Customer Reviews

Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet: Francisco de Quevedo, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Hernandez

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The translation is marvelous: I read them all before in Spanish. And the Selection? Amazingly good ! Congratulations to the translator! It`s not an easy feat to translate Garcìa Lorca or Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz...eoither The Master: Quevedo...or Machado ( the name is ANTONIO, NOT ANTONIA ) The person who selected the poems is really knowing... If you want to read and enjoy the very best of Spanish written sonets...This Book is a Poetic "Bible " Don`t miss it !

The sonnet form was introduced to Spain from Sicily in the fifteenth century through the writing of El Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458), a poet who wrote Petrarchan sonnets in Spanish. During the Renaissance, the Italian sonnet made its way to most of the countries of Western Europe. In England, Edmund Spenser changed the Petrarchan rhyming form of 'abba abba cdecde' to 'abab bcbc cdcd ee,' and William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets with the form 'abab cdcd efef gg.' As Willis Barnstone says in the introduction to his book, 'Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet,' 'the Spanish sonnet, a literary vagabond in courtly dress, began in the court of the Sicilian Frederic II, went up to England, and finally, seven centuries after its Italian birth, with its picaresque wits and form intact, dropped down just above the Antarctic Circle to appear in the poems of the Argentine Anglophile [his maternal grandmother was English] Borges.' Professor Barnstone goes on to present a thorough history of the evolution of the Spanish sonnet and a colorful biography of six Spanish language poets who used the form. His writing is informed by his long friendship with Jorge Luis Borges. Barnstone offers here a sampling of 112 Spanish sonnets by these six masters, placed side by side along with his own magnificent translations.

Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645) is described as a 'monstruo de la naturaleza' [monster of nature] because of his prodigious outpouring of writing. 'Like Swift, Dostoyevski, and Kafka, he is one of the most tormented spirits and visionaries of world literature ['El Buscón' (The Swindler), 1626, is his masterpiece] and also one of the funniest writers ever to pick up a sharp, merciless pen.' Though Quevedo's sonnets are at times scatological and darkly satirical, they are also humorous and hopeful.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51-1695) was a Mexican discalced Carmelite nun who is considered by some religious scholars to be the first female theologian of the Americas. Although I was familiar with her love poems and her articulate defense of a woman's right to write in 'Response to Sor Filotea,' I had not read her sonnets in translation before. As he does with all six sonneteers, Barnstone faithfully maintains Sor Juana's rhyming, meter, and cadence in his translations of her sonnets. His analysis encompasses her writing and her life, including some critique of Octavio Paz's definitive biography, 'Sor Juana, or The Traps of Faith.'

Antonio Machada (1875-1939) recalls the landscape of his native Sevilla in his sonnets. In, 'El amor y la sierra' (Love and the Sierra), he writes, 'Calabaga por agria serranía / una tarde, entre roca cenicienta. (He was galloping over harsh sierra ground, / one afternoon, amid the ashen rock).' Barnstone calls Machado 'the Wang Wei of Spain' because 'he uses the condition of external nature to express his passion.' As Petrarch had his Laura, Machado had his Guiomar (Pilar de Valderrama). In 'Dream Below the Sun,' he writes, 'Your poet / thinks of you. Distance / is of lemon and violet, / the fields still green. / Come with me, Guiomar. / The sierra will absorb us. / The day is wearing out / from oak to oak.'

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was a Spanish poet and playwright who was affected by Luis de Góngorra and gongorismo. His 'Gypsy Ballads' was 'the most popular book of poetry in the Spanish language in his time.' Barnstone states that 'his closest attachment, his passion, was the painter Salvador Dalí,' with whom he carried on a six year love affair. Luis Buñuel castigated him for his Andalusianism; indeed, Lorca felt that Buñuel's satiric and surrealist film 'Un chien andalu' mocked him. After traveling to New York and Havana, Lorca became 'the playwright of Spain' with his brilliant 'Bodas de Sangre' (Blood Wedding). His 'Sonnets of Dark Love,' unpublished during his lifetime, were probably written to Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, an engineering student. Barnstone believes that 'dark love' is an allusion to San Juan de la Cruz's 'dark night of the soul.'

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) of Argentina considered himself a poet, though he was a master at prose. According to Barnstone, because of the blindness that afflicted Borges in midlife, 'he could compose and polish a sonnet while waiting for a bus or walking down the street' and then later dictate it from memory. 'Borges's speech authenticated his writing, his writing authenticated his speech. To have heard him was to read him. To have read him was to have heard him.' In 'Un ciego' (A Blindman), he says, 'No sé cuál es la cara que me mira / Cuando miro la cara del espejo; / No sé qué anciano acecha en su reflejo / Con silenciosa y ya cansada ira. (I do not know what face looks back at me / When I look at the mirrored face, nor know / What aged man conspires in the glow / Of the glass, silent and with tired fury.)'

Miguel Hernández (1910-1942), a poor goatherd and pastor from the province of Alicante in Spain, wrote his best poetry while imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War. 'In the prisons, Hernández became,' in Barnstone's opinion, 'the consummate poet of light, darkness, soul, time, and death.' One of his poems, 'Llegó con tres heridas' (He came with three wounds), is a popular song, recorded by Joan Baez on her 'Gracias a La Vida' album.

'Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet' is recommended to all who love this poetic form and want to know more about the lives of these remarkable poets. A good index and list of references are included for further study.

For those who already know the various authors of this book individually, words will be in excess to describe the treasures contained therein. The five Spanish already classical authors and Jorge Luis Borges closing the group with honors are a guarantee of high quality and deep touching entertainment. Tasting the fluent and sincere social verb of Quevedo, or absorbing in silence the sweet and perfect mysticism of Juana Inés would be sufficient to recommend this book. But we find much more, Machado, García Lorca and Miguel Hernández, marked by the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, found in their sensibility, the way to transform hate and blood into the purest and most powerful poetry. About Borges, well, what can one say about a man of his talents, his well known depth is something you will find easily linked to his enormous sensibility and human solidarity. Definitively, this multiple anthology is a treasure to keep forever.

This collection of Spanish sonnets is an excellent book. The selections are in general difficult to argue with. I only question whether it makes sense to place Borges (who was, in truth, more innovative as a prose-writer than as a poet) in the same category of merit as geniuses like Quevedo and Lorca. The fact that Barnstone personally knew Borges quite well makes this seem a little suspicious to me. Nonetheless, the sonnets included by Borges are quite well-crafted and fully deserve to be read and re-read.

As for the actual quality of the translations, it seems rather uneven. Barnstone, like other verse-translators who are also poets, faces the Sisyphean task of trying to bend and mould his own voice and verve to fit those of the poet he is translating. The fact that the six poets represented in this volume have very different voices renders the translations particularly vulnerable to comparison.

Unfortunately, the six poets in translation end up sounding a little too similar to each other. What's more, they all sound a little like Barnstone. Quevedo suffers particularly badly in this regard. Here, by way of an example, is one of Quevedo's sonnets followed by Barnstone's translation.


Enseña Cómo Todas Las Cosas Avisan de la Muerte

Miré los muros de la patria mía,
si un tiempo fuertes, ya desmoronados,
de la carrera de la edad cansados,
por quien caduca ya su valentía.
Salíme al campo; vi que el sol bebía
los arroyos del hielo desatados,
y del monte quejosos los ganados,
que con sombras hurtó su luz al día.
Entré en mi casa; vi que, amancillada,
de anciana habitación era despojos;
mi báculo, más corvo y menos fuerte.
Vencida de la edad sentí mi espada,
y no hallé cosa en que poner los ojos
que no fuese recuerdo de la muerte.


He Shows How All Things Warn of Death

I gazed upon my country's tottering walls,
one day grandiose, now rubble on the ground,
worn out by vicious time, only renowned
for weakness in a land where courage fails.
I went into the fields. I saw the sun
drinking the springs just melted from the ice,
and cattle moaning as the forests climb
against the thinning day, now overrun
with shade. I went into my house. I saw
my old room yellowed with with the sickening breath
of age, my cane flimsier than before.
I felt my sword coffined in rust, and walked
about, and everything I looked at bore
a warning of the wasted gaze of death.


First of all, props to Barnstone for knowing that, in Renaissance Spanish, "monte" meant not only "hill" but also "forest." If you know Spanish, you'll notice the great liberties and compromises of image and diction that Barnstone has taken. There's nothing particularly wrong or unusual about this in a poetic, non-literal translation. It's to be expected. However, much of it does not sound at all like Quevedo or, for that matter, *any* Baroque Spanish poet. The half-dozen half-rhymes, though common in modern English poetry, sound peculiar here in a poem supposed to represent classical forms.

Even more jarring, though, is the enjambment of lines 8 and 9. The 9th line traditionally marks the *volta* or "turning point" of the classical European sonnet. In Quevedo's original, the first 8 lines discuss the speaker's experience outdoors, whereas the last 6 discuss his experience upon entering his own home. The "overrun/with shade" does violence to this classical balance to force a rhyme in a way that Quevedo would have found weird, if not in outright poor taste. Likewise, enjambments that split phrasal verbs such as "walked/about" in lines 12-13 are also peculiarly modern and not in keeping with the classical baroque aesthetic, particularly not in a poem with a theme, tone and music as solemn as this one's.

"I saw/ my old room yellowed with the sickening breath/ of age" seems egregious, even in a poetic translation. The original literally reads "I saw that it was despoiled, the remnants of an aged room." Though "anciana" can mean "elderly" and usually describes a person, the main metaphor is not anthropomorphic, but rather a suggestion of ancient, abandoned ruins. I can't shake the feeling that the image of sickness and pallor was employed simply to force the rhyme "breath" to go with the "death" of the final line.

Speaking of the final lines, "about, and everything I looked at bore/ a warning of the wasted gaze of death" is not only slightly incomprehensible, but also un-Baroque. The original Spanish reads "and I did not find a thing to rest my eyes upon/ that was not a reminder of death." The double negative lending force to a positive statement (a rhetorical figure also known by the two-dollar word "litotes,") balanced neatly over two whole lines, is what gives this poem's conclusion a kind of epigrammatic resonance. Barnstone's version, marred as the penultimate line is by the enjambed "about," quickly degenerates into phrase-making with a "warning" and a "wasted gaze." This poem, though a fine work by Barnstone, doesn't sound like Quevedo at all. It sounds like Barnstone's idea of how *he* would have written it. In my view, this renders it unsuccessful.

That said, Barnstone does do a much better job with the later poets: Borges, Lorca, Hernandez and Machado, whose modern aesthetic and tones are a little closer to those of his original poetry. Even though he uses the same stylistic tricks to find rhymes (such as odd enjambments and peculiar paraphrases) they seem less offensive in the modern poets because they are less foreign to their aesthetic. I found myself coming upon passages by Lorca and Hernandez that seemed as perfect as a translation could be, like the following four lines by Lorca from "Night of Sleepless love"

Climbing the night, we two in the full moon,
I wept and you were laughing. Your disdain
became a god, and my resentments soon
were morning doves and moments in a chain...

This passage is paced very differently from the original Spanish. Nonetheless, it still sounds plausibly like Lorca.

Borges in particular fares spectacularly well in Barnstone's versions, probably because Borges collaborated in their revision! In fact, I'd go so far as to say that there is no better translator of Borges' poetry than Barnstone. He has a unique ear for Borges' oddities and idiosyncratic shifts of thought. Even when he deviates from Borges' text, he still manages to sound like Borges.

In conclusion:

Buy this book for (mostly) excellent renderings of Lorca, Hernandez, Machado and Borges. If it's translations of Quevedo and Sor Juana Ines De la Cruz you're after, be prepared for a much more uneven, and occasionally jarring, performance.

This book is more than I expected. Excellent biographical information and literary context for the six authors. Relates the work of six great Spanish poets of different epochs. The translations are very helpful for someone who knows some Spanish. I would have preferred more literal and less poetic translations.(See Sor Juana de la Cruz, "En perseguirme, Mundo, que interesas? ...") Even a fine poet like Barnstone must take liberties with the original when he turns a Spanish sonnet into an English sonnet. This book is invaluable to the amateur and, I would assume, to the professional as well.

It was in new condition and the poetry is in Spanish with English translation. Worth reading, especially the comments by the author who is very knowledgeable with the subject.