstract and symbolic language while adhering to traditional haiku conventions. In present day Japan, haiku has become somewhat of a hobby, practiced by retirees in

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cultural clubs and children in elementary school haiku contests. Riichi Kuriyama in his book Haikushi (The History of Haiku) highlights the difficulty in formulating a coherent definition of haiku when he asserts that, “having been transformed through so many periods and by so many people, it is impossible to give an unequivocal definition of haiku” (8).23 And in the same vein, Katsu Akamatsu, in his book Haikushitaiyo (Compendium of the History of Haiku) professes that, “since its inception the only constant characteristic of haiku is the 5-7-5 rhythm” (18).24 Unfortunately, most Western discussions on haiku overlook the extreme diversity that has characterized the development of this Japanese poetry and tend to underscore aspects that most satisfy orientalist desires fueled by Nihonjinron discourse. As the above suggests, any notion that equates haiku with a particular movement, or claims the “spirit” of this poetry is embodied in a specific poet, ignores the heterogeneity that has notably transformed haiku over its five-century history. As Kenneth Yasuda (1957) explains in his Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History, “haiku, far from being an esoteric, purely Japanese form, incomprehensible to the West, shares common ground with all art in an important and significant manner” (xix).

The “Spirit” of Haiku in Watanabe Discourse about Watanabe and his poetic works almost invariably includes some reference to the influence of the Japanese haiku. His childhood experience with this concise poetry is often attributed as being a decisive influence on his artistic process (Bustillo 2018; De Paz 2010; Li Ning Anticona 2014; López-Calvo 2013; Muth 2009; Tsurumi 2012). In the autobiographical discourse that Watanabe proliferates in interviews and essays, the author himself has on many occasions emphasized the influence that haiku has exerted on his poetic style. In an interview, the poet alludes to the origin of his early experience with this oriental poetry: The influence I have from Japanese literature is because he read to me a lot. He read to me a lot. My father was a strange person. He read considerably. He used to come to Lima and buys books in Japanese. Sometimes he would say to me “come here and he would read me haiku. I didn’t know what a haiku was. I was eight or ten years old. I didn’t understand but I liked it. (Muth 116)25

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Allusions such as these demonstrate how this early exposure to Japanese haiku would leave an indelible mark on his artistic creativity and would be instrumental in his conceptualization of literature and of himself. However, a review of the literary works of Watanabe reveals that, although a few poems may resemble the concise structure of haiku, none of his published works adhere to the formal characteristics which traditionally define a haiku poem. So, what is this haiku influence and how is it represented in Watanabe’s poetry? As aforementioned, much of the discourse regarding Watanabe and his poetry centers on the influence his Japanese father forged on his personality and literary vision. However, Watanabe himself has fomented to a large degree, this narrative in childhood accounts that he relates in the various formats in which he shares autobiographical anecdotes. The influence of Japanese haiku in his creative process has been developed in much the same way. An example of this can be seen in his book Elogio del Refrenamiento (A Tribute to Restraint) where the poet reiterates his early exposure to haiku through his father and attributes it to his artistic development as a poet: Among the chickens and ducks in the corral of my house, my father would translate, between reflective pauses, those short poems that I didn’t quite understand at that time. That was the first poetic language I knew. (148)26

The perceived passion his father had for haiku would have a determining impact on how the young José would portray his progenitor in his autobiographical narrative. According to the Peruvian poet, for his father haiku was more than just a poetic expression, it was a way of life, an integral part of his existence. In an interview with Tsurumi, Watanabe asserts: “For my father reading haiku was a way of everyday thinking” (154).27 In this way, the poet traces back his interest in haiku through reconstructed memories of his father, cementing an autobiographical trajectory which enduringly associates this poetry with his artistic development. As an adult, these memories would fuel a profound interest in Japanese poetry leading him to become an avid reader of the classic Japanese haiku poets, among which include Basho (1644–1694), Buson (1716–1784) and especially Issa (1763–1828), after whom he named his youngest daughter in honor of the poet. This interest in haiku inspired him to develop personalized theories on the nature of this poetic expression and of poetry in general. In his essay Haiku y Occident (Haiku and

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the West),28 Watanabe expounds on the difference between the Japanese haiku and Western poetry: In the West a poet, in general terms, conceives a poem starting from a poetic idea. However, I should say “he conceives the beginning of a poem”, because almost always “his” idea winds up adhering to the language, giving in to its requisites. In the end the poet accepts the form that the language imposed, as long it hasn’t violated the canon or style too much. With haiku the issue of language is not the central problem. The poet, suddenly enlightened by a perception, receives at the same time the writing, the words to transmit to others his experience. (Muth 120–121)29

Also, in his Elogio del refrenamiento (A Tribute to Restraint), the Peruvian author philosophizes about the nature of haiku pointing out that the essence of this poetry resides in its objectivity. According to Watanabe, the haiku poet attempts to objectively reproduce the moment in which the nature of the world is spontaneously revealed to the poet. This requires that poet interferes as little as possible by avoiding the use of rhetorical devices. The author explains: Theoretically, the haijin, or author of haikus, would prefer not to have to write his poetic discovery. He would hope rather that all men were with him and that, unanimously, all had the same instantaneous perception. But he is alone. So, without feelings and in the most clinical way possible, he attempts to provoke or reproduce in the reader the experience that was revealed to him. (149)30

And on another occasion in the same book Watanabe asserts that “haiku is an exercise in humility in the presence of the very discovery of beauty” (148).31 These theories on the way poetry is conceptualized would become an integral part of his creative process, and in some cases even inspire essentialist notions of identity inherited through his Japanese ancestry. Watanabe associates his propensity to meditate on phenomenon found in nature to his interest in haiku, and even suggests an inherent relationship between this poetry and his personality: I possess a sort of humility that I am not sure if I learned from Japanese poetry, especially from haiku, or if it’s from family tradition, you see my family is apathetic, totally undramatic. (Sánchez y Tumi 1)32

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These theoretical conceptions on the nature of haiku would often accompany critical opinions of those Latin-American haiku poets whose works did not adhere to his conceptualizations of this poetry. The Peruvian writer was especially critical of José Juan Tablada, the Mexican modernist poet known as the founder of haiku in Spanish language. In the aforementioned essay, he comments on Tablada’s poems asserting that: [Tablada], in his search for concision in poetic language, arrived at this traditional Japanese poetry, but, in spite of the great literary quality of his verse, many of his poems, that he himself call haikus are, in fact, metaphors. (Muth 121)33

Undoubtedly, the author’s identification with the Japanese haiku left a profound influence on his notion of poetry and the subject matter he took up in his artistic development. From his own interpretations of this concise lyric form, Watanabe would develop his own poetic style centered on the contemplation of nature. Especially prominent in his repertoire are poems inspired in the observation of animals. Having been raised on a farm, the author claims, inculcated a profound respect for creatures of nature. In an interview, the poet relates the origin of his captivation with animals: In my village animals were not pets. They were like family. (…) When you’re born in a village like that you learn that the adventure of life is not yours together with other neighboring humans. We are in the same adventure with animals, even with insects. (Muth 117)34

This experience would later be a fundamental element in his poetic creations. A large number of his poems are characterized by objective descriptions of animals, such as the following titles: “Los iguana” (The Iguana), “El ciervo” (The Deer), “La oruga” (The Caterpillar), “El gato” (The Cat), “La ardilla” (The Squirrel), and “La ranita” (The Frog), to name a few. In this way, the adherence to objectivity in the portrayal of phenomenon found in the natural world would become the trademark of the Nikkei’s poetic creativity. In an interview, the poet confirms this artistic conceptualization in his own poetry when he states, “I try to make my poems almost like a natural history” (Muth 118).35 His personal interpretations of this oriental poetry would lead him to theorizes about

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elements he considers particular to this Japanese lyrical form. In an interview with Tsurumi, the poet explains these elements, according to his own interpretation, called “haiku recreado” (recreated haiku), that constitutes a haiku poem: (1) an element of surprise, (2) two contrasting elements, and (3) phenomenon found in nature, because haiku is not urban (154). These components would form part of his own poetic conceptualization, being integrated into a large portion of his artistic creations. Although not a haiku, these elements which the Peruvian author considers essential to this Japanese poetry can be observed in “La mantis religiosa” (The Praying Mantis): My weary gaze strayed from the forest which was bluish in the sun to the praying mantis that remained motionless a few feet from my eyes I was stretched out on the warm stones near the banks of the Chanchamayo and she remained in the same place, inclined forward, her hands contrite, trusting excessively in her imitation of a twig or dry stick. I wanted to catch her, to show her that some eye will always find us out, but she disintegrated between my fingers like a brittle shell. Browsing through an encyclopedia I realized I’d destroyed an empty male. Dispassionately the encyclopedia explains that the story goes like this: the male on his little stone, singing and swaying about, calls to a female who quickly appears at his side perhaps too readily too prepared. For a mantis coitus lasts a long time. As they’re kissing she slips a long tubular tongue into his stomach and through her tongue injects a corrosive saliva, an acid, that liquefies his internal organs and the tissue of his furthest parts while giving him pleasure and so while pleasuring him her tongue absorbs him, sucking out every last drop of substance from his feet to his brain, and the male continues in this supreme schizophrenia from

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copulation to death. And finding him a shell, the female flies away, her tongue small once again. Encyclopedias do not make assumptions. Neither should we speculate about the last word that remains fixed forever in the open mouth of the dead male. Though we should not deny the possibility of a word of Gratitude.36

In an interview, the poet professes that this poetic creation is an objective reconstruction of an episode in his life in which he was deeply moved by nature (Muth 117). The unexpected encounter with the praying mantis, the contrasting elements of life and death, the development of the scene in nature, and the objectivity with which it is narrated all underscore the integration of elements Watanabe deems as particular to haiku poetry and his interpretation which proclaims that the haiku poet only transcribes poems that are already written in nature. However, this repeated discourse on his childhood exposure to haiku and the subsequent influence it had on his literary vision has been sensationalized by critics who associate the poet with stereotypical images of Japan and its culture. For example, in the prologue to Watanabe’s Poesía Completa (Complete Poetic Works), Dario Jaramillo Agudelo asserts that: Perhaps it is that contemplative state, that austerity of someone who only takes precise words from language, perhaps all of this (in addition to his knowledge of the subject added to his paternal ancestry from Japan), perhaps all of this, I say, leads us to associate Watanabe with haiku. (Agudelo 14)37

Cozman, in his book Mito, cuerpo y modernidad en la poesía de José Watanabe (Myth, Body and Modernity in the Poetry of José Watanabe), even claims that “Without haiku it is not possible to approach, thoroughly, the study of Watanabe’s poetry” (78).38 In spite of the continual discourse which espouses Watanabe and haiku, none of his poems adhere to the infamous 5-7-5 syllabic structure of this concise poetry. In fact, in his Poesía Completa (Complete Poetic Works), a compilation which includes all his published works, short three-lined poems which resemble the haiku structure only appear on three occasions.

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The first is in his poem “Mi ojo tiene sus razones” (My Eye Has Its Reasons) in which a supposed haiku composed by his father Harumi is cited: Amidst the fog Touching the hazy boat I set off (59)39

The second is found in “Imitación de Matsuo Basho” (Imitation of Matsuo Basho), a poem inspired by the travel diary Oku no hosomichi which combines prose and a “haiku” to create a travel sketch similar to those in Basho’s famous masterpiece: On the summit of a crag a goat and his mate frolic. Below the abyss (64)40

And lastly, in his poem “Casa joven con dos muertos” (A Youthful House with Two Dead), Watanabe cites a haiku translated from the Japanese poet Moritake: Fallen from the flower the petal climbs the branch again Oh, a butterfly (168)41

On the other hand, the author himself maintains that he is not a poet of haiku and asserts that his relationship with haiku has been exaggerated. In an interview with De Paz, Watanabe explains this overemphasized influence of haiku attributed by critics eager to make stereotypical associations based on his oriental heritage: “I have always spoken about my father, that he came from Japan in a boat, etcetera, and based on that they associate me with Japanese serenity and haiku”. He continues, “I’m influenced by haiku, but not as much as many presume. I have been influenced by other poets that talk about nature” (228).42 Ironically, much of the discourse that associates the Nikkei poet with the Japanese haiku can be traced back to a narrative that Watanabe himself has propagated about the nature of haiku and his own poetic creations. The author sums up this relationship in an interview when he states, “I don’t write haiku. But perhaps its spirit is in my poems, which are

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somewhat longer; the idea that nature somehow dictates poems to us” (Muth 116).43 This discourse on the spirit of haiku has been reinforced by Western critics who, given Watanabe’s oriental paternal heritage, see in the Nikkei the manifestation of a Japanese “spirit” and as a result systematically correlate him with haiku. For example, in the prologue to Poesía Completa (Complete Poetic Works), Agudelo asserts: Frequently the word “haiku” appears when talking about José Watanabe. It’s worth clarifying that the presence of haiku in this poet is rather virtual. Watanabe is not an author of haiku but is immersed in its spirit. (14)44

However, in the majority of cases, the literary discourse on the “spirit” of haiku in Watanabe’s poetic works is little more than abstract notions or ambiguous analogies. In his analysis, Li Ning Anticona refers to haiku characteristics in Watanabe’s poetic works as “the haiku effect”. He later states that this effect is “from the infinite expansion of the system, and is one of the characteristics observed by readers and critics of Watanabe’s work and derives from Zen esthetic” (270).45 In an attempt at highlighting the influence of haiku in the Peruvian author’s poetry, Bustillo arrives at the following conclusion: The influence of haiku in the poems of Watanabe should be sought in the tone of his poems and in the poet’s attitude towards nature and language, and not in the known traditional structure of haiku. Watanabe did not practice the composition of haiku adhering to the three verses of seventeen syllables, rather he used it as a constructive element within some of his poems, being faithful, consciously or unconsciously, to its origin. (105)46

Other analyses have taken the association of Watanabe and the influence of haiku to an extreme. In Mito, cuerpo y modernidad en la poesía de José Watanabe (Myth, Body and Modernity in the Poetry of José Watanabe), Cozman claims that: One of the aspects that is most striking in this collection of poems […] was the use of haiku as strophic form, since no other Peruvian poet, besides a few exceptions, had employed this in a systematic way. (83)47

Although Watanabe used a haiku-like concision in a handful of poems, it can hardly be said that he utilized haiku in any systematic way in his poetic works. In this way, much of the discourse that associates Watanabe

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with haiku can be traced to abstract rhetoric and hyperbole related to the notion of a haiku “spirit”. In spite of the difficulty in objectively substantiating the concept of a coherent essence, or spirit, unifying the history of this poetic genre, the discourse on the “spirit” of haiku in the poetry and figure of Watanabe have predominated in literary circles. These discussions have undoubtedly shaped public perceptions of the Peruvian poet and have contributed to the orientalized discourse that surrounds Nikkeis in general, and consequently to Watanabe’s own sense of self. In the words of the poet: A lot of times you have to respond to the image in which people see you. People somehow impose an image on you, and you respond to that image that you yourself end up believing. (De Paz 219)48

Conclusion José Watanabe exemplifies the dialogical process of identity formation advocated by narrative identity theorists who purport that the concept of self is situated in the multitudinous dialogues that comprise and frame an individual’s particular reality. As we have illustrated, Watanabe constructs his identity from a number of dialogues that he negotiates internally as well as externally. In his poetic works, the author brings to the surface an internal dialogue in which he struggles to define himself as a Nikkei “other” in Peruvian society where a rigid classist mentality traditionally ascribes immigrant and indigenous populations less favorable status. However, contemporary popular discourse has exalted Japanese culture to an exotic “other” and has disseminated notions of “samurai” dignity and stoicism unique to the Japanese character. Watanabe has himself ascribed to these essentialist concepts of “Japaneseness” as influential in his personal and artistic development. As demonstrated in the analysis of “la impureza” (The Impurity), the poet symbolically explores his own “Japaneseness” through dialogic intercourse with childhood memories of his Japanese father whom he characterizes with positive stereotypes and essentialist notions, and reinforces this concept in conversations in which he narrates biographical information in interviews and written anecdotes about his childhood. The notion of “Japaneseness” as projected by the Peruvian author is disseminated in academic dialogues by critics and researchers who, without direct knowledge of Japanese culture and language, ascribe to the orientalist discourse about Japan prevalent in

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Western scholarly circles. These essentialist notions have also reinforced a discourse that has associated the figure of Watanabe with haiku. Rooted in memories of his father’s interest in haiku poetry, the Peruvian poet externalizes his identification with this poetic form in dialogues concerning the essence of haiku and “Japaneseness”. Originated largely in orientalist discourse and generalizations about the “spirit” of this concise Japanese poetic form, his personal interpretation of haiku is reinforced in Western literary criticism that sees in Watanabe and his poetry the manifestation of “Japanese culture and values”. Although the authenticity of “Japaneseness” in the character and literary vision of Watanabe may be debatable, there is no doubt that the Peruvian Nikkei poet identifies profoundly with the figure of his Japanese father and projects an identity which reflects this connection. The present inquiry into the construction of “Japaneseness” in the figure and poetic works of José Watanabe has not been, by any means, an attempt to discredit or devaluate the exceptional literary quality of the poet’s artistry, but rather it hopes to shed light on how Japan continues to be seen by the West through essentialist notions and stereotypical representations. In addition, it hopes to highlight the fact that the literary quality of Watanabe’s poetic works does not reside in it being “Japanese” and can be appreciated without resorting to essentialist categorizations based on positive Japanese stereotypes. But most importantly, the analysis intends to highlight the deep identification that the Peruvian poet shared with his father and the sentiments this evoked. After all, these emotions are the foundation of his poetic creativity and the cornerstone of his artistic talent. As to why José Watanabe would embrace essentialist notions about the culture of his paternal ancestry, we can only speculate. Maybe his identification with an idealized Japan was a way to eulogize the father he lost at such a young age with whom he had a very close bond. Or maybe it was because “being Japanese” was no longer accompanied by the persecution and discrimination that once afflicted classist Peruvian society, but now inspired notions of unique and exotic sensibilities. Or maybe it was because, as his sister Teresa suggested when she said to me on August 16, 2018 as we sat in a pick-up truck rolling on a dusty road to their childhood home in Laredo, “He liked to make stuff up”.

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Notes 1. M.D.P.:

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

¿Digamos que a través de tus poemas buscas tu propia identidad? J.W.: En todos. Sí, para conocerme. Quiero saber qué soy, cómo soy. M.D.P.: ¿No te desespera pensar que nunca vas a saber quién eres? J.W.: No, porque sigo escribiendo. Si me dijeras que me voy a morir mañana me desesperaría, diría “voy a morir sin saber quién soy”. Tengo la esperanza de vivir unos años más y ojalá en esos años más llegue a una definición de mí mismo, aunque sea ficticia, porque yo sé que es mentira. (232). “En la poesía de Watanabe hay un ingrediente que es japonés. (…) [E]s que tiene una tradición oral transmitida por su padre que es japonés, siempre aparecerá un crisantemo, una enredadera, siempre habrá una sombra, un poder de concentración” (139). “incorpora una sensibilidad oriental […] a la poesía peruana y esto solo pudo ser posible porque su padre un buen día dejó su Japón natal para afincarse en Laredo” (200). “Me parecía que Watanabe era un maestro oriental que disponía los tres versos del haiku con la sabiduría y prudencia de un hombre que, al despuntar el alba, ha meditado sobre la cotidianidad que todos los seres humanos debemos afrontar, y así desprende una enseñanza sin los vanos ropajes de la solemnidad” (14–15). “Mucho me quieren estereotipar, me quieren japonizar. Hay muchos estudios que están haciendo ahora en EEUU sobre mi poesía, donde me estereotipan bastante. O sea soy producto de las grandes culturas la japonesa y la andina. Y yo no me siento representante de dos grandes culturas. Yo escribo nada más”. “Me incomoda cuando dicen que puedo ser un hombre de sabiduría. Hay una proclividad a chantar sobre mi figura orientalismo, budismo zen, japonesismo” (214). “¡Si¡ yo no soy zen. El sambenito de zen. No, yo enfáticamente ¡no soy zen¡ No soy zen, carajo…” (243). Sambenito refers to a type of penitential scapular, or garment, worn by heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. “a veces soy más japonés” (De Paz 188). Otra vez otra vez despiertas con el cuerpo poco, bien poco. Otra vez tu vida oscila en el monitor cardiaco pero más en tu miedo. Ya no es la hipocondría. Ya te saltó el verdadero animalito. Mas no patetices. Eres hijo de. No dramatices. ¡Mira que tu miedo es la única impureza en este cuarto aséptico! ¿O nunca conseguiré realmente ser hijo de?

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El japonés se acabó «picado por el cáncer más bravo que las águilas», sin dinero para morfina, pero con qué elegancia, escuchando con qué elegancia las notas mesuradas primero y luego como mil precipitándose del kotó de La Hora Radial de la Colonia Japonesa. Y la serrana que si descubre que miran condolidamente su vejez protesta con el castellano castizo que se conserva de Otusco para adentro: «Más arrugas hay en tus compañones que en mi majoma, carajo», y asombrosamente sigue matando pollos, cuyes, cabritos, sin un gesto compasivo y diciendo, como si dictara la suprema lección moral: «Deja el tiesto sobre las brasas, hijo, para que coja más temple». Ellos no vendrán, pues, a tomar tus manos y acaso estás a punto de no ser hijo de nadie. Entonces el pensamiento imposible que te viene y te deja va haciéndose posible. Acógelo: ten miedo, ten miedo, y justamente con tu miedo quizá vuelvas a ser el hijo de, como antes, niño, cuando ellos todavía te abrazaban con alguna piedad. (Poesía Completa 112) 10. Mas no patetices. Eres hijo de. No dramatices. /¡Mira que tu miedo es la única impureza en este cuarto aséptico!/¿O nunca conseguiré realmente ser hijo de? 11. “Mi padre era un japonés, como decimos, bien japonés, o sea callado y de maneras muy suaves” (Muth 114). 12. “Me viene a veces una pulsión recóndita que me señala una responsabilidad: sé como tu padre” (146). 13. “Fue Harumi, no obstante, el principal modelo de contención emotiva, con su comportamiento despacioso, ausente de ademanes y cargado de silencios, desprovisto también, de una relación de piel con su esposa frente a sus hijos. El poeta, al igual que sus hermanos, iría adoptando esta forma de ser recogida de maneras” (38). 14. “El refrenamiento no es suprimir; significa auto-control y mantener la dignidad. Mi padre y mi madre eran así por voluntad propia porque pensaban que el ser humano debe ser discreto. La palabra en japonés es enryo … ‘una postura digna’” (243–244).

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15. “trato de mantener la dignidad, enryo, que tiene que ver con lo postural. Enryo es quedarse sentado mientras los demás corren cuando la tierra tiembla” (189). 16. Translated from the original Japanese by the author. The original reads: 遠慮・えんりょ・enryo: ➀人に対して言語・行動を控え目にすること、「喫煙はご遠慮く ださい」 ➁それとなく断る。 辞退すること 「招待を遠慮する」 17. “Watanabe registra escuetamente los hechos, evitando la argumentación y los comentarios emotivos; hacia el final no hay una moraleja, como haría en la fabula tradicional, lo que se advierte detrás de la historia es precisamente el espíritu del bushido (el camino de guerrero) y la cosmovisión zen. La búsqueda y postura final del ave están cargadas de esa dignidad que resume la moral y la filosofía de budismo” (114). 18. 武士道は「一の階級的思想」であって、外国を意識して生まれた「国 民的思想」ではない。したがって、武士道を「国民的思想の表象」であ り、対外的比較のニュアンスを含む「大和魂」(=Soul of Japan)と単純 に同一視することができない (19). 19. “Yo nunca sé. Yo investigaba después y sé que vino a trabajar en una hacienda azucarera cerca de Lima. Pero por otro lado, él nos decía otra cosa. Por eso no sé qué es verdad y qué es mentira y prefiero mantener esa ambigüedad” (Muth 119). 20. Cuando yo llegué a vivir en Lima era costumbre besar la mejilla de las mujeres y yo me demoré años para sentirme cómodo. Era muy forzado hacerlo para mí. Mi padre influyó mucho en eso y en mi modo de pensar y de ser. Por eso yo soy algo budista, pero lo aprendí en mi padre mirándolo. Después leí un libro de budismo (Muth 115). 21. “Watanabe recibió la cosmovisión del budismo y la filosofía zen a través del ejemplo vivo de su padre: su postura ante la vida, su ética y su estoicismo ante el dolor y la adversidad” (112). 22. “no solo nos apasionan las formas artísticas japonesas sino las corrientes religiosas, filosóficas o intelectuales de que son expresión, en especial el budismo” (9). 23. Translated from the original Japanese by the author. The original reads: 俳諧の変容は人により時代により変遷が重ねていて、かならずし も一義敵とは言えない。 24. Translated from the original Japanese by the author. The original reads: 只五七五の韻律が俳句の持って生まれた不変の特質eである。

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25. “La influencia que tengo de la literatura japonesa es porque él leía mucho. Me leía mucho. Mi padre era una persona extraña. Leía bastante. Venía a Lima y compraba libros en japonés. A veces me decía “ven” y me leía haiku. Yo no sabía lo que era un haiku. Yo tenía ocho o diez años. No entendía pero me gustaba” (Muth 116). 26. “En medio de los pollos y patos del corral de mi casa, me traducía (mi padre), entre grandes pausas reflexivas, esos breves poemas que entonces yo no entendía claramente. Ese fue el primer lenguaje poético que conocí” (148). 27. “La lectura de haiku de mi padre fue una forma de pensar cotidiano” (154). 28. Unpublished document received courtesy of the author. 29. “Un poeta de Occidente, en términos generales, concibe un poema a partir de una idea poética. Sin embargo, debí decir ‘concibe el comienzo de un poema’, porque casi siempre ‘su’ idea termina siguiendo al lenguaje, entrando en su exigencia. El poeta finalmente acepta la forma que el lenguaje le impuso, siempre y cuando éste no haya violentado demasiado su canon, su estilo. En el haiku el problema de lenguaje no es el problema central. El poeta, que es súbitamente iluminado por una percepción, recibe al mismo tiempo la escritura, las palabras para transmitir a otros hombres su experiencia” (Muth 120–121). 30. “Teóricamente, el haijin, o escritor de haikus, preferiría no tener que escribir su hallazgo poético. Desearía que todos los hombres estén junto a él y que todos, unánimemente, tengan la misma instantánea percepción. Pero está solo. Entonces, sin afecciones y del modo más notarial posible, intenta provocar o reproducir en el lector la experiencia que a él le fue revelada” (149). 31. “El haiku es un ejercicio de pudor frente al propio descubrimiento de la belleza” (Elogio 148). 32. “Tengo una especie de pudor que no sé si he aprendido de la poesía japonesa, especialmente del haiku, o si me viene por tradición familiar, pues mi familia es antipatética, totalmente desdramatizada” (Sánchez y Tumi 1). 33. “[Tablada] Buscando la concisión en la palabra poética llegó a esta poesía tradicional japonesa, pero, al margen de la gran calidad literaria de sus versos, muchos de sus poemas, que él mismo llamó haikus son, en realidad, metáforas” (Muth 121). 34. “En mi pueblo los animales no eran mascotas. Eran como parientes. (…) Uno aprende cuando nace en un pueblo así que la aventura de vivir no es mía junto a otros prójimos humanos. Estamos en la misma aventura con los animales, hasta con los insectos” (Muth 117). 35. “Trato de hacer que el poema sea casi una historia natural” (Muth 118).

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36. De Lomellini, C.A, Tipton, David (Trans). Path Through the Canefields. East Linton: White Adder Press, 1997, 14–15. The original reads: Mi mirada cansada retrocedió desde el bosque azulado por el sol hasta la mantis religiosa que permanecía inmóvil 50 cm. De mis ojos Yo estaba tendido sobre las piedras calientes de la orilla del Chanchamayo y ella seguía allí, inclinada, las manos contritas, confiando excesivamente en su imitación de ramita o palito seco. Quise atraparla, demostrarle que un ojo siempre nos descubre, pero se desintegró entre mis dedos como una fina y quebradiza cáscara. Una enciclopedia casual me explica ahora que yo había destruido a un macho vacío. La enciclopedia refiere sin asombro que la historia fue así: el macho, en su pequeña piedra, cantando y meneándose, llamando hembra y la hembra ya estaba aparecida a su lado, acaso demasiado presta y dispuesta. Duradero es el coito de las mantis. En el beso ella desliza una larga lengua tubular hasta el estómago de él y por la lengua le gotea una saliva cáustica, un ácido, que va licuándole los órganos y el tejido del más distante vericueto interno, mientras le hace gozo, y mientras le hace gozo la lengua lo absorbe, repasando la extrema gota de sustancia del pie o del seso, y el macho se continúa así de la suprema esquizofrenia de la cópula a la muerte Y ya viéndolo cáscara, ella vuela, su lengua otra vez lengüita. Las enciclopedias no conjeturan. Esta tampoco supone qué última palabra queda fija para siempre en la boca abierta y muerta del macho. Nosotros no debemos negar la posibilidad de una palabra de agradecimiento. (2008, 66–67)

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37. “Acaso ese estado contemplativo, esa austeridad de quien sólo usa del lenguaje las precisas palabras, acaso todo eso (más su conocimiento de la materia añadido a su ascendencia paterna del Japón), acaso todo eso, digo, conducen a asociar a Watanabe con el haiku” (Agudelo 14). 38. “Sin el haiku, no es posible abordar, plenamente, el estudio de la poesía de Watanabe” (78). 39. Entre la niebla Toco el esfumado bote Luego me embarco (59) 40. En la cima del risco retozan el cabrío y su cabra. Abajo el abismo (64) 41. Cae un pétalo de la flor Y de nuevo sube a la rama Ah, es una mariposa (168) 42. “siempre he hablado de mi padre japonés, que vino de Japón en barco, etcétera, y a raíz de eso me asociaron con la serenidad japonesa y el haiku”, “[t]engo influencia del haiku, pero no tanto como muchos suponen. Tengo influencia de los poetas que hablan de la naturaleza” (228). 43. “No escribo haiku. Pero el espíritu tal vez sí está en mis poemas que son un poco más largos, el aprender que la naturaleza de alguna manera nos dicta los poemas” (Muth 116). 44. “Con mucha frecuencia la palabra “haiku” aparece cuando se habla de José Watanabe. Vale la pena aclarar que en este poeta la presencia del haiku es más bien virtual. Watanabe no es autor de haikus pero sí está inmerso en su espíritu” (14). 45. “de ampliación infinita del sistema, es una de las características apreciadas por los lectores y críticos de la obra de Watanabe y proviene de la estética zen” (270). 46. La influencia del haiku en los poemas de Watanabe debe buscarse en el tono de sus poemas y en la actitud del poeta frente a la naturaleza y frente al lenguaje, y no en la conocida estructura tradicional del haiku. Watanabe no practicó la escritura del haiku ciñéndose a sus tres versos y diecisiete sílabas, más bien lo utilizó como un elemento constructivo dentro de algunos de sus poemas, siendo fiel, consciente o inconscientemente, al origen del mismo (105). 47. Unos de los aspectos que más llama la atención de este poemario (…) fue el empleo del haiku como forma estrófica, pues los poetas peruanos, salvo unas excepciones- no la habían empleado de manera sistemática (83). 48. Muchas veces tienes que responder a esa imagen con que la gente viene a verte. La gente de alguna manera nos impone una imagen, y uno responde a esa imagen que uno mismo termina creyéndose (De Paz 219).

CHAPTER 2

Rhetorical Approaches to the Poetry of José Watanabe Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe

Both my temperament and my many years of experience in the study of literature lead me to conceive the latter fundamentally as rhetoric. Of course I do not mean “rhetoric” in the negative sense that this word has come to acquire in our day, but in the sense that any literary text is first and foremost the product of a certain processing of verbal matter which I believe is fair to call rhetorical. Surely this is not because such processing be the only important aspect of literature, as opposed to what is usually referred to as “content”, but because such content is not essentially different in literary texts to the content that can be found in other genres which also use language as their raw material. There is also no need to say that what we call Rhetoric is the result of human ingenuity

The text translated from original Spanish by José Antonio Pérez de Camino. A. López-Pasarín Basabe (B) Politics and Economics Sciences, Waseda University, Shinjuku City, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Muth et al., The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81615-5_2

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in the search for the most effective ways to communicate such content: everything in and out of language, that is to say, the world. It is hardly questionable that, among the various literary genres, poetry is in principle the one for which such an analysis be best suited. This is because of the high degree of codification that it subjects the linguistic matter to, as a result of which it has traditionally been considered a language different to everyday language to the highest degree. As we know, this is less clear since the final years of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth, when the limits of possibility widen until they almost touch the limits of language itself, and when the distance that had for centuries separated poetic language and daily communication was eliminated. To anyone familiar with the poetry of José Watanabe, the consistency of the style that presides throughout his work, almost from the beginning to the end, is apparent. Although Álbum de Familia (Family Album) does have some peculiar features, it is easy to recognize in it the Watanabe we have always known, firmly established since El huso de la palabra (The Word Spindle), whose characteristics are easily found in all his poetic works. It is obvious that such a style is built upon the voluntary elimination of the barriers existing between the literary and colloquial languages. Watanabe’s style is thus realist. This might suggest, therefore, that a rhetorical analysis is hardly the most adequate approach to Watanabe’s work, and this view may very well be prevalent among critics, since such studies are nearly nonexistent. Nevertheless, that desire to eliminate all traces of rhetoric is nothing but another rhetorical strategy, and just as any other style, a realist style can only be rigorously defined through rhetoric. Identifying the elements that make Watanabe’s work realist poetry was a possibility that I considered for this chapter. Although I kept that goal in mind, because of space limitations, among others, I preferred to focus on three aspects, which are the ones that can be found in these pages. First, an analysis of the group of semantic processes that are generally known under the label “image”. Second, the study of one of the subjects that are most characteristic of the Peruvian author: poetry itself. Finally, the study of another aspect that I consider important: the author’s treatment of meter and rhythm. Although my approach will be necessarily personal in nature, I hope this chapter contributes both to a more precise knowledge of this author’s work and to determining the specific characteristics of the genre that we call realist poetry.

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Semantic Analysis and Figurative Language In spite of the widespread use of the term “image” to refer to what may well be the most characteristic phenomenon of contemporary poetry, throughout my career as a poetry analyst I have systematically refused to adhere to this practice. I have done so for a very simple reason: below the surface of this term lies a great diversity of different literary devices which, indeed, become central from the end of the nineteenth century. It is precisely because of this that it is more necessary than ever to accurately define them and classify them if we are to explain anything about the subject matter of our study. Those devices are basically the ones known as “tropes” in ancient rhetoric. Nevertheless, following the conscious and deliberate introduction of irrationality as a driving force in the construction of poetic works, which starts to become slightly visible since Romanticism, become popularizes in Symbolism and gets to its highest point with the avant-garde, the devices that were cataloged by Greco-Roman rhetoric are not sufficient. Unless we are ready to relinquish the accuracy that seems necessary, new efforts in classification and definition need to be made. At the very least, the following concepts are usually included in the term “image”. Other classical rhetorical devices, such as metonymy and synecdoche, which I will not deal with in this chapter,1 are often referred to with the same term, and that is why I say “at the very least” here. VISIONARY IMAGE VISION METAPHOR SYMBOL SIMILE COMPARISON

In the larger area of the chart, I have placed those devices which have a rational base on the left and those which have an irrational base on the right. Because of its place in relation to the other devices, symbol appears somewhat separate. In the following pages, I will explain each of these

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devices and make relevant distinctions. Simile and comparison (which I will also deal with later) are placed at the bottom, taking up the entire area, since both are used with rational as well as irrational bases. Needless to say, if I refuse to use the word “image” to refer to these phenomena, it is not because it is false (all of these processes do produce images), but because it is not sufficiently accurate to be an adequate tool for analysis. When these processes are directly known under the term “metaphor”, which unfortunately is often the case, we enter into territory of the highest degree of error. In my opinion, these attitudes, so common in literary criticism, prevent us from gaining accurate knowledge of many aspects of the ever so complex artifact that we know as contemporary poetry.

Metaphor Here I will follow the definition of metaphor that most closely matches the original, namely the replacing of a term by another with which it has a relationship of analogy. I favor a definition based on analogy over other definitions because I believe it better explains the relationships that actually lie at the foundation of metaphors: both the resemblances (physical or not) and the functional similarities. The fact of the matter is that if there is no analogy, then there is no metaphor, but rather one or another of the different phenomena that I will refer to as “vision” or “visionary image” in these pages, or even a symbol, which in my view basically depends on metonymy. It is only when we include all these that metaphor becomes the foundational literary device of contemporary poetry, and not even so, it seems to me, if we leave out the symbol, which is the way it ought to be in my view. In any case, it is essential to quantitatively check for the presence of metaphors on the one hand, and of visions and visionary images on the other, in order to make a judgment concerning the stylistic features of a poetic text. In Watanabe’s case, metaphor is not the most abundant of the literary devices that will be studied here (there are many more symbols, and also comparisons), but it is a process that frequently occurs, much more so than the aforementioned visionary image and vision. Without venturing any further in our analysis, all this firmly anchors Watanabe’s poetics in the field of realist writing. Strictly speaking, metaphor may not be objective, but it is accessible to reason by means of analogy, and this cannot be said of those devices typical of irrationality.

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Metaphor is uniformly present in any of Watanabe’s books. In these pages, I will not deal with the different vehicles, nor will I provide a list of statistical data from which we would be unable to draw information concerning what really matters, which is a better understanding of his poetry. I will say that, as is well known, metaphor can be applied to different parts of speech, and therefore, also in Watanabe’s work, we can find nominal, verbal, and adjectival metaphors. The first ones, as it is often the case, amount to more than half of the total number present; they are followed at a considerable distance by verbal metaphors and lastly by adjectival metaphors. Here I will only show some particularly successful examples and also some others which may allow us to obtain a better understanding of the characteristics of Watanabe’s work. If we assume that density is a virtue of poetic works, and by density we mean a multidirectional power of words, then we will have to agree that the following example is particularly successful: The2 murmur of the sea which is to die. And this murmur reconciles us with the other murmur of the river around whose bank we would mercilessly kills toads ripping them open with a stick against the river stones so metaphorical it makes you laugh. (35)3

Making use of his obviously noticeable tendency toward metapoetry, which I will deal with extensively later, here Watanabe picks up what is probably the most famous metaphor of the Spanish language, and refers to it in the last verse. But he does so in an ironic way. The river, which is a metaphor for life, becomes its opposite for the poor toads, underscoring the distance between the real and the literary, at the very moment in which a piece of biographical information is brought before our eyes in a most lively way. A memory which is surely painful to the adult is not put forward directly, but instead through the filter of literature, which is the best way to make it accessible as a living experience in a manner that can be shared by all readers. This last example may be considered clever, but displaying cleverness is not one of Watanabe’s characteristics. In the end, his clever metaphors are nothing but very accurate linguistic artifacts. For example: My father, for example, the pathetic Prometheus silently bitten by cancer fiercer than eagles. (35)4

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Here Harumi Watanabe is associated with the mythological character Prometheus who in Greek mythology was punished by Zeus for bringing fire to mortals and whose liver was eaten by an eagle sent by the Olympian god. As the association suggests, the cancer implicitly represents the Eagle, as it is eating away at his liver. Leaving aside the parts of the myth impertinent to the poem (we cannot perceive the ailment as a divine punishment, nor as characteristic of the bird attributed to Zeus), the metaphor separates the two contrasting terms. Here the Eagle is associated with the majesty and dignity of a suffering man who accepts his destiny without complaints. the supreme schizophrenia of mating with death. (67)5

This verse summarizes a typically romantic theme in a very condensed way, adding at the same time a comical note thanks to which we perceive that the speaker does not feel much in consonance with such a transcendent worldview. My uterus of smoke exits through the chimney and dissolves like nimbus. (201)6

These lines are part of a dramatic monologue by a woman who has had her uterus surgically removed and later cremated. The expression comes out accurate and imaginative, close to the limits of vision (although not reaching those limits, since it can be easily understood). There are a couple of very successful adjectival metaphors: when the light descends in beams, biblical. (131)7 its black chambers hanging visceral (…) (149)8

The first one comes out as a very cinematographic reference (which is not strange in Watanabe, for professional reasons), and the second one, which is excellent, conveys the desired effect in a very visual way, by means of a metaphorical use of the word, “visceral”, which has to be interpreted here in its etymological sense, since, as it is well known, in today’s Castilian Spanish it does not carry the meaning of “similar to entrails”. Once more, we can see that the successful expression is sometimes the brief result of a very complicated manipulation of the language.

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In the same way that the clever metaphor does not occur in Watanabe’s work, the metaphor that glorifies or embellishes, so common in several periods of our literature, hardly appears. We may, however, bring a couple of examples to the fore. They stand out precisely because they are so rare, the second one in particular: and on the things, falling then closing a glass coffin. (233)9 … a bolt of lightning illuminated the great trees of the lake shore and we saw momentary branches of gold and silver. (399)10

Just as any of the devices covered in this section, a metaphor can be more or less extended, from the simple mention to a development with undefined limits. In the latter case, the development may or may not adopt an allegoric mode. We can talk of allegoric modes when there is an exact correspondence between the elements at the level of reality and the elements at the figurative level. Since allegory is such a primitive rhetorical device, so profoundly medieval, it is very unlikely that any contemporary author would be attracted to its charms, but any such author would undoubtedly be interested in more or less relaxed versions. Rather infrequently, some discreet and precise examples of this phenomenon can be found in Watanabe. We are the sick, a sad line of angels in loose-fitting gowns for flying in. (109)11 the whitewash cracks and tears have drawn casual harsh features on him and the column is a martial angel mutilated at his wings, a bitter one. (131)12 In the little wicker basket there’s a pile of potatoes they have distant facial reliefs and awake in the darkness with their sunken little eyes soiled in dirt. (153)13

It is not difficult to see that these examples are instances of the wider phenomenon we know as motivation (as understood by the Russian

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formalists). We can formulate a stylistic rule according to which the more motivation a metaphor has, the less irrationality it contains, and vice versa. We can see here that the “papas – rostros” (potatoes – faces) equation is not hard to notice, although it is made clear by the development that follows. “Enfermos – ángeles” (sick people – angels) is a much more complex one, and it is better understood when followed by the “batas -alas” (gowns – wings) metaphor.14 The second one is unquestionably the most difficult one: in my system, and because there is no analogy, “columna – ángel” (column – angel) would constitute a visionary image and never a metaphor. The words “sin alas” (without wings), which involuntarily echo Luis de Góngora, together with our knowledge that the figure was formed by the cracks, substantiate the base of the analogy. All this suffices to show, in a simple manner, that Watanabe’s poetry is unquestionably rooted in realist poetics. When he uses brought-fromafar metaphors, that is, when there is a long distance between the tenor and the vehicle, the Peruvian poet almost always resorts to motivation, to metaphor in praesentia, or to both of them. “El sol era nuestra leona” (106, The Sun was Our Lioness), which is broadly developed later: “husmea” (sniffs), “nos busca” (looks for us); “Y he venido a esta máquina a explicarme. (…) Pero esta máquina (la poesía, digamos)” (85, And I have come to this machine to explain myself … But this machine [poetry, let’s say]); “La que más me provoca es tu ranita lúbrica / llamada clítoris” (211, What tempts me the most is your tiny slippery frog / called clitoris); and so forth. It would not be hard to find more of this kind of example. Sometimes the development can take up an entire poem, as in the beautiful “De la poesía” (On Poetry), which is strictly made up of the development of a metaphor that associates poetry to a plant growing in excrement. I will finish this section by making reference to a phenomenon that is highly illustrative of Watanabe’s conception of poetry. I am referring to the negation of metaphor, as can be seen in the following examples: The sea will never be a coherent orchestra (155)15 (my woman) not river or fountain as we used to say but svelte flesh (432)16

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I believe that this is all related to a paradoxical, antiliterary attitude (as insufficiently “vital”), within literature. We will see this in a much more detailed manner when we deal with metapoetry.

Visionary Image This term is taken from the Spanish critic and poet Carlos Bousoño (1952, I: 195–197; 1977, 53). I will use this term to refer to the rhetorical device in which a term is replaced by another term and there is no relationship of analogy between them, nor, of course, a relationship of contiguity nor of inclusion, which respectively defines metonymy and synecdoche. I have made several modifications with respect to Bousoño’s model, and these are explained in my 2016 book (215–217). Visionary image is basically defined here as a nominal metaphor with an irrational base. There are as few as ten instances of this phenomenon in the entirety of Watanabe’s work, and there are books where it does not appear at all. I will provide some examples only to show what this device is like and why it is extremely useful to differentiate it from metaphor: Oranges suggest only easy metaphors. I mean: captured rain, kaleidoscope, burst. (39)17 because when the squirrel returns it brings with it the incredulity of its awakening and my wonder will change too and eventually be a woman, summer, any joy you mention. (160)18

In the first example, and despite the talk of metaphors (here Watanabe simply follows the established custom), it is not hard to see that there is not the slightest relationship of analogy between oranges and captured rain, a kaleidoscope or a burst. Similarly, it is impossible to find any such relationship between a squirrel and the terms to which it is compared (woman, summer, joy). The reader may wonder what this relationship is based on if there is no analogy. In a visionary image, two entities are equated emotionally, that is, they elicit the same emotion. This is what the poet puts forward, and if the visionary image is successful, thus we should experience the desired emotion. In the second example, the squirrel is equated to two entities that have in common the fact that they awaken a euphoric effect in the speaker; and that effect is transferred to the animal.

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In the first example, which is more complex, we would have to see what element is foregrounded in each case. For example, its connection with nature in the case of the rain, the magic and somewhat unreal coloring in the case of the kaleidoscope, and the automatic violence in the case of the burst. It is not a problem if we are not able to be very precise, because the visionary image, like the vision or the symbol (i.e., the means of irrationality), does not need to be understood in order for us to derive an esthetic pleasure from them. We can understand it, of course, but only by means of a later analysis, which strictly speaking is perfectly unnecessary for the reader of the poem. This is obviously an essential difference with regard to metaphor, which cannot provide any pleasure if we fail to see the relationship of analogy. Accordingly, it seems rather absurd to obstinately continue to consider that these are two instances of the same phenomenon. To do so deprives us critics of an essential tool. Bearing in mind Watanabe’s fondness of the characteristics of realist writing, it should not be surprising in the slightest that there be so few traces of this device in his work. Things were different during his novice period, before he had decided on a realist style and showing obvious avant-garde influences. This can still be seen in his “Poemas inéditos” (Unpublished Poems, the last section of his Poesía Completa), in his poem “Film de los paisajes”, where we can find various meaningful examples: All the houses are buckets of flowers. (452)19 The landscape is lemon-flavored (453)20

Vision This term is also Bousoño’s. He defines it in this way: “attributing impossible qualities or functions to an object” (1952, I: 233). It has to be kept in mind that vision, even more so than the visionary image, tends to be based on non-allegorical developments (that is to say that the figurative elements that are made explicit have no correspondence to the real elements), and therefore, its nature as a trope (by which one term is replaced by another with which it bears a certain relationship) may become considerably obscure, even to the extent where it can barely be recognized, somewhat in the same way as it happens with symbols. The next example, taken from Watanabe’s work, shows in a concrete way how this process works:

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The bicycle you bought when working as a weeder came and stopped at the gate like a thin horse. (163)21

We might be assumed that, just as visionary images, visions would not be so abundant in Watanabe’s work. However, they actually appear frequently in all his books. A detailed look at the motives of their usage will allow us to extract their significance in the work of this Peruvian author. The most peculiar use Watanabe makes of this device is related to his references to myths. Such myths belong to the Peruvian sierra culture of the author’s mother, which I have always believed to be more important in Watanabe than the Japanese.22 . The author has an ambivalent relationship with myths, of course. The culture from the Peruvian sierra, myths included, is part of his original childhood paradise. But such a paradise is forever lost. He is no longer a child, obviously, and besides that he is an urban resident now. Not only does he live in the city, but he shares its culture as well, since that is part of his upbringing. He contemplates myth with a rationalist mentality, but he does not want to abandon it completely, not so much because of a residue of healthy skepticism (not being too sure about anything), but in order not to break up completely what constitutes the roots of his identity. Vision is a perfect rhetorical device to capture this ambivalent attitude: The myth is expressed, and it is presented as myth, and it is up to the reader to either decide on its plausibility or classify it as a sample of the poet’s imagination. For example, the one with the flying heads: you said that the heads detached themselves from the bodies and flew away disheveled, hungry, biting the hollow air. (16723 In Berlin a flying head is a thing of little consequence. In my hometown it’s a dangerous myth. (169)24

Or this other one: The myth says that time drills a spiral into stone and there it sleeps and will awake and come and the sheep’s fleece will have been renewed and the metaphor. (69)25

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This is the case in “El nieto” (103, The Grandson), with the frog that flees from the deceased grandfather’s chest; in the miracle narrated in “Las rodillas” (138, The Knees); or in “La alameda de pinos” (414; The Pine Avenue), with the white horses whose sight causes death. Another frequent use of vision in Watanabe’s poetry is one that develops possibilities different from those that occur in reality, either as something unfulfilled, as a hypothesis toward the future, or as a simple hesitation. Watanabe’s world is a very physical one, but his poetry refuses to believe in a world exhausted at the surface. It also refuses to believe that we humans have the ability to understand everything. In fact, this constant uncertainty is one of the most powerful mechanisms of his poetry. What if, suddenly, in the darkness of the laboratory, The voice of a different power sounded, a terrible god that ordered me not to stop at my facial features, to continue revealing myself without interruption and show the depths of my flesh, my cells, my most intimate web? (401)26

The interrogative form, or in this instance, the conditional marker “si” (if), the expressions “tal vez” (maybe), “acaso” (perhaps), and so forth are yet another set of formal resources used to introduce this kind of vision that seems to be so characteristic of Watanabe’s poetry. In other cases, what is sought after is simply a flight of the imagination, and vision is the most adequate rhetorical device for that purpose. Needless to say, it is not all just a mere pastime, but has a profound effect on this poet’s worldview. A good example of this is the entire poem “Paisaje móvil” (Moving Landscape), which I will not transcribe here, in which we attend a display where the desert is compared to a large animal. We can find another example in the following verses: My mother, like wonderous animals, ate grass, honey and earth and produced milk of different flavors, including the toxic ones. (420)27

Finally, I will refer to two types of visions which are different from the ones that we have seen so far, and which form two separate groups. The first one aims at translating the worlds of various painters into the

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language of poetry: Chagall, in the poem of the same name (27); Munch and his famous painting “El grito” (The Scream, 178); or Eielson in “Intestino” (Intestine, 451). The second one is, just as in the case of the visionary image, comprised of the poems of youth, which have notable remnants of avant-garde language. Two characteristic examples are “Cine mudo” (Silent Cinema, 41) and “Film de los paisajes” (Landscape Film, 452). Such poems, so different from the kind of writing we recognize as usual in Watanabe, exceptionally show us visions carrying poetic irrationalism. The motives they convey and the forms that adopt the usual visions by our poet are very different, as I have tried to clarify in the previous pages, and thus, the expression remains within the limits of realist writing, however personal this writing may actually be.

Simile It is not always done, but it is not infrequent to differentiate between simile and comparison, as I will do here. By simile, we understand connecting two terms by means of comparative links in an absolute manner (“A is like B”), whereas comparison is the same phenomenon, only the similarity refers to just one specific quality (“A is as big as B”) or action (“A does this as B does it”), or the similarity is quantified (“A is bigger or less big than B”). As we shall see, comparisons are always very abundant in Watanabe’s poetry, but similes are much more uncommon. For example, I can hardly find any in his first two books. Probably as a consequence of the false and rarely questioned idea that metaphor is the central process in contemporary poetry, and also as a result of a notion, common in the Ancient world and expressed by Quintilian,28 that metaphor is an abbreviated comparison, simile and comparison are seemingly not wholeheartedly accepted by critics. However, when properly used, they are tools that allow for substantial discoveries in terms of condensed expression, and sometimes even provide us with keys to the author’s worldview. Although, like metaphor, traditional comparisons and similes are based on analogy, there is no reason why they cannot be used to link terms which fail to bear a relationship of analogy. I believe that, in view of how successfully they were used in surrealism, any possible notion that they are minor or not creative enough should be eliminated. There is no need to turn to surrealism, to the irrational expression, to understand this. Watanabe’s similes are always based on analogy, just as

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we could expect,29 but that does not stop him from finding relationships which, like a spark, produce images (yes, images) that are fully meaningful in the reader’s mind: But last night I didn’t see your head, only your ears like two butterflies, two snails, two wrung out little frogs. I shouldn’t use similes to talk about your ears (158)30 The mountain is no mother, its caves are like empty eggs where I put my flesh in (199)31 it’s my own past: it stands now before me as a tiger that gave me a truce. (218)32 [deserts] look like giants with big backs who meditate on their homeland while defecating. (220)33 but it is comparable to a fisherman who’s untied a hundred knots throughout the night and who, at peace and satisfied, sees his string straight the following morning. (288)34 I think about the difficult harmony between the obstacle and the body, like the bullfighter before the bull or the poet before the poem: (348)35 two tramboyos, those dark fish, that look like shapes formed out of the sea’s subconscious. (423)36 In the border of the desert and the canefields, the solitary house is somehow like a skull abandoned in the sun: … (426)37

When the analogy is not only half hidden and the poet needs to point it out for us (what we call “discoveries of expression”), but is also difficult to perceive even when highlighted, so that we think it is nonexistent, there is always an explanation ready to clarify: This house, Asterión, is like the eagle that crosses the sky: it was born out of the very wish to navigate through infinity. (441)38

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Comparison There is no question that, with the exception of symbols, out of the rhetorical devices analyzed in this study, comparison is the most abundant in Watanabe’s poetry, to the extent that it is almost impossible to find a poem where it does not appear. It can also be said that a considerable share of this Peruvian poet’s expressive imagination is expressed by means of comparisons, and that such a display of ability for analogy may well be one of the most notable points of his poetry. Many of these comparisons are surprising, accurate, and able to produce fully meaningful images, with economy of means, and with the degree of density that is expected and demanded from poetry. In the course of my presentation of the different types of comparisons, I will introduce here some of the most successful ones, some others which are less typical (which, for this reason, can tell us a great deal about our poet’s style), and finally, I will show how several others, with a very complex structure, can occasionally appear. I have noted above that, in principle, comparisons occur when two entities are connected by means of comparative links, but only with reference to a quality or action. Hence, the two basic types of comparison are the ones that originate in an adjective. our joy will be intimate and unspoken like the joy of the iguana that has no voice to celebrate. (98)39 The deep night is silent and robust like a wide-skirt mother. Those who knew Doña Paula know that the metaphor is unbeatable.40 (152)41 a bowl deep as two hands together (202)42 the wounds in my sides opened as two gills. (213)43 … hieratic like a sad gang of plaster workers the saints wait for the restorer. (231)44

And the ones that originate in a verb: It was tough to see you roll like a seed. (40)45

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her perfect white dress seemed to move on its own like a sheet on a string. (261)46 Here I am like that tree that withstands the current. (302)47

The definition I gave above included differences of degree. This kind of comparison is extremely rare in Watanabe’s work, and I have only found one example, which is nevertheless an extremely successful one: The minuscule chapels on the side of the roads, never taller than those on their knees praying. (217)48

Another type of comparison that should be addressed is the one that does not equate two entities, but one entity and one action in which the similarity is derived as the result of the comparison. Within this category, the most typical and frequent case involves the pattern “como si (as if) + subjunctive”: It rises almost vertical as if it were struggling to end at the highest point of the air.49 (91) and the dog licks the glutinous red stuff as if it were addicted. (127)50 almost fighting for it as if it were the meat of resurrection day. (196)51

But in Watanabe’s work we also find “como + gerund” examples: as if waiting for the flight of the stick (36)52 ivy crept into the rooms as if to eavesdrop (156)53 it moves as if it was drawing an ancient signature, (210)54

And “como + past participle” as well:

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The stag moves as if articulated by strong internal elastic bands (135)55 my mother’s proud position who slept as if she were satisfied. (371)56

One example that belongs in this group is a singularly extended one, which involves two comparisons and a very visual, almost cinematographic, delight in the process: Its flight seems as if guided by another squirrel that leaves its body and runs ahead always by an instant and leaves behind it another, an agile trace that vanishes miraculously in the ordinary air. So the squirrel moves like a curious optical illusion of flying figures that never blend into one. (159)57

Just as in the case of simile, comparison does not necessarily impose an analogy between the terms compared (in this case too, the paradigmatic example of surrealism is valid). In Watanabe’s poetry, we could expect this to be the case most of the time. And it is, in fact. There are only marginal exceptions among dozens of examples. Actually, I can only find two examples in which there is no room at all for analogy: … the salt, harder than the winter. … the memory of that body gets comfortable like a wounded air dog. (217)58

Something which, indeed, does not seem very typical of our poet. But there are other unclear examples worth looking at. In this one, The blood of the murdered ones … and vibrates like a dreadful horizon. (405)59

There might not be a basis of analogy, but that is a superfluous matter, since the semantic value is monopolized by the verb “vibrar” (vibrate), and the unequivocal adjective “infame” (dreadful). In the following one, We live waiting for a day when time penetrates as a violent fatigue in the sand (98)60

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there is no analogy, strictly speaking, but it is replaced by a metonymical relationship. The final example is an interesting case, My neighbor stretches out his house like a cloth that fits him. (200)61

that has a visionary character, which nevertheless does not impede the perfect functioning of the analogy. As in the case of the other rhetorical devices, it is important for us to consider Watanabe’s use of motivation. As we have discussed, the less motivation, the more irrationality, and vice versa. Watanabe rarely hesitates when it comes to giving a solid foundation to any comparison in which the analogy is somewhat vague and risks not being perceived: She threw the book which flapped and broke against the wall like a pigeon. (76)62 it’s my own past: it stands now before me as a tiger that gave me a truce. (218)63 Evil came and it perfectly fit in me as a wicked clarity. (306)64 The carob tree bends like a green cloud. (378)65

The material is abundant, and the topic is virtually inexhaustible, but I will not develop it further. I hope that what has been said so far contributes to the validation of the characteristics that we have already seen in dealing with metaphors, visions, and similes, and that explain why Watanabe’s writing can be firmly said to belong within the limits of a realist poetics.

Symbol “Symbol” is a polysemic term, used in different contexts and disciplines with characteristics that are not only different, but even contradictory at times. Its use in Semiotics is particularly well known, where, according to Peirce’s famous definition, it stands for the type of sign whose relationship to its object is arbitrary, language being the most successful example. I believe that one of the characteristics of literary language is that it maximally strives to, whenever possible of course, eliminate all traces of

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arbitrariness from the material it uses, that is, language. It is for this reason that we need a definition more useful for our purposes, one that is more adequate as a tool for analysis. Accordingly, symbol will be understood here as “a term which brings to mind a different entity with which it shares a common emotional value” (López-Pasarín, 246). I also believe that, regardless of the fact that symbols, as so many other phenomena, are treated as metaphors by critics, and without ruling out the possibility that, in fact, there may be symbols where a relationship of analogy might somehow be at work, most of them can be explained by reference to a metonymical relationship (i.e., one of time–space or logic contiguity), as shown by the fact that lexicalized, conventional symbols (such as “crown” for “king” or “monarchy”; “cross” for “Christianism”; and so forth) are perfect instances of metonymy. The symbol is not only polysemous, but is an extremely complex rhetorical device, particularly because it is created at very different levels of generality, since there is a very broad spectrum that ranges from universal symbols which we all share as human beings and which have to do with anthropological orientation criteria (those of position, light, etc.), to personal symbols, exclusive to a particular writer, including as well those shared by various groups, such as those that mark the limits that separate cultures. In any case, and although it is obvious that there are symbols in all poetry regardless of the era, in contemporary poetry, starting precisely with what is known as symbolism, its presence becomes overwhelming. Contrary to what is often said, the principal literary device of poetry from the end of the nineteenth century onward is not metaphor, but symbol. This is evidenced by the fact that while it is not hard to find poems with no metaphors, it is almost impossible to find poems with no symbols. If we are to help clarify the typology of styles, it seems essential to me to consider the existence of two classes of symbols: homogeneous and heterogenous symbols. Here, again, I am using Bousoño’s terminology and concepts. Let us have a look at symbols in Watanabe’s poetry.

Homogeneous Symbols A homogeneous symbol has symbolic meaning only; that is, it cannot be taken literally, or at least cannot plausibly be taken literally, in the context of the poem. These are symbols that only go as far as their emotional signification, and which understandably are the most favored in irrationalism. Let us have a look at one of Watanabe’s poems in order

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to illustrate this. The poem is “Cuatro muchachas alrededor de una manzana” (Four Girls Around an Apple), from Álbum de Familia (Family Album): The apple is alliance of man and his desire. And thus it remains under my nails, endless in the shrillness of the guitar I think of old Beethoven’s forehead who I have suggested is a pause; but the apple lies in wait and covets in silence the old fire in the laughter, too loose, of four girls who make an offering game out of the fire, game and game that compel me to humiliating parapets: I force gestures rare in me such as condescending smiles such as looks that take refuge in the corners. In truth I have never been skilled at the assault, I know that my old horse was made for long traps and before the ones of these times of ease he gets frightened and doesn’t get fueled before hearth or before discord. I celebrate the wild strumming of the guitar on the gramophone and while they clap I dream of lewd acts, I look at my fingers no longer in gloves to throw to the ground and I decide my retirement, without discord, apathetic, while my apple continues to consume on its own. (49)66

It seems clear that, from the very title, the apple plays a meaningful, if not very meaningful role in the poem. We can call this role symbolic without any problems. But, what kind of symbol is the apple? Since it is not part of any narrative or descriptive frame as an apple, as the ones we know in real life, it can be deduced that it would make little sense to accept it literally. The apple in Watanabe’s poem only goes as far as its symbolic value. What that might be is not hard to deduce, although, as often happens with non-lexicalized symbols, it is difficult to specify, without the slightest semantic remainder, by means of a more or less prolonged explanation. That is why I find it a little risky to consider a symbol a trope. In this case, we resort to the various apples in our cultural

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tradition, and there appear to be at least two: one from the Garden of Eden and one from the Judgement of Paris. I think that both of them work here, although to different degrees. The first one as a symbol of evil, in particular, the kind of evil that, although not in theory, in practice the various Christian churches so often have considered to be the most harmful to man: lust. The second one seems to me to be more important and a more direct motive of the poem. In the Greek myth, Paris has to judge the beauty of three goddesses, and Aphrodite is the one who ends up receiving the golden apple prize. That is the whole key to the poem: In order to illustrate his problems with women, the main character hints at conscience issues derived from the long-standing Christian obsession with lust, but most importantly, he shows us the counter-figure of Helen’s abductor. This is not about the ability to judge goddesses, but about a mere mortal overwhelmed by women’s appearance and grace, with failure at any kind of erotic act as the foreseeable outcome. This is all expressed in a very accurate and humorous manner, and manages to convey that feeling in a completely original poem. The role the apple symbol plays here is absolutely irreplaceable. In any case, we realize that we do not need to understand in a strict sense what the symbol signifies: It suffices to feel it, and the analysis I have carried out takes place after I had received the esthetic emotion and, therefore, this analysis is completely unnecessary for this emotion to occur. That is characteristic of the symbol and, since we cannot give the apple its literal value (this would lack plausibility or interest), we give it its symbolic value instead. It is, therefore, a homogeneous symbol. There are various examples of this kind of symbol in Watanabe’s poetry: the angel, with so much literary tradition, in “El ángel no deseado” (The Undesired Angel, 82), in “Alrededor de mi hermano Juan (i.m.)” (Around my brother Juan [i.m.], 163), and in “La ranita” (The Little Frog, 211); the eye, in the poem, thus titled (205); the snake of “Canción del pescador dominical” (Song of the Sunday Fisherman, 155), “Judas” (324) or “Camino al Gólgota” (Road to Golgotha, 326); and so forth. But these symbols are really scarce, particularly when compared to the ones I will deal with in the next section. We continue to confirm how this analysis of rhetorical devices explains unequivocally why, when placed before Watanabe’s work, we feel we are in front realist poetics.

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Heterogeneous Symbols By heterogeneous symbol, I mean one that can be read at two different levels: symbolic and literal. That is, it involves elements that play a narrative or descriptive role in the poem, but at the same time recall a different reality, in the emotional way symbols do.67 I believe that this is of paramount importance to understand not only poetry, but all literature as a whole. The density of the meaning that we see as belonging to the literary text comes from this universal character of the symbol, to a considerable extent. As it happens with the heterogeneous symbol, this is even true as well as in cases where there may seem to be no symbol at all. And, since this is an idea that, as a matter of fact, does not seem acceptable to many critics and creators, it is worth dedicating some space to defend it, because it is, in my opinion, essential. A segment from the excellent Spanish poet Ángel González’s book on Antonio Machado (1999) will help put forward these ideas more precisely. It is a very long quote, but it is also a very instructive one: I believe it is convenient to establish borders separating the symbolic behavior of words from their connotative behavior, a task often ignored by literary theorists, maybe because linguists tend to define both functions by virtue of their opposition to denotation, leaving them aligned within a common semantic front, vaguely similar on the basis of what they are not or what they do not perform. One of the many possibilities for establishing a convenient contrast (and the following differentiation) between symbols and connotative signs, can be taken from some of the (nonlinguistic) theses explained by Roland Barthes in his Elements of Semiology. Reference is made there to the phenomenon by which the use of certain day-to-day things—clothes, for instance—used, in principle, for practical purposes, ends up acquiring a special value as a social sign. Once established as such signs, society can refunctionalize them and consider them utilitarian uses again: A mink coat, for example, can be treated as if its only use was protecting one from the cold. In sum, the “thing” that had become “sign” becomes “thing” again. When such a round trip process, such “refunctionalization”, occurs, we should not speak in terms of social signification of uses, but of connotation instead. It is not difficult to transfer Barthes’s shrewd proposal to the stylistic level. It suffices to substitute denotative word for practical use, symbol for social sign (and maybe poet for society). Symbol would thus be the denotative expression that acquires a special value, which is the essential and

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apparent reason for its use in a particular poem. The concept of connotation is not modified, and would be placed now in an independent position, equally separated from the wholly denotative and the symbolic functions. The connotation does not alter the denotative capabilities of the word, which it gets back in their entirety. However, the word will never be what it was before, since it still contains the unavoidable resonance of its symbolic signification … but it seems to me that to talk in terms of “símbolos disémicos” (doubly meaning symbols), as [Bousoño] does in his Teoría de la expresión poética (Theory of Poetic Expression), does not help us to correctly interpret them. First of all, the word “symbol” is somewhat vague, and tends to designate ample extensions of reality. In one sense, it is said that all words are symbols, in a different sense, that all tropes are symbols. In either case, the term has been abused to such an extent that it can hardly be used if one is to avoid generalizations. Neither are theorists very much in agreement when it comes to defining its nature. For Bousoño, the signification of the symbol is always irrational, hence he denies in a somewhat vague way what other authors see in the symbol: its character as a sign to a certain extent iconic, which includes certain kinds of relationships of similarity or contiguity and never arbitrary, which justify it and make it universally understandable. Therefore, it follows from Bousoño’s analysis and terminology that Machado’s language is essentially symbolic and irrational. I, on the contrary, think that Machado’s poetic word is not always like that; I think that in some of the examples given—and in many more that could be put forward—it is characterized by its denotative accuracy, a quality to which it owes its meaning overload, so often labeled “mysterious”. It is not the case, as Bousoño professes, that in Poem XXXII of Soledades, there is a rational signification besides the irrational one, but the other way around; the order of the numbers does change the product here. Observing a priority in the enumeration that results from a hierarchy of values, it is more appropriate to say that besides the denotative signification (rational, in Bousoño’s terms) there is another one which may be irrational. I would also question the opportunity of the adjective … In contrast with the denotative sign, which, because of its essentially arbitrary character, deserves to be labeled illogical or irrational, the connotative significations that the word ends up acquiring … are based on processes explicable through logic. (137–138, 143–144)68

Although my answer would be a different one, I believe González correctly centers the question. It is true that things are made considerably clearer by putting heterogeneous symbols (“disemic”, as González labels

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them because Bousoño uses this term as well) in connection with denotation and connotation. There seems to be no total consensus regarding these terms. “Denotation” does not seem problematic: It is more or less the meaning that can be found in the dictionary (all dictionaries are denotation dictionaries). But, what exactly is a connotation? In my view, in order for these terms to play a useful role as scientific concepts, it is necessary to clearly set their limits. Thus, it seems to me that both denotation and connotation are terms which refer to linguistic entities. Does it make sense to say that a tree or a mountain denote or connote something? Here lies an important difference with respect to the symbol, which largely crosses the borders of language: A tree or a mountain does have the potential to symbolize many things. There is no question that this is not because of these elements’ own capability to do so, but because of an innate capacity of humans to push them to make their whole world meaningful, since nature may act following certain behavioral patterns, but I doubt that, strictly speaking, this be meaningful in the slightest. There is another issue here which I believe is essential, and on which I do not know any reference. It has to do with the two Saussurean aspects of what we call language (langue and parole), and with the question of whether denotation and connotation belong with one or the other. In this respect, there might be doubts with regard to the latter, but there is no question that the former is always included in the langue sphere; it would be illogical if things were different in the case of connotation. This means that they must be common for all competent speakers of a language. It follows that, although I noted above that all dictionaries are dictionaries of denotations, and although it would certainly be a very complicated task, it would not be impossible by any means to create a dictionary of connotations. In any case, I believe that, even if it is a common occurrence, and in this respect González’s text is no exception, connotations should not be taken along with secondary or associated meanings (which typically arise metonymically). The desk I am writing on right now could happen to be very similar to one that I had in my childhood. Therefore, it would not be strange, if that had been the case, that my desk reminded me of that part of my life, and that in doing so it awakened a wealth of emotions. By definition, such emotions would not go through any rational filter, and could be of any class, and reveal themselves in any form. First, they could be positive or negative, depending on whether I considered my childhood

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to have been a happy part of my life or a difficult one. I believe it would not make sense in the slightest to call this a connotation. Poets (artists in general, although the focus here is solely on poets) incessantly use symbols and do not dismiss any method by which to construct them. Already coded symbols, precisely because of being so, are available for use to anyone, and poets have the means to bring them to life. They incessantly use anthropological symbols, the universal ones. There is no question that they also use connotations, as symbols that belong with a particular culture. But I would be willing to swear that what we see in the symbols that we consider most characteristic of a certain poet are the type of purely personal associated meanings that I have attempted to describe above. The rhetorical device that Watanabe most prominently uses is precisely the heterogeneous symbol. There is hardly any poem without one or more, with varying degrees of centrality, and with a complex network of relationships, being what contributes considerably to the semantic density of his work. Any reader of his poems is capable of distinguishing between two very characteristic types of texts: the ones that make use of a narrative frame, and those that make use of a descriptive one. Poems of the first type are built around heterogeneous symbols. With regard to the poems of the second type, all those that have so much to do with the Renaissance genre emblems readily come to mind, including so many that have an animal as a motive (and, generally, as the title). Needless to say, all those animals are symbols. Any minimally comprehensive approach to this issue would require a disproportionate number of pages, because it would be equivalent to thoroughly and minutely analyzing our author’s poetry. Subsequently, in order to prove what I have been defending in the previous paragraphs, I will focus on just one particularly complex and important symbol, and I will attempt to show its development and motivation. The symbol I have chosen for this purpose is the river. I will not even point out all of its occurrences, but only some of them, since I believe this will be sufficient. I have already commented on the first meaningful appearance of the river as a metaphor in the poem “Poema trágico con dudosos logros cómicos” (Tragic Poem with Questionable Comic Achievements); the following may be the first meaningful appearance of the river as a symbol: We stopped at a small village whose name alludes to the observed purity of the river that runs across it. (64)69

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In this poem, the river is the conventional river found in eclogues: the peace of the countryside, the ideal beauty of nature. It is a very different one in “El Cauce vacío” (In the Dry Riverbed, HN, 130): In summer following the laws of nature, the river Vichanzao stops flowing into canefields. Small-holders have dammed the flow higher up and diverted it to the cornfields. Here in the dry river bed only a breeze is flowing an invisible river. I walk here, stepping on round boulders buried in mud, gazing at small pools where a few diminutive grey fish survive and bite at the reflection of my face. No longer snot-nosed kids, we don’t catch minnows in jars anymore. Nor do we make traps for crayfish and our distant enthusiasm fades painlessly. I expected more pain. When you return to the past, it’s overgrown with brambles, Issa said. But I stroll on, strangely relieved, neither scratched nor guilty, along the dry riverbed from whose high banks the roots of willows appear. I bite them and their bitter taste is the only resistance that I find as I swim against the current.70

Here, for the first time, with its specific name, the river is the landscape of childhood. There is also an explanation of the motives why the riverbed is dry—motives which do not imply a change in the times by any means. But the motives depend on reason, and the symbol will not listen to reason. The disappearance of the river is not symbolically temporary, but permanent, since it implies the passing of the years and the irreparable loss of that childhood. The poem “El grito (Edvard Munch)” (The Shout [Edvard Munch], HN, 178), begins with these verses: Under the Chosica Bridge water is collected and it is blood water,

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but no one believes in my blood. Poets speak in figurative language, they say and I struggle: it is not the reflection of the crepuscular, auburn sky, in the mirror-like water.71

Although here the river may be one of those rivers from childhood, its sight at the end of the evening takes away any possible positive value and turns it into a torrent of blood, which, as we are metapoetically informed, is to be taken in a literal sense, and which becomes the reason for the character depicted in this famous painting to react the way he does. The following segments are from “Los ríos” (The Rivers, CC, 213): My sister comes through the hospital hallway with her old, Peruvian, resounding shoes. Suddenly somebody flushes the toilet, and it is river Vichanzao muddy running through the stones. … And my graceful sister opens the faucet and washes the dish, and this time it is river Moche, crystal clear and beneficial, coming in through the wounds in my sides opened like two gills. It’s great to be a fish then: a sensuality that allows me this pain.72

The protagonist, who is in a German hospital recovering from a serious surgical procedure, listens to the artificial flow of water through taps and toilets, and this immediately makes him recall his childhood world. Everything transmutes into something else symbolically: The adult man, sick and obsessed with death, transforms into the healthy and happy child for whom death was inexistent, as it is for any child; the extremely artificial world of the hospital transforms into pure nature; and the very same protagonist turns his awareness (the awareness of death) into an irrational fish. Although scientific advances allowed him to stay alive, these are only patches, temporary extensions that will never be able to replace the true eternity and happiness that can only be found in childhood. The next example is “El Bautismo” (The Baptism, 302–303), an excellent poem in HEN. Its quality resides in the original and complex way in which it uses the symbol we are focusing on here:

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But You, why do You come to me, Lord? You are without sin, except for a birthmark, perhaps: the Father’s fixity who lives in a unique eternal day. The river will tell you that the walking of men is continuous and inevitable. That’s why I baptize You, praying that when you leave the water the floating spirit of the river is with You, its passing in time until the day the heavens open again for You.73

This well-known episode of the Gospel is narrated here in John the Baptist’s words. It is known that, according to the data from the Bible, Jesus’s baptism is strictly unnecessary as he was born free from the original sin, and that its purpose was to begin a ritual tradition. Since the river is a current that flows, here the flow is presented in opposition to fixity. When a person is baptized in a river, which is something that Catholics stopped doing, it purifies human beings, but at the same time, since the river symbolizes life, although only to the extent that it flows toward a sea of death, it puts humans through the test of time. This is the paradoxical complexity of the myth, according to which Jesus, being both man and god at the same time, cannot be a man in the same sense that other men are, but can get close to the feeling by going through the ritual himself. In the poem “El descanso en la fuente” (The Rest by the Fountain, 305), from the same book, although it is not the river, but a different aquatic element, it may help us better understand the poem that we have just read. Samaria, rather unfriendly land, see how He sits by the well, alone, beaten by the deserts. His thirst forgotten, engrossed, He watches the windless wheat fields, the sleeping sheep in the hill, the leaning leaves of humble vegetables, the reflection of the deep water

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polishing his clothes. At noon everything reaches its original cleanliness, its calm plenitude. He has found a unique and infinite hour, and He is already in it. Now He is convinced: His eternity is possible. Let him drink now, Samaritan woman.74

Here, once more, Christ’s human and divine sides are compared. The first one evokes tiredness and thirst. The second one suggests the immobility of the desert. Life is perpetual change; only a god can see the characteristics of eternity in what does not move. Already in his divine condition, Christ can continue with the task of giving up his human condition, and thus the beautiful ending of the poem. The last poem is “El vado” (The Ford, PA, 368): If you go by the beach where they ford the river you’ll see, stuck in the silt, long eucalyptus sticks. They are there for the walkers who go to the other bank. One of them will be your crook: with its help, risk-free, you’ll feel your way through the muddy waters and the pebbles of slippery moss. Make sure you leave it stuck on the other bank with gratitude: someone else will come: perhaps my father who looks for wild watermelons in the yellow lands, perhaps myself, as I return, old and late, anxiously looking at my hometown which ripples behind the river or blurs in the mist of the sun. There, according to tradition, they sewed my navel at the joint of two adobes for me to have a homeland. Leave your crook stuck in the silt.75

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What is of interest here is not the aquatic element of the river: The river is merely a border. It is, in principle, the border between one bank and the other. But here it becomes a quintessential border: the one that separates life from death. As a border, the river separates, but the ford allows contact between its two banks. And it is this contact what allows (as a wish) the longed-for reunion with the father. I hope that this hasty itemization of some of the appearances of the river as a symbol successfully illustrates some of the reasons why I defend what I have expressed at the beginning of this section. The specific origin of each of the symbolic rivers may vary considerably, but we can see that in most cases they cannot be classified as connotations, but are instead based on experiences, memories, wishes, and all kinds of associated meanings in the mind of a particular man, José Watanabe. There would be much more left to say if we were to give a minimally comprehensive account of the river as a symbol in his poetry. We can see that not even in those cases where a symbol is used in a prolonged and complex way, does it lack axiological characterization: What is positive here may be negative there. We have sensed as well that symbols tend to occur very frequently in pairs with opposite valences, and always or almost always in correlations. Here we would have to analyze all the aquatic symbols in order to reach a minimal level of accuracy concerning the exact meaning of the river in each particular occurrence. We would also have to analyze the highly complex relationships that it bears with another basic symbol in Watanabe’s work: the desert, which stands for the arid and the lifeless, but also for a childhood scene. And we could continue to take different points into account in a virtually endless process. As I have noted before, analyzing the heterogeneous symbols in Watanabe’s poetry virtually amounts to thoroughly analyzing his complete works.

Conclusions In the previous pages, and with reference to Watanabe’s work, I have dealt with the core aspects of rhetorical analysis of texts at the semantic level, which, misleadingly, are often jointly classified as “images”. I started this section protesting against the use of this term, not calling it false, but simply explaining that it encompasses a great number of different phenomena which ought to be separated by any means if we are to carry out a minimally accurate analysis. This is because one of the characteristics of contemporary poetry, probably the most salient one, is the enormous

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complexity and diversity of these devices. I think that we will never be able to contribute to the necessary typification of styles if, for example, we continue to confuse those metaphors that are based on analogy and those that are not. Some may argue that there are no clear-cut lines separating metaphors from visions or from visionary images, and I admit that this is actually the case. Nevertheless, such clear-cut lines are also nowhere to be found when it comes to separating metaphor and metonymy, for example. In literature, for better or for worse, things do not usually call for a yes or a no, but for a more or a less, and there are no steady borders that cannot be crossed. Still, I believe that giving up on analysis because it is occasionally, or even often difficult, would simply be an irresponsible thing to do. Only a minute study of the kind of rhetorical devices used and of their variations and uses will allow us to extrapolate the characteristics of the poet’s style in any critical way. This is particularly true with regard to those two broad fields that I have called “rationalism” and “irrationalism”—fields in which, obviously, all differences are necessarily differences of degree only. We have seen that the symbol is the quintessential rhetorical device in Watanabe’s work. As I noted above, I believe that the symbol is a decisive element in contemporary poetry. We have also seen that it is pertinent to distinguish between homogeneous and heterogeneous symbols76 when doing a critical study of this kind. It is my belief that, without any fear of being wrong, we can state that a style that we deem as realist is characterized by the preponderance of heterogenous symbols. It seems to me that this is unquestionably the case with Watanabe, representative of such a style. We have also seen that next in number and importance come comparisons, always or almost always kept within the field of analogy, just as metaphors, which follow in importance. It is not surprising that there is hardly any presence of visionary images. What might be a little surprising is that there is a stronger presence of visions than one would have expected, but we have seen that their use has to do with Watanabe’s worldview, and with very important aspects of his poetry’s semantics, such as the ambivalent relationship with myth (rejected from a rational perspective, but felt as part of the Peruvian sierra culture where his maternal roots are found), and also the ambivalent relationships with his imagination and desires. This all explains how we not only feel our author’s poetry (and this is the main function of the symbol), but also how we understand it and can take advantage of its narrative and descriptive potential. There is

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no question that this is, to a great extent, why it is appealing to the reader and why it is undeniably original.

Metapoetic Approaches It is obvious for any reader of Watanabe’s work that one of his most characteristic themes is metapoetry: poetry about poetry itself. This can be seen in all of his books, from the first one to the last one, although the frequency of the occurrences may vary. There is no question that for one of the books, El husode la palabra (The Word Spindle), starting from its very title,77 metapoetry can be considered a central theme. From being the theme of the whole poem to being only surmised in some subtle allusion, the role of metapoetry as a theme in the poems can vary. This all draws, nevertheless, a very compact and coherent vision of the idea that the Peruvian author has of his work. A critical approach to this theme will unquestionably lead us to a more accurate understanding of his work. I will start this analysis by looking at those poems in which poetry appears most directly as theme. There is no doubt that the first one is “Mi ojo tiene sus razones” (My eye has its reasons, HP, 59–60). It describes a day at the seaside with a woman lover. The description of the landscape and of the protagonists’ attitudes gradually intermingles with the author’s reflection at the time of the writing: Any objective attempt at transcribing the experience clashes with the obvious fact that the eye (the perception) focuses on certain things, and, although this is not made explicit, memory is also selective. “Y es el poeta inobjetivo que mira e insiste” (And it is the nonobjective poet who looks and insists) tells us a later poem: “En el museo de Historia Natural” (In the Natural History Museum, HP, 70). So, in the end, the whole experience is summarized in a few words: “el muslo / contra la roca” (the thigh / against the rock). The moment it becomes part of an essentially meaningful artifact such as a poem, reality, compact, and, strictly speaking, meaningless requires the symbol’s help, as we have seen in the previous section. The poem “Imitación de Matsuo Basho” (Imitating Matsuo Basho, HP, 64–65) is of less theoretical depth, but is nevertheless a considerably interesting experiment, since the entire poem is simply a development of the final haiku. Any possible connection with reality, the presence or absence of biographical data, clash against what is self-evident: The poem, being literature, is fiction, and everything must be placed at that level.

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“Planteo del poema” (Nursery of the Poem, HP, 68) responds to its title: The speaker wants to write a poem and gives an account of the elements from which to start. There is an experience to convey (that of the happiness of family life for a couple of young, first-time parents), and a motive (“image” in his words) which serves to actualize it in an expressive manner: the woman as a female kangaroo and the newborn baby girl in the pouch. We are given an account of the various developments of this root image. With the last verse: “Yo debí escribir ese poema. Espero hacerlo algún día” (I should have written that poem. I hope to do it someday), we discover, in a very surprising way, that the text exemplifies the rhetorical device that ancient rhetoric called apophasis: pretending not to talk about something while actually doing so. It is not hard to find it nowadays in speeches, particularly in political ones: All instances of the so-widely used “I won’t even mention…” phrase are expressions of this rhetorical device. Its rhetorical role is obvious: to show grace (i.e., to highlight the ethical aspect, in the Aristotelian sense) by not attacking particularly weak points of the opponent’s argument, while actually doing so. In the case of Watanabe’s poem, the idea is probably to make sure one is forgiven for what could be seen as not developing the poem as fully or as deftly as promised when planning it. This is not the only instance of apophasis in Watanabe’s work. In “El anónimo” (The Anonymous, HP, 96), the speaker makes an attempt at conveying an experience but ends up, supposedly, giving up on this purpose: “No tuve el lenguaje, y esa falta no me desconsuela” (I did not have the language, and that fault does not distress me). I said “supposedly” since we do have a finished product (the poem), which gives a complete account. In “Mejor lacónico” (Better Laconic, HP, 71), we have an instance of one of the most usual processes of this author’s poetry, which is, as we know, a development based on heterogeneous symbols which manifests the meaning only at the end. Thus, the poem recalls some potter whistles of this childhood, very simple products but nevertheless particularly appreciated by children. And it is at the end that such symbol reveals its real nature, metapoetic in this case, just by means of the last verse: “que con una sola nota basta” (that with only one note is enough). And then we understand that the real or apparently biographical story is just a detour meant to give expression to an esthetic concern: simplicity over all, rejection of the baroque and of originality for its own sake, characteristics of Watanabe’s poetry as a whole and of the very poems in which they appear.

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“La ballena (metáfora del descasado)” (The Whale [Metaphor for the Divorced], HP, 77) is a celebrated poem which, in a certain way, opposes the one I have just commented upon in terms of its processes. Rather than revealing metapoetry in the last verse, it makes it apparent from its very title. So much so that the symbol, without losing its heterogeneous character, displays its symbolic status from the beginning, and not, as is usually the case, as a result of its development in the poem. In addition, it questions the very autobiographical character of the experiences originating in Watanabe’s poems. We understand, in fact, that we read the poem in the same way regardless of whether the story being narrated—the speaker exhorts a vague “you” to go see a beached whale—is a real experience, whether it is something that someone told the author, or whether it was simply imagined by the author. I will note, incidentally, that in this poem, the whale (or the sea) are not metaphors, but symbols. Strictly speaking, there are no metaphors in this text. I point this out not in order to criticize the author for any fault, since the value of this poetry, which by virtue of being literature is fiction, does not depend at all on whether its factual assessments are true or false, but in order to attempt to stir certain harmful inertias of the critics, since no one has ever thought of mentioning a fact so obvious. The allusion to certain rhetorical devices (mostly metaphors, but also simile or symbols) is one of Watanabe’s favorite ways of introducing the metapoetic theme. He almost always does so not as in “La ballena” (The Whale), that is, explicitly as the main theme from the beginning to the end of the poem, but as a motive that appears momentarily, intermingled with the development of any other theme. This all is extremely effective, since at the time when we are shown the immediacy of the experience more closely, a twist appears that reminds us that we are in front of a literary text. There are many examples: Oranges suggest only easy metaphors. I mean: captured rain, kaleidoscope, burst. But my relationship with them does not seem to go any further than the almost obscene activity of gobbling them down. (39)78 The shearers impose their strength upon the sheep,

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they tie them up and with their scissors they the take their innocent metaphor for cloud away from them. … and the sheep’s fleece will have been renewed and the metaphor. … Time descended from her fine countenance to her fine feet and wrapped with skin all her metaphors. (69)79 Cats are dangerous for poetry, soon they accumulate adjectives, they provoke much, they seduce much. (140)80 The night is silent and robust like a wide-skirt mother. Those who knew Doña Paula know that the metaphor is unbeatable. (152)81 I shouldn’t use similes to talk about your ears because they came to my dream only as such ears, naked, as properly. But language, dissenting, prefers to name them with figures, with fleeting prodigies. (158)82 One of the twelve of them asked: Are you starting a parable, Master? Outside, I thought: how little sensible his disciples that they don’t see that the man is crowned by death and that bread or flesh are the same thing! When they left my neighbor accused me of being theatrical and image-maker: He always uses symbols in his talk, she said to me; but in the empty dining room, between the leftovers and the wine, I sensed the pure smell of a wound. (319)83

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At that moment the stone was neither waterproof nor hard: it was the back of a big mother who stalked prawns in the river. Oh poet! again the temptation of a useless metaphor. The stone was stone and that was enough for it. It was no mother. … (339)84 … the thoughts seem to have stopped: the rats and the seagulls are not old allegories. We all have entered into a strange innocence. The sea has also gotten rid of its tales and carries us with the pure physics of sailing. (415)85 that symbol86 where we all are about to fly. (450)87

“Los versos que tarjo” (The Verses I Cross Out, 81) seems to be pointing out a struggle the author has when it comes to writing: which is preferable, the beauty of the individual verses, or that of the poem as a whole? It seems here that the author blames the poem’s failure on his attachment to the former. This is somewhat surprising since, although it is true that such a conflict does exist in certain eras and for certain poets, becoming very visible to the eyes of the critics and even to those of mere readers, I think that no one would consider that in Watanabe’s poetry excessive work on the individual verse leads to the failure of the whole course of the poem, which continues to be, nevertheless, the essential unit. In this way, Watanabe is aligned with the best traditions in contemporary poetry. In any case, this is what seems to be conveyed here. “Refulge otra vez el sol” (The Sun Shines Again) is a very important poem for what we are dealing with here, not so much because of its own beauty or degree of excellence, but because it contains the first instance of the motive in which the theme of metapoetry is most consistently and firmly projected in Watanabe’s work: the conflict between life and poetry. The speaker gives an account of an experience which, in many cases, centers around its most static form: contemplation (of a landscape, an animal, a natural being, etc.). The poet strives to transform that data, which is not meaningful in itself, into meaning (in Watanabe’s case, most of the time into a symbol), and the voice of his conscience reprimands him for doing so. There is the natural world on the one hand, and the

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human world on the other, and the former is always superior. Human beings can only contemplate from the outside, take pleasure only in a way that is always ontologically inferior: They are excluded somehow and they know it. This attitude is already noticeable in some of the examples transcribed above. As I have noted, it appears unequivocally for the first time in this poem: Accept this vision strictly. … That was the sense of laughter. Accept that sense strictly and reject poetic speculation. Because it is your opaque verse against your shining joy of youth. (84)88

The examples are abundant, without the slightest variation on the semantic configuration that I have just explained: I was going toward the poem and refrained myself: that man is at stake, I told myself (94)89 Agree then with the wise whippoorwill who emerges from the reed beds flying and admonishes you: “Not here, your sweet eclogue doesn’t belong here”. (95)90

An image, even one of humble verbal imagination like this one, goes to the mind and asks it to acquiesce with the poet. That is the deal. Not this time, this time I only request your immediate and literal Look: (106)91 I’ve left behind a number of days that seemed eternal and a piece of an orange peel in the Mediterranean. The peel seems to represent the grace or ingenuity of poetry, and in truth it’s terrifying when it floats upon my days and on the waters it’s a human document, just as my arm or my shoe. (218)92

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I was awestruck and mute. No footnote on beauty will ever speak truly of those flags. (409)93 The carob tree puts me before language. In this so extremely clean landscape there are no words. He is the only word and the sun can’t burn it in my mouth. (411)94

The same negative regard to poetry appears in “La piedra alada” (The Winged Rock, PA, 342) in a slightly different way: … it beat without understanding. that we can imagine a bird, the most beautiful one, but we can’t make it fly.95

Virtually the only occasion in which life arises triumphant from its conflict with poetry is in the extremely successful poem called “Basho” (BDN): The ancient pond, no frogs. The poem writes on the surface with his cane. The water has been shaking for four centuries. (413)96

The experience that the most famous of all haikus strived to convey exhausted itself in its own instantaneity. And it did not go alone: the frog at its origin disappeared long ago. Poetry cannot make bodies return, it does, however, have the power to permanently fixate the experience. It does so precisely by turning the experience into a meaningful event, which is what was rejected in the previous examples, although we can see in it one of the characteristics of Watanabe’s poetry that make it valuable. Upon some reflection on why this attitude is different, we will see that, whereas in the previous poems the experiences were present and were the author’s, the experience in this poem is from the past and is someone else’s. We understand, therefore, that these two positions are contradictory only in their formulation and appearance. Life is, of course, the greatest gift for humans. The problem is, though, that it is always time-limited. Nothing can beat time, obviously, but certain things can make us think that they can, and poetry is one of them. Such is its value. Nevertheless, since it cannot stop the ravages of time in any way, but only make us believe it can, the reactions against this we have just had the chance to read are not surprising.

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A similar perception is at the origin of “El guardián del hielo” (The Ice Guardian, 228), which has been interpreted differently, but for which the metapoetic interpretation seems to me to be the most appropriate. Certainly, the symbol is not made explicit in any direct way at any moment: This is one of the virtues of this poem, which is unquestionably one of the best in Watanabe’s repertoire. But the speaker who tries to stop the ice cream from melting in the middle of the desert stands as the poet’s counter-figure, who strives to anchor and give an account of what is unavoidably lost. Besides its esthetic dimension, it all acquires an ethical one as well: The lack of resignation before the ravages of time, such a battle lost in advance, is what defines the only possible human attitude. On several occasions, Watanabe engages in ekphrasis—a poem about a work of art (a painting or a sculpture), which is a genre with a longstanding literary tradition. It is not surprising that, as a result of the difference in the languages, the text should end up adopting a metapoetic color. Such is the case in “Escena de caza” (Hunting Scene, HP, 88), full of constant allusions to the act of describing an unnamed painting. Throughout its entirety, the poem uses sumptuous language rather unusual in Watanabe, in a kind of pastiche that tries to convey the world it represents as faithfully as possible. In any case, the most important instance of ekphrasis in Watanabe’s poetry for the purposes of this study is “El grito (Edvard Munch)” (The Scream [Edvard Munch], HN, 178), which begins as follows: Under the Chosica Bridge water is collected and it is blood water, but no one believes in my blood. Poets speak in figurative language, they say and I struggle: it is not the reflect of the crepuscular, auburn sky, in the mirror-like water.97

It is, therefore, in principle, an instance of what we have seen before: a rejection of the poetic, of fiction, as represented by figurative language, in favor of life. We can see, however, a new element: This is no longer about nature in its usual shape or activity—since in this case we would logically think that the redness of the river is due to the reflection of twilight: There are no rivers of blood in the real world. This way, fictional expression becomes literal. It is all for the purposes of capturing the protagonist of the painting’s radical anguish. It ends as follows:

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She is not restricted to figurative language: there are butchers and not auburn skies, she shouts. I write, and my style is my repression. In horror I only allow myself this silent poem.98

Horror is thus a radical experience of the human world, and Munch expressed it his way, while the speaker does so through poetry, which allows for expression without the need to submerge into the pathetic. After reading this text, we are better able to understand what is meant by “restraint” in both its dimensions, ethic and esthetic, in the famous essay, and also why Watanabe might feel attracted to this painting while at the same time dissenting from expressionist esthetics. This is a very successful, complex, and profound poem, in which a double mimesis within a mirror game becomes the best representation of life, not in its factuality, but in its essential reality, this being, indeed, the fundamental task of fiction. There can be no opposition between fiction and life but when looked at in a superficial way. “La ardilla” (The Squirrel, HN, 159–160) is another original metapoetic poem. It starts with the description of the animal that gives title to the poem, being as usual the speaker’s experience (a real squirrel that comes to his balcony to eat) and, just when we expect this kind of emblem that we have encountered on so many occasions to take shape, the poem stops and reveals itself as a poem. We are told when it was composed and for what reason. This inability to express what was meant is what is expressed in its final failure, so we have another instance of apophasis here, since there is no question that the poem is complete. The brief, final section of Natural History is titled “Coda” and is composed of two poems, both centered around the topic we are dealing with in these pages. In spite of its brevity, it can be considered the only specifically metapoetic section in all of Watanabe’s books. The first of these two poems is the beautiful “De la poesía” (On Poetry, 183), in which the metaphor presents poetry as a plant growing in excrement, as what is alive and grows from what is past and dead, even if it does not have the eternal character that we unjustifiably assume great works of art to have. A reason for hope, without a doubt. The second one, “Arte poética” (Poetic Art, 184), is of little interest and fails to deliver on the promise in its title. It is peculiar in that it is the only poem in which Watanabe uses rhyme. Of its contents, which are humorous and ironic, what most deserves to be highlighted is the claim that, rather than

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strengthening the desire toward poetics, the correct attitude for anyone hoping to dedicate themselves to poetry should be to renounce it, in the hope for words to come and fill our void. Habitó entre nosotros (He Made His Dwelling Among Us) is obviously not the book by Watanabe where the metapoetic theme is most important. It is present, nevertheless, demonstrating the Peruvian poet’s interest in parable. “Razón de las parábolas” (Reason for Parables, 311) deals with the Word, divine, of course, and highlights the longing for permanence and the simplicity of the stories that Jesus would tell as means to illuminate the listeners’ minds. There is no question that this is all part of its author esthetic program. With respect to parable, I think it would be fair to characterize it as an allegory in which narrative elements replace the descriptive ones. Some of the parables in the gospels are not exactly like this, but the most characteristic ones, such as the Parable of the Sower— which is explicitly foregrounded in this poem—do fit this pattern. I think that there are no real parables in Watanabe’s work, since, as I believe I have proved in the previous section, his stories basically weave symbols rather than metaphors. Contemporary readers and authors are not fond of allegory, and it is not a literary device that appears in this poet’s work. The insistence on the perpetuity of the Word (divine word and poetic word) runs through the entirety of this book, and it also appears very directly in “Marta y María” (Martha and Maria, 314). “Flores” (Flowers, BDN, 412) is the last of the poems in Watanabe’s work that is entirely metapoetic. While acknowledging the way the flowers in the title sprout and quickly disappear, leaving room for new ones to sprout, the speaker insists on poetry and confesses to the difficulties that the writer faces as a result of such an insistence: If flowers pass, why should poetry be permanent? And if it is not permanent, why dedicate one’s time to it? The poem ends with the following verses: From these flowers I will once again learn that poetry so dear to me can only be but a fleeting and delicate action of the eye.99

Possibly stemming from Watanabe’s interest in Japanese literature is the idea of beauty found in the fugacity of the real, an element present in Japanese esthetics. Reality, fleeting, and beautiful (the more fleeting, the more beautiful) is the object of some of the most famous Japanese poetry. Meanwhile, any value judgment concerning whether this tool destined to give a permanent form to our experience is suspended. All this happens by

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means of his favorite metonymy of the eye. This insistence is odd, to say the least, since Watanabe’s poetry goes beyond the simple and objective acknowledgment of what is observed—as could be the case of certain haiku poetry—and adds a human presence and reflection, as this poem illustrates. I will finish this section by saying that there are many poems in which the speaker is depicted as a poet, as I have commented in the previous pages. Some others which deserve mention are “En el museo de Historia Natural” (In the Natural History Museum, HP, 70), “A propósito de los desajustes” (With Regard to the Maladjusted, HP, 85-86), “Como el peje-sapo” (Like the Monkfish, HP, 105), “La deshabitada” (The Empty House, HN, 156-157), “El ojo” (The Eye, CC, 205-206), “Free run” (348) o “Film de los paisajes” (Landscape Film, PI, 452–454). In some cases, this becomes the key to the anecdote, as in three poems from Cosas del Cuerpo (Things of the Body). “La vuelta” (The Return, 224–225) narrates the poet’s return to Laredo, the protagonist having already become the pride of the locals. “Los poetas” (The Poets, 239) was written following a request by the poet’s friend Abelardo (Sánchez León, it is supposed) for him to write a prologue for his book. With regard to “La jurado” (The Judge, 237–238), it mixes the real experience of reading poems by young authors for the purpose of awarding a prize, with the visionary presence of the dead mother. In each of these cases, the issue is treated as mere introduction of biographical elements, at a level with proper nouns, the presence of the family, the allusion to experiences, etc. The fact that we often use the term autobiography when discussing Watanabe invites reflection, and maybe we do not realize that not all biographical data are used; in other words, that, again, nothing is given in advance, but is instead the result of a choice. And in that choice, a limited number of elements are favored: first, all the childhood memories—which we can suspect were idealized to different degrees— and memories from his adult life as well, underscoring that continuity with childhood (family and places), the difficulties of love, the extreme fear of death, or as we have seen, poetry itself; not, for example, any other of his professional activities. In any case, there is no reason why these should be metapoetic texts. Nevertheless, in some there are interesting observations, which generally match the ones described above. For example, in “Los poetas” (The Poets, 239), with its insistence on the Word—which we have already seen in He Made His Dwelling Among Us—this time with no religious undertones, but with cinematographic nuances (Citizen Kane): the unique word that can justify anything. And certain verses in “La jurado” (The Judge, 237–238) confirm the double aspect of “restraint”, ethic and esthetic:

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… Death in truth is like poetry: see it coming as a form of temperance.100

As I promised at the beginning of this section, the metapoetic theme is one of the most persistently dealt with in Watanabe’s work and one of its most characteristics. I believe it is worth asking ourselves why. In my opinion, metapoetry is connected to the peculiar nature of the Peruvian’s poetry in a way that goes beyond the very logical interest in one’s occupation, which depicts its author as one that is very self-aware of his task. Indeed, a poetic work such as Watanabe’s is subject to a number of risks. The first one is the tonality of the expression. It seems clear that Watanabe was a man given to sentimentalism. As we already know and have quoted along these pages, the key word of his ethics (in particular, when facing death) and his esthetics is “restraint”: to give an account of the experience and convey one’s feelings, but without entering the area of the pathetic. We have seen in “El grito” (The Scream) that the shock resulting from the painting cannot hide the profound disagreement with expressionist esthetics. Along with humor and irony in particular, metapoetry has that goal: It is used to prevent us from falling into sentimental effusiveness in circumstances that seem to be particularly appropriate for doing so. Ángel González, the Spanish poet that I quoted when discussing the symbol, seems to have, in my view, many similarities with Watanabe in his poetic temperament, and he too uses humor, irony, and metapoetry, although in somewhat different doses, to an identical effect. The second danger that I would like to point out has to do with the fact that Watanabe’s writing is realist, and particularly with the fact that it is autobiographical. It is perfectly possible in contemporary poetry to hide the rhetoric and to introduce poems as “life fragments”; nevertheless, logic tells us that this is but an option in style. This is a challenge that cannot be faced in a naive way if one is to be successful at it. One of the keys in connection with the fact that Watanabe’s work turns out to be what it actually is, an excellent piece of literature, can only be awarded by the most absolute lucidity. Metapoetry is its most palpable proof and also the best of its tools. It speaks both about the immense difficulties that must be overcome about the deceptive appearance of writing to be so “easy”, and about the fact that it is nothing but fictional writing.

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Therefore, it turns out to be extraordinarily illustrative of the decisive process that makes a text literature: How a particular experience, which in principle should not be of interest to anyone but its subject, becomes something that can be transmittable and worth sharing with a community of readers.

Meter and Rhythm From my very first reading of Watanabe’s work, I was convinced that a great deal of its appeal and efficacy was due to its use of rhythm. To this day, this topic has not been subject to any critical analysis, so I thought it would be important to include a section dealing with this issue as part of this review of some of Watanabe’s poetry’s rhetorical aspects. The starting point here will be the brief analysis of certain poets which I consider particularly illustrative of the different variants and multiple problems relevant to the Peruvian poet’s work. I will apply the criteria for meter and rhythm analysis that I introduced in my 2017 paper.101 First I determine the number of syllables in each verse. In the case of verses that have never been part of a regular series in Spanish (basically, those longer than fourteen syllables), when they appear as the result of combining shorter verses, I signal this in brackets. Within each verse, I mark the stresses (rhythmic, obviously) in bold, and I indicate the numerical order of the stressed syllables. I have used the grave accent to mark secondary stresses in those cases where their presence seems worth marking. I mark pauses by means of slashes (/): a single slash for internal pauses independent from the metrical pattern of the poem; a double slash for pauses at the end of the verse and for caesuras; and a triple slash at the end of a stanza. Finally, to account for the intonational curve I use a downward arrow (↓) to signal “cadencia” (falling intonation following the last stress of the phrase), an upward arrow (↑) to indicate “anticadencia” (rising intonation at the end of the phrase), and a horizontal arrow (→) to mark enjambments. Although at certain points it would allow for a more accurate analysis, I think it would be risky to signal other intonational features such as “semicadencia” (falling intonation at the end of the phrase, but not as marked as in “cadencia”) and “semianticadencia” (rising intonation at the end of the phrase, but not as marked as in “anticadencia”). I merely point out in my analyses what seems more plausible according to my sense of rhythm—which is nevertheless well trained after many years dedicated to poetry—but I

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cannot claim to provide any “final” judgments, which I believe cannot exist in this field. In these conditions, I find the three types of arrows I mentioned above sufficient to gain a general understanding of the intonational curve, and I will not try to fine-tune the analysis any further in a way that would be necessarily risky. The first of these analyses deals with “El guardián del hielo” (The Ice Guardian), one of the most deservedly famous of Watanabe’s poems: ↑Y coincidimos en el terral →// 10 4-9 el heladero con su carretilla averiada →// 14 4-10-13 y yo↓ // 3 2 ↑que corría tras los pájaros huidos del fuego →// 14 (8 + 6) 3-7-10-13 de la zafra.↓ // 4 3 ↑También coincidió el sol.↓ //7 2-5-6 ↑En esa situación →// cómo negarse a un favor llano: ↓// 15 (7 + 9) 6-7-10-12-14 ↑el heladero me pidió cuidar →// su ef ímero hielo. ↓///16 (11 + 6) 4-8-10-12-15 ↑Oh cuidar lo fugaz bajo el sol…→ /// 10 1-3-6-9 ↑El hielo empezó a derretirse→// 9 2-5-8 bajo mi sombra ↓, tan desesperada→// 11 4-10 como inútil.↓// ↑Diluyéndose →// 8 3-7 dibujaba seres esbeltos y primordiales→// 14 3-5-8-13 que sólo un instante tenían firmeza→// 12 2-5-8-11 de cristal de cuarzo→// 6 3-5 y enseguida eran f ormas puras →// 9 3-4-6-8 como de montaña o planeta →// 9 5-8 que se devasta. ↓/// 5 4 ↑No se puede amar lo que tan rápido f uga.↓// 13 3-5-9-12 ↑Ama rápido↓, ↑ me dijo el sol.↓// 10 1-3-7-9 ↑Y así aprendí↓, ↑en su ardiente y perverso reino↓,// 13 2-4-7-10-12 ↑a cumplir con la vida:↓// 7 3-7 ↑Yo soy el guardián del hielo.↓// 8 1-2-5-7 So we came across each other in the breeze the ice vendor with his broken cart and I

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who would chase birds escaping the burning of the cane. The sun too had found us. At that moment, who could deny the merest favor: the vendor asked me to watch his ephemeral wares. Oh to care for evanescence under the sun... The ice began to trickle under my shadow—as useless as it was desperate. Its dissolution traced svelte and primordial beings with the fleeting density of quartz crystal and suddenly they were pure forms as of mountains or a planet abruptly ravaged. How impossible to love what so quickly fades. Love swiftly, said the sun. And I learned, in her perverse and ardent kingdom, to honor life: I am the guardian of ice.102

As anyone who has read Watanabe’s work can surely tell, metrical factors are of very little importance for our author. He never uses a fixed form: Among his poems, we will not find sonnets, romances, etc. Rhyme is missing as well, with the only exception of “Arte poética” (Poetic art, HN, 184), which is a very brief poem written in rhyming couplets with assonant rhyme with verses of different lengths. Poems are generally divided in stanzas, but these are not regular in the slightest; that is, they do not depend upon any metrical pattern, but upon the distribution of the matter with semantic or expressive criteria instead. All these characteristics are not surprising in a contemporary poet: They coincide with the norms of poetry of our times. What is surprising is the tenacity with which Watanabe clings to this compositional mode, since exceptions are not rare in the poetry of the last two centuries, and fixed forms, at least some of them, have not disappeared from books at all. But, most of all, Watanabe’s originality, and one of the ways in which he displays this difficult task with such ease so characteristic of him, is revealed in his disregard for syllabic quantities in his verses. It is true that free verse

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seems to have been the usual form adopted in poetic writing in Spanish for over a century, but I think it is very easy to show that, for most authors, the hendecasyllabic pattern continues to be constantly at work. Although there may be numerous exceptions, hendecasyllabic, heptasyllabic, enneasyllabic, and alexandrine verses continue to be by far the most abundant verse types, with residual use of other types of verses to provide some rhythmic variation. For this reason, I believe that in most cases, rather than “free verse”, “free versification” would be a more appropriate term. And yet, this is not the case in Watanabe. That kind of metrical base is, if not completely missing, so blurred that it would hardly make any sense to base the analysis on it, although it would not be impossible to do so. Watanabe’s verse is, therefore, free verse in the fullest sense of the word, and this is, again, one of the highest values of his poetry. But, if the metric component carries so little weight in this poetry, it is fair to ask ourselves where its rhythmical bases lie. There is no question that it does have rhythm, and one that is specifically poetic, that is, based on the distribution of the linguistic matter across the verses. Unfortunately, Spanish metric and rhythm are specialties which have alarmingly fallen behind, and specialists are unable to reach basic consensus on issues as essential as whether there is a pause, or not, between verses in enjambments. From my point of view, the only possible definition of verse is that of a set of syllables, some of which are stressed and are limited by pauses. If this were not true at least to a certain extent, I cannot see how we could ever differentiate between verse and prose in the slightest, and verse would become a sort of chunked prose, with visual effects, but not rhythmic ones, and I think that we can all agree that this would obviously be perfect nonsense. We thus come back to the question: Since Watanabe was perfectly free to choose between prose and verse to express himself and he chose the latter, what is the basis for the specifically poetic nature of his rhythm? When metrical patterns are very strong, that is, when they are highly codified, as it is the case for most of our poetic tradition (for all of it until the nineteenth century), rhythm cannot be a function of content, but superimposes it instead. In fact, the charm of this type of poetry originates to a large extent in the fact that it takes place in a space created by the tension between the metrical pattern on one side and semantic and syntactic patterns on the other side. But when this tension is reduced to such an extent that we have seen in Watanabe, when verse is truly free, it seems clear that rhythm (which obviously has to be poetic) mostly relies

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on those semantic and syntactic patterns that had trouble finding their place within the metrical constraints of traditional poetry. Certainly, free verse came to being as a result of that need for a more malleable and more perfect expression for the kind of content that belonged with poetry, and which was deemed impossible to express within the boundaries of the traditional ways. There is no question that Watanabe’s verse originates in an identical need as well, and that work on this verse implies the fine-tuning of a tool that becomes more and more accurate and adequate for the expression for which the author needs to find an outlet. But rhythm can only accompany that need; by itself, it does not seem able to adopt neither very specific semantic patterns, as musical rhythm, but, inasmuch as it is poetic (and free) rhythm, nor general semantic patterns. As I said a moment ago, rhythm is only required, therefore, to accompany the content, that is, to not clash directly with it, and if it does, it should be to affect the semantics. What does seem to have an immediate effect upon rhythm, or to be decisively influenced by it, is what we call “tone”, which can be defined as the general attitude that the poem’s speaker adopts with regard to the ideal reader. Obviously, there is no reason why the poet should possess one tone only. A poet’s tone is not unlikely to gradually or radically evolve in time, from one book to another, or even from one poem to the next one. But it is usually the case for a poet to have one basic tone, and for it to be one of the most characteristic elements of their writing. There might be no need to say that finding one’s own tone is one of the most difficult things for any poetry writer, and all great poets have their own. Watanabe manages to do this from the first of his books, at least to a certain degree, and without a doubt from his second book, and he never strayed from it, and this very fact I believe is sufficient to evaluate the quality of his work. What exactly is that tone? It is undoubtedly a minor tone, one that does not try to break away from the modalities of daily language, and which is occasionally carved out of the conversation model, but which more often adopts the appearance of a storyteller. This explains the narrative pattern so characteristic of Watanabe’s poetry, not infrequently counterbalanced by a preference for description. It is this tone that is inextricably united to rhythm, since it would be difficult to explain one without the other. Of course, this is merely its basic modality, around which different patterns emerge that provide his poetry with an indispensable variation without which the reader’s interest would end up waning.

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I have chosen “El guardián del hielo” (The Ice Guardian) not because it is one of Watanabe’s best poems, but because, added to the inescapable basic “storyteller” pattern, there is an element that is rare in this author. This is, indeed, a particularly euphonious poem by a poet whose poetics rejects excessive formal perfection, or the search for formal beauty for its own sake, since this is interpreted as too conventionally “poetic”, and therefore not very appropriate to account for what one wishes to communicate. It is fair and also very instructive to ask ourselves about the elements the euphony of this text is based on. As I have mentioned before, there is no rhyme. With regard to the number of syllables per verse, the verses here seem to be inclined to adopt more traditional forms; however, they do not get much longer, and not all of them do. There is nevertheless more freedom in this respect than in other poems. The stresses, without which rhythm in Spanish would be inconceivable, do not seem to behave differently with respect to other poems: There are usually two or three non-stressed syllables between each ictus, although this is not the only possibility. But this is nevertheless the usual pattern with Watanabe. Finally, pauses adapt to tone in a natural way. Although not very much, tone does seem to differ in a meaningful way from what is usual in Watanabe’s poetry. The Ice Guardian has, from its very title, an emphasis and solemnity that are hard to find in other texts. I am referring in particular to the fact that the shift from narration and/or description to the symbolic, almost always implicit, is explicitly marked in this poem. First, because of the fact that the title and the last verse place us right within that mythical space—in a sort of circular structure that contributes to the emphatic effect of the poem. The rhythm of the last verse is very meaningful: It opens with two consecutive stresses—a structure that is usually avoided but seems necessary here—and has a mirrored distribution of the graphic (and almost phonetic as well) matter: “yo-oy”, which is also a famous biblical formula. When paying close attention to this, we can see that it is that solemnity and that phonetic play which produce the pleasant sounds mentioned above in a poem that has no rhyme. In a non-exhaustive analysis, we can see that in verses six and seven there are a number of words with final o: “coincidió”, “sol”, “situación”, “favor”, or words that repeat a-o, as “favor-llano”. In verse 8, we have “efímero-hielo” (e-o), or “heladero-efímero” (with final “ero”). “Cuidarfugaz” in verse 9 (final stressed a); in verse 14, “seres esbeltos”, with a clashing pair of “es”; in verse 16, “de cristal de cuarzo”, which duplicates the sequence “de k”; in verse 17, “formas puras” (both ending in

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“as”); in verse 18, “como de montaña o de planeta”, where the sequence “nta” is immediately followed by “neta”. This list could go on. If rhythm is basically binary alternate repetition, in its most elementary form, and Watanabe’s poetry does not reject syntactic or morphological repetition forms, or keyword repetition, but does not use them in a particularly unnoticeable way, it seems that we have to descend to the phonic level to find that possible rhythmic base. The next example is “Banderas detrás de la niebla” (Flags Behind the Fog, 409–410), from the book of the same title. ↑ Hày una vejez triste e indefinida en el puerto,↓// 15 5-6-10-14 ↑más herrumbre en el muelle ↓// 7 1-3-6 ↑y bares sospechosos en la ribera→// 12 2-6-11 donde antes había casonas→ // rodeadas de hierba tenaz. ↓/// 17 (9 + 9) 2-5-8-10-13-16 ↑Una noche,↓↑ cuando una niebla densa y turbia→// 13 3-9-10-12 cubría el mundo, ↓↑yò caminé a tientas →// 11 2-4-9-10 por el entablado del muelle. ↓//↑Adolescente aún, ↓// 15 (9 + 7) 5-812-14 ↑acaso buscaba el terror gozoso de la evanescencia.↓/// 17 2-5-8-10-16 ↑Iba confirmando con la mano la baranda,↓//↑ sus uniones→// 18 (10 + 8) 1-5-9-13-17 de metal,↓↑ las cuerdas de las trampas de cangrejos→// 14 3-5-9-13 atadas a las cornamusas oxidadas.↓/↑ Los cangrejos →// 17 2-8-12-16 merodeaban de noche los restos del pescado eviscerado,↓↑ tripas→// 20 (7 + 11 + 2) 3-6-9-13-17-19 que rodaban en el f ondo marino → //11 3-7-10 o se enroscaban como serpientes →// en las pilastras del muelle. ↓/// 18 (10 + 8) 4-9-14-17 ↑Escuchaba la suave embestida de las olas →// 14 3-6-9-13 en el costado de los pequeños botes→// 12 4-9-11 que en las madrugadas→ //salían a recoger redes →// 15 (6 + 9) 58-13-14 cruzando entre los barcos de guerra→ //estacionados en la bahía. ↓// 19 (10 + 10) 2-6-9-13-18 ↑Un perro abandonado en el f ondo de un bote,↓//↑ tan ciego→// 16 (14 + 3) 2-6-9-12-15 como yo,↓↑ gemía.↓/// 6 3-5

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↑Entonces vi banderas→ //que alguien, ↓↑a lo lejos,↓↑ agitó→// 17 (7 + 10) 2-4-6-8-12-16 detrás de la niebla.↓/// 6 2-5 ↑Quedé deslumbrado y mudo.↓//↑ Ninguna apostilla→// 14 (8 + 6) 2-5-7-13 sobre la belleza hablará realmente→ // de aquellas banderas.↓/// 17 (11 + 6) 5-8-10-13-16 An old age sad and obscure hangs about the port, more rust on the dock and suspicious bars on the shoreline where before there were houses ringed by stubborn herb. One night, when a mist dense and murky covered the world, I walked groping along the planking of the dock. Still a youth, perhaps I sought the joyful terror of dwindling away. I went on feeling the railing with my hands, its metal joinings, the ropes of the crab traps tied to the rusted keels. The crabs prowled by night among the gutted fish and their innards that rolled in the deep sea or wound themselves like serpents around the pilasters of the dock. I listened to the gentle push of the waves at the sides of the small boats that in the mornings they went out to gather nets passing between the warships stationed in the bay. A dog, as blind as me, whimpered in the bottom of a boat. Then I saw someone, in the distance, waving flags behind the fog. I was awestruck and mute. No footnote on beauty will ever speak truly of those flags.103

I use this poem to exemplify one of the methods that are most characteristic of Watanabe, one that we could simply name “long-verse poem”. It is obvious, since it is such an easy element to notice, that some of

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Watanabe’s poems tend to have short verses and some others tend to have long ones, and this is a characteristic that is sometimes extended to the entire or most of the books in which they are included. This is only a trend without much rigidity and therefore includes plenty of exceptions. But I think it undeniably exists. The tone of this poem continues to be that of a storyteller, but here it acquires a particularly discursive form, with plenty of descriptive digressions, and, on this occasion, of lists, which is not a particularly normal device in Watanabe. Among the long verses, we frequently find some of the traditional ones, or parts of them. Their stresses are very regular, and they contribute to the rhythm, calmly flowing by means of smooth pauses and continuous enjambment, until we reach the conclusion, where the emotional wealth of the poem is concentrated, without making use of emphasis as in The Ice Guardian, which is more in accordance with the Peruvian poet’s usual compositional processes. The smoothness, the natural flow of the words, and their elegance obviously depend on those rhythmic elements, but they also regularly rely on phonic elements, in particular, on those that have to do with vowel distribution. Again, without claiming to be exhaustive, I will deal here with the most notable ones. In the first stanza, the repetition of “u-e”, whereas the last two verses contain a continuous “e-a” (and I would not like to over-extend the analysis by talking about an iconic relationship between this phenomenon and the content, which narrates the transition from the nighttime reality to an imagined future that the adolescent wishes would be clear). In the second one, there is a collision between the enjambed elements “turbia-cubría” (u-i-a), and the stanza comes to an end with “evanescencia”, weakening the stresses. “Evanescencia” delicately rhymes with “tienta” and “densa”, both in the first verse. In the third stanza, following “confimando-mano” (man-o), there is an overwhelming succession of “a-a”, sometimes relying on homoioteleuton (“merodeaban”, “rodaban”, “enroscaban”), with an “e-o” cluster in the fourth verse. In the fourth stanza, we have “recoger redes”, with an initial “-re”, and the prevalence of “a-o”, centered in the fourth verse. Finally, in the last stanza, “mudo” is built entirely with phonemes in the previous word (“deslumbrado”), and the last verse closes with the repetition of “e-a”, which, with the exception of the initial “o”, are the only vowels. My only intention when pointing out this phenomenon is to account for the fact that poetry can do without its most codified forms and devices, and can escape from poetic conventionalism, but it cannot run away from

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rhythm. Watanabe had the option to choose between prose and verse and he chose verse, and from then on, there were no options, rhythm inevitably imposed itself. And without repetition, there is no rhythm. To a large extent, the genius of his poetry lies in his ability to use verse in such a malleable manner that it makes full use of the effects available in poetic language without giving up the naturalness of prose. One of the devices that contribute to making diction natural, without having to give up on the virtues of verse is enjambment. As I mentioned above, it is obvious in this poem that the smooth rhythmical flow depends, to a large extent, on the regular distribution of stresses, on pauses—which also occur in homogeneous intervals—and in continuous enjambment. It seems logical that enjambment should be unavoidable when the number of syllables is regular, as we can easily see in classic Spanish poetry. But, once we decide to go without this device, there seems to be no reason that can justify the fact that meter and syntax do not coincide. Thus, we can see that it is hardly used in the first forms of free verse in Spanish. But those poets were not aiming at a colloquial style. The later poets who did use it found out that enjambment was an excellent method for making diction more natural, for avoiding a forcefulness and an emphasis that continued to be seen as conventionally poetic. When we look at it, we see that it is a rhythmic problem. Like these poets, Watanabe knows how to use this device and clearly belongs, with regard to this aspect as well, within the colloquial poetry trend. Enjambment in Watanabe is usually like the kind we see in “Banderas detrás de la niebla” (Flags Behind the Fog, 409–410): continuous and completely devoid of violence. There is no scarcity of examples of atypical uses of this device, as the use of non-stressed words at the end of a verse: “que” (pages 59 [“que/si” enjambment], 105, 218, 314 and 383104 ), “y” (pages 210, 314 and 329), “cuando” (page 322). “Film de los paisajes” (Landscape Film, 452–454) reinforces its avant-garde tone with a “con” (with) at the end of a verse and with a case of tmesis: “bien/ venida”. As I have said before, these are very rare examples that must be treated as exceptions, but which are not unproblematic because of the enjambment and the use of non-stressed words in verse-final position, which, if not considered to be entirely the result of playfulness, as in this last poem, must be seen as a means to underscore the non-poetic character of this poetry without giving up verse in doing so. There is also no shortage of examples of the iconic use of this technique, which is always very appropriate to suggest notions of ending,

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emptiness, interruption, etc., or the opposite notions, such as continuity. If we look at the book where they seem most abundant, “La piedra alada” (The Winged Rock), we find “como una cascada / sobre la peña” (page 341); “emergidos / de la tierra”, “los une / eternamente” (page 343); “sigue /buscando” (page 346); “una fosa / debajo de la higuera” (page 376). There is even a very strange case in which it is used to reinforce the surprise effect: “dijo mi madre / en Reyes 17:12” (p.372). It would not be impossible to find similar examples in other books, but they would be scarce in any case. It must be concluded that enjambment in Watanabe is almost exclusively motivated by rhythm. The next poem I would like to deal with here is precisely from The Winged Stone: “Jardín japonés” (Japanese Garden, 345): ↑La piedra →// 3 2 entre la blanca arena rastrillada→// 11 4-6-10 no fuè traída por la violenta naturaleza. ↓// 15 4-9-14 ↑ Fuè escogida por el espíritu →// 9 3-8 de un hombre callado→// 6 2-5 y colocada, →// 5 4 no en el centro del jardín, →//8 3-7 sino desplazada hacia el Este →// 9 5-8 también por su espíritu. ↓/// 6 2-5 ↑No más alta que tu rodilla, →// 9 3-8 la piedra te pide silencio.↓/↑ Hày tanto ruido→ // 13 2-5-8-10-12 de palabras gesticulantes y arrogantes →//13 3-8-12 que pugnan por representar →//9 2-8 sin majestad→// 5 4 las equivocaciones del mundo. ↓///10 6-9 ↑Tú mira la piedra y aprende:↓/↑ ella,↓// 10 1-2-5-8-9 ↑con humildad y discreción,↓// 9 4-8 ↑en la luz flotante de la tarde, →// 10 3-5-9 representa →// 4 3 una montaña. ↓/// 5 4 The stone, among the raked white sand, was not brought by violent nature. It was chosen by the spirit of a quiet man

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and placed, not in the center of the garden, but rather skewed to the East, also by his spirit. Not much taller than your knee, the stone asks you for silence. There is so much noise made by empty and arrogant words that struggle dishonorably to represent the errors of the world. Look at the stone and learn: it, in the floating light of the afternoon, with tact and humility, it represents a mountain.105

In the same way that “Flags Behind the Fog” exemplifies the poem with long verses, this one exemplifies the poem with short ones. This is probably as far as regularity can go in Watanabe: out of twenty verses, five of them are enneasyllabic, and many of the other verses follow traditional patterns. Again, brief verses perfectly match the desired tone, which in this case is that of a person speaking in a low voice: A smooth and continuous enjambment is added to the short verses, with a very regular stress pattern and almost complete absence of pauses. Serenity, which may be the basic note of the content, is conveyed in an excellent way by means of such a rhythmic structure, which, as usual, is supported by a number of euphonic devices. Among these, we can highlight the following ones: In verse 2, “a” prevails among the vowels almost exclusively, iconically expressing whiteness. In verse 3, there is a double sequence “e-a”. In the following verses, we find use of homoioteleuton in “traída-caída-colocada”, echoing “ida” and with a final repetition “c-da”. Verse 11 is interest because of the presence of the “pi-pi” (“piedra” – “pide”) sequence, with an accumulation of stresses to suggest noise, and with the only strong pause of the poem to stand for rupture. New homoioteleuton in verse 12, rhyme in the stressed “a” in the following one, and “a-e” in verse 18, and “piedra” – “aprende” in verse 16, with the repetition of p, e, d, r. This poem is a good place to deal with the most complex problems that any study of meter and rhythm in Watanabe’s poetry has to face: that of differently aligned verses. With regard to this issue, it has to be said that the poet’s behavior is odd, since it varies considerably depending on the book being studied. In AF, out of the fifteen poems it is composed of,

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eight of them have differently aligned verses—sometimes abundantly— and seven of them do not: almost two exact halves. Their number rises in HP: Out of thirty-six poems, only eight of them have a completely traditional alignment; this is the only book by Watanabe to include poetic prose (three texts). In HN, only three poems remain free from some form of staggering. With CC we are even again: fifteen poems of each kind. But in HEN and PA there is not a single poem traditionally aligned, whereas in BDN all of them are. As we can see in “Jardín japonés” (Japanese Garden), sometimes there are real staggerings, but most of the times there are just indentations at different lengths. The problem is, obviously, to decide whether this has consequences for rhythm. In truth, it is hard to discern any sort of regularity, which only with a great imagination could be said to highlight particularly notable units because of their semantic value, or because of any other value. It seems that nothing of this carries any practical effect in the reading, that the indented verses do not share any particular distinctive phonic character, and that the pauses between them are the usual pauses between verses. There remains, of course, their graphic character, which I hesitate to include in rhythm, not because I think it cannot exist, but because Watanabe seems to have been learned this device from avantgarde poetry, which uses it pictorially (unrhythmically), in order to make use of the page in a more imaginative and playful way; sometimes also iconically, although I find it hard to find such examples in Watanabe. In any case, these are verses that generate a certain degree of indecision, particularly when it is very difficult to decide if we are in front of a verse that has been broken down into two, or in front of two verses, since there are no strict rules governing the point at which a poem can be broken down. It is possible to find examples of this in HP, or in very well-known poems like “La mantis religiosa” (The Praying Mantis, 66–67). Strangely enough, in Watanabe’s Poesía Completa (Complete Poetic Works), there is only one case where we find the usual typographic device (one of them) to indicate a broken-up verse. Could it have been the editor’s decision? let there be winter in the whole hemisphere, but let there always be the [miracle of the sun in the stairs. (168)106

It is very likely that the playful spirit that rarely abandons the Peruvian poet has something to do with creating this indecision, and that it is one more strategy to avoid what is conventionally poetic while writing poetry at the same time.

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I will finish this section with one final example, the first segment of Antígona (Antigone). ↑Hoy es el primer día de la paz. ↓// 11 1-2-6-10 ↑Las armas enemigas →// aún no han sido recogidas →// y están dispersas→// 20 (7 + 8 + 5) 2-6-10-14-17-19 sobre el polvo como ofrendas inútiles. ↓/// 11 3-7-10 ↑Qué rápido el viento de la madrugada ha borrado→ // las huellas de huida de los argivos.↑// 26 (15 + 11) 1-2-5-11-14-17-20-25 ↑Cuando la luz es brillante →// como la de esta mañana, →//parece que el pasado→// 23 (8 + 8 + 7) 4-7-15-18-22 es más lejano. ↓//5 2-4 ↑Pero no, ↓//↑ellos huyeron apenas anoche,↓// ↑ no más noches.↓// 17 (4 + 11 + 4) 3–7-13–16. ↑Antes de nuestro último sueño → // fuè el tropel de su desbande. ↓///17 (9 + 8) 1–5-8–12-16. ↑Vinieron → 3 2 y se posaron →// sobre nuestros tejados→ //cual águilas armadas ↓//19 (5 + 7 + 7) 4-11-14-18 ↑y pusieron en nuestras siete puertas →//11 3-8-10 siete renombrados capitanes↓// 10 1-5-9 ↑y nunca acallaron →//sus siniestros gritos de guerra. ↓///15 (6 + 9) 2-5-9-11-14 ↑Pero Zeus,↓//↑ que abomina los alardes →// de la lengua altanera, ↓//19 (4 + 8-7) 3-7-11-15-18 ↑estuvo con nosotros.↓// 7 2-6 ↑Acosados por nuestros batallones,↓//↑ corrían por su vida →// aquellos que cantaban →// 24 (11 + 7 + 7) 3-10-13-17-19-23 que habían venido a beber nuestra sangre.↓/// 11 2-4-7-10 ↑No la bebieron y agradezcamos hoy la vida →//14 4-9-11-13 y el sol →//3 2 y la paz que es un aire transparente,↓// ↑ y empecemos a olvidar. ↓///19 (11 + 8) 3-6-10-14-18 It is the first day of peace today

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The enemy’s weapons have not yet been collected and lie scattered on the dust like useless offerings. How quickly has the early morning wind erased the traces of the warriors’ flight from Argos When the light shines the way it shines this morning the past seems to be further away. But it isn’t. They hardly fled last night. No more nights. Before our latest sleep they escaped in heaps. They came and they landed on our roofs as armed eagles and put seven renowned captains by our seven gates and they never quietened their sinister war cries. But Zeus, who hates haughty language displays, was on our side. Relentlessly pursued by our battalions, they ran for their lives those who sang that they had come to drink our blood. They didn’t drink it and today we should be grateful for life and for the sun and for peace in a transparent air, and let’s start forgetting.

The first time I read Poesía Completa (Complete Poetic Works) I was surprised by Antigone. I immediately saw that, rather than the difference in genre with regard to the other books compiled, it was the obvious difference in the diction that I found surprising. Since this is immediately reflected in the rhythm, I thought that it would be interesting to deal with rhythm in this rewriting of Sofocles’ famous tragedy as part of this study of rhythm in Watanabe’s poetry. I believe this poem can be very illustrative regarding what rhythm is usually not like in the Peruvian poet’s work. In the segment I have selected, it seems clear that verses are longer than usual, but can in many cases be broken down into traditional meter. These characteristics can be equally applied for the most part to the rest of the segments. This is of course a regularity that is never absolute in Watanabe, but it is clearly more present in this book than in the others. Stress patterns continue to be very regular, but a characteristic that very noticeably stands out is that enjambment has disappeared almost completely: Wherever possible, sentences are enjambed over hemistichs

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rather than verses. It is also worth highlighting the presence of repetition devices which, although common in most poets, are rare in Watanabe: anaphora, parallelism, and enumeration. Sometimes these devices are the ones that dominate the rhythmic development of the poem, and so, in contrast to the clear tendency toward the long verse, we have “Vinieron” or “y el sol”, whose isolated presence can only result from the pressure exerted by those devices. When we add to this the fact that the syntax lacks the usual naturalness we find in Watanabe and that there is a certain archaic aftertaste in the choice of certain words, we can start to understand the reasons behind this all. The key is, undoubtedly, the change of tone, which can continue to be the storyteller tone—since here the story is narrated, contrary to the conventions of the dramatic genre—but the story here is not told to a complicit audience nor in a conversational tone. I believe that Watanabe tries to combine the typical declamatory tone of the Greek tragedy with a non-excessive separation from normal language on the one hand, and also what we already know: the poetic and the non-poetic—continuing to write poetry but pretending not to do so—on the other hand. The work arises from this crossing of tensions, and the rhythmic result is the one described above. No matter to what extent, the declamatory trait is here and not in the rest of this author’s books. I guess this is because he deemed it necessary for the tragedy not to lose its tragic character, without which it would be completely meaningless. And it is, in summary, this lack of naturalness that surprises the reader familiar with the rest of his collection of poems. Besides the repetition devices I have already mentioned and the lack of enjambment, which may be the most decisive novelties with respect to other works, it is worth noting that, just as in the other works, although maybe in a more conscious search for euphony—which also has to do with a greater separation from natural diction that I have already mentioned— it shows great care in the distribution of the phonic matter, which compensates for the lack of rhyme through constant echoes. As always, in order to exemplify this type of phenomena, and without claiming to give an exhaustive account of the subject, I will highlight the following: in verse 2, “enemigas” – “recogidas” (i-a), in verse 4 “huellas” – “huida” (hu), in verse 5 “parece” – “pasado” – “lejano” (“pa” repetition in the first two, and “a-o” repetition in the last two); incidentally, “lejano” does form enjambment, with iconic motivation; in verse 7, a case of derivation (“anoche” – “noches”); in verse 8, a triple consecutive “u-e” (“nuestro” – “sueño” – “fue”). To be brief, in the third stanza we have

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a homoioteleuton, doubled in paronomasia (“posaron” – “pusieron”), a repeated “siete” that is followed by “siniestro” (si), and “gritos” – “guerra”. In the fourth stanza, we have “corrida” – “vida” (i-a), with epistrophe based on this word in the following stanza, and “venido” – “beber” (be); this last verb forms polyptoton with “bebieron” in the following stanza, where we find acute (last-syllable) rhyme in “a”: “paz” – “olvidar”. There is no question that this analysis could go further, but what we have seen is enough to prove that there is constant attention to the phonic matter. It must be pointed out that in Antigone there are cases of verses with different indentations as well. There are not many of them, and they abruptly cease to occur, the last one appearing in the fifteenth of its twenty-two sections. Here too it seems impossible to attach any rhythmic importance to this phenomenon, in the sense that it could impose any specific parameters to diction, and if we discard any possible iconic or even properly semantic motivation, we can only see this phenomenon as an automated inertia in a particular way of writing with, as I explained before, an avant-garde origin. This is all even more surprising since this work, strictly speaking, was meant to be a playscript (and, therefore, the visual aspect of the text would be superfluous). I guess this fact has to be interpreted as the result of a number of tensions: It is a theatrical play, in verse, part of a poetry compilation. This would be a way to stress, therefore, the written aspect of this text over its nature as text for the stage. I will finish this long exposition with a summary of the various characteristics that I have explained in the preceding pages. Watanabe’s verse is free verse in a stricter sense than in most poems in Spanish. The quantity of syllables carries less weight than usual, and it is much harder to find traces of even a minimally regular hendecasyllabic patterning at work than in most poets. Stress patterns are regular and carefully measured, but not more than in other poets, and the Peruvian poet does not attach much value to repetition devices. Rhythm is maintained by means of constant enjambment and pauses, both smooth in most cases and also by means of a very careful distribution of the phonic matter, whose echoes, repetitions, and contrasts literally form the matter of the text. These metric and rhythmic options depend on a esthetic choice: that of separating poetic language from colloquial language as little as possible. Also, they cannot be separated from a very specific tone: that of telling or describing stories, which is almost an unmovable central nucleus around which a number

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of variants occur, which necessarily have consequences for rhythm, as I have explained in the preceding pages. When tone parts ways with that central form, as in Antigone, where we are still being told a story, but where the genre and the classic model require a voice more inclined to declamation, the changes in the rhythm are as evident as the ones I have tried to describe above. In any case, there is no question that Watanabe’s originality and his value as a poet depend to a large extent on this ability to find his own tone and to use it with unusual perfection.

Conclusion As it is the case for any kind of poetry without exceptions, the rhetorical approach is not necessarily the only possible one or the most illustrative one for the study of Watanabe’s poetry, but it is the most specific literary. It is the one that best adjusts to the notion of poetry as a specific expression of literary fiction, since that is precisely what rhetoric is, at least the way I conceive it. This is, therefore, not just an interesting approach, but, literally, an indispensable one. Even more so since the effectiveness of the Peruvian poet’s work is based, to a very large extent, on the rejection of the most salient aspects of rhetoric (if we share the narrow vision of rhetoric that so often prevails) and, therefore, literary critics have not felt compelled to study it from this angle. The goal of this chapter is to contribute to filling such an important gap. However, bearing in mind the essential conceptualization of poetry that I defend, a complete study would have required an unusual number of pages and would have probably been discouraging even for the most enthusiastic readers. It was necessary to make a choice, and that is why this study focused on three aspects. I believe the first one to be essential because it is, in my opinion, the most solid base for most of Watanabe’s poems. Focusing on those aspects at the semantic level that, in an extraordinarily vague fashion, are usually referred to as “images”, we were able to see that under a label that is as useless as commonly used, there lie a variety of very different devices, whose varying densities determine heterogeneous styles with striking precision. We have seen that metaphors and comparisons, in this order of frequency, are often in charge of expressing the semantic matter of the poem, but that they lack the really overwhelming omnipresence of the symbol. I believe that Watanabe’s work provides an excellent field against which the validity of observations concerning general poetics can be verified. In this regard, I

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have explained the need to separate those devices based on irrationality from those not based on it. This is because we can draw essential conclusions on style based on which of these prevails. I have also strongly argued in favor of considering two types of symbols, one of which, the heterogenous symbol, is often ignored or even rejected by other literary critics. Let me repeat: A realist style is fundamentally characterized by the constant presence of this type of symbols, although the simultaneous use of a wide variety of other factors may result in different types or degrees of realism. Some may find it strange to find a section on metapoetry as part of a rhetorical analysis, but metapoetry is a function of language, expressed by rhetorical means, and such is, therefore, the natural place for its study. Given the consistency and frequency with which it appears in Watanabe’s work, I consider it an important aspect worth analyzing. As I noted in the relevant section, I was interested in focusing on its relationship with realism and with the use of biographical matter, which is one of the most evident characteristics of this author’s poetry, as its critics have always been quick to point out. I think that there would be no point in trying to hide that one of the driving motives behind the elaboration of these pages is an interest in the development of a poetry whose effectiveness is based on the intention of not being poetic, of a body of literature (fiction) aimed at becoming a piece of life itself. This is obviously a issue that should never be left out when approaching any work of literature, but whose urgency cannot be questioned when dealing with a literary work that sees itself as realist, colloquial, and biographical. It is obvious that Watanabe emerges triumphant from this attempt, and there is no question that here lies the value of his poetry to a considerable extent. The third section nuances all this and develops it even further. It may be the most complex of the three in my view. Watanabe’s conception of meter and rhythm is very new and very complex, and the fact that the study of this aspect is so scarcely developed, at least with regard to writing in Spanish, does not help in the slightest. The analysis in this section could have gone further or have been more precise, and certain questions left unanswered could have been addressed. Nevertheless, I believe it is sufficiently illustrative of how the minute and effective work in this area is one of the most solid values of Watanabe’s poetry. I have also tried to illustrate certain points of general poetics and to highlight certain basic facts concerning writing: that there is no poetry without tone, that there cannot be a worthwhile poet who does not have their own tone, and that rhythm and tone are inextricably united.

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I will repeat here that there are other issues that should be borne in mind in a rhetorical approach to Watanabe’s work. It seems to me that not much importance would be awarded to a number of aspects in such an approach: devices at the morphological level (since his humor is rarely based on wordplay) or at the syntactical level; devices at the phonic level (in addition to the role they play in rhythm); or at the textual or graphic levels. I do think that an analysis at the pragmatic level would be worthwhile, since there is no question that it would be a fruitful one. Issues such as the construction of the self, the presence, sense and direction of apostrophe, humor and irony, to say the least, are essential ones whose study remains pending. Such is a task that I impose upon myself for the future, or that I would encourage anyone among the considerable number of literary critics who value José Watanabe’s work and who dedicate a great part of their time, energy, and talent to clarifying it, to carry out such a study.

Notes 1. Please refer to my book Teoría y práctica del análisis de textos poéticos (2017) where I deal with many of the points I cover in this section. The terminology and definitions have their origin in Bousoño, although I have adapted them. All the references can be found in the book. 2. (…) el murmullo de la mar que es el morir. Y este murmullo nos reconcilia con el otro murmullo del río por cuya ribera anduvimos matando sapos sin misericordia reventándolos con un palo sobre las piedras del río tan metafórico que da risa. 3. For the sake of simplicity, I will quote Watanabe’s poems either by their page in his Poesía Completa (2008) or by reference to the book they appear in: I will use the following abbreviations: AF = Álbum de familia (Family Album); HP = El husode la palabra (The Word Spindle); HN = Historia natural (Natural History); CC = Cosas del cuerpo (Things of the Body); A = Antígona; HEN = Habitó entre nosotros (He Made His Dwelling Among Us); PA = La piedraalada (The Winged Rock); BDN = Banderasdetrás de la niebla (Flags Behind the Fog); PI = Poemas inéditos (Unpublished Poems). 4. mi padre, por ejemplo, el lamentable Prometeo silenciosamente picado por el cáncer más bravo que las águilas. 5. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, in Watababe, J., Path Through the Canefields, 1997, Edinburgh, White Adder Press, p. 40. The original reads:

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la suprema esquizofrenia de la cópula a la muerte. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

Mi útero de humo sale por la chimenea y se disuelve como nimbo. cuando la luz desciende en haces, bíblica, sus negras cámaras colgando viscerales (…) y sobre las cosas cae y se cierra un ataúd de vidrio. … un relámpago iluminó los grandes árboles de la orilla del lago y vimos de ramas de oro y plata instantáneos. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, in Watababe, J., p. 33. The original reads: Los enfermos somos una triste fila de ángeles de amplias batas para volar.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

las grietas y desprendimientos del revoque le han dibujado duras facciones casuales, y la columna es un ángel marcial y mutilado de alas, un resentido. En la canastilla de mimbre hay papas amontonadas: tienen lejanos relieves faciales y están velando en la penumbra con sus ojillos hundidos y sucios de tierra. A very similar metaphor is “pájaros de camisón blanco” (birds in white gowns, 169) in reference to the same group of sick people and implicitly entailing the “camisón – alas” (gowns - wings) metaphor. El mar nunca será una orquesta coherente (mi mujer) no río o fuente como se decía antes sino carne esbelta Las naranjas solo me sugieren fáciles metáforas. Digo: lluvia capturada, calidoscopio, estallido. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 55. The original reads: porque cuando la ardilla vuelve trae todavía

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la incredulidad de su despertar, y cambia, y eventualmente es una mujer, el verano, cualquier contento. 19. 20. 21.

Todas las casas son cubos de flores. El paisaje es de limón La bicicleta que compraste trabajando en el desyerbe ha venido y se ha parado en la puerta como un flaco caballo. 22. See my article. 23. tú decías que las cabezas se arrancaban de los cuerpos y volaban desgreñadas, hambrientas, mordiendo el vano aire. 24. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 60. The original reads: En Berlín una cabeza volando es cosa indiferente. En mi pueblo es un mito peligroso. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

El mito dice que el tiempo taladra una espiral en la piedra y allí duerme y despertará y vendrá y el vellón de la oveja se habrá renovado y la metáfora. ¿Y si en la oscuridad del laboratorio, de pronto, sonara la voz de otro poder, un dios terrible que me ordenara que no me detenga en mis facciones, que siga revelándome sin interrupción hasta mostrar las profundidades de mi carne, mis células, mi entramado más íntimo? Mi madre, como los animales milagrosos, comía hierba, miel y tierra y producía leche de diferentes sabores, sin olvidar los tóxicos. Quintilian, Institutes ofOratory. One exception can be found: “Me acompaña una muchacha parecida a una fuente” (40), where the analogy between the lass and the fountain is nonexistent, and there exists only an emotional equivalence (that is, in the effect on the reader’s emotion).

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30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

Pero anoche no vi tu cabeza, solo tus orejas como dos mariposas, dos caracoles, dos ranitas estrujadas. No debería usar símiles para hablar de tus orejas la montaña no es madre, sus cuevas son como huevos vacíos donde recojo mi carne es mi propio pasado: está ahora delante como un tigre que me dio una tregua. [los desiertos] parecen gigantes de gran lomo que meditan en una patria mientras defecan. pero comparable está a un pescador que ha desatado cien nudos toda la noche y a la mañana siguiente ve satisfecho y en paz su cuerda lisa. Pienso en la difícil armonía entre el obstáculo y el cuerpo, tal el diestro frente al toro o el poeta frente al poema: dos tramboyos, esos peces oscuros, que parecen formas asomadas del inconsciente del mar. En la frontera del desierto y las plantaciones de caña, la casa solitaria tiene algo de cráneo abandonado al sol: (…) Esta casa, Asterión, es como el águila que cruza el cielo: ha nacido del propio deseo de navegación del infinito. nuestra alegría será íntima y tácita como la alegría de la iguana que no tiene voz para celebrar. La noche profunda es silenciosa y robusta como una madre de faldón amplio. Los que conocieron a doña Paula sabrán que la metáfora es inmejorable.

41. Obviously, it is not a metaphor. 42. un cuenco hondo como dos manos juntas 43. las heridas de mis costados abiertas como dos branquias. 44. (…) hieráticos como una triste cuadrilla de obreros de yeso los santos esperan al restaurador. 45. Fue duro verte rodar como una semilla. 46. su apurado vestido blanco parecía ir solo como una sábana volada de un cordel. 47. Aquí estoy como árbol que resiste la corriente. 48. Las diminutas capillas del borde de las carreteras, nunca más altas que alguien rezando de rodillas,

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49.

se eleva casi vertical como si buscara acabarse en el punto más alto del aire. 50. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 40. The original reads: y el perro lame la cuajarada roja como si fuera su vicio. 51.

casi disputándola como si fuera carne del día de la resurrección, 52. como esperando el vuelo del garrote 53. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 54. The original reads: Una hiedra entraba en las habitaciones como mirando 54. 55. 56.

Se mueve como dibujando una rúbrica antigua, El ciervo se mueve como articulado por fuertes elásticos internos la postura orgullosa de mi madre que dormía como saciada. 57. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 55. The original reads: Su huida es como guiada por otra ardilla que sale de sí misma y la antecede un segundo siempre, y aún detrás de ella va dejando otra, un ágil trazo que se desvanece milagrosamente en el aire ordinario Así la ardilla va como un curioso juego de óptico de veloces figuras que nunca encajan. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62.

(…) la sal, más dura que el invierno. (…) se acomoda la memoria de ese cuerpo como un lastimado perro de aire. La sangre de los asesinados (…) y vibra como un horizonte infame. Vivimos esperando que un día el tiempo penetre como un violento cansancio en la arena Mi vecino estira su casa como un tejido que le ajusta. arrojó el libro que aleteó y se quebró en la pared como una paloma.

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63. 64. 65. 66.

es mi propio pasado: está ahora delante como un tigre que me dio una tregua. Vino el mal y calzó perfectamente en mí como una perversa lucidez. El algarrobo se inclina como una nube verde La manzana es alianza del hombre y su deseo. Y así perdura bajo mis uñas, inacabable en la estridencia de la guitarra. Pienso en la frente del viejo Beethoven que he propuesto como una pausa; pero la manzana acecha y codicia en silencio el viejo fuego en la risa demasiado suelta de cuatro muchachas que hacen del fuego juego de entrega, juego y juego que me obligan a parapetos que me humillan: fuerzo gestos que no acostumbro como sonrisas condescendientes como miradas que se refugian en los rincones. En verdad que en el asalto nunca he sido ducho, sé que mi viejo caballo está hecho para dilatadas asechanzas y ante ellas de estos tiempos de desenfado se intimida no se consume ni en hoguera ni en discordia. Celebro el rasgue desenfrenado de la guitarra en la fonola y mientras ellas aplauden yo sueño procacidades, me miro los dedos que ya no llevan guantes para arrojar al suelo y decido mi retiro, sin discordias y a desgana, mientras va devorándose sola mi manzana.

67. As noted above, I have taken this term and concept from Bousoño, but I believe they are both confirmed by “Linguistics and Poetics”, maybe the most influential text on contemporary literary theory. Here, Roman Jakobson notes that “As early as the 1880s, Potebnja, a remarkable inquirer into Slavic poetics, pointed out that in folk poetry symbols are, as it were, materialized …, converted into an accessory of the ambiance. Still a symbol, it is put, however, in a connection with the action”. 68. Creo que es conveniente establecer fronteras que separen el comportamiento simbólico de las palabras de su comportamiento connotativo, operación que los teóricos de la literatura no suelen abordar, quizá porque los lingüistas tienden a definir ambas funciones en virtud de su oposición a la denotación, dejándolas alineadas en un mismo frente

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semántico, nebulosamente semejantes en base a lo que no son o no realizan. Una de las muchas posibilidades de establecer un convincente contraste (y la consiguiente diferenciación) entre símbolos y signos connotativos la ofrecen algunas de las tesis (no lingüísticas) expuestas por Roland Barthes en sus Elementos de semiología. Se alude allí al fenómeno según el cual el uso de algunas cosas cotidianas –las ropas, por ejemploutilizadas en principio con fines prácticos, acaba adquiriendo un especial valor de signo social. Una vez constituidos como tales signos, la sociedad puede refuncionalizarlos y considerarlos de nuevo como usos utilitarios: un abrigo de visón, por ejemplo, puede ser tratado como si sólo sirviese para protección del frío. En resumen, “la cosa” que había llegado a ser “signo” vuelve a ser “cosa”. Cuando se produce ese proceso de ida y vuelta, esa “refuncionalización”, no debe hablarse ya de la significación social de los usos, sino de connotación. Trasladar el agudo planteamiento de Barthes al plano estilístico es sencillo: basta con sustituir en ese esquema uso práctico por palabra denotativa y signo social por símbolo (y tal vez sociedad por poeta). El símbolo sería así la expresión denotativa que llega a adquirir un especial valor, que es la causa aparente y fundamental de su uso en un poema determinado. El concepto de connotación no sufre modificaciones, y quedaría situado en una posición independiente, alejado por igual de la función plenamente denotativa y la simbólica. La connotación no interfiere la operatividad denotativa de la palabra, que la recupera plenamente. Sin embargo, la palabra nunca llegará a ser la misma, pues conserva inevitables resonancias de su significación simbólica. (…) pero hablar de “símbolos disémicos”, como hace en su Teoría de la expresión poética, no me parece que ayude a interpretarlos correctamente. En primer lugar, la palabra “símbolo” es un tanto imprecisa, suele designar realidades muy amplias. En un sentido, se dice que todas las palabras son símbolos; en otro, que todos los tropos son símbolos. En cualquiera de las dos acepciones se ha abusado tanto del término, que llega a ser casi inutilizable si se quieren evitar las generalidades. Tampoco los teóricos están muy de acuerdo a la hora de definir su naturaleza. Para Bousoño la significación del símbolo es siempre irracional, con lo que niega de una manera un tanto ambigua lo que otros autores ven en él: su carácter de signo en algún modo icónico, que recoge cierto tipo de relaciones de semejanza o contigüidad, nunca arbitrarias, que lo justifican y hacen universalmente comprensible. Del análisis y de la terminología de Bousoño se deduce, por tanto, que el lenguaje de Machado es primordialmente simbólico e irracional. Yo pienso, por el contrario, que la palabra poética de Machado no es siempre así; creo que en alguno de los ejemplos dados (y en muchos más

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que podrían ofrecerse) se caracteriza por su precisión denotativa, cualidad a la que debe su sobrecarga significativa, tan frecuentemente calificada de “misteriosa”. No es, como afirma Bousoño, que en el poema XXXII de Soledades, además de la significación irracional haya otra racional, sino al revés; aquí el orden de factores altera el producto, y lo justo es decir, respetando una prioridad enumerativa que corresponde a una jerarquía de valores, que además de la significación denotativa (racional en la terminología de Bousoño) hay otra ¿irracional? También considero dudosa la oportunidad del adjetivo. (…) En contraste con el signo denotativo, que por su arbitrariedad merecería, en su esencia, el calificativo de ilógico o irracional, las significaciones connotativas que la palabra acaba adquiriendo (…) están basadas en procesos lógicamente explicables. 69. Nos detuvimos en una aldea cuyo nombre alude a la contemplada limpidez del río que la atraviesa. 70. Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 42. The original reads: En verano, según la ley de aguas, el río Vichanzao no viene a los cañaverales. Los parceleros lo detienen arriba y lo conducen al panllevar. Aquí en el cauce queda fluyendo una brisa, un río invisible. Camino pisando los cantos rodados enterrados en el limo Y mirando los charcos donde sobreviven diminutos peces grises que muerden el reflejo de mi rostro. Los pequeños sorbedores de mocos ya no los atrapamos en botellas. Tampoco tejemos trampas para camarones y nuestro lejano bullicio se esfuma sin dolor. Supuse más dolor. En el regreso todo se convierte en zarza, dijo Issa. Pero yo camino extrañamente aliviado, ni herido ni culposo, por el cauce en cuyas altas paredes asoman raíces de sauces. Las muerdo y este sabor amargo es la única resistencia que hallo Mientras avanzo contra la corriente. 71.

Bajo el puente de Chosica el río se embalsa y es de sangre, pero la sangre no me es creída. Los poetas hablan en lengua figurada, dicen

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73.

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y yo porfío: no es el reflejo del cielo crepuscular, bermejo, en el agua que hace de espejo. Mi hermana viene por el pasillo del hospital con sus zapatos resonantes, viejos, peruanos. De pronto alguien hace funcionar el inodoro, y es el río Vichanzao terroso corriendo entre las piedras. (…) Y mi graciosa hermana abre el caño y lava el plato, y esta vez es el Moche, cristalino y benéfico, entrando por las heridas de mis costados abiertas como dos branquias. Rico ser pez entonces: una sensualidad que me permite este dolor. (…) Pero Tú, ¿por qué vienes a mí, Señor? Tú no tienes pecados, excepto acaso una marca de nacimiento: la fijeza del Padre. que vive en un solo y eterno día. El río te dirá que el caminar de los hombres es continuo e inevitable. Por eso te bautizo, rogando que cuando dejes el agua te acompañe el espíritu fluyente del río, su transcurrir en el tiempo hasta el día en que los cielos se abran nuevamente para Ti. Samaria, tierra poco amiga, míralo sentarse junto al pozo, solo, derrotado por los desiertos. Olvidado de su sed, ensimismado, observa los trigales sin viento, Las ovejas dormidas en la colina, las inclinadas hojas de humildes hortalizas, el reflejo del agua profunda abrillantando su ropa. En el mediodía todo alcanza la limpidez de su origen, su tranquila plenitud.

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75.

76.

77.

78.

Ha encontrado una hora única e infinita, y está entrado en ella. Ahora Él está convencido: su eternidad es posible. Dale ya de beber, samaritana. Si vas por la playa donde se vadea el río verás, plantadas en el limo, largas varas de eucalipto. Están allí para los caminantes que van a la otra ribera. Una será tu cayado: con ella tantearás, sin riesgo, un camino entre las aguas turbias. y las piedras de resbaloso musgo. Cuida de dejar hundida la vara. con gratitud en la otra orilla: otro viene: acaso mi padre que en las tierras amarillas busca sandías silvestres, acaso yo que regreso, retrasado y viejo, mirando ansioso mi pueblo que tras el río ondula o se difumina en el vaho solar. Allí, según costumbre, sembraron mi ombligo entre la juntura de dos adobes para que yo tuviera patria. Deja el cayado clavado en el limo. This is again based on Bousoño’s suggestions, as expressed in statements like the following one: “this disemic character of the symbol, very adequate to esthetically delve in any realism” (1952, I: 285). The connections he establishes between heterogeneous symbol and irrationalism are omnipresent in the whole of his work, as can be seen his 1977 and 1979 books referenced in the bibliography. Translator’s note: The original title in Spanish contains a play on words: The word “huso” (spindle) has a more common homophone: “uso” (use), so the title is very likely to be understood as “The Use of the Word” until read. Las naranjas solo me sugieren fáciles metáforas. Digo: lluvia capturada, calidoscopio, estallido.

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Pero mi relación con ellas no apunta más allá de la casi obscena ocupación de engullirlas. 79.

80. 81.

Los esquiladores imponen su fuerza sobre las ovejas, las maniatan y con una tijera les quitan su candorosa metáfora de nube. (…) y el vellón de la oveja se habrá renovado y la metáfora. (…) El tiempo bajó de su fino rostro a sus finos pies y le empellejó todas sus metáforas. Los gatos son peligrosos para la poesía, pronto acumulan adjetivos, mucho provocan, mucho seducen. La noche profunda es silenciosa y robusta como una madre de faldón amplio. Los que conocieron a doña Paula sabrán que la metáfora es inmejorable.

82.

83.

No debería usar símiles para hablar de tus orejas porque vinieron a mi sueño solamente como orejas tales, desnudas, como propiamente. Mas el inconforme lenguaje prefiere nombrarlas con figuras, con efímeros prodigios. Uno de los doce preguntó: ¿estás empezando una parábola, Maestro? Afuera pensé: ¡qué poco avisados sus discípulos que no ven que el hombre está coronado por la muerte y que pan o carne es lo mismo! Cuando se marcharon mi vecina me acusó de exagerada e imaginera: Él siempre habla con símbolos, me dijo; pero en el comedor vacío, entre las migajas y el vino, percibí el límpido olor de una herida.

84.

En ese momento

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85.

86. 87. 88.

89.

90.

91.

92.

la piedra no era ni impermeable ni dura: era el lomo de una gran madre que acechaba camarones en el río. Ay, poeta, otra vez la tentación de una inútil metáfora. La piedra era piedra y así se bastaba. No era madre. (…) (…) los pensamientos parecen haber cesado: las ratas y las gaviotas no son viejas alegorías. Todos hemos entrado en una rara inocencia. El mar también se ha despojado de sus historias y nos lleva con la pura física de la navegación. It refers to the cross. ese símbolo donde estamos todos a punto de volar. Acepta estrictamente esta visión. (…) Ese era el sentido de la risa. Acepta estrictamente ese sentido y declina la especulación poética. Porque es tu verso opaco contra tu brillante alegría de muchacho. Estaba yendo hacia el poema y me abstuve: ese hombre está en juego, me dije. Dale entonces la razón al juicioso chotacabras que emerge volando de los cañaverales y te amonesta: “Aquí no, tu dulce égloga aquí no”. Una imagen, aun de humilde imaginación verbal como ésta, va a la mente y le pide que condescienda con el poeta. Es el trato. Esta vez no, esta vez sólo pido vuestra mirada inmediata y literal: (106) Translated by C. A. de Lomellini and David Tipton, p. 61. The original reads: He dejado atrás varios días eternos y una cáscara de naranja flotando en el Mediterráneo. La cáscara parece gracia o ingenio de la poesía, y en verdad es

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algo aterrador cuando cae sobre esos mis días y las aguas: es un documento humano, lo mismo que mi brazo o mi zapato. 93. 94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

100.

101. 102. 103.

Quedé deslumbrado y mudo. Ninguna apostilla sobre la belleza hablará realmente de aquellas banderas. El algarrobo me pone frente al lenguaje. En este paisaje tan extremadamente limpio no hay palabras. Él es la única palabra y el sol no puede quemarla en mi boca. (…) batió sin entender que podemos imaginar un ave, la más bella, pero no hacerla volar. El estanque antiguo, ninguna rana. El poeta escribe con su bastón en la superficie. Hace cuatro siglos que tiembla el agua. Bajo el puente de Chosica el río se embalsa y es de sangre, pero la sangre no me es creída. Los poetas hablan en lengua figurada, dicen y yo porfío: no es el reflejo del cielo crepuscular, bermejo, en el agua que hace de espejo. Ella no está restringida a la lengua figurada: hay matarifes y no cielos bermejos, grita. Yo escribo, y mi estilo es mi represión. En el horror sólo me permito este poema silencioso. De estas flores aprenderé una vez más que la poesía que tanto amo sólo puede ser una fugaz y delicada acción del ojo. (…) La muerte de verdad es como la poesía: mírala venir como una forma de la templanza. Which is a modified version of Spang’s ideas. Translation by Michelle Har Kim, “José Watanabe”, Asian American Literary Review 2.1 (2011): 55–85. Translation by Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica. No. 77, Article 46, (April 2013), pp. 503–504. Available at: https://digitalcommons.provid ence.edu/inti/vol1/iss77/46.

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104. Page numbers in Poesía completa. 105. Translation by Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica, p. 501. 106. haya invierno en todo el hemisferio, pero haya siempre el [milagro del sol en la escalera.

CHAPTER 3

José Watanabe’s Poetic Capacity and Energy Beyond Critique for Critique’s Sake Shigeko Mato

Introduction What do José Watanabe’s poetic words mean or represent? What does he seek or want to show through his poetry? I used to delve into these questions in order to, to borrow Sontag’s words, “squeeze more content out of [Watanabe’s poetry]”,1 until I stumbled upon Rita Felski’s telling inquiry: “Why are we so hyperarticulate about our adversaries and so excruciatingly tongue-tied about our loves?” (Limits 13). Her question may seem naïve or overtly anti-interrogation to certain critics,2 but, on the contrary, it is an adept one by an experienced critic who compels us to start engaging ourselves in reflecting on how we can articulate why the text we love matters to us without engrossing ourselves in the “method wars”, to use Felski’s phrase (“Introduction” v; Anker and Felski 15). This chapter attempts to articulate what Watanabe’s poetry is, what his poems do, and ultimately why Watanabe’s poetry matters to us, by drawing

S. Mato (B) School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Shinjuku City, Japan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Muth et al., The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81615-5_3

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attention to the questions that Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker urge us to ask when we read a text that we love as critics. “What does this text create, build, make possible”? (Felski, Limits 182). “What gets built and shaped when a critic reads? What affordances and opportunities does literary form and experience open up”? (Anker and Felski 20). Instead of searching for certain meanings in Watanabe’s poems or dissecting his words to satisfy one’s own ideological or philosophical agendas, this chapter invites readers to read, see, hear, and feel his poems through an alternate mode of reading that Felski calls “postcritical reading” (Limits 12, 172–182), which I will explain below. Susan Sontag’s now classic essay published in 1964, “Against Interpretation”, manifested a stance against excessive and hyper-valued interpretations of content over form in the critique of an artwork (4): What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all. . . . The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. (14)3

Sontag was concerned with critics’ efforts to senselessly and incessantly “dig[s] ‘behind’ the text, to find a sub-text which is [claims to be] the true one” (6), by separating content from form and making the former “essential” and the latter “accessory” (4). In so doing, she argued, critics would face the danger of losing their sensible and sensuous (sensual also) faculty to see, experience, and feel what a work of art is (7). In order to avoid this loss of the sensible, according to her, critics should offer a criticism that “dissolves considerations of content into those of form” (12). Now, more than a half a century later, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, Sontag’s warning of the peril of the forced separation of content and form and calling for embracing the two do not seem at all antiquated. On the contrary, certain points made in recent debates on the future of literary criticism resonate with Sontag’s argument (Anker and Felski 16; Felski, Hooked 12, 131). In her book, The Limits of Critique (2015), Felski argues against the practice of “suspicious interpretation” (“suspicious reading”), driven by particular ideological and political camps of literary and critical theories

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and approaches, that overshadows and dominates other intellectual, imaginative, and experiential ways of reading a literary work (1–13).4 If Sontag is against the separation of content and form, Felski is against all sorts of divisions among disciplinary orientations, approaches, and moods, which lead to a suspicious critique for the sake of critique that is mistakenly but obstinately associated with the ideas of intellectual rigor, radicalism against the status quo, and sophistication (6, 184, 191–192). “No more separate spheres!” (11). Felski exclaims and introduces a new way of approaching a literary text, which she calls “postcritical reading” (not uncritical reading) (12, 173–174). According to her, “postcritical reading” allows critics to recognize the limitations of their own theoretical and methodological approaches and styles habituated in their disciplines and encourages them to stay away from “an endless rumination on a text’s hidden meanings or representational failures ” (173–174). In order to expand their theoretical and methodological scope and repertoire, Felski spurs them to take into consideration the human appreciation of a literary work with more aesthetic, affective, and imaginative sensibilities and pleasures (12–13, 173–174, 184–185, 186). Rather than digging out hidden or presumed themes, messages, or motives behind or beyond a text, she suggests critics to “place [themselves] in front of the text, reflect[ing] on what it unfurls, calls forth, makes possible” (12). Felski’s engagement in this new way of reading, resonating with Sontag’s demands “to learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more” (14), has inspired me to revisit the works of Peruvian poet José Watanabe with a “postcritical” eye and reflect on my “suspicious reading” that I was about to conduct to explore some poems of Watanabe’s that I love. As a “suspicious” reader, I had tried to excavate concealed meanings behind, beyond, and between the lines manifesting the sensibility and mood of ineffableness, ephemerality, and nothingness, in the hope of demystifying an association often made between the poet and his Japanese heritage and identity. However, in focusing too much on the task of unmasking the poet’s identity, the sensibility and mood, which I previously saw pouring out of his poems and which allured me into his poetic world, eventually dissipated, as did my appetite for interpreting his poems through his Japanese heritage and identity. Now, rereading my favorite poems through Felski’s postcritical contemplations, I intend to “place [myself] in front of the text” in order to recapture the sensibility and mood of ephemerality, ineffableness, and nothingness that have affected my feelings and thoughts.

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I use the verb “affect” to refer to the intense stimulations and energy stemming from Watanabe’s poems which not only move me emotionally, but also compel me to experience unexpected ways of thinking and perceiving. According to Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg: [a]ffect, at its most anthropomorphic, is the name we give to those forces—visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion—that can serve to drive us toward movement, toward thought and extension, that can likewise suspend us (as if in neutral) across a barely registering accretion of forcerelations, or that can even leave us overwhelmed by the world’s apparent intractability. (1)

These moving forces of affect arise due to ongoing intense reciprocal, conflicting, personal, and impersonal encounters and interactions among bodies, as well as between a body and a world (1–2). “At once intimate and impersonal”, Seigworth and Gregg indicate, “affect accumulates across both relatedness and interruptions in relatedness, becoming a palimpsest of force-encounters traversing the ebbs and swells of intensities that pass between ‘bodies’” (2). In this ever-changing “palimpsest of force-encounters”, the critics find the potential of affect that capacitates a body to be affected comfortably and/or uncomfortably and its state and duration of being-affected to be shifted into action to affect (2). This potential of affect recalls “the act of reading” that Felski delineates by drawing on a French critical theorist, Marielle Macé’s notion of reading as “one of the daily means by which we give our existence form, flavor and even style” (Macé 213, quoted in Fleski, Limits 176).5 In Felski’s words: [i]n the act of reading, we encounter fresh ways of organizing perception, different patterns and models, rhythms of rapprochement and distancing, relaxation and suspense, movement and hesitation. We give form to our existence through the diverse ways in which we inhabit, inflect, and appropriate the artistic forms we encounter. Reading, Macé insists, is not simply a matter of deciphering content but involves “taking on” and testing out new perceptual possibilities. (176)

In reading Watanabe’s poetry, “a palimpsest of force-encounters [and force-relations]”, to borrow Seigworth and Gregg’s expression, emerges in front of me, entangling my restful and restless senses and perceptions in

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the palimpsest. And it is this entanglement of “force-encounters” (affect) that encourages me to dare to quit “suspicious reading” to find out what is behind Watanabe’s texts and to “‘tak[e] on’ and test[ing] out new perceptual possibilities” that go beyond critique for critique’s sake (Felski 176).

Attunement Between Watanabe’s Poetic Vision and “Postcritical Reading” Because her study focuses on the recent tendencies of literary studies in the US academia over the course of the last four decades (Limits 3), one may question the applicability of Felski’s notion of “postcritical reading” beyond the US, and it is true that she does not mention anything about the Global South. From the side of Peru, in his frustrated comment on the lack of interest in analyzing Watanabe’s poetry within the country, Camilo Fernández Cozman indicates the inapplicability of Western theories to the studies of Peruvian poetry. He asks, “When will we study our poets as if they were classics, instead of blindly imitating the models of theories coming from the US and Europe”? (16–17).6 Despite this doubt regarding the applicability, either due to the absence of Latin America in Felski’s study or the forced extension of Western thoughts into Peruvian literary studies, I still see much less harmfulness than valuableness in reading Watanabe’s poems through Felski’s “postcritical reading”. Her new mode of reading gives us a tool to recognize and articulate the importance of seeing what Watanabe’s poetry is and experiencing what it does. Indeed, there is a noteworthy resonance between what Watanabe expects his poetic creation to be and to do and Felski’s call for contemplating what a text is and what it does. In his interviews, the poet often expressed the role of a poet as a dexterous language agent who tries to capture the sensibility that the poet feels in his or her own actual experiences and to transmit precisely the same perception as the poet’s within the limited nature of language (Watanabe “no soy un poeta;” Maribel De Paz 234–235).7 For Watanabe, “[a] poem is a mode of saying to the reader: ‘Look, I saw this, I offer it to you, I hope you can reproduce in your spirit the same as I saw and felt” (“No soy un poeta”).8 When another Peruvian poet, Diego Alonso Sánchez, asks Watanabe about the meaning of the desert, stone, and wings which appear in a poem, “The Winged Rock” (“La Piedra alada”),9 offering his own interpretations of

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the images, the poet interrupts the interviewer, saying: “But there you are giving an interpretation of the poem. Obviously, I never proposed that symbolization that you are doing” (“Love quickly”).10 Watanabe goes on to underscore again the importance of recreating “an approximated sense” of what he sees: “The poet’s eye gives … an approximated sense … the sense that you start giving to the poem based on what you see in reality” (“Love quickly”).11 Rather than encouraging us to interpret meanings hidden behind his poems, he wants us to come closer to his poems to feel what he has seen and experienced through his language.12 If Watanabe’s attitude of creating a moment to see and feel what his words attempt to reproduce resonates with Felski’s postcritical mode of appreciating what a text is without suspiciously decoding it, his attitude toward literary criticism reinforces the attitudinal echo between the two. For Watanabe, critiques should serve to stimulate him to know more: [T]o a large extent they help you confront your own work, whether they support you or deny you. I prefer to read the critique that pushes me to go to a bookstore, that motivates me to read or research more about an author; that is the critique in which I believe.… [T]hen come deconstructionist critiques, semiotics, which I understand, though I always end up asking myself, what are they for? (“Paradoxes” 80)13

Because of this notable resonance, which I want to call “attunement”, to appropriate Felski’s use of the expression (Limits 178),14 Watanabe’s poetic works should be explored through her “postcritical reading” as one way to appreciate his works. By “attunement”, she means connectedness ongoingly generated and assembled by multiple actors (Limits 157). Influenced by Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT), which describes society or what he calls “the social” as networks of attachments of human and nonhuman actors that “couple and uncouple, attach and break apart”, Felski considers literary and art works as the coactors that coproduce networks and assemblages with readers and other coactors (Limits 157).15 She asserts that works of literature and art are not static and passive objects to be examined, but active participants that invite us to create networks of interactions which (re)orient us in certain ways and may influence our ways of thinking and actions (164). She also draws attention to the indispensability of receptors’ attachment and engagement, pointing out that “[t]ext cannot influence the world by themselves, but only via the intercession of those who read them, digest

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them, reflect on them, rail against them, use them as points of orientation, and pass them on” (172). Felski’s understanding of the networks of coactors makes me become aware that “[r]eading … is a matter of attaching, collating, negotiating, assembling––of forging links between things that were previously unconnected” (173) and allows me to attach myself to the hitherto unprecedented, seemingly too idiosyncratic, connection between her “postcritical reading” and Watanabe’s works of poetry. This attunement or connectedness, then, leads me to challenge myself to co-activate other ways of reading that are not built upon the specific agendas and methods, so that I can get up close to see and experience what Watanabe’s poems are, what kind of feelings and perceptions they bring up in us, what attunements and networks they solicit, and what differences and changes they make in our modes of thinking and being. In this study, I explore four poems, “Prayer in front of My Mother’s Cadaver” (“Responso ante el cadáver de mi madre”), “Laughing and Clouded” (“Riendo y nublado”),16 “Flags behind the Fog” (“Banderas detrás de la niebla”),17 and “The Algarrobo Tree” (“El algarrobo”), which appear in Watanabe’s last collection of poetry, “Flags behind the Fog” Banderas detrás de la niebla (2006), which is divided into four sections, “Laughing and Clouded”, “Flags behind the Fog”, “Other poems” (“Otros poemas”), and “The Other Asterion” (“El otro asterión”). First of all, I select his last collection for the focus of this study, since the book has been least studied thus far and, more importantly, since it is, according to the poet, a result of his new attempt to let poems be less conclusive, more open, and more inviting for readers to feel them and coproduce them (“José Watanabe” 2:59–4:20).18 Second, I select the aforementioned poems from the first two sections, because the sections’ titles, “Laughing and Clouded” and “Flags behind the Fog”, prompt me to be attuned to the senses of ephemeralness, ineffableness, impenetrableness, and nothingness that arise from the words and spur me to turn to the first poem. The title that comes to my eyes is “Prayer in front of My Mother’s Cadaver”, and the tangible and concrete image surprises me, and this unexpectedness gets me “hooked” in this collection, to borrow from the title of Felski’s more recent book, Hooked: Art and Attachment (2020). In Hooked, Felski continues to encourage us to think through why we are attuned to a certain work and not to others, offering as an answer: “[B]ecause [it] matters to us” (43). And, yes, I am attuned to these

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four poems of Watanabe’s because they matter to me. The word “matter” (both noun and verb) certainly connotes the idea or action of being of importance and value, concerning, caring for something, affecting, having influence, and making a difference, but Felski’s understanding of the word through Latour’s actor-network theory further sheds light on the mood of “mattering”, which always already contains the sense of all sorts of connections of coactors, in other words, attachment and attunement (Hooked 6, 43). To put it differently, our values, concerns, cares, affects, and ideals (what matters to us) draw us to specific works, while, at the same time, we, who are touched by the works, animate, and activate them as coactors (Limits 175; Hooked 33, 43). Felski’s mattering through postcritical reading gives me a language to justify why these poems matter to me and what they can do. I consider the four poems to be good examples of demonstrating how Watanabe’s poetry engages (or speaks to) me most to feel, sense, perceive, and experience his aesthetic world and how my attentive and affective engagement, interplaying with his poetry, brings unprecedented and unforeseeable “ways of reading [and] modes of being” (Macé 213).19

“Prayer Before My Mother’s Cadaver:” Not Just a Dead Body? As mentioned above, it is surprising to encounter the title of the opening poem, so palpable that one can recreate the concrete funeral viewing scene of his mother, in contrast to the seemingly ungraspable section title, “Laughing and Clouded”. The initial surprise becomes greater as the poem opens: This cadaver lacks happiness. What immense guilt when a corpse lacks joy. One wants to bring her something radiant or tasty (I remember her happiness as an old woman eating a tender steak), but Dora hasn’t come back from the market. (11)20

Because of the odd pair of juxtaposition of the words, “this body,” a specific material thing, and “happiness”, a certain state of mind that cannot be materially defined, the contrast, this time, between the title and the first line, almost shocks those of us who expect something concrete

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and tangible to appear. Facing the line, we activate the poem, not by unraveling the meaning of the dead body missing happiness, but by perceiving the energy springing from the unexpected nearness of the tangible body and the intangible state of being of the dead body. The activated words, then, reproduce the sense of the close relation of the tangible and the intangible throughout the poem in the form of this prayer, which is this very poem. In the following stanzas, through the continuous juxtaposition of the tangible and intangible, the poetic voice depicts how the dead body is not a simple material thing, but a being that evokes certain emotions and memories: This cadaver lacks happiness, can any joy still enter her soul which is lying on her organs of dust? How useless we are before a corpse that is so desolate. We can no longer amend anything. Does anyone still keep that tiny poor’s apples that she candied and in her gracious hands did they look like they came from a splendid tree? (11)21

Her physical body is shattered into the “organs of dust” that her surviving children cannot repair, but it conjures up, not only the sentiments of guilt, uselessness, and desolation among them, but also their wish to make her soul happy, as well as their memories of her joy, toughness, ingenuity, and obligingness. It is also intriguing to note that the emotions and memories evoked by her body are also tied to other material entities, such as a tender steak that she loved, the small apples she preserved in syrup, and her hands that made them. All these images, both tangible and intangible, gathered before her dead body, bring her body to life, making the poetic voice see that it is not merely a corpse, but a being connected to his and his siblings’ world and that she is now leaving that world: Now she is leaving with her widow’s ring. Now she is leaving, and don’t promise her anything: you will provoke her a sarcastic phrase and lapidary that, as always, will make you an idiot. (11)22

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The poetic voice, seeing her leaving with her wedding ring, remembers that she was a widow faithful to his dead father. At the same time, his own voice tells him not to promise her anything, while she is leaving, because he knows that he will only elicit “a sarcastic and lapidary phrase” that will, as always, make him feel like an idiot. For him, she was a tough mother-judge of her son’s promises. But soon at the end of the poem, her sarcastic attitude makes sense to the poetic voice: Now she is leaving with her habit of going dancing on the way to rock the son she carried on her back. Eleven children, Mrs. Rabbit, and none of them knows what the hell to do in order to make her cadaver happy. (12)23

The poetic voice continues to bring life to her body through his memory. Seeing her habit of dancing on the road upon her departure, he remembers her swaying her baby on her back. She was a mother who bore eleven children like a rabbit. Although the poetic voice’s memories bring her physical dead body into being and connect his emotions to her body and existence, the last two lines, “and none of them knows what the hell to do / in order to make her cadaver happy” (12), take us to the opening scene of her cadaver missing happiness. The poem captures the material reality that the poetic voice has to accept. Her dead body is nothing more than a physical thing which her children cannot change or add happiness to. His mother’s reaction, with a “sarcastic and lapidary” phrase, to the poetic voice’s promise reminds us of her wisdom of seeing it useless or even deceitful, because it prevents her surviving children from accepting the material reality of her corpse, which remains as it is without happiness. However, the poem reminds us that it is this very poem that enlivens her dead body, attaching it to the emotions, memories, and all the other associations emanating from this very cadaver. In this way, the sense of nothingness and helplessness of accepting the material reality is always tied to the immaterial image of her body having happiness. The last line (enjambed line), “in order to make her cadaver happy”, when read separately from the previous one showing the incapableness, underscores the poetic voice’s hope for her happiness.

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What Does “Prayer Before My Mother’s Cadaver” Do? As the title of the poem shows, this poem is a prayer for his dead mother. In his interview with Ernesto Hermoza, Watanabe confesses that he wrote it for himself as his last relationship with his mother and that it was a painful process for him: “I had thought it through for many years, but it was hurting me to write it, I was starting to write and then quitting it. This time I dared to write it, publish it, and I put it first” (“José Watanabe” 5:40–5:58).24 As this poem is based on his own relationship with his mother and reflection on his farewell to her, the emotions and memories that arise in her dead body are also built around the poet’s actual interactions with her. Watanabe recalls his mother’s comment on his poetry. “You wrap a word rougher than trash, wrap shit in pretty paper. Terrible. She realized the language was careful, but what it enclosed was very harsh” (6:38–6:55).25 The fifth stanza of the poem corresponds to her tough response to his poetic creation. If this poem is a result of Watanabe’s overcoming the painful process of writing and completing it, it may bring him a sense of closure. Or if this poem is a reflection of his lived experience, it should satisfy his expectation that poems should be created through the words that poets find in their own experiences (“Paradoxes” 81). Then, Felski may ask us why this poem matters to us. Why are we drawn to it? Through the description of his personal complicated relationship with his mother and farewell to her, the poem, “Prayer”, may connect those surviving family members who undergo a similar episode of life and offer them a cathartic experience. However, beyond catharsis, what attaches us to it resides in the energy of the prayer, the poem that revitalizes the poet’s mother’s material cadaver. As seen above, her dead body is animated by the prayer while the energy of the animated body blasts out emotions and memories. At the beginning of the poem, we perceive the feeling of guilt and helplessness of the poetic voice, being saddened, but soon feel the prayer’s energy that recuperates his memory of his mother in which she appears vividly alive to us with her tough and caring personality. Then, the emotions and recuperated memories penetrating her cadaver take us to witness the moment of her leaving the physical world. We also hear her sarcastic words and see her dancing on a road to swing her son on her back, while hearing the poetic voice talking to her, calling her

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“Mrs. Rabbit”, and seeing him finally letting her go with the prayer of hope for her cadaver to have happiness. This poem stimulates us to think about what the “prayer before the cadaver” is and what it does, literally as the title shows. In other words, the poem makes us perceive the potential and limitation of the prayer— that is—the words laid out in this poem. The prayer unleashes all sorts of emotions and memories around the dead body, animating the body and us to feel the energy. However, the words of the prayer ultimately cannot change the material reality of the dead body. The words are limited and cannot assure the promise to be realized, as indicated in his mother’s sarcastic response to his poetry, echoed in the fifth stanza of the poem. In the TV interview with Hermoza, Watanabe insinuates this simultaneous phenomenon of the potential and limitation of the prayer before reciting the poem: “You know that sometimes one resists … to write a poem and when one makes the decision of writing it, it looks very bad. It is a therapeutic session, and you even end up taking a sedative to sleep. This happened to me with this poem” (“Poet José Watanabe” 5:03–5:21).26 Creating this poem served him as a therapeutic session that capacitates him to produce the prayer, but since the therapy, as the prayer he produced, was insufficient to satisfy his expectation. Despite of the difficulty of finishing it, he decided to place it first in the book. Also, it is the first poem he chose to recite in the same TV interview. The poem, appearing first in the book, greets and welcomes us to participate in reciting the prayer. Our prayer is attuned to the poem, adding other constellations of energy to interact with the co-presence of the potential and limitation in the poem. We are affected by it, being connected to the human condition of death beyond the death of the poetic voice’s mother, but we also affect the poem by activating the prayer again and again. This affective attunement to the prayer capacitates us to see what we did not see before (her animated body), to hear what we did not hear before (her sarcastic but wise voice), and accept what we did not accept before (that there is nothing else but the dead body), in different modes of understanding death.

“Laughing and Clouded:” Proof of the Living Around the Dead If the “cadaver missing happiness” is an intriguing phrase immersing us in the poem, the curious and enigmatic title, “Laughing and Clouded”, also

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draws us into this text. As in the previous poem, “Prayer”, the opening line surprises us: Meningitis killed the butcher’s son in his bed. So much blood was in that house that a clean death could only be recognized27 before a bright mirror, without the opacity of a gasp. (22)28

It opens with the depiction of the butcher’s son’s death caused by meningitis, which is not a laughing matter. This oddity of the association between a death and being “laughing and clouded” seduces us to decode the suspicious meaning of the title in relation to the theme of death. Would it mean a laughter representing the irony of the death in a butcher’s house? Would this poem be a mirror image of Watanabe’s clouded mind in coping with his illness and approaching death? These interpretations could be interesting, however, in so doing, we may be forced to legitimize them through specific studies of semantics, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and others, and may be blinded to see what the phrase, “laughing and clouded”, is, as described in the poem. Despite the temptation of a suspicious reading, the second stanza immediately reorients us to face the description of a playful scene of children having fun with breathing onto mirrors: After that, we boys began to watch ourselves with disbelief in the mirrors. Nothing was worth more than the light we say dancing in our eyes and the satisfaction of the fog on the glass after tossing it our breath, the best gesture of the living. (22)29

The focus becomes, not the death of the butcher’s son, but the fog of breath on the mirrors which his son did not make. The poetic voice remembers that as children, he and his friends, blowing air at the mirrors, it was invaluable to see that they were alive. In the following last stanza, the poetic voice now with gray hair still keeps the habit of blowing breath at mirrors: Looking at myself in mirrors and foolishly blowing my breath at them I have persisted until today.

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Yes, that graying man in the golden frame is me. I yell: It’s me! It’s me! And it gives me enormous pleasure to see him, laughing and clouded. It is me and if it were not I would still say it was me because I want to be (and to keep being) in any living face so as not to be, like the butcher’s son, dead. (22)30

This is the first and only time when the phrase, “laughing and clouded”, appears. Reading it without figuring out what it figuratively represents, we come to understand that the phrase literally refers to his joyful reaction of seeing his own reflection on the mirror, laughing, but his figure is foggy because of the clouded spot marked by his breath on the mirror. It becomes obvious that the title is a proof of life that manifests the moment of him being alive and his desire to cling to that moment of being alive. The last line, however, turns us again back to the butcher’s son’s death. Although his death is presented as “so as not to be”, the word “dead” is placed at the very end and keeps staying in our mind. Even though the theme of this poem can be death, it is described only through the poetic voice’s lived experience, and the focus of the topic shifts into a proof of life, filled with the vivid scene of blowing air at mirrors and the foggy spot of his breadth and into his exclamation of delight at being alive and desire for holding onto that aliveness. Death is around the poetic voice, but the image of death can be uttered and enacted only by the language of the living who is laughing and looking at a foggy spot on the mirror, or, to put it simply, who is not yet dead.

Feel the Vitality of “Laughing and Clouded”! As seen in “Prayer”, the potential and limitation of words are one of the themes of “Laughing and Clouded”. Once the word “death” is pronounced in the first stanza, it does not reappear until the word “dead” ends the poem. Between the first and last depiction of the same scene of death, the rest of the poem does not show what death is like, not even a symbolic or metaphorical image of death. What the poem shows is a description of what death is not like, within the time and space of the death of the butcher’s son that he witnessed. We are reminded again that the words are insufficient to recreate the experience of death, yet that

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the poet needs them to utter death to us by the words that he obtains through his experience of not being dead. As Darío Jaramillo Agudelo states in his prologue to Poesía completa (Complete Poetic Works), Watanabe’s search for an exact word to capture the whole reality that he experienced is impossible, just as manifested in one of his metapoems, “The Verses that I Cross Out” (“Los versos que tarjo”), yet that exact or “faithful” word is an indispensable tool to reproduce “the fissure of the reality that only he has seen to tell it without drama” (10).31 In his Lacanian reading on Watanabe’s poetry, Victor Vich asserts that many of Watanabe’s works project the limitation of language (the symbolic order to which the subject-the poet pertains) to represent the materiality of existence, especially the existence of nature (the object emitting impenetrable images back to the subject) (124). The critic argues that in Watanabe’s poems, the poet is portrayed as a subject who struggles to paint the intensity of material reality that outstrips the symbolic meaning presented by words, and who comes to accept the irrepresentability of the intensity of material reality through his language (124). Vich’s application of the Lacanian gaze to Watanabe’s poems is felicitous and convincingly leads us to articulate how and why the poet’s gaze serves to create a hiatus between the symbolic meaning and the materiality of the natural world. We are tempted to jump into this Lacanian way of reading “Laughing and Clouded”, which has a variety of ingredients to be analyzed through the notion of the gaze: the irrepresentability of death through the symbolic order, the sense of self being alive and the desire to live reflected on the mirrors, and the inevitable reality of the returned image of death that lessens the proof and desire of being alive into nothingness. It can be a solid study. However, this felicitousness may enclose us in the comfortable way of scrutinizing how the poem represents the Lacanian gaze and justifying why it is befitting to read it through a particular theory. Thus, this sort of approach may prevent us from conveying how and why we felt connected to or shocked by this poem upon reading, hearing, or reciting it. This enclosed way of reading a text is the one that Felski’s “postcritical reading” encourages us to put aside. Her “postcritical reading” redirects us to “place ourselves in front of” the poem (Limits 12) and reminds us again of Watanabe’s brilliance in conveying the appearance of death based on what he saw and experienced. Despite the insufficiency of language to communicate the total aspect of death, he approximates himself to the presence of death by describing the

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vitality of life. What excites us about this poem is Watanabe’s dexterity in shifting his awareness of the limitation of language into his maximum application of the potentiality of language, in order to talk about death by illuminating the energy of life. The energy of life described by the title phrase, “laughing and clouded”, is wrapped in with the scene of the butcher’s son’s death. While situating life even in this inescapable vicinity of death, Watanabe lets the energy of life loose from the death scene and lets it attach itself to ordinary things and activities. The mirrors, their surface, the light on the mirror reflecting in the children’s eyes, the foggy breath on the mirrors, the golden frame, and the adult poetic voice’s gray hair are the ordinary things that he saw and sees. As we (re)read the poem, we animate them to call up the movements of leaning out to the mirrors, watching the light dancing, blowing their breath to the mirrors, watching the poetic voice’s reflection, repeating the same act of blowing, shouting, and laughing. These things and motions are gathered together, boosting the vitality of life, in the poem and described as parts of human and nonhuman life that prove that the poetic voice is not dead. We, living beings, breathe to live, without often paying attention to our breath, but Watanabe, through the language that he has lived, gives energy, not only to this automatic and unconscious practice of sending air out from and into our lungs, but also to us to see and sense what we did not see before. The vocabulary that he employs for breath varies, from “gasp”, “fog”, “breath” (“aliento”), “breath” (“hálito”), and “clouded (spot)”, suggesting that breathing is, not merely an automated physical activity, but an imperative proof of being alive, not dead. The poet’s approximation to death through the proof of being alive, then, takes us to hear the poetic voice’s exclaiming his existence and desire to continue to be alive. His voice repeating, “It’s me!”, vibrates the already existing energy of life. The vibration elevates us to feel the same delightedness of seeing his reflection on the mirror as he does. We are drawn to feel this pleasure of being alive, because Watanabe’s depiction calls attention to the poetic voice’s desire to cling to the reflection of, not his self in a narcissistic way, but the vitality of life itself that he wants to continue to experience in “any living face” (22). The reappearance of the same dead son at the end recaptures the unavoidable vicinity of death, yet we cannot help sensing the energy of life even in his death. The repetition of “the butcher’s son” tells us again the identity of the dead person, connecting us back to the first stanza where

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the scene of death appears for the first time. The dead was the son of the butcher who was living as a family member of the butcher until the illness took his life away. From the verb, “killed”, we feel the interruption of his life, including his last moments of breathing in bed with the illness. Like the butcher’s son, all the animals slaughtered there were alive, and their blood was flowing in their bodies until the butcher killed them. Death is something that interrupts the flow of the energy of life, but it is also the death that awakens the poetic voice to feel again the energy of life that the dead had experienced and, more importantly, to connect that energy to the one that living things are experiencing at the moment of being alive. The poem makes us see the circularity of the energy of life in the dead and the living to continue to exist. “Laughing and Clouded” enables us to feel the energy of life in relation to death, both, the past death and the one to come. It may spur us to find a mirror to blow our breath at and to hear the poetic voice’s laughter, (which I did), in order to feel the energy of being alive in one of the most ordinary scenes. Watanabe’s language in the poem to describe death may be insufficient because he has not experienced death and has to rely on what he has seen and experienced, but it becomes more limited when we, readers, fail to participate in feeling the effluence of the energy of “laughing” mirrored in the clouded spot. After finishing reading the last word of the poem, “the dead”, how can we sense the vitality of life existing within the inescapable reality of mortality, if we exclusively attempt to decipher how and why the insufficiency of language incapacitates Watanabe to represent the reality of death or life?

“Flags Behind the Fog:” Walking and Pausing Watanabe has expressed in many occasions that his role as a poet is to have “the real experience of the word”, not to “literaturize” before writing (“Paradoxes” 81) in order to share his experience, as closely as possible, with readers.32 If the previous poems transmit unexpected modes of approaching the inevitable human condition of death, capturing the potentiality of the words which revitalize the dead and the energy of the living, this poem engages us in a different mode of perceiving the ephemeral and ineffable moment of beauty that the natural world produces, despite the limitations of language. “Flags” was one of the two poems that Watanabe chose to recite in the above-mentioned TV interview. Before reciting it, he stated:

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For me, poetry is something like that there are privileged moments when nature opens up and tells us something. Suddenly we are walking and we find a stone illuminated by a ray of sunlight.… There, there is a truth, there something is being told to us, but we cannot say what it is. So, poetry uses language to try to say what that is, but since … language is limited, every poem is an approximation to that truth suddenly discovered. That is more or less what I say in this poem. (“Poet José Watanabe” 7:12–7:58)33

In “Flags”, Watanabe invites us to walk slowly with the poetic voice to experience the approximation to “the truth suddenly discovered” in the middle of walking and pausing (“Poet José Watanabe” 7:58). In this six-stanza poem, Watanabe’s poetic voice takes us to a dilapidated port town with a rusted pier and suspicious bars at the shore that has replaced the affluent houses and their lasting vigorous lawns: An old age sad and ill-defined hangs about the port,34 more rust on the dock and suspicious bars on the shoreline where before there were houses ringed by stubborn herb. (27)35

By laying out a concrete and tangible image of a run-down port town from the second to the fourth line, the poetic voice depicts a sense of a sad old age. But we cannot help but wonder why the curious adjective “illdefined” (“indefinida”) is added to describe the old age. By “ill-defined” (“indefinida”), does he mean an unknown old age emphasizing uncertainty and anxiety? Or does he mean the nebulous and dim ambience of the decrepit town? Or both? Instead of decoding the meanings or signs hidden behind the adjective, while still keeping these questions in mind, we will let the following stanzas lead us to a possible way of approaching the moods and feelings that the opening line elicits and will see what “[a]n old age sad and ill-defined” unfolds after reading through the entire poem. In the following stanzas, the poetic voice describes the walk he took one foggy night at the pier: One night, when a mist dense and murky covered the world, I walked groping alone the planking of the dock. Still a youth, perhaps I sought the joyful terror of dwindling away.

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I went on feeling the railing with my hands, its metal joinings, the ropes of the crab traps tied to the rusted keels. The crabs prowled by night among the gutted fish and their innards that rolled in the deep sea or wound themselves like serpents around the pilasters of the dock. (27)36

What predominates in the stanzas is the ambience of a dense misty night. We are soon immersed in the thick fog and drawn into the poetic voice’s walk in the darkness, searching for “the joyful terror of dwindling away” (27). As he feels for the rail of the boardwalk, the rail’s metal joints, and rope traps for crabs tied to rusty cleats, we also feel the rail and the crab rope traps. We then sense and smell the crabs prowling the remains of eviscerated fish and the guts rolling down at the bottom of the sea and coiling like snakes around the pillars of the pier. Just as what the poetic voice touches, feels, and sees in the fog stimulates our tactile, visual, and olfactory senses and organs, the sound of the gentle waves hitting on the side of small fish boats that he hears excites our auditory system: I listened to the gentle push of the waves at the sides of the small boats that in the mornings went out to gather nets37 passing between the warships stationed in the bay. A dog, as blind as me, whimpered in the bottom of a boat. (27)38

The sound of the waves and the image that follows––that of the fish boats, at dawn, leaving to gather up nets and navigating between warships stationed at the bay, absorb us in listening to the waves and imagining the movements of the fish boats at the dim dawn. The soft sound of the waves then seems to be interrupted by the frantic whining of an abandoned dog at the back of a boat. Although the dog’s whimpering may temporarily surpass the gentleness of the waves, it becomes part of the foggy ambience, ultimately being fused into the sound of the waves and the other scenes that the poetic voice imagined at the dawn. The verb “whimpered” (“gemía”) in an imperfect verbal form corresponds to the descriptions of what the poetic voice senses in his quiet walk, also exhibited by the other imperfect verbs, “covered”, “sought”, “went”, prowled”, “rolled”, “wound”, “listened”, and

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“went out” (“cubría, buscaba, iba, merodeaban, rodaban, se enroscaban, escuchaba, and salían”) (27). Up to this moment (up to the end of the fourth stanza), the poetic voice has sketched out the fog at the pier from night to dawn and engaged us to experience the moods, imaginations, and sensibilities stemming from the fog through all our sensory system. At the end of the fourth stanza, the poetic voice, the dog, and we are immersed in the fog. In the next stanza, however, the mode of walking in the fog is halted by what the poetic voice witnesses in a second: Then I saw someone, in the distance, waving flags behind the fog. (28)39

The poetic voice sees the flags behind the fog that someone waves far away. The preterit verbs, “saw” and “wav[ed]” (“vi” and “agitó”) in contrast to the previous moods and images described in the imperfect verbs, introduce a more rapid and agile mood and motion than before. Especially, the pause produced by two commas and the expression “in the distance” between “someone” and “wav[ed]” captures a sudden and swift motion of the flags quickly emerge and disappear in the fog. As soon as the poetic voice witnesses the flags movement behind the fog, all the scenes and images depicted in details thus far––the dog’s whimpering, the sound of the waves, the fishermen’s boats moving, crabs eating fish guts, crab traps, and the rail of the boardwalk––are dissipated by the astonishment and ineffableness that he finds in the beauty of the flags: I was awestruck and mute. No footnote on beauty will ever speak truly of those flags. (28)40

He goes on to affirm that the beauty that he experiences through the flags cannot ever be expressed or explained by any annotations about beauty. His contemplations of the surroundings through his walk at the pier end here with his illumination of the beauty of the flags. Although he does not go back to reflect on his walk, his state of being bewildered and speechless caused by the unreproducible beauty takes us back to the expression in the second stanza, “the joyful terror of dwindling away”, which appears immediately after he starts his walk (27). Reading the poem again, it becomes clear that the phrase already hints

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at the terrifying, yet at the same time, fascinating image of the ineffableness of the beauty coming from the flags waving fleetingly in the fog. It is fascinating for the poetic voice to reach a total comprehension of the beauty, yet there is a “terror” as well because it cannot ever be recaptured in the same way again. What the poem calls forth as a whole can be an encounter with this “joyful terror” of the ephemerality and ineffableness of beauty through contemplations in the fog. Going back to the question raised above, regarding the adjective “illdefined” (“indefinida”) in the very first line, “[a]n old age sad and ill-defined hangs about the port”, we have suggested earlier two possible meanings of the word: unknownness and indeterminacy of a physical deterioration and/or the unclear ambience of the run-down town covered in fog. However, recognizing that “the joyful terror of dwindling away” is what the poem unfolds, “[a]n old age sad and ill-defined” can be understood as follows. The final stage of life (human and nonhuman) is sad, but even in the phase of physical deterioration and in the thick darkness covering the surroundings, as this town faces, one can find a moment of beauty through attentive contemplations of small, ordinary, and seemingly insignificant things around him or her. One can experience an indescribable, perhaps exhilarating or overwhelming, moment, even in his or her old age or in a deteriorated town, and because of this possible experience of being illuminated, awed, or shocked, describing an old age or rusted town as a sad phase of life becomes questionable, it is ill-defined. No matter how ephemeral and ineffable the moment of beauty may be, such a moment can invigorate the darkness of the final phase of life with “joyful terror”.

“Visceral Forces”41 in “Flags Behind the Fog” In our first attempt to read the poem without a “suspicious reading”, our sensory system and organs are stimulated by the poetic voice’s walk in the fog, in which we join. Following the poetic voice’s walk, we begin to contemplate the foggy surroundings, and he, at the end of the poem, involves us in witnessing the illumination of beauty in the flags waving behind the fog. During the walk of contemplation, we are surprised that our senses are enlivened by the simple and ordinary scenes at the rundown pier. The detailed sensory-provoking descriptions of the scenes, then, lead us to imagine and feel the vitality of all sorts of forms of existence (living and non-living) even in the dark and dilapidated town. This

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vitality depicted as it is part of ordinary life, without any exaggeration or dramatization, encourages us, not only to perceive energy around our everyday routines, but also to see the capability (or difficulty) of sensing vitality in all living and non-living entities through contemplations in any deteriorated time and space, including our old age to come. In brief, these sensory stimuli and vitality in the poem serve as “visceral forces” of affect (Seigworth and Gregg 1) that propel us to experience them, try to relate them to our own surroundings, and think about the possibility of perceiving them in our daily life. If our interaction with the poetic voice’s walk of contemplation sheds light on the potential of affect—capacity to be affected and to affect— our engagement with the last part of the poem projecting the sudden illumination of the moment of beauty intensifies the power of affect. This sudden apparition of beauty in a run-down port is something unexpected, but what surprises and affects us the most is the poetic voice’s ability to enunciate the impossibility of recapturing the same beauty, while at the same time, in contrast, perpetually seizing the resonance of the beauty. More concretely, the ephemerality and ineffableness of the beauty are highlighted in the first lines of the penultimate and last stanzas, especially in the Spanish original version: “Then I saw someone, in the distance, waving [flags]” (“Entonces vi banderas que alguien, a lo lejos, agitó”) and “I was awestruck and mute. No footnote” (28). On the other hand, the second lines of the penultimate and last stanzas, “[flags] behind the fog” (“detrás de la niebla”) and “on beauty will ever speak truly of those flags” (28), create a mood of the lingering presence of the beauty in the fog. The first lines of both stanzas capture the sudden apparition of the beauty and the moment of being left astonished and speechless, and the phrase, “No footnote”, in the first line of the last stanza, further, reinforces the mood of ineffableness. However, as soon as the last lines of both stanzas, which are enjambments (lines running over from the end of the previous lines), appear, it becomes clear that although the moment of encountering the beauty is ephemeral and ineffable, the beauty in the fog continues to exist. By not connecting the lines, “[flags] behind the fog” (“detrás de la niebla”) and “on beauty will ever speak …”, together with the previous lines, thus not forming complete sentences, they can be read as individual lines, separated from the previous ones. Since the line, “[flags] behind the fog”, does not appear together with the line of “I saw [flags that] someone … wav[ed] (“vi banderas que alguien, … agitó”), the emphasis falls in the lingering scene of the fog.42 Likewise, the last line, “on beauty

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will ever speak …”, presented without the subject, “No footnote”, can be read as an affirmative phrase with a verb in the future tense that draws attention to the enduring existence and continuity of the beauty in the fog. Facing this contrast between the ephemerality and ineffableness of beauty, on the one hand, and its endurance and persistence, on the other, we are being caught between a fast and fleeting motion and a slow, lingering, and reflective mood. In the last two stanzas, we sense the quick and slow speed and mood alternately in each line. As soon as the apparition of the flags in the fog draws us in a sudden and quick motion, we are surrounded by the slow mood of the fog. Then, we feel a sense of quickness and evanescence produced by the sudden change in the poetic voice’s cognitive state of being affected by the illumination of the flags. Yet, once again, we are flown into the slowness depicted through the image of the lingering beauty of the flags, and we, furthermore, sense the future possibility of recapturing and speaking of the illumination of the beauty. At the end of the poem, we are delighted to experience the state of enlightenment through the poetic voice’s encounter with the moment of the illumination of the beauty, while the ephemerality and ineffableness of the beauty terrify us, knowing that it will disappear soon. In this sense, we come to grasp the intense feeling of “the joyful terror of dwindling away” (27) and become aware of our own capability of perceiving such an intensity around our body and world. In a sense, we are already in the entanglement of “force-encounters” or pulsations, born out of the stimulated senses through the contemplations at the foggy pier and the delightful and terrifying moment of the illumination of the beauty. This entanglement that we feel can be interpreted, to borrow Seigworth and Gregg’s expressions, as “a palimpsest of force-encounters traversing the ebbs and swells of intensities that pass between ‘bodies’” (2). Being drawn into the different moods and speeds in the last four lines, we further experience the heightened intensities of these “forceencounters”. The already intense feeling of the pleasant terror shifts into slow quietness, taking us back to the mood of contemplations in the fog. The quick mood of astonishment and speechlessness also turns into the ambience of repose and contentment brought by the lingering presence of the beauty of the flags. In this ambience, then, we become aware that although an illumination of beauty can suddenly appear and instantaneously disappear, it may ceaselessly and quietly abide around us. In

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other words, the idea of the impossibility of reproducing the same beauty is now swayed by the more hopeful sense of the possibility of encountering an illumination of the same beauty. Because an illumination may appear at any moment, we are encouraged to continue to contemplate our surroundings and hope to witness an illumination. But our relatedness to the world of contemplations and illuminations are immediately interrupted by a doubtful thought and pressure. It becomes overwhelming for us to always contemplate attentively and be ready to capture a moment of an illumination of the same beauty, and we fear that we may fail to (re)capture it. The poem makes us feel the entanglements, which we want to call, “visceral forces”,43 of “the joyful terror of dwindling away” provoked by the sense of the impossibility of reproducing the ephemeral and ineffable illumination of beauty, the mood of contentment and hope for recapturing it, and the overwhelmingness and fear caused by a doubt about the attainability of the intractable latency and infinitude of illuminations. These “visceral forces”, being intermingled in our emotional, cognitive, perceptual, and physical system, not only stimulate our guts, but also set us in motion to try out unexpected and mind-boggling ways of perceiving the capabilities of seizing beauty illuminated in our surroundings and beyond.

“The Algarrobo:” “Hooked on”44 a Tree in a Dessert Unlike the poetic voice of “Flags”, that of “The Algarrobo” neither walks around in the foggy darkness in order to intensely look around his surroundings, nor searches for an illumination of beauty. Instead, he describes the greatness and resoluteness of an algarrobo tree standing firm in the middle of sand dunes. The poem opens with the apparition of the fiery afternoon sun blazing over a desert land. The furious sun has arrived to scorch the land and scare away all the living beings in the desert: The sun has returned this afternoon to the desert like a radiant beast. Seeing it like this, so furious, one would say that it comes from calcinating the whole earth. It has come to rage where everything already seems to be dying. They fled

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from their inspections of the dead; the gray fox, the scorpions and the invisible sand serpent. Only the algarrobo tree, used as it is to its intense but precarious life, has remained still, lonely among the innumerable dunes. (29)45

As soon as the poem opens with “[t]he sun”, the heat of the desert, through the words, “to the desert”, “radiant beast”, “furious”, and “calcinating”, pervades our body. We share the same feeling of “to be dying” with other desert creatures, who cannot bear the heat and escape from the blazing sun. In this harsh environment, the tree is the only one that endures the sun quietly and solitarily. Contemplating this firm, quiet, and solitary algarrobo tree, the poetic voice depicts the shapes that it has grown into: This gnarled tree, in its growth has kept inconceivable postures: once it swayed at its waist like a clumsy young dancer, once, dazzled, it erratically stretched its twisted arms, once dropped a branch on the ground in surrender. There is no body more tortured. The only happy thing about it is its towering green hair that goes wherever the wind wants it to go. (29)46

The poetic voice takes us in front of the tree and fixates our eyes on it. We are not guided to move around from one site to another unlike in “Flags”, but rather encouraged to stare at the tree, standing still confronting the threat of the heat. However, this does not mean that the poem makes us perceive the tree as something static and motionless. On the contrary, in this stanza, the tree starts moving. The poetic voice delineates the process by which the algarrobo tree has grown to be a forbearing, equanimous, and resolute being. The algarrobo’s current gnarled aspect is attributed to its movements that have constantly reshaped its appearance. If shaking its waist clumsily like a young dancer was the first movement, being stunned, carelessly stretching its entangled arms was the second. Then, these two movements were followed by the third, in which the tree let a branch fall into the ground like a surrender.

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Although the poetic voice details only these three movements, the reiterated phrase, “once”, delivers an image of the constant movements that occurred at different times and underscores the invariableness of the tree’s appearance. Further, if we read again the lines between the first “once” and the last––“… once / it swayed at its waist … / once, dazzled, / it erratically stretched its twisted arms, / once dropped a branch on the ground …” (29 emphasis added)––we can anticipate other shapes formed by other movements at other times. Indeed, the following line, “[t]here is no body more tortured” (29), implies that since the three movements mentioned in the previous lines, the algarrobo tree’s body has been damaged, twisted, and mutated over again by more entanglements and falls of branches and other movements, perhaps caused by its reactions to weather and temperature changes in the desert, as well as by its contacts with living beings. We feel trapped in an atmosphere where the “torture” never halts and continues to mutate the tree over and over again. The algarrobo tree seems to resign itself to its fate, facing the natural forces, however, it does manifest its abiding resilience and vitality. Despite being the most tortured body, it still manages to feel the delight of the wind blowing over the leaves at its top in the unbearable desert. The last two lines of the third stanza, “[t]he only happy thing about it is its towering green hair that goes / wherever the wind wants it to go”, display the unequivocal growth of the green leaves and the delight that the wind brings to the tree. The algarrobo’s leaves sway in whichever direction, surrendering itself to the wind, yet it finds a way to show its vigor of being alive and delighted. In the cycle of the phases of (1) the confrontation of the torturous forces of nature, (2) tolerance and surrender, and (3) resilience and vitality, the algarrobo tree has constantly mutated its form, creating an unconceivable shape, and continues to transform itself into something unimaginable and indescribable. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that at the end of the poem, the poetic voice radiates the unutterableness of the tree: The algarrobo tree puts me in front of language. In this extremely clean landscape there are no words. It is the only word and the sun can’t burn it in my mouth. (29)47

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The existence of this enduring tree inspires the poetic voice to describe it in words, yet he understands that words cannot express the state of its being, because doing so may disgrace its integrity. The only way to express it is to use the pronoun, “it”, (or “he” in Spanish) through which the poetic voice seeks a way to communicate as precisely as possible its existence. However, the word, “it”, (“he”) can be neither specified nor verbally pronounced, but must be kept unutterable in his mouth. Its existence is ineffable, yet paradoxically, it is this ineffableness that allows the poetic voice to protect the algarrobo tree from being damaged by words and to continue to express its resilient existence.

Entangled “Visceral Forces”48 in “The Algarrobo” In “Flags,” the vitality of the living and non-living entities captured through contemplations in the fog provokes “visceral forces” that stimulate the potential energies of my sensory and perceptual system. In “The Algarrobo”, it is also the vitality of the tree emanating from contemplations that brings us such “visceral forces”. As soon as the tree emerges in front of us, in the middle of the desert where the sun blazes in the afternoon, in the fourth line of the second stanza, we already feel its physical and mental strength: “Only the algarrobo tree, used as it is / to its intense but precarious life, has remained still, / lonely among the innumerable dunes” (29). In contrast to the action verb, “[They] fled”, describing the other creatures’ escape, the tree is described as a resolute thing remaining quiet and alone. Yet, the depiction, “to its intense but precarious life”, already suggesting the intensity and precariousness of its life, engages us in detecting its vital energy. Then, in the following stanza, while becoming aware of the everlasting cycle of the tree’s confrontation with the torturous natural world, surrender, and revitalization, we clearly see and feel its vitality created by its growing movements and entanglements that constantly mutate its body. Even in this harsh environment, where the “torture” never stops and where the tree embraces its fate, it still tries to grow and revitalize itself. This physical stamina is admirable, but what impresses us the most is its resolute attitude that capacitates it to find and cultivate happiness and delight without expecting anything beyond in its painful fate. This vitality stirs our thoughts: what it would mean to be an algarrobo tree in a desert; whether or not we could live, endure, surrender, and

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revive like the tree; how we could accept the perpetual cycle and experience the vital energy; how we could find happiness, facing the blazing sun and sandy wind; and how we could let go of happiness and remain calm and quiet. This emergence of swarming and swelling thoughts can be understood as the rise of the “visceral forces” of affect articulated by Seigworth and Gregg. This multiplying thinking and questioning can be “visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion––that can serve to drive us toward movement, toward thought and extension” (1). These thoughts, in fact, further compel us to relate ourselves to the tree’s mode of living and being. This does not mean that the poem enables us to live like the tree, but it makes us reflect on the vitality of the tree, grapple with a new way of existing and a new meaning of life, and want to try out this mode of living and being. Our body, mind, and world are affected, being driven “toward movement, toward thought and extension” (Seigworth and Gregg 1). However, what affects us the most about this poem resides in the end, as in “Flags”, where the poetic voice reveals the algarrobo tree’s ineffableness. The penultimate line of the last stanza, “there are no words. / It is the only word” (29), suspends our sense of being connected to the tree’s world. If there are no words to describe it, how could we reach something indescribable and understand its mode of being? After having read and sensed its detailed movements and mutations, how could we be attuned to the ineffableness? The revelation of the ineffableness is shocking and intensifies our thinking and perceiving system which impinges on our relatedness to the tree. Here, the “visceral forces” crossing between relatedness and un-relatedness already make “a palimpsest of force encounters” (Seigworth and Gregg 2), but the palimpsest becomes further complicated by the paradoxical result of the ineffableness. The palimpsest born out of the tensions between relatedness (to be identified with the tree) and un-relatedness (to be not identified with the tree) is now magnified through the other conflictive encounters between our body’s capacities and incapacities to perceive and experience the tree’s mode of existing by virtue of the ineffableness. As seen above, on the one hand, because of the lack of precise words, it is impossible to pronounce the meaning of the tree’s resilient existence, but on the other, the poetic voice keeps it in his mouth, reminding us of the permanent existence of its vital energy which constantly moves and mutates. The word, “it”

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(“he”), in the poetic voice’s mouth, spurs our curiosity to wonder if we can have it in our mouth and taste its energy, while, at the same time, prompting us to ponder on our own capability and incapability of gripping and experiencing its resilient existence and vitality always in flux and transmitting them without shattering the ineffableness. Moving back and forth between the palimpsest of “visceral forces”, we are engaged in weaving the webs of our body’s (world’s) limitations and flexibility toward new possible ways of perceiving the tree’s ineffable mode of existing and applying new perceptual possibilities to our way of living beyond words.

Conclusion: Starting to Walk, See, and Cuddle This has been my first attempt to sit in front of Watanabe’s poems and express what I feel and perceive in them without limiting my reading to a specific school of thoughts or “-isms” and worrying about matching my reading to a trendy camp of ideology and politics in academia. Felski’s “postcritical reading” and the concept of affect have allowed me to articulate the vital impulses that I feel, facing the vitality of language and life always contiguous with the inevitable and unutterable death, as well as the ephemeral and ineffable moment of the illumination of the flags behind the fog and the algarrobo tree’s unutterable mode of being. I take pleasure in feeling the senses of enlivenedness and nothingness coming from the prayer in front of a dead body and the vitality of life, always contiguous with death, existing in the most ordinary and habitual things and actions. I am also delighted, witnessing the very moment of the illumination of beauty which appears behind the ordinary scenes at the run-down pier at night in the fog. I also have deep affection and respect for the tolerance, resoluteness, adaptability, and resilience of the algarrobo tree standing in the desert. These pleasant stimuli draw me deeper to the poems. I am “hooked in” the poems and want to cheer and almost push others to read them.49 I want to share the pleasure and delightfulness stemming from the energy emanating from life and death, the ephemeral moment of fleeting beauty, and ineffable strength of the tree, but the following question immediately arises: How can I convey to other readers what I have just felt and experienced through Watanabe’s poems, not to recreate the experience for them, but to let them know how important and pleasurable it is to be able to articulate why his poems matter to me? Felski’s “postcritical reading” would encourage us to invite others to become coactors who could,

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first, recognize their practice of reading as a small event of a larger society, not as some exceptional privilege distant from the society and world; and who could, then, share their thoughts on why Watanabe’s poetry or other texts “weasel themselves into [their] hearts and minds” (Limits 162– 164). Thus, the coactors of Watanabe’s poetry should free themselves from the limited, perhaps scholarly and academically legitimated, way of looking into his works, as Felski quotes Latour’s expression, “emancipation does not mean ‘freed from bonds,’ but well-attached” (quoted in Felski Limits 146, 189).50 Thinking about inviting other readers to practice “postcritical reading” for Watanabe’s poetry, however, a doubt still comes to mind. How can I not to fall into the risk of righteously defending and legitimizing my “postcritical reading”, when facing different interpretations made based on specific agendas and methods, especially when these interpretations expand my horizon to understand his poetry? Perhaps, this is a false apprehension, but how can I avoid a suspicious critique of non-“postcritical reading”? Felski is neither against interpretation, disagreement, or dissidence (Limits 190, “Response” 386), but warns us not to confine ourselves in the comfortable and tempting “dryness of our intellectual vocabularies” (Limits 178). Watanabe’s poetry is an invigorating aesthetic work that attracts us to try the new “postcritical” way of reading. Offering a myriad of topics varying from Laredo, memory, nostalgia, family, myths, the natural world, ordinary occurrences, Japanese and indigenous heritage, illnesses, hospitals, the functions of body and organs, eroticism, life and death, the precision and limitation of language, to the presentation of material reality, it inspires us to see them from different angles and perspectives beyond our comfort zone of reading and, more importantly, to constantly interact with the poetry, instead of interpreting it or searching for what is missing in the previous interpretations. As Darío Jaramillo Agudelo notes, Watanabe’s contemplative and insightful eye, shining on uncountable topics and unconventional angles, invites us, not only to discover something new in our own surroundings, including our personal relationships with people and society and the natural world, but also to come to see how what we have learned from his poetry is reflected in his poetry (22). We are stimulated by Watanabe’s poetry, while we stimulate it. Through these sorts of interactions between readers and his poetry, a sense of connections is created. The networks of connections

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can be manifold and infinite. They can bring out tensions and intensities (the “visceral forces” of affect) electrified by the clashes of different knots and ties. Then, the networks of connections constantly activate and reassemble our sensory and perceptual pathways toward new patterns and paradigms for approaching Watanabe’s poetic world and reflecting on our own surroundings and modes of existing through his poetry. Or, to put it simply, we are affected by Watanabe’s poetry and affecting the ways of reading it, and hence the ways of thinking, perceiving, and existing. Perhaps, Watanabe was a poet who was conscious, not only about the potentials of affect produced in his poems, but also about the fact that he was being affected by the potentials of affect created by his own poems. In his lecture titled as “From Depression to Creation”51 given on December 6, 2005 at the Psychiatry and Art Chapter of the Peruvian Psychiatric Association (el Capítulo Psiquiatría y Arte de la Asociación Psiquiátrica Peruana), in Lima, he revealed the long process of recovering from his depression after a surgery and treatment for his lung cancer at a hospital in Germany. He lost his appetite for eating, mental ability to get out of bed, and even the motivation to write. When his condition improved, he realized that he had lost his poet’s language. While he wanted to continue to be a poet, the loss of his appropriate language and words disconcerted him (“Conference”).52 He stated: “I never had to fight so hard to pull out a poem. Neither did I ever experienced the attention and joy of writing with more intensity. Then I knew as never before that expressing oneself poetically was a therapeutic act” (“Conference” 18:34–18:55).53 While struggling to look for the right words, he immersed himself in writing and experienced the pleasure of writing. By doing this, he gained more strength to write and live than ever. Writing was a therapeutic act that pushed him toward a new way of creating poems. He was affected by his own writing, and now his poems transmit the potentials of affect which drive us toward unprecedented, “postcritical” ways of thinking, writing, and reading beyond critique for critique’s sake. From February 21, 2019 to August 18, an exposition of Watanabe’s versatile works, titled Watanabe. The Eye and His Reasons,54 took place, at the House of Peruvian Literature (la Casa de la Literatura Peruana) in Lima (Watanabe). The curator, Rodrigo Vera, created an ambience in which any lover of Watanabe’s poetry or literature in general can “walk and see” (“caminar y ver”), not only Watanabe’s poetic works, but all the works he produced, without any entrance fees, in order to be in tune with

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Watanabe’s conviction that a poetic composition arises out of our (the poet’s and the reader’s) modes of existence, not out of academic literary studies (Vera 18–19). His and our modes of existence––everyday lives, social roles, relationships with nature, and other unmeasurable connections to the world––stimulate Watanabe’s sensorium system to create his poetry, which activates our sensorium system to steer us to walk and see our own modes and reflect on them to connect them to other modes of existence. The curator and visitors together created and experienced this expansion of connections at the exposition by interacting and intermingling with Watanabe’s multifaceted works, the curator, those who were involved in making this exposition, and other participants, through diverse methods and moods, from digital and paper forms of displays, the reading and dialoging sessions of Watanabe’s poetry and children’s books, play-dough workshops for creating figures in his children’s books, conversation tables, to guided tours, among others (Watanabe 142–145). This affecting space of attunements and interminglements was a perfect arena to remind us again why Watanabe’s poetry continues to cuddle us with his simple, yet absorbing words and make us cuddle it with care in return. Walking, seeing, and cuddling in his poetry, we hope to go on to stumble across further affective and active engagements with other, unexpected and expected, unpleasant and pleasant, human and nonhuman associates, in order to interweave us with other moods, modes, and possibilities of reading and existing.

Notes 1. One of my previous studies on Watanabe’s poetry aims to reconfigure what is behind his works beyond his affinity to his ethnically marked Japanese Peruvian identity known as nikkei. Another study of mine explores through Barthes’ concept of photography how and why the unattainability of reality projected in Watanabe’s poetic images. Both focus on what was missing in the previous critiques, rather than how my reading is connected to them or why Watanabe’s poetry matters. 2. See responses to Felski’s Limits of Critique as well as her response to them in PMLA 132.2 (2017): 331–3391. Also see Terry Eagleton’s review, “Not Just Anybody” in London Review of Books 39.1 (2017): n.p. 3. Rita Felski has already made a connection between her idea of “postcritical reading” and Song’s posture regarding the overemphasized weight given to the content of an art work over the form (“Introduction” vi). Further, in their Critique and Postcritique (2017), Anker and Felski

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make a reference to Sontag’s essay (16). In her more recent book, Hooked: Art and Attachment (2020), Felski refers to Sontag’s essay in order to point out the limitation and danger of interpreting a text based on models and methods established by political, philosophical, and institutional motivations (12, 131). Felski’s phrase, “suspicious interpretation or “suspicious reading”, is adopted from Paul Ricoeur’s coinage, “hermeneutics of suspicion” (1–3, 31–32) by which he means the “intensive acts of deciphering ” conducted by his three masters of suspicion, Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche (31). She reasseses Ricoeur’s phrase to show how vigilant and militant modes of reading for finding and decoding hidden meanings behind, beyond, and between the lines have become attractive and pleasurable to literary critics (30–31). For more information on Macé’s study on ways of reading, see her article, “Ways of Reading, Modes of Reading” in New Literary History 44 (2013): 213–229. “¿Cuándo estudiaremos a nuestros poetas como si fueran clásicos en vez de imitar ciegamente los modelos teóricos que vienen del país del norte y de Europa”? (16–17). Translation is mine. In an interview with Gonzalo Pajares Cruzado, a journalist from Peru21, a Peruvian newspaper, which can be found in Librosperuanos.com, Watanabe states: [The poetry] is a very fleeting perception[,] [s]omething I see as clear and conclusive, but in a short way. When I desire to translate that vision, that truth … to a poem and to offer it to the reader, a great difficulty comes. The language is limited. Then, I feel that all the poems that one makes are always approximations, approaches, attempts to transmit that truth. ([La poesía] es una percepción muy fugaz[,] [A]lgo que veo nítido y contundente, pero de modo muy breve. Cuando deseo trasladar esa visión, esa verdad … a un poema y ofrecérsela al lector, viene una gran dificultad. El lenguaje es limitado. Entonces, siento que todos los poemas que uno hace siempre son aproximaciones, acercamientos, intentos de transmitir esa verdad). In another interview with Maribel de Paz, he states: “The poems that I write, I have taken out of reality, and they are in life itself. I am walking and suddenly see something and say ‘there is a poem there’” (235) (“Los poemas que escribo los he sacado de la realidad, están en la vida misma. Voy caminando y de pronto veo algo y digo «ahí hay un poema»” [235]). He also wants readers to understand that “[t]he poetic experience is an

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8.

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10. 11.

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experience of language, but it is an experience that entails an experience of life” (234) (“[la] experiencia poética es una experiencia del lenguaje, pero que conlleva una experiencia de vida” [234]). “[e]l poema es un modo de decirle al lector: ‘Mira, vi esto, te lo ofrezco, ojalá puedas reproducir en tu espíritu lo mismo que yo vi y sentí”) (“No soy un poeta”). The translation is borrowed from José Watanabe:Todo cuerpo es tótem/EveryBody Is Totem (2019), a bilingual anthology of Watanabe’s poems assembled together as a New York University and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru’s collaborative translation project, led by María José Zubieta. “Pero ahí estás haciendo una lectura del poema. Obviamente yo nunca propuse esa simbolización que haces tú” (“Ama rápido”). “El ojo del poeta le da … un sentido aproximado … el sentido que comenzas a darle al poema a partir de lo que ves en la realidad …” (“Ama rápido”). When asked about the influence of haiku in his poetry in an interview, “The Paradoxes of Language: Interview with José Watanabe” (“Las paradojas del lenguaje: Entrevista con José Watanabe”) published in Ajos & Zapiros No.7 by José Cabrera Alva et al., Watanabe responds that his attitude is that of a haiku poet: “That attitude of someone who has seen something and says: ‘I have seen this, but don’t know what it means. Here it is, I describe it to you and let’s see if you feel the same as I’” (75–76). (“Esa actitud de alguien que ha visto algo y dice: «he visto esto, pero no sé qué significa. Aquí está, te lo describo y a ver si tú sientes lo mismo que yo»”) (75–76). “… en buena medida te ayudan a confrontar tu propia obra, ora te apoyan ora te desmienten. Prefiero leer la crítica que me empuja a ir a una librería, que me motiva a leer o a investigar más sobre un autor; esa es la crítica en la que yo creo. … luego vienen los deconstructores, los semióticos, los cuales entiendo, aunque siempre termino preguntándome, ¿para qué sirven”? (“Paradojas” 80). Felski’s book Hooked: Art and Attachment (2020) has a chapter titled “Art and Attunement”. In the book, Felski tackles the questions that she has raised in The Limits of Critique and somewhere else—why certain texts “hook up with” us and how we can talk about the sensibility and affect of “being hooked” in an academic setting that has a tendency to disregard our passions and sentiments (Limits 178–179)––by reminding us that there are always audiences outside of academia who generate a network of appreciation of various sorts of aesthetic experiences (Hooked xiv). See the quote in the interview with Pajares Cruzado in Note 7 in this study.

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16. Translation is from José Watanabe: Todo cuerpo es totem. 17. Translation is from Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica, No. 77, Article 46, 2013. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=2734&context=inti. Accessed 25 March 2021. 18. In a TV interview with Ernesto Hermoza, a year before his death, Watanabe talks about his new attitude toward his poetic creation upon publishing Banderas. In the previous books, I always started a poem and oriented it toward a conclusion, toward something that sounded philosophical, too forceful. In this case the endings are much more open … I am tired of making too specific conclusions, I prefer to leave poems more open … Before I gave readers everything done, everything fed. Now I give them a very open ending, so that they can interpret. I trust readers’ intelligence more. (2:59–4:20) En los otros libros anteriores yo siempre empezaba el poema y lo orientaba hacia una conclusion, hacia algo que sonaba filosófico, demasiado contundente. En este caso los finales son mucho más abiertos. … Ya me cansé de hacer conclusions demasiado concretas, prefiero dejar el poema más abierto. … Antes yo le daba al lector … todo hecho, todo comidito. Ahora se lo doy con un final muy abierto, que pueda interpreter. Confío más en la inteligencia del lector. (2:59–4:20) 19. I borrow this expression from the title of Macé’s article, “Ways of Reading, Modes of Reading” (213). 20. A este cadáver le falta alegría. Qué culpa tan inmensa cuando a un cadáver le falta alegría. Uno quiere traerle algo radiante o gustoso (yo recuerdo su felicidad de anciana comiendo un bife tierno), pero Dora aún no regresa del mercado. (11) 21. A este cadáver le falta alegría, ¿alguna alegría aún puede entrar en su alma. que está tendida sobre sus órganos de polvo? Qué inútiles somos ante un cadáver que se va tan desolado. Ya no podemos enmendar nada. ¿Alguien guarda todavía esas diminutas manzanas de pobre que ella confitaba y en sus manos obsequiosas parecían venidas de un árbol espléndido? (11)

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Ya se está yendo con su anillo de viuda. Ya se está yendo, y no le prometas nada: le provocarás una frase sarcástica y lapidaria que, como siempre, te dejará hecho un idiota. (11)

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26.

27. 28.

Ya se está yendo con su costumbre de ir bailando por el camino para mecer al hijo que llevaba a la espalda. Once hijos, Señora Coneja, y ninguno sabe qué diablos hacer para que su cadáver tenga alegría. (12) “Este poema lo tenía pensado hace muchos años, pero me dolía mucho escribirlo, empezaba a escribirlo y lo dejaba. Esta vez me atreví a escribirlo, lo publiqué y lo puse primero” (“José Watanabe” 5:40–5:58). “Envuelves una palabra más tosca que basura, envuelves mierda en papel bonito. Terrible. Se dio cuenta que el lenguaje era cuidado, pero lo que encerraba era muy duro” (6:38–6:55). “Tú sabes que a veces uno se resiste … a escribir un poema y cuando toma la decisión de escribirlo, te queda muy mal. Es una sesión terapéutica, y hasta terminas para dormir tomándote un sedante. Me ocurrió con este” (“Poeta José Watanabe” 5:03–5:21). The line is translated as “that only a clean death could be allowed”, but I would translate as “that a clean death could only be recognized”. The translation is done through the collaborative team led by Zubierta. See note 165. La meningitis mató en su cama al hijo del carnicero. Tanta sangre hubo en esa casa que una muerte limpia sólo fue aceptada ante un espejo brillante, sin la opacidad de un resuello. (22)

29.

30.

Desde entonces, los muchachos empezamos a asomarnos con incredulidad a los espejos. Nada pagaba la luz que veíamos bailando en nuestros ojos y la satisfacción de la veladura en el cristal tras echarle nuestro aliento, el mejor gesto de los vivos. (22) Mirándome en los espejos y soplándoles tontamente mi hálito he persistido hasta hoy. Sí, ese señor entrecano en el marco dorado soy yo.

3

31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

JOSÉ WATANABE’S POETIC CAPACITY AND ENERGY BEYOND …

151

Grito: ¡Soy yo! ¡Soy yo! Y me da un enorme placer verlo, riendo y nublado. Soy yo y si no lo fuera también diría que soy yo porque quiero ser (y seguir siendo) en cualquier rostro vivo con tal de no ser, como el hijo del carnicero, el muerto. (22) “la fisura de la realidad que sólo él ha visto, para decirla sin dramatismo” (10). “la experiencia real de la palabra;” The word “«literaturizar»” is invented by Watanabe (“Paradoxes” 81). “Para mí la poesía es algo así como que hay momentos privilegiados en que la naturaleza se abre y nos dice algo. De pronto estamos caminando y encontramos una piedra iluminada por un rayo de sol.… Ahí hay una verdad, ahí se nos está diciendo algo, pero no podemos decir qué es. Entonces la poesía usa el lenguaje para intentar decir qué es eso, pero como … el lenguaje es limitado, todo poema es una aproximación a esa verdad descubierta de modo súbito. Eso es más o menos lo que digo en este poema” (“Paradojas” 7:12–7:58). Translated by Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica (503–504). The word “indefinida” is translated as “obscure”, but I would translate it as “illdefined”. Hay una vejez triste e indefinida en el puerto, más herrumbre en el muelle y bares sospechosos en la ribera donde antes había casonas rodeadas de yerba tenaz. (27) Una noche, cuando una niebla densa y turbia cubría el mundo, yo caminé a tientas por el entablado del muelle. Adolescente aún, acaso buscaba el terror gozoso de la evanescencia. Iba confirmando con las manos la baranda, sus uniones de metal, las cuerdas de las trampas de cangrejos atadas a las cornamusas oxidadas. Los cangrejos merodeaban de noche los restos del pescado eviscerado, tripas que rodaban en el fondo marino o se enroscaban como serpientes en las pilastras del muelle. (27)

37. The line is translated as “in the mornings they went out to gather nets”, but I would translate it as “in the mornings went out to gather nets”. 38. Escuchaba la suave embestida de las olas en el costado de los pequeños botes que en las madrugadas salían a recoger redes cruzando entre los buques de guerra estacionados en la bahía.

152

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

S. MATO

Un perro abandonado en el fondo de un bote, tan ciego como yo, gemía. (27) Entonces vi banderas que alguien, a lo lejos, agitó detrás de la niebla. (28) Quedé deslumbrado y mudo. Ninguna apostilla sobre la belleza hablará realmente de aquellas banderas. (28) I am borrowing Seigworth and Gregg’s term (1). In the Spanish original version, the second line of the last stanza only has “behind the fog”, to which the word “flags” is added in the English translation. Further, “agitó” is translated as “waving”, being changed from the preterite form to the present participle. Because of these changes, the English translation does not capture the sudden movements and apparition that the poetic voice saw. I am again borrowing Seigworth and Gregg’s term (1). I am borrowing Felski’s phrase from the title of her book, Hooked. El sol ha regresado esta tarde al desierto como una fiera radiante. Viéndolo así, tan furioso, se diría que viene de calcinar toda la tierra. Ha venido a ensañarse donde todo ya parece agonizar. Huyeron del repaso de los muertos el zorro gris, los alacranes y la invisible serpiente de arena. Sólo el algarrobo, acostumbrado como está a su vida intensa pero precaria, ha permanecido quieto, solitario entre las dunas innumerables. (29)

46.

Este árbol nudoso, en su crecimiento ha fijado posturas inconcebibles: alguna vez cimbró la cintura como un danzante joven y desmañado, alguna vez, aturdido, estiró erráticamente los brazos retorcidos, alguna vez dejó caer una rama en tierra como una rendición. No hay cuerpo más torturado. Lo único feliz en él es su altísima cabellera verde que va donde el viento quiere que vaya. (29) 47. El algarrobo me pone frente al lenguaje. En este paisaje tan extremadamente limpio no hay palabras. Él es la única palabra y el sol no puede quemarla en mi boca. (29) 48. See Note 44 of this chapter. 49. I am borrowing Felski’s phrase again (Hooked).

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153

50. This quote is from Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005). See pp.218. 51. “De la depresión a la creación”. The title of the paper that Watanabe read at the conference, “Conferencia de José Watanabe” (“Conferencia”). 52. “Conferencia”. 53. “Nunca tuve que pelear tanto para sacar adelante un poema. Nunca tampoco viví con más intensidad la atención y la alegría de escribir. Entonces supe como nunca que expresarse poéticamente era un acto terapéutico” (“Conferencia” 18:34–18:55). 54. Watanabe. El ojo y sus razones.

Conclusion1 Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe

“Elogio del refrenamiento” (Tribute of Restraint) is unquestionably José Watanabe’s most famous essay, of which there exist several versions. The one that was published by the journal QueHacer in 1991 begins as follows: A few days ago, a Peruvian girl who studies literature in Madrid asked her mother, who lives here in Lima, to locate me and ask me for some poems to include in some anthology. When the woman came to my house to fulfill her daughter’s request, she said: “What a coincidence! I have a lodger in my house who is from your country. He is a Japanese student from Osaka University who is doing a postgraduate course at Universidad Católica.” As I merely smiled in a condescending way, she kindly requested further clarification from me: “You are both from the same country, aren’t you?”, she said. “A little bit, Madame”, I replied.

1 The text translated from original Spanish by José Antonio Pérez de Camino.

A. López-Pasarín Basabe (B) Politics and Economics Sciences, Waseda University, Shinjuku City, Japan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Muth et al., The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81615-5

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At first sight, the anecdote may seem innocent, but it is in fact terrible: although the intentions are seemingly good, here a person is being denied something as basic as their nationality. One is often faced with a similar situation when reading critical works about José Watanabe: however implicitly, rather than a Peruvian poet, in most cases we seem to be encountering a Japanese poet who for some arcane reason decided on a whim to write in Spanish. This is surprising, because the rich poetic tradition of twentieth-century Peru is formed by poets who are not of an indigenous background but whose origin is therefore elsewhere. I will mention just one case which is very similar to Watanabe’s: that of the excellent poet and painter Jorge Eduardo Eielson. His mother was Peruvian, but his father was a foreigner: He was from the USA, of direct Scandinavian origin. Both Watanabe and Eielson lost their father when they were children. Nevertheless, I cannot recall having encountered any works aiming at explaining Eielson’s work from a North American or Scandinavian perspective. Different from Watanabe, Eielson spent most of his life in Italy, but he has never been denied his place in Peruvian poetry. It is true that he does not seem to mythicize his paternal heritage, but it would be reasonable to suspect that the matter has much more to do with how appealing Japanese culture is to the West these days, something which Eielson’s origins could hardly compete against. It is not hard to understand the reasons for Watanabe’s idealization of his roots when we consider anecdotes such as the one that appears above, which was probably not the only one. Every life is composed of losses and acquisitions, although most of us feel the pain more of the former than the satisfaction of the latter. And there is no scarcity of artists who make this the raw material of their work. In Watanabe’s case, the decisive event is the loss of his childhood paradise. Certain biographical events contribute to establishing a symbolic mixture that always sends us to that magical age. His childhood was Laredo, his hometown, alive in myth and only present in reality to confirm the ravages of time. His childhood stem from his maternal culture, still alive in that region. His childhood was, of course, his father as well. Laredo and the maternal culture were lost with the move to Trujillo when José was a child; the father was lost when he died soon afterward. Mythification necessarily requires absence, and in these cases, this requirement is met. In order to complete the portrayal of loss, we could mention the final move to Lima (from the provinces to the capital) and the realization that his “Peruvianness” could be questioned by his fellow nationals.

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When we read Watanabe’s work, we should bare all these factors in mind and not just one of them. We should question the assumption that the father’s heritage is the only one present in these works, and not the mother’s. After all, the mother appears as a character in many more poems than her husband does, coupled with the fact that the poet did have direct experience with the mother’s culture. We should also be questioning whether we in the West have the best conceptual tools to adequately appreciate Japanese culture. When we read certain interpretations of Watanabe, it seems that we are very ill-equipped, and that all we do is apply once and again the same old simplified frames. For example, “haiku” and “Japanese poetry” are synonymous terms for Westerners. I will not deny the interest of haiku here, and I understand the reasons that make it appealing in Europe and America, but, in spite of having a long history across many centuries, it is not the most ancient nor the most important of Japanese poetic forms. The identification of Zen with haiku has been rejected by all the specialists in this poetic form, but here in the West we have trouble coming to terms with this. Despite Basho’s popularity, Watanabe’s favorite haijin—and maybe the West’s as well—is Issa Kobayashi. Watanabe liked him so much that he went as far as to give his name to one of his daughters. It just happens that Issa was a Jodoshinshu (“The True Essence of the Pure Land Teaching”) monk, a branch of Buddhism more popular than Zen in Japan. We talk in our book about the difficulties of giving a satisfactory definition of haiku, which, given the extreme variety of content depending on its different trends, can only be understood as a form. Also, based on the obvious fact that Watanabe does not write haiku, we point out that it does not seem acceptable to say that his poetry expresses something as vague as a supposed “spirit” of that poetic form. Likewise, with regard to Zen, does anyone really doubt that there is much progress to be made in that direction? Among Watanabe’s works, the only one that has had a lukewarm or even negative critical reception is Habitó entre nosotros (He Made His Dwelling Among Us). Those scholars who have dealt with it have supported their unfavorable opinions with various reasons. But it is not difficult to perceive a profound bewilderment among these critics: What is someone like Watanabe doing writing about Jesus Christ? In all certainty, if it had been a book about the life of the Buddha, that would have allowed us to maintain intact our previous beliefs. But Watanabe’s only religion is Christianity. There is no question that it was a unique form of Christianity, sometimes squarely rejected, sometimes accepted save for

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a matter of nuances, and sometimes dreamed of in a different historical development, as promised by the Jesus figure the book is dedicated to. Such a Christianity is, of course, no small part of the global myth of the lost childhood. The notion of the father as a mythical model is most characteristically specified in the concept expressed in the famous essay’s title: restraint. It is a very important term to understand Watanabe because it points to two very fruitful directions: the ethic and the esthetic. The esthetic direction forms the base of his poetics: for an author like him, who maybe because of his temperament was prone to sentimental effusions, this implied a number of resources meant to repress direct emotivity (irony, humor, metapoetry, etc.). The ethical direction is the one that appears in a more remarkable manner, and, as clearly illustrated by the aforementioned essay, has mostly to do with one’s attitude before death. Again, biographical reasons come to our help: The poet’s family is repeatedly acquainted with death from his early childhood and, most of all, death becomes one of the author’s essential concerns following the first instance of serious cancer, as it appears in the impressive poem “Krankenhaus”. The reasons to adopt such a dignified attitude before death, the fear of not being able to, and the role model played by the father in this respect are present in numerous ways throughout the author’s books. It has to be said, though, that upon a little reflection, we obviously need to acknowledge that restraint is not only characteristic of Japanese culture, but also of his Peruvian mother’s Sierra culture. We hope our intention is not lost. We are not suggesting that Watanabe was not influenced at all by things Japanese (at least, the way he conceived them), or that there are no references whatsoever to Japanese culture in his works. With the exception of certain unequivocal references, we are far from knowing which psychological mechanisms take part in the creation of a work of art. What we are trying to convey here is that, in general, Watanabe’s poetry can be explained much more precisely when looked at as fully Peruvian and integrated within the various poetic traditions to which this country’s poetry belongs: that of poetry in the Spanish language in general, that of Latin American poetry, and that of Hispanic American realism which started in the 1960s. We also think that, if we are ready to believe Watanabe when he talks about a Japanese influence on his personality, we should similarly be ready to take him seriously when he denies such an influence upon his poems: almost always, and sometimes in a very categorical manner.

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Besides all this, in this book we invite readers to approach Watanabe’s poetry as poetry. It is obvious that one of the most salient characteristics of his work is the conscious use of an overwhelming amount of “signs from reality”, elements that anchor his work to a tangible reality, which in Watanabe’s case is autobiographical. Certain critical approaches seem to consider his poems as a sort of life record, or to say the least, as a kind of diary. In our book, we try to bring back this work to the realm of poetry, illustrating how specific rhetoric operates in this work (rhetoric that is not less complex than that of those works considered difficult). Realism is a style-related option and, therefore, its most exact description can only be carried out from the point of view of rhetoric. The introduction of biographical data is a rhetorical strategy which induces the reader to approach the text in a certain way, but whether the data is more or less accurate, whether they are true or false, has no bearing at all on the work’s value, not even on its reception. We know that many of the details in this poetry have an exact correlation to reality, but it would be impossible to be certain about all of them, given what we may know or guess about memory, wishes, dreams, etc. At the end of the day, it is not important whether what we are being told is the poet’s, a friend’s, or a relative’s real experience, or whether it is merely the result of the poet’s imagination, since poetry is literature, and literature moves within the sphere of fiction, which is not quite the land of the untrue, but just the land where the distinction between truth and fiction is suspended. It is easy to see that life is a succession of random events and of choices we make among possibilities whose ranges are very limited to circumstances. When we move this into the realm of art, we enter the world of meaning, the story becomes coherent, and the more or less random experiences become meaningful. We need, at the very least, to make a selection from the material used. To provide an example that is easy to understand, we can see that Trujillo does not exist in Watanabe’s poetry, in spite of the fact that he spent there such an important period of life’s teenage years and early youth. The catalyst element in his poetry is the lost childhood, and Trujillo simply has no role to play in it. In addition to this, Watanabe, as the conscious poet he is, makes sure to keep the tension between the vital, autobiographical, and the literary in his poems: He demands the readers to identify with the story and to empathize with the emotions that emanate from it. Still, when this identification risks becoming total, eliminating the possibility of critical distance, Watanabe is quick to introduce an ironic turn, a slightly

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humorous element, or a metapoetic note, to warn us that we are before a literary text. What characterizes poets is not having extraordinary experiences, completely different from those of regular people, or even—although it may not be a strange case—feeling these with more intensity. What makes them different is their ability to turn all this into literature. We would not be interested in the everyday experiences of an unknown person unless, by means of an extraordinary ability to put words together, they turned these into experiences in which readers could see themselves; into experiences that the reader could own through their senses, feelings or intellect, and in doing so experience in a more nuanced, more accurate, and always more intense way something that they already knew, or experience something completely new which suddenly appears natural. The type and origin of the experiences themselves are of little relevance if we lack the magic of linguistic expression and all the devices at work in the text, which are the sole medium through which poetry can convey what lies outside of it, and without which it would not have a raison d’être. Therefore, in this book we suggest something as simple as this: that Watanabe should be read as a Peruvian poet—both as a poet and as a Peruvian person. Although we have strived to defend our positions the best we could, we are aware that they may not be convincing for everyone. We believe that the academic careers and the biographical circumstances of the three authors (one of them Japanese, the other two Westerners who have spent more than half their lives in Japan) enable us, in all fairness, to assess what Japanese culture is like, how it is perceived in the West, and its role in the body of work we are analyzing here. But in this literary science of ours, and in spite of the fact that we are convinced that it ought to be considered a full-fledged science, there are no mathematical demonstrations, and we have to move within the area of plausibility. We believe, therefore, in the epistemological role of intellectual debate, which can only arise from sensible discussion on divergent perspectives. We hope our book contributes to such a debate in order to advance a little more toward achieving what all who write about him are unquestionably committed to: a more profound knowledge of the extraordinary work of the Peruvian poet José Watanabe.

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Interviews Watanabe, José. “José Watanabe en Presencia Cultural-Parte I.” Interview by Ernesto Hermoza. YouTube, uploaded by Presencia Cultural, 1 February 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WnHiXx2D4M. ———. “No soy un poeta que piensa en la trascendencia.” Interview by Gonzalo Pajares Cruzado. Librosperuanos.com. Archivo de Artículos Periodísticos: José Watanabe. Librosperuanos.com, 18 December 2006. http://www.librosper uanos.com/autores/articulo/00000001175/No-soy-un-poeta-que-piensaen-la-trascendencia. Accessed 23 February 2021. ———. “Poeta José Watanabe lee poemas- Banderas detrás de la niebla.” Interview by Ernesto Hermoza. YouTube, uploaded by Presencia Cultural, 31 December 2006. ———. “Las paradojas del lenguaje: Entrevista con José Watanabe.” Interview by José Cabrera Alva et al. Ajos & Zapiros 7 (2005): 69–85. ———. “Conferencia de José Watanabe: De la depresión a la creación (I).” YouTube, uploaded by Gonzalo Tapia, 8 July 2016. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=Al2ueDlOLE8.

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———. “Ama rápido. Lo único que te queda es amar rápido, entrevista a José Watanabe (Parte I).” Interview by Diego Alonso Sánchez. Vallejo & Co, 24 September 2016. https://www.vallejoandcompany.com/ama-rapidolo-unico-que-te-queda-es-amar-rapido-entrevista-a-jose-watanabe-parte-i/. Accessed 23 February 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECO4TI rrnGo. ———. El ojo y sus razones: catálogo de exposición. Lima: Casa de la Literatura Peruana, 2019. Casadelaliteratura.go.pe. http://www.casadelaliteratura.gob. pe/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/catalogo_2020_ElOjoYSusRazones_dob lepag.pdf. Accessed 27 March 2021. Watsuji, Tetsuro. Fudo: Ningen gaku teki kousatsu (Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study). Tokyo: Iwanamisho, 1935. Williams, C. K. Poetry and Consciousness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Wilson, Janelle L. Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005. Yasuda, Kenneth. Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1957.

Index

A abstract, 21, 29, 30 academic, 3, 4, 30, 144, 146, 148, 160 adjectival metaphor, 43, 44 adjective, 53, 55, 61, 73, 132, 135 Agudelo, Dario Jaramillo, 27, 29, 37, 129, 144 Aitken, Robert, 20 Akamatsu, Katsu, 21, 22 Álbum de Familia, xv alexandrine verses, 85 allegory, 45, 79 Alrededor de mi hermano Juan, 59 analogy, 42, 46, 47, 51–53, 55–57, 69, 103 analysis, xv, 2, 6, 7, 20, 29–31, 40, 42, 48, 57, 59, 61, 68, 70, 82, 85, 87, 90, 98, 100, 101 Andrews, Molly, 8 anecdotes, 5, 8, 9, 23, 30, 156 Anker, Elizabeth S., 116, 146 apophasis, 71, 78

A propósito de los desajustes, 80 Arte poética, 78 Asia, 4 Asian, xv, xvi, 4–6, 10, 14, 113 aspects, 99 associated, 6, 14, 19, 31, 44, 62, 63, 68, 117 assumption, 27, 157 attunement, 120–122, 126, 146 auditory, 133 autobiographical, 22, 23, 72, 81, 159 avant-garde, 48, 94

B Banderas detrás de la niebla, 88, 91, 121 Basho, Matsuo, 19, 20, 23, 76, 157 beauty, 19, 24, 59, 64, 74, 76, 79, 87, 89, 131, 134–138, 143 Belaúnde, Fernando, xiii Belaúndem, Alonso, xi Benedict, Ruth, 5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Muth et al., The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81615-5

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168

INDEX

beyond, xvi, 4, 80, 81, 115, 117–119, 125, 126, 138, 141–147 biography, xv, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20 Blythe, R.H., 19 body, 3, 12, 52, 55, 100, 118, 122–126, 137, 139–144, 160 Bousoño, Carlos, 47, 48, 57, 61, 62, 101, 106, 107, 110 Buddhism, 6, 11 Bushido, 3 Bushido, 16, 17, 19 Buson, Yosa, 21, 23 Bustillo, Tania Favela, 10, 16, 18, 22, 29 C Chamberlain, Basil Hall, 19 characteristics, xv, 7, 13, 23, 29, 40, 43, 48, 56, 67, 68, 71, 76, 84, 96, 98, 100, 159 childhood, xv, 6, 9, 12, 22, 23, 27, 30, 31, 49, 62, 64, 65, 68, 71, 80, 156, 158, 159 Christianity, 157 Cillóniz, Antonio, xiii colloquial, xiii, xiv, 21, 40, 91, 98, 100 Como el peje-sapo, 80 comparative, 20, 51, 53 comparison, 17, 42, 51, 53–56, 69, 99 complex, xv, 42, 46, 48, 53, 57, 63, 65, 66, 68, 78, 93, 100, 159 conceptions, 25 connotation, 60–63, 68 conscious, 41, 52, 97, 118, 130, 142, 145, 159 consciousness, 17, 29 contemplation, 25, 74, 117, 134–137, 141 contemporary, 4, 21, 79 conventionalism, 90

convey, 16, 44, 51, 59, 71, 76, 77, 81, 93, 129, 143, 158, 160 conviction, xiv, 146 cosmovision, xv, xvi, 16, 18 Couchoud, Paul-Louis, 19 Cozman, Camilo Fernández, xi, 11, 27, 29, 119 criticism, 20, 31, 42, 116, 120 critique, 116, 117, 119, 120, 144–146 Cuatro muchachas alrededor de una manzana, 58 cultural sensibilities, 1, 19 D Davis, Fred, 8 death, vii, 10, 14, 16, 27, 44, 50, 65, 66, 68, 73, 80, 81, 126–131, 143, 144, 149, 150, 158 De la poesía, 46, 78 denotation, 60, 62 De Paz, Maribel, xiv, 8, 10, 11, 14–16, 22, 28, 30, 32, 37, 119, 147 depict, 81, 123, 132, 139 depression, 12, 145 descriptive, 58, 60, 63, 69, 79, 90 desert, viii, 16, 50, 52, 66–68, 77, 119, 138–141, 143 Deshimaru, Taisen, 19 dialogical, 7, 8, 30 dignity, 14–16, 30, 44 discourse, xv, 3–5, 10, 12–15, 17–19, 22, 23, 27–30 disemic, 61, 110 dissidence, xiii, 144 divergent, 160 Doi, Takeo, 3 E effect, 5, 19, 29, 44, 47, 50, 81, 85–87, 91, 92, 94, 99, 103

INDEX

effusiveness, 81 ekphrasis, 77 El algarrobo, 106, 113, 121, 152 El ángel no deseado, 59 El Bautismo, 65 El Cauce vacío, 64 El descanso en la fuente, 66 El grito, 51, 64, 77, 81 El guardián del hielo, 77, 83, 87 El huso de la palabra, 40, 70 El nieto, 50 Elogio del refrenamiento, 24, 155 El ojo, 80 El otro asterión, 121 El vado, 67 emblem, 3, 10, 14, 63, 78 emotion, 14, 15, 21, 31, 59, 62, 118, 123–126, 142, 159 emotional, xv, 13, 14, 16, 21, 47, 57, 60, 90, 103, 118, 138 En el museo de Historia Natural, 70, 80 engagement, xvi, 117, 120, 122, 136, 146 enigmatic, 126 enjambment, 82, 85, 90–93, 96–98, 136 enneasyllabic, 85, 93 enryo, 14–16 Entrevista a Tulio Mora, xvi ephemerality, 117, 135–137 episode, 8, 27, 66, 125 Escena de caza, 77 essential, 4, 26, 39, 42, 48, 57, 60–62, 70, 74, 78, 85, 99, 101, 116, 158 essentialist, xvi, 3–5, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20, 24, 30, 31 Estación Reunida, xiii esthetic, 29, 48, 59, 71, 77–81, 98, 110, 158 etymological, 44

169

euphony, 87, 97 exceptional, 3, 5, 31, 51, 144 existence, 23, 57, 118, 124, 129, 130, 135, 137, 141, 142, 146 expectations, 13 experience, xiii, 2, 7–9, 13, 16, 22, 24, 25, 39, 43, 47, 68, 70–72, 74, 76, 78–82, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 125, 128–132, 134–137, 142, 143, 145–148, 157, 159, 160 F father, vii, viii, 6, 9–11, 13–18, 22, 23, 28, 30, 31, 43, 50, 67, 68, 124, 156–158 Felski, Rita, xvi, 116–121, 125, 129, 143, 144, 146–148, 152 fiction, 70, 72, 77, 78, 99, 100, 159 figurative, 41 Film de los paisajes, 48, 51, 80, 91 fixed, 27, 84 Flores, 79 form, xiii, 6–9, 20, 24–26, 29, 50, 79, 84, 90, 91, 94, 97, 98, 116–118, 123, 133, 140, 146, 152, 157 Free run, 80 free verse, 84, 86, 91, 98 fugacity, 79 G Generación del ‘70, xiv genre, xv, 30, 39, 40, 63, 77, 96, 97, 99 Gieser, Thorsten, 7 González, Ángel, 60–62, 81 Greco-Roman, 41 Gregg, Melissa, xvi, 118, 136, 137, 142, 152 grito, 98 Gundert, Wilhelm, 19

170

INDEX

H haikai, 19, 21 haiku, xv, 6, 10, 11, 19, 20, 22–29, 31, 37, 70, 76, 80, 148, 157 Hearn, Lafcadio, 4 hemistichs, 96 hendecasyllabic, 85, 98 heptasyllabic, 85 heritage, xv, 6, 9, 11, 28, 29, 117, 144, 156, 157 Hermans, Hubert J.M., 7 Hirakawa, Sukehiro, 3 historical, viii, xiv, 17, 20, 158 homogeneous symbol, 57, 59 homoioteleuton, 90, 93, 98 Hora Zero, xiii, xiv humorous, 59, 78, 160 huso, 110

I identity, xv, 2–9, 12–15, 24, 30, 31, 49, 117, 130, 146 ideological, xiii, 116 Iida, Ryuta, 21 illumination, 134–138, 143 image, ix, 5, 18, 20, 27, 30, 40–42, 47, 48, 51–53, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 99, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127–129, 132–135, 137, 140, 146 imagery, 3, 11, 16, 18 imagination, viii, 8, 49, 50, 53, 69, 75, 94, 134, 159 Imitación de Matsuo Basho, 28, 70 impinges, 142 indigenous, 9, 30, 144, 156 ineffableness, 117, 121, 134–137, 141, 142 integrity, 2, 141 Intestino, 51 irrationality, 41, 42, 46, 48, 56, 100

Issa, Kobayashi, 21, 23, 64, 108, 157 Iwasaki, Fernando, 5

J Japanese, 2 Japanese culture, 156 Japaneseness, xv Jardín japonés, 92 Judas, 59 juxtaposition, 122

K Kanno, Kakumyo, 4 Kojien, 15

L La ardilla, 25, 78, 102 La ballena (metáfora del descasado), 72 La deshabitada, 80 La impureza, 12, 16, 19, 30 La mantis religiosa, 26, 94 language, xiv, xv, 2, 3, 15, 16, 20, 23–25, 27, 29, 30, 39, 40, 43, 44, 51, 56, 61, 62, 65, 71, 73, 76–78, 86, 91, 96–98, 100, 119, 122, 125, 128–132, 140, 143–145, 147, 148, 158 langue, 62 La piedra alada, 16, 76, 92 La ranita, 25, 59 Las rodillas, 50 La vuelta, 80 León, Abelardo Sánchez, xiii, 80 limitation, 40, 117, 126, 128–131, 143, 144, 147 linguistic, 2, 14, 40, 43, 62, 85, 160 Li Ning Anticona, José, xi, 9, 10, 16, 22, 29 literary devices, xv, 41, 42

INDEX

literature, xiv, 2, 19, 21–23, 39, 43, 45, 47, 60, 69, 70, 72, 79, 81, 100, 120, 145, 155, 159, 160 López-Calvo, Ignacio, xi, 10, 16, 22 Los poetas, 37, 80, 113 Los ríos, 65 Los versos que tarjo, 74, 129 Loti, Pierre, 4

M Macé, Marielle, 118, 122, 147, 149 mantis, 26, 27 Martos, Marco, 10 Meiji Restoration, 4, 17 memory, 6, 12, 13, 18, 43, 55, 70, 123–125, 144, 159 mestizo, 13 metaphor, 25, 42–47, 49, 51, 53, 56, 57, 63, 69, 72–74, 78, 79, 99, 102, 104 metapoetic, 65, 71, 72, 77–81, 160 metapoetry, 43, 47, 70, 72, 74, 81, 100, 158 meter, 40, 82, 91, 93, 96, 98, 100 metonymical, 56, 57, 62 metonymy, 41, 42, 47, 57, 69, 80 metric, xv, 85, 98 mind, vii, viii, 20, 40, 48, 52, 57, 63, 68, 72, 75, 79, 99, 101, 122, 127, 128, 132, 138, 142, 144, 157 Mi ojo tiene sus razones, 28, 70 modernity, 3 Mora, Tulio, xiii, xiv Mori, Sumio, 21 Moritake, 28 morphological, 88, 101 mortality, 131 mother, viii, 9, 14, 17, 18, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 73, 74, 80, 122, 124–126, 155–158

171

motivation, 45, 46, 56, 63, 97, 98, 145, 147 multicultural, 8 multifaceted, 146 myth, viii, 49, 59, 66, 69, 144, 156, 158 Mythification, 156

N Nakane, Chie, 3 Narrative, 7 nature, xiv, xvi, 3, 5, 8, 18, 21, 23–29, 40, 48, 61, 62, 64, 65, 71, 77, 81, 85, 92, 98, 119, 129, 132, 140, 146 Nikkei, 5, 8, 10, 13–16, 18, 25, 28, 30, 31 Nitobe, Inazo, 3 notion, 13

O objectivity, 24, 25, 27 Ollé, Carmen, xiii Oquendo de Amat, Carlos, xiv Oriental, xv orientalist, 6, 22, 30 orientalist discourse, xvi orientalize, xv, 4–6, 11, 15, 30 origin, xiv, 15, 17, 22, 25, 29, 68, 76, 77, 98, 99, 101, 156, 160 Oviedo, José Miguel, xiv

P Paisaje móvil, 50 paternal, xv, 10, 11, 27, 29, 31, 156 patterns, 86 Paz, Octavio, 20 perceptions, xv, 4, 5, 15, 17, 20, 30, 118, 121 Peru, ix, 17, 119, 148

172

INDEX

Peruvian, xiii–xv, 2, 3, 5, 8–14, 16–18, 23–26, 29–31, 40, 46, 49, 53, 65, 69, 70, 79, 81, 82, 90, 94, 96, 98, 99, 117, 119, 145–147, 155, 156, 158, 160 piedra, 93, 103, 151 Planteo del poema, 71 Poema trágico con dudosos logros cómicos, 63 Poesía Completa, 13, 27, 33 poetic voice, 8, 9, 123–128, 130–142, 152 poetry, vii–ix, xiii–xvi, 2, 6–12, 19, 20, 22–25, 27, 29–31, 40–43, 46, 50, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60, 63, 68–82, 84–87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96–100, 106, 115, 118, 119, 121, 122, 125, 126, 129, 132, 144–148, 156–160 Poets, 63, 65, 77, 80 polysemic, 56 positive, 68 postcritical, 117, 120, 122, 144, 145 postcritical reading, xvi, 116, 117, 119, 120, 129, 143, 144, 146 post-structuralism, 127 pragmatic, 101 Prometheus, 43, 44 prose, 28, 85, 91, 94

Q quietness, 137 Quintilian, 51, 103

R rational, 41, 47, 49, 51, 57, 62, 69 Razón de las parábolas, 79 realism, 159 realist, xv, 21, 40, 42, 46, 48, 51, 56, 59, 69, 81, 100

reality, viii, xiv, 2, 4, 30, 45, 50, 60, 61, 70, 78, 90, 120, 124, 126, 129, 131, 144, 146, 147, 156, 159 reflect, 2, 6, 11–13, 16, 23, 31, 76, 77, 80, 96, 115, 117, 121, 125, 128–130, 134, 142, 144, 146, 158 reflection, 77 Refulge otra vez el sol, 74 relevant, 100 Renaissance, 63 repetition, 88, 90, 93, 97, 98, 130 Responso ante el cadáver de mi madre, 121 restraint, 14–16, 78, 80, 81, 158 rhetorical, xv, 24, 39–41, 45, 47, 49, 50, 53, 56, 57, 59, 63, 68, 69, 71, 72, 82, 99–101, 159 rhythm, xv, 22, 40, 82, 85–87, 90–94, 96–98, 100, 101, 118 Riendo y nublado, 121 Russian formalists, 46 S Sakuda, Enrique Higa, 11 samurai, 15–17, 30 scenes, 131 school, 143 Seigworth, Gregory J., xvi, 118, 136, 137, 142, 152 self, vii, viii, xiii–xv, 7–9, 14, 16, 25, 30, 81, 101, 129, 130 semantic, 41 sensory, xvi, 134, 135, 141, 145 sentimentalism, 15, 81 Shiki, 21 short verses, 93 simile, 51, 52, 55, 56, 72–74 Singer, Jefferson A., 8 social, 120 Sontag, Susan, 115–117, 147

INDEX

Spanish, xv, 10, 13, 19, 25, 39, 43, 44, 47, 60, 81, 82, 85, 87, 91, 98, 100, 110, 136, 141, 152, 155, 156, 158 spirit, 16, 19, 22, 28–31, 66, 92–94, 119, 157 spiritual, 2, 4, 19, 20 stanza, 13, 14, 21, 82, 84, 90, 97, 123, 125–128, 130, 132–134, 136, 137, 139–142, 152 static, 74 stereotypes, 5, 12, 30, 31 stoic, 13–15, 19, 30 structure, 21, 23, 27, 29, 53, 87, 93 subjective, 21 Suzuki, Daisetsu T., 4, 19, 20 Suzuki, Sadami, 4 symbols, 42, 48, 53, 57–61, 63, 68, 69, 71–73, 79, 100, 106 synecdoche, 41, 47 synonymous, 19, 157 syntactical, 101 T Tablada, José Juan, 19, 25, 35 texts, 68 theory, 3, 9, 59, 106, 120, 122, 129 therapeutic, 126, 145 traditional, 11, 16, 21, 25, 29, 30, 40, 51, 86, 87, 90, 93, 94, 96 traditions, 74, 158 tragedy, 96, 97 Tsurumi, Rebecca Riger, 10, 14, 16, 17, 22, 23, 26 U unequivocal, 22, 55, 59, 75, 140, 158 unpleasant, xiv, 146

173

V Vallejo, Cesar, xiv Verástegui, Enrique, xiii verses, 11, 29, 80 Vich, Victor, 129 virtue, 17, 43, 60, 72, 77, 91, 142 visceral, 44, 118, 136, 138, 141–143, 145 vision, xiii, xiv, 5, 23, 27, 31, 42, 44, 48, 50, 56, 69, 70, 75, 99, 147 visionary image, 42, 46, 47, 49, 69 visual, viii, xiv, 44, 55, 85, 98, 133 vocabulary, 130

W Watanabe, Enrique, vii Watanabe, Harumi, 14 Watanabe, José, xiv–xvi, 2, 5, 7–11, 13–18, 22–25, 27–32, 34, 37, 40, 42–51, 53–59, 63, 68–72, 74, 76–87, 89–94, 96, 98–101, 113, 115, 117–122, 125–127, 129–132, 143–151, 153, 155–160 Watanabe, Tilsa, xi West, 3, 20, 24, 31, 156, 157 Western, xv, 3–5, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 29, 31, 119, 160 Wilson, Janelle L., 8

Y Yamamoto, Kenkichi, 20

Z Zen, 4, 11, 16, 18–20, 29, 157