Portrait of Dámaso Alonso. By Hernán Cortés. Conserved in the RAE.
Dámaso Alonso passed away a day like today in Madrid, the city where he was also born, 30 years ago. Poet, teacher, essayist, linguist, and literary critic, he was member highlight of the 27 Generation and also Director for the Royal Spanish Academy. Got the Cervantes Prize in 1978. So to remember, those are 5 sonnets chosen from his work.
Damaso alonso
Although his childhood was spent in Asturias, he graduated from Law and Philosophy and Letters in Madrid. He shared studies in the Student's residence and he was part of that unique generation of artists, writers and poets that was the Generation of 27. He taught in several universities foreigners like Berlin, Cambridge, Oxford or Stanford. Here he was a professor at the universities of Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid.
Su work is varied and combines titles of literary creation with others of history and criticism. It was also James Joyce translator. He entered the RAE in 1945 and managed to direct it from 1968 to 1982. Among his poetic work, the following stand out: Pure poems, The wind and the verse, Children of wrath, Man and god o Joys of the view.
5 sonnets
Care
Fierce spring! My tenderness goes
spilled through the deepest veins,
fresh hontanar, and fury unveiled,
that to exhausting astonishment it hurries.
Oh what a rush, what a boil, oh what a rush
to find, on the closed hill,
the red sore of the frozen cave,
and its sweetest cure, in madness!
Fleeting monster, fright of my life,
ray without light, oh you, my spring,
my fierce vermin, my strong archangel!
To what gloomy depth does he invite me,
unfolded and astral, your hair?
Love. love, beginning of death!
***
Love science
I do not know. It only reaches me, in the spring
from your eyes, the gloomy news
of God; only on your lips, the caress
of a world in harvest, of a heavenly barn.
Are you crystal clean, or snowdrift
destroyer? No, I don't know ... Of this delight,
I only know his cosmic greed,
the sidereal beat with which I love you.
I don't know if you are death or you are life,
if I touch pink in you, if I touch star,
If I call to God or to you when I call you.
Junco in the water or deaf wounded stone,
I only know that the afternoon is wide and beautiful,
I only know that I am a man and that I love you.
***
Impending destruction
Will I break you, hazel wand,
I will break you maybe Oh tender life,
blind passion in green boil born,
you, fragile being that I press with my hand!
A fleeting spark, just a slight
crunch in sweet quivering pulp,
and you will learn, oh helpless branch,
how much death could in one summer.
No more; I'll leave you ... Play in the wind,
until you lose, to the sharp autumn,
your green frenzy, leaf after leaf.
Give me autumn too, Lord, what I feel
I do not know how deep to creak, what dumb fright.
Stop, oh God, your red flare.
***
Women
Oh, whiteness. Who put in our lives
of frenzied abyssal beasts
this clarity of sidereal lights,
these snows, flushed sleepy?
Oh sweet hunted beasts.
Oh smooth touch. Oh zenith signs.
Oh musics. Oh flames. Oh crystals.
Oh tall sails, emerged from the sea.
Ay, timid glares, pure ortho,
who brought you to this hard man's chest,
to this black roar of hatred and oblivion?
Sweet specters, clouds, vain flowers ...
Oh tender shadows, vaguely human,
sad women, of air or of moan!
***
Prayer for the beauty of a girl
You gave it that burning symmetry
from the lips, with the embers of your depth,
and in two enormous channels of blackness,
chasms of infinity, light of your day;
those lumps of snow, that boiled
by solivating the smoothness of the linen,
and, wonders of exact architecture,
two columns that sing your harmony.
Oh you Lord you gave her that hillside
that in a sweet blade spills,
secret honey in the gilded smoke.
What is your mighty hand waiting for?
Mortal beauty claims eternity.
Give him the eternity you have denied him!