Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos

Duende and Apocalypse in Lorca's Theory and Poetics

Author(s): MARTHA J. NANDORFY
Source: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos, Vol. 26, No. 1/2, ESTUDIOS EN HONOR A
MARIO J. VALDS (Otoo 2001 / Invierno 2002), pp. 255-270
Published by: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos
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MARTHA J.NANDORFY

Duende and Apocalypse in Lorca's

Theory and Poetics

Federico Garc?a Lorca desarrolla una teor?amuy original y anti-te?rica en "Juego

y teor?adel duende" e "Imaginaci?n, inspiraci?n,evasi?n," dos ensayos clavespara
interpretarel concepto de la negaci?n en el discurso apocal?ptico. Su colecci?n de
poemas, Poeta enNueva York, representade modo performativo todos losaspectos
de lamuerte desde el sacrificiopersonal hasta el apocalipsis colectivo.El discurso
apocal?ptico promete revelar lo indecible,pero elpoeta enNueva York traspasa los
y hablar desde el otro lado de lamuerte. Lorca
l?mitesde laprofec?apara sacrificarse
elabora un lenguaje del silencio en cuyo hueco deja resonar la voz del Otro. Ser
pose?do por el duende implicadejarse herirmortalmente para recibir la creatividad
m?xima que s?lo se arraiga en la herida. Esta paradoja que confunde eros y
thanatos, el principio de la creatividad y el principio de la negaci?n, el "yo" y el
"otro" tambi?n estructura el discurso Lorca subvierte el mensaje
apocal?ptico.

religiosodel apocalipsis depur?ndolo hasta llegara lo sublime de un panmateriali

smo absoluto donde cesa la dualidad inherentea la vida. El duende posibilita la
desintegraci?n del ego y la traves?aal espacio tel?rico que configura en t?rminos
materiales como el otro lado de lamuerte.

Federico Garc?a Lorca's Poeta enNueva York is an apocalyptic call to end the
corrupt and exploitative world that reduces human beings, nature, and even
inanimate objects to functional "thingness."1Paradoxically, the ultimate object
of apocalyptic discourse would seem to be thenegation of being and language.
Though such a negation inevitably ends in silence, that silence is emphatically
not equivalent to nothingness devoid of significance.Only from an oppositional
point of view would "nothing" constitute themeaningless opposite of Being. If
instead "nothing" is considered tobe the principle of irreconcilability,theOther
that is always elsewhere and yet inhabits life- no-thing - then silence too is
meaningful and makes itselffeltby resonating in language.2 Lorca develops an
extraordinary anti-theoretical theory about negation in his lecture "Juego y
teor?adel duende," whose titleconjoins theoryand play in order to address both

revista canadiense de estudios hisp?nicos Vol XXVI, 1-2 Oto?o / Invierno 2001-2002

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256

artistic technique and "true" inspiration, or what he calls evasion. In under

twenty pages, he explores the nature of the duende, mediator of death (the
ultimate formof negation), as opposed to suchmeeker agents of inspiration like
the angel and themuse who look down upon lifeand death from a safe,elevated
distance.3 The duende, however, can only be invoked for the highest stakes: life
itself.
For true inspiration to happen the duendemust possess thebody inhand-to
hand combat, since creation is always situated at the very brink of the abyss of
human corporeality.This making present of theultimate absence (death) rejects
metaphysical representation, for the duende possesses bodies, from whence
miraculous expression must come as direct performance of a vital experience:

As?, pues, el duende es un y no un obrar, es un luchar y no un pensar. Yo he o?do

poder
decir a un viejo maestro guitarrista: "El duende no est? en la garganta; el duende sube por

dentro desde la planta de los pies." Es decir, no es cuesti?n de facultad, sino de verdadero

estilo vivo; es decir, de sangre; es decir, de viej?sima cultura, de creaci?n en acto, (ni, 307)

The fertility of this encounter suggests that the duende is not wholly
diabolical. Since itonly appears when the artist approaches the abyss, the duende
is an intermediary between the living body and the Other, which can only
express its silence through thatbody. The image of being possessed by a force,
risingup through thebody tomanifest itselfin an inspired act, suggests a kind
of ventriloquism inwhich the performing artist speaks theOther's voice. This
performative practice (whetherdiscursive or not) fully implicates the artist in a
radical disequilibrium that,when extending outward to a vision of collective
inspiration, culminates in apocalypse.
Perhaps more than any other discourse, apocalyptic performs the impossible:
it summons death in the name of everlasting lifeand attempts to give voice to
silence. The predominant trope of apocalyptic is apostrophe and while both
apocalypse and apostrophe unveil and make present, the non-object of this
revelation isdeath figured as silence or absence. This making present of absence
is embodied in "contra-diction" - literally "against diction" - making of
negation not a denial or opposite of language, but a "part" and the "other" of
language, just as death is "part" of and "other" to life.4
pny is the siteof a unique convergence of thedesire for social revolution, and
the desire to revolutionize poetic discourse by pushing language beyond its
limits.One of themany paradoxes arises from the revolutionary experimenta
tionwith language that is at times virtually incomprehensible, and yet professes
a socially committed ideology. Lorca remains faithfulto the aim of creating the
"hecho po?tico" and to the tenet that the poet must resist the desire to be
understood. It seems ironic that a socially committed work like pny would
adhere to a vision of purity seeminglybased on a degree of subjectivitybordering

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 257

on complete solipsism. However, Lorca s understanding of the complex nature

of artistic creation, centres around the concept of contradiction as the very
essence of poetry: "La se recibe; la poes?a no se analiza, la poes?a se ama.
poes?a
Nadie diga 'esto es claro,' porque la poes?a es obscura; nadie diga que esto es
obscuro,' porque la poes?a es clara" (ni, 269).
While the vocative and frenzied discourse of pny seems to be the raw
expression of desire, the Eastern rejection of desire plays a significant role in
Lorca's concept of sacrifice as related to a kind of love that isbeyond desire. He
contrasts two Spanish words thatare sometimes used as synonyms: "querer" and
"amar" In the 1930Havana version of the lecture "Imaginaci?n, Inspiraci?n,
Evasi?n," (there are five versions published in different periodicals), Lorca
affirmsthe superiority of love in thepoet who has managed to renounce desire:
"Vivir a costa de la poes?a que producen los objetos reales le causa cansancio.
Entonces el poeta deja de imaginar.Deja de so?ar despierto y deja de querer. Ya
no quiere. Todos queremos. Pero ?l no quiere. El ama. Ama y puede. Va del
querer al amor. Y el que ama no quiere" (111,271). This vision of how the greatest
poetry is created also implies an ethics of reading,which iswhat Lorca means
when he says that poetry should be received,which is not, in the context of
Lorcan poetics the same response as analytical interpretation. Interpretation
assumes an active stancewhereby the reader superimposes ideas and desires on
the text. This desire to make sense of a text also implies appropriating its
intrinsic quality of otherness, and even reducing it to an abstract stereotype.
While TrinhMinh-Ha refersexplicitly to how some anthropologists interpret
what theyclassify as "native," her observations are equally valid for the critique
of any interpretation that intends reductively to fix the identityof the other:

The other is never to be known unless one arrives at a suspension of language, where the
a ... unless one understands
reign of codes yields to state of constant non-knowledge the

of a of which remains, through its a

necessity practice language signifying operations,
process constantly unsettling the of and a
identity meaning speaking/writing subject,
process never allowing I to fare without non-I. (76)

If,as Trinh suggests,we engage in "the continuous realityof awakening" (76),

leading to a kind of disinterested reception, the textwill be more about the
relation of self to other, than an object of analytical inquiry.Paradox destabilizes
identityand meaning, and strikesmany Westerners as illogical or nonsensical
because, contrary to the rules of rhetoric, its aim is not persuasion (Trinh 16).
The poetic subject of pny juggles the apocalyptic discourse whose traditionalaim
is to persuade, with the paradoxical language where opposites cease or are
suspended in limbo. While, for instance, there seems to be contradictory
intentionality in the poetic subject's scathing indictment of "salvaje Norteam?
rica ... imp?dica"(l. 48) in "Danza de lamuerte," given that it isconfigured in

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258

imagery that isunreferential in the extreme, the charge of contradiction cannot

be levelled at Lorca. According to his vision, contradiction is the essential
capacity of poets and contradiction or paradox is also a way of overcoming the
duality separating eros and thanatos,desire and love {querer/amar).
The initially alienated subject of pny gradually assumes an identity and
implicates himself in a cosmic struggle whose intentions are irresolvably
contradictory.5The subject's trajectory,fromanguished alienation to ideological
participation in a collective history,also spells his disintegration and the end of
time.This play of identityand disintegration demands a radical questioning of
the reader's capacity to interpret.Both the individual and collective cosmic
struggle take place under the sign of themoon, incarnation of thanatos, leading
to that elsewhere desired for the Blacks of Harlem.6 Instead of constructing
himself a mask of messianic authority and transcendence, the self-effacing
prophetmakes a sacrificialofferingof his face and elaborates a self-destructuring
discourse of paradox in order to give voice to theOther: "Te dejar? pacer enmis
mejillas" ("Tu infancia enMenton" 1.22), "yme ofrezco a ser comido por las
vacas estrujadas" ("Nueva York [Oficina y denuncia]" 1.69).
The best place to starta discussion about reading pny isperhaps with Lorca's
own statements about poetry in "Nuevo Carro de
Tespis." Poetry, he says,
emerges out of three powerful voices: "La voz de la muerte, con todos sus
presagios; la voz del amor y la voz del arte" (ni, 530). The reading experience
envisioned by Lorca must inflicta wound literallyand figuratively.Meaning
takes root in thismaterially representedwound that is each being's participation
in death, the ultimate Other who can neither be cured nor killed. By the same
token, interpretation cannot resolve the textual aporia, for closing thewound
would destroy poetic discourse:

Como poeta aut?ntico que soy y ser? hasta mi muerte, no cesar? de darme con las
golpes
en espera del chorro de sangre verde o amarillo
disciplinas que necesariamente y por fe
habr? mi cuerpo de manar alg?n d?a. Todo menos en la ventana
quedarme quieto
mirando el mismo La luz del poeta es la contradicci?n ... La
paisaje. poes?a no quiere
adeptos, sino amantes. Pone ramas de zarzamora y erizos de vidrio para que se hieran por
su amor las manos que la buscan, (ni, 264)

Throughout pny we discover this intimaterelationshipbetween sufferingand

awareness. What kind of consciousness can Lorca wish us to achieve, when

poems like "Paisaje de lamultitud que orina" speak of destroying those who
attempt rational exegesis?:

Ser? preciso viajar por los ojos de los idiotas,

campos libres donde silban las mansas cobras deslumbradas,

paisajes llenos de sepulcros que producen manzanas,

fresqu?simas

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 259

para que venga la luz desmedida

temen los ricos detr?s de sus lupas ...
que (11. 38-42)

Those who attempt to see throughamagnifying glass will get burnt, for the light
they seek turnsout not to be the comforting illumination of knowledge, but the
blinding insight ofmadness. How can one travel through the eyes ofmadness
instead?What is there to understand inmadness's self-destructuringdiscourse,
Why are death and fertility,
evasive of dialectical resolutions? beauty and ugliness
conflated,without reaching a resolution inwhich one term secretlydominates
the other?
The recent reappearance of themanuscript of pny finally confirms Jos?
Bergamin's arrangement of thesepoems, organized and published posthumous
ly.But even before thisvery recentdiscovery, an evident narrative thread could
be discerned, not just in the disposition of the sections but also within single
poems themselves.7Meaning emerges from the "aphasie" discourse and assumes
the faint outlines of a tenuously developed tale. But themeaning speaks to the
more than to the intellectual capacity
reader's openness to theother's suffering,
to decipher a recognizable world. In "1910 (Intermedio)," someone speaks
despite being reticent and thinkinghimself incapable of storytelling:

No preguntarme nada. He visto que las cosas

cuando buscan su curso encuentran su vac?o.

un dolor de huecos por el aire sin gente

Hay
y en mis ojos criaturas vestidas ?sin desnudo! (11.18-21)

What is there to speak of in this "void," a recurring term in pny denoting

absence and the abyss both within and without: the speaker's own void and the
void of the city that threatens to annihilate him. Is there any desire to undress
these veiled creatures, "without nakedness"? Perhaps stripping away the layers
of clothing and masks would reveal some flesh and bone, something human?
This world of scaffolding,however, is inhabited by herds of empty suits, and for
those deluded enough to see otherwise - to see presence rather than absence -
an unveiling is in order: "Pero si alguien tiene por la noche exceso de musgo en
las sienes, /abrid los escotillones para que vea bajo la luna / las copas falsas, el
veneno y la calavera de los teatros" ("Ciudad sin sue?o" 11.47-49). Still, the
desire to decipher this seemingly esoteric discourse leads the reader to ask: "who
speaks?"Who gives the order "open" and towhom? A speaking subject inscribes
himself through thevery act of speaking about not being able to speak and,while
at firsthe refusesor cannot say "I," gradually he assumes some identitywithout
which there could be no text,no reading or writing.
At the same time, the subject goes so far as to climb theChrysler Building
fromwhere he hurls his accusations and admonitions in "Grito hacia Roma".

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Yet he continually de-centres himself as in "Poema doble del lago Eden:"

"porque yo no soy un hombre, ni un poeta, ni una hoja, /pero s?un pulso herido
que ronda las cosas del otro lado" (11.34-35). This play of self-construction and
disintegration demands a radical questioning of the reader's capacity to
Where is this other side, haunted by thewounded and disembodied
interpret.
speaker?
My reading of pny is guided by Lorca's "theory" of negation embodied in the
duende, as mediator of the ultimate secret. While that creature is never
mentioned explicitly in this poetry, theprophetic subject's struggle, situated on
the brink of the abyss, is the existential and artistic strugglewith the duende. In
the poem "Muerte," the speaker even seems to assume the duendes identity:
"?qu? seraf?nde llamas busco y soy!" (11.19).The ultimate secretalso refersto the
secret of revelation; in "Panorama ciego de Nueva York" it is in the duendes
cosmic realm that the great battle will be fought between White capitalist
civilization and "otros sistemas" (11. 17). These other systems include the
favoured tribe of the Blacks of Harlem, Nature, and otherness itself, the
embodiment of negation that theWhites (NorthAmericans) cannot tolerate in
their voracious urge to dominate, control, and consume.8

The duende as agent and expression of alterity challenges the reader to be

receptive to a deadly and silent message. This extreme form of alterity is
inescapable in an apocalyptic that combines negation with revolution. Instead
of turning death into metaphysical presence by describing it, Lorca's text
performs the impossible and the unsayable. The significantdifference lies in the
fact that a metaphysical representation of death would constitute a "making
present" of absence, thereby negating absence. The subject of pny attempts,
-
instead, to approach the negative space of death that elsewhere,which always
eludes appropriation and representation - even if this ultimately means
sacrificinghimself. In "F?bula y rueda de los tresamigos" instead of negating the
Other bymaking itpresent, the poet ends up negating himself in order to give
voice to theOther: "Comprend? que me hab?an asesinado. / ... /Pero se supo
que la sexta luna huy? torrente arriba, /y que elmar record? ?depronto! / los
nombres de todos sus ahogados" (11.60, 67-69).
Such a discourse of negation would seem to break freeof textual constraints
such as temporal and spatial deictics and other orienting semiotic elements, that
readers can usually recognize and agree upon, therebymaking shared commen
tarya possibility and a social necessity.9According to Lorca, "La imaginaci?n es
el primer escal?n y la base de toda poes?a ... Pero la imaginaci?n est? limitada
por la realidad: no se puede imaginar lo que no existe; necesita de objetos,
paisajes, n?meros, planetas, y se hacen precisas las relaciones entre ellos dentro
de la l?gicam?s pura. No se puede saltar al abismo ni prescindir de los t?rminos
reales" ("Imaginac?n, inspiraci?n evasi?n" ni, 259). Nevertheless, the represen
tation of identityas a unified speaking subject becomes inoperativewhen the

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subject/object dichotomy becomes so (con)fused that the subject is constructed

as object and vice versa.The titleof pny, as Lorca commented inhis lecture "Un
poeta en Nueva York" may as well be "Nueva York en un poeta" (m, 347).
pny follows a chronology reflected in the narrative trajectory apparent in
longer poems like "El reyde Harlem." The chronology does not refersimply to
the ordering of thepoems, but to the speaker's changing sense of consciousness.
In the firstpoem, "Vuelta de un paseo," the poetic subject's refusal or inability
to speak is a sign of profound disorientation produced by the hostile environ
ment that engulfs him. The space where he finds himself, however, cannot be
clearly distinguished from his agonized subjectivity, for it is so intensely
threatening to him that itsnegativitydestroys his sense of self.This firststage of
bewilderment and sufferingaccords with traditional apocalyptic, since thedesire
for radical change emerges from an overwhelming rejection of the current state
of theworld.
Before the speaker can even begin to articulate his despair and rage, hemust
find the source of his desire and sense of harmony. His disorientation and loss
of self is predicated on a previous state of integration inNature. Here Lorca's
personal trajectory is inseparable from the poetic personals sense of
uprootedness. Several studies of his attitude toNature, especially as it relates to
childhood, remark on how profoundly the telluric informs Lorca's ethics and
aesthetics, but David Johnston is particularly perceptive to the link between
childhood and Nature, and the anguished sense of sexual otherness that ruptures
this harmony. He characterizes Lorca's work as "an art rooted in a sense of earth,
whose central concern is to uncover the buried bonds between humankind and
the clay fromwhich we have sprung," and observes that "nature,wild, harsh and
rampant, rather than our more domesticated variety,gives Lorca's work both its
backdrop and itsdeepest meaning" (29-30).
In the latterpart of this essay, I wish to summarize how the duende both
enables and troubles critical commentary.My reading of pny, asmediated by the
presence of the duende, demonstrates how this textnecessarily spins different
semic effects specifically related to apocalyptic discourse. This interpretive
practice acknowledges that the speaking subject of pny is fragmented,not only
because of anguished alienation in the urban hell ofNew York, but also because
he invites the duende to wreak havoc with reality, rationality, and his own
integrity.
The subject,with its fragmented body and discourse in the final poems,
resembles the alienated subject who encounters the urban void in the first
poems, giving pny an apparently circular structure.The narrative thread of the
text,however, reveals a complicated dynamic that involves different stages of
development in the subject's psyche and actions. The subject's final dissolution
is thematerial manifestation of negation, but should not be read as failure,
because sacrifice expresses an act of love in which self-immolation opens a

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262

wound intowhich theOther can enter. In "Nocturno del hueco" the subject is
-
finally silenced not shut down but opened up to the sublime: "Yo. /No hay
siglonuevo ni luz reciente./S?lo un caballo azul y una madrugada" (11.12-14).The
unsayable is at the core of Lorca's apocalyptic aesthetic and in "Cielo vivo" is
expressed through paradox that is situated in space and therebyaccessible: "Alii
bajo las ra?ces y en lam?dula del aire, / se comprende la verdad de las cosas
equivocadas" (11.19-20).
The presence of the duende erases any distinction between the historical
author and the visions that spring from his prophetic, apocalyptic intuition,
shattering the ego in order to produce themost radical forms of solidarity and
communion. Lorca's apocalyptic discourse performs themiraculous novelty, at
once intensely creative and destructive, associated with the duende. And ifhis
social commitment spells the prophetic subject's self-immolation, this is also the
sign of his enormous capacity for eras, reformulated as "the challenge of
introjection (of absorption and of negation), of incorporating an other that
tends (pleasurably, dangerously, dramatically) to split the self" (Smith 62).
Lorca's poetry is a challenge, not only to the reader's intellectual capacity to
decipher "symbols" but to the very sense of self and purpose implicated in
engagingwith the text.For ifpny performsways of giving voice to theOther, it
also demands that the reader listen to that silence and give ita space to resonate:

-
The verb must not only be the verb of someone itmust overflow, in itsmovement

toward the other, what is called the speaking subject. Neither the philosophies of the

neutral nor the philosophies of subjectivity can acknowledge this trajectory of speech that
no
speech
can make into a totality. By definition, if the other is the other, and if all speech

is for the other, no as absolute can and the

logos knowledge comprehend dialogue
trajectory toward the other. This incomprehensibility, this rupture of logos is not the

of irrationality but the wound or inspiration that opens then makes

beginning speech and
possible every logos or every rationalism. A total logos, in order to be logos, would have
to let itselfbe profferedtowardtheotherbeyond itsown totality.(Derrida 98)

Interpretation can never close or cure thiswound that "opens speech" since it
is evident in all language regardless of the speaker's single-minded intention to
circumscribemeaning within interpretation. "Aporia" and "ab?me" are simply
other names for thiswound that resistsappropriation, and confounds thosewho
do not heed its fatal power: "Nosotros ignoramos que el pensamiento tiene
arrabales /donde el fil?sofo es devorado por los chinos y las orugas" ("Panorama
ciego de Nueva York" 11.22-23). These terms,often associated with poststructur
alist and deconstructionist readings, name sites of tension where opposites
collidewithout any possible rational resolution. Lorca often spatializes these sites
by calling them "outskirts" or "suburbs," indicatingmarginal spaces beyond the
city's sphere of poisonous influence. In this enigmatic image, philosophers, or

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rational thinkers, are apocalyptically devoured by the Chinese, seemingly

representativeofwisdom rooted in the recognition of nothingness, togetherwith
the telluric caterpillars, agents of destruction appearing in other verses of pny.10
Negation, as a crucial aspect of Lorcan apocalyptics unsettles meaning by
revealing the capriciousness of itscontradictions, the continual dynamism of its
play. Thus the duendes influence cannot be reduced to mere poetic and
linguisticformalism in an attempt to totalizemeaning by circumscribing itsplay.
Nonetheless, poems like "Grito hacia Roma" do elaborate the subject's overt
ideological intentions asmediated by apocalyptic discourse: "Porque queremos
el pan nuestro de cada d?a, /florde aliso y perenne ternuradesgranada, /porque
queremos que se cumpla la voluntad de laTierra /que da sus frutospara todos"
(11.71-75). To ignore the ideological drama of pny would be to deny the text's
historical and social significance.Moreover, theunravelling of the threads of the
Lorcan text reveals heuristically thatmeaning is always double, always is and is
not. Lorca himself expresses thisdoubleness as "un plano po?tico donde el s?y
el no de las cosas son igualmente verdaderos" (ni, 283). The lyrical and
prophetic power of the textflows from the interweavingor collision of the two
imperatives of eros and thanatos. pny literally and figuratively challenges its
readers to resist the rational compulsion to choose between the two, in order to
privilege one as meaningful while banishing theOther as non-sense or simply
non-existent.
As we have seen, the language of pny is characterized by disintegration and
yet itallows and reinforces the elaboration of a history and a speaking subject
who expresses his struggleand his vision. Hence, the story is always twofold: the
collective drama of apocalypse and the subject's personal drama of love and loss.
These dimensions are so intertwined, given the subject's implication in
eschatological events that it becomes problematic to speak of a telos. In one
instance, Lorca expresses admiration for "poemas suspendidos sobre el abismo
por un hilo de ara?a" (ni, 464) and indescribing the greatness of Pablo Neruda,
he revealswhat he most values in art and what he himself embodies:

Un m?s cerca de la muerte que de la filosof?a; m?s cerca del dolor que de la
poeta

inteligencia; m?s cerca de la sangre que de la tinta. Un poeta lleno de voces misteriosas

que, afortunadamente, ?l mismo no sabe descifrar; [de] un hombre verdadero que ya sabe
que el junco y la golondrina son m?s eternos que lamejilla dura de la estatua. (111, 464)

The proximity to death, pain, and blood suggestsdirect contactwith the duende
who, by engaging the artist in thedeath struggle, infuses the act of creationwith
thepower that can only come from theunsayable. The fact that thepoet himself
cannot decipher his own voices places the critic in an interestingposition.
Should the critic assume a position of superiority in relation to the poet, and
decipher those voices in order to construct an interpretation? If the

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264

indecipherability of those voices hides and reveals the sublime, then the
pretension of unveiling it through interpretationwould seem to stem from
another sort of blindness or, in otherwords, deafness to silence.
The act of critical reading in this context brings us to the image ofweaving
and theMidrash. Catherine Keller explains that "Midrash refers to the ancient
tradition of rabbinic commentaries on scripture, inwhich multiple readings,
developing and disputing each other,would literallysurround the scriptural text
on the printed page" (31). She goes on to discuss how "several contemporary
Jewishthinkershave renewed themethod of themidrash in conjunction with a
postmodern interest in theplurivocality of text itself,especially as articulated in
Derrida's perhaps crypto-Judaic notion of 'intertextuality,'" and how the
conceived of as a fabricwoven frommany
interpreteris related to the text/textile
threads: are weavers who become themselves threads:
"Interpreters subsequent
an apt self-inscription for any theology of radical relation" (31-32). For such a
reader, there isno "outside" (dehors) to the text,which isnot to say that the text
cannot be related to diverse experiences and reflectionscoming fromoutside the
particular text being read. It does imply, however, that the critic cannot
comfortably distance herself from the text,keeping her discourse scrupulously
disentangled from its fabric,especially the apocalyptic text,"themaster scriptof
thehidden transcript" (Keller 10).
Apocalypse, etymologically, a vision, must be understood as the contrary of
revelation of philosophical truth,as the contraryof aletheia (Kristeva quoted by
Keller 24). In this, itdemands a special kind of "suspension of disbelief" while
appealing to a Utopian telosthatdrives the drama forward into a futurebased on
hope, and fuelled by desire for community and solidarity.The promise of the
kingdom ofwheat announced by a black child in "Ode toWalt Whitman," the
prophesied image of the Blacks ofHarlem reunited in songwith theirking, the
poetic subject's own voyage toCuba represented as a post-apocalyptic paradise,
all signal the telosof hope that gives pny its social and spiritual significance.
But even at his most prophetically eloquent, the subject's desires cannot be
reduced to a single coherent intentionality, an apocalyptic effect that is
profoundly intertwinedwith the havoc-wreaking presence of the duende. In
poems like "Ciudad sin sue?o," thevisionary promise spoken in theplural "we"
is itselfhighly ambiguous, because the common good shared by individuals is
projected to the other side of death:

Un d?a
los caballos vivir?n en las tabernas

y las hormigas furiosas

se
atacar?n los cielos amarillos que refugian en los ojos de las vacas.
Otro d?a
veremos la resurrecci?n de las mariposas disecadas

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 265

y aun andando por un paisaje de esponjas grises y barcos mudos

veremos brillar nuestro anillo y manar rosas de nuestra lengua. (11. 22-29)

Where is the speaking subject now? Human history all but disappears and
miraculous new circumstances are projected onto horses, cows, butterflies and
the strangelysingularbut shared "nuestra lengua." Identitymelts away in the all
pervasive panmaterialism that mixes objects related to human existence
("tabernas," "nuestro anillo") with Lorca's apocalyptic bestiary.Here, consistent
with other instancesof the same imagery in pny, the ants functionas apocalyptic
agents that paradoxically attack death, represented as yellow skies. This image
suggests the liberation of the cows,more obvious in the image of thebutterflies'
resurrection.The verb "spilling" (manar) recalls other Lorcan images of flows
a
emanating frombodies, for example, thevoice represented as stream of blood
(chorro) that flows from the body of the singer possessed by the duende. The
lethalpresence of the duendeliberates being from its identities,itsmasks, and the
constructs of subjectivity.And in the largercollective context of apocalypse, this
scrambling and erasing of boundaries acquires political implications, social
ramifications: "Once we forgetabout our egos a non-neurotic form of politics
becomes possible, where singularity and collectivity are no longer at odds with
each other, and where collective expressions of desire are possible" (Deleuze and
Guattari xxi).
The apocalyptic structuresof Lorca's pny articulate a Utopian form of being
and non-being in opposition to capitalism. The anguished subject repeatedly
denies being in the singular and only finds a voice to represent sufferingothers,
theOther. Returning to the opening poem of pny, "Vuelta de paseo," the silence
I identifiedas signalling repudiation of an emptyword, can be reread as already
belonging to the productive phase of apocalypse, the decentred subject's first
repudiation of ego and of the neuroses associated with alienated individuality:

Con el ?rbol de mu?ones que no canta

y el ni?o con el blanco rostro de huevo.

Con los animalitos de cabeza rota

y el agua harapienta de los pies secos.

Con todo lo que tiene cansancio sordomudo

y mariposa en el tintero.
ahogada

con mi rostro distinto de cada d?a.

Tropezando
?Asesinado por el cielo! (11. 5-12).

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266

To represent oneself as "assassinated by the sky" existentiallyconnected to the

sufferingof others, is both to lament "insurmountable sufferings,unbearable
needs" and to split and empty the self in order tomake room for others. The
empathy implicit in confusing the selfwith otherswho exceed theboundaries of
the human also marks entry into madness. But "madness need not be all
breakdown. Itmay also be breakthrough ..." (Deleuze and Guattari 131).Loss of
selfamounts to introjectingotherness and becoming empathetically vulnerable
to the needs and desires of others. This panmaterialistic experience invests the
apocalyptic prophet-poet with collective significance. "El ni?o con el bianco
rostro de huevo" and "mi rostro distinto de cada d?a" read as disturbing
referents for alienation, mirror the barely human figures in Lorca's "self
portraits,"with theirblank eyes and missing features.This loss of ego, symboli
cally representedby the amputation, scattering,and erasure of body parts, does
not debilitate the subject. It isprecisely in the radical insightof the emptied self
that the ethics of apocalypse takes root in "thewilderness where the decoded
flows run free,the end of theworld, the apocalypse" (Deleuze and Guattari 176).
Paul Ricceur grappleswith theproblem of duality in thepsychoanalytic terms
of progression and regression.This is another tellingof the storyof contradictory
desires (to forge ahead, to return to nothingness) and his account of the
interpretive impasse offers insights on how to read similar contradictory
impulses in pny:

We might say that consciousness is history, while the unconscious is fate. It is the

hithersidefateof childhood and of symbolsalreadythereand reiterated,the fateof the

repetition of the same themes on different helices of a spiral. And yet man has a

responsibilityto grow out of his childhood and shatterthe process of repetitionby

ahead of himself a contrasting of hitherside forms
constituting history through
The unconscious is the originor
eschatology. genesis, while consciousness is the end of
time or apocalypse. But we remain in an abstract opposition. We must therefore

understand that, although opposed, the system of hitherside figures and that of figures

which always refer to a previously given symbolism are the same. (118)

Ricceur's representation of the "life" storycoincides with the subject's drama in

pny: he too is situated in adulthood, looking back at childhood. In pny,
however, the subject's openness towards theOther is a radical form of negation
that configures the space of childhood as present by conflating itwith an
apocalyptic future. "All?" is both past and future in such poems as "1910
(Intermedio):" "Aquellos ojos m?os en mil novecientos diez / ... /All? mis
peque?os ojos" (11.1,17), and "Cielo vivo:" "Pero me ir?al primer paisaje / ... /
All? todas las formas guardan entrelazadas / una sola expresi?n fren?tica de
avance" (11. 5,13-14).

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 267

In pn y the subject consistentlyaddresses his own decentredness and performs

his disintegration, revealing the glorious future promised by apocalypse as
situated indeath,where resurrection isnot of theflesh or even of the individual
soul. Instead, Resurrection consists of apocalyptic dissolution permitting the
chaotic, synchronie fusion of all in the "desembocadura" of "Navidad en el
Hudson":

?Ohesponjam?a gris!
?Ohcuellom?o reci?ndegollado!
?Ohr?ograndem?o!
no son m?os!
?Oh brisa m?a de l?mites que

?Ohfilodemi amor,oh hirientefilo! (11. 36-40)

This (con)fusion of selfand Other, lifeand death, the story-tellerand his tale is
at once the dramatic enactment of irreconcilability and the celebration of
thanatosand eros. Instead of being appropriated by the self,theOther as wound
is graftedonto the self.
Transfixed by the duende into a "lunar paralytic," thepoet inNew York fuses
apocalyptic forms together at the rim of thewound (in, 315-16), site of the
ultimate battle inwhich he is foreversuspended as the galloping void of a horse,
pure emptied movement: "Yo. /Mi hueco sin ti, ciudad, sin tusmuertos que
comen. /Ecuestre por mi vida definitivamente anclada" ("Nocturno del hueco"
11.69-71). Apocalypse assumes its full significance in this space of negation,
dynamic death that erupts "en carne viva, en nube viva, enmar viva, del Amor
libertado del Tiempo" (111,315).The disquieting, liberatorypoetic power of pny
is rooted in this apocalyptic "madness," the constant awareness of death's
proximity: "el duende hiere, y en la curaci?n de esta herida, que no se cierra
nunca, est? lo ins?lito, lo inventado de la obra de un hombre" (111,315).

Brock University

NOTES

1 References to Poeta en Nueva York are from the bilingual edition of Greg Simon
and Steven R White. From here on I use the abbreviation pny.
2 I capitalize the "O" of "Other" to represent the radical difference associated
with thanatoSy as opposed to the other as another human being. In some
instances the distinction becomes blurred; for example the Blacks of Harlem,
as and revolutionary agents in the poem "El rey de
represented apocalyptic
Harlem," function in both the realm of death at end-time and as human

protagonists of a socio-political battle. The concept of resonant silence is

similar to Jacques Lacan s appropriation of Saussure's linguistic paradigm to

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268

develop the concept of the Other's "voice" making itself felt along the paradig
matic axis of the text, which is the space of difference and absence and is
interwoven with the horizontal axis of discourse. Ronald Schleifer works with a
distinction that is less dualistic in order to show how difference is not necessar

ilythesame thingas binaryopposition.This distinctionismade by using the

terms
"metonymy" and "synecdoche" because they are often confused, despite
not always being reducible to each other (9).
-
3 All quotations from Lorca's texts with the exception of pny - are cited from
the 1993 edition of Obras completas. For further critical commentary on the
notion of duende, see Paul 160-66.
Binding,
4 See Schleifers Rhetoric and Death, especially the Introduction: "These two

aspects of death?a 'part' and an other' are themselves not reducible to a

hierarchic (which is to say a synecdochic) relationship: death is not 'essentially'
a part of life or
'essentially' the negation of life. Rather, both of these senses are
included, nonopposably, within 'death'" (6).

5 At first the frenzied speaker is so devoid of what may be termed "signs of

identity" that he is barely recognizable as human. When

speaking from beyond
the pale it is hard to conceive of a human identity, he nevertheless modifies
himself in the Spanish text with masculine adjectives, for instance "Yo, poeta
sin brazos, perdido" ("Paisaje de lamultitud que vomita" 36). For this reason I
refer to the speaking subject throughout with masculine pronouns.
6 I refer to the Afro-Americans and the Afro-Cubans as "Blacks"
following the
translation of pny by Simon and White, who probably chose this term for being
closest to the Spanish "negros" and because Lorca does not make any national
distinction. Furthermore, Lorca presents a united vision of Africans and their
descendants for the ideological purposes of cohesion, continuity, and power.
He moves back and forth between spatial realms that seem to represent Africa

("Norma y para?so de los negros"), Harlem ("El rey de Harlem"), and Cuba

("Son de negros en Cuba") and links these spaces ideologically to configure

values common to the favoured tribe for whom he prophesies the final apoca

lyptic victory.
7 The problems raised by the putative absence of Lorca's authorial and editorial

supervision and the ensuing variations among different editions of pny have
been studied in detail by several critics. See Miguel Garcia Posada's Lorca:

interpretaci?n de Poeta en Nueva York, Eutimio Martin's "?Existe una versi?n

definitiva de Poeta en Nueva York?" and Daniel Eisenberg's Poeta en Nueva
York: historia y problemas de un texto de Lorca. While the debate about which

poems should be included in pny and inwhat order does affect any critical

study of the text, Iwould argue that it is far from crucial especially since many
longer poems function as microcosms of the work. Moreover, what I refer to as
the narrative thread does not constitute a linear trajectory because contradic
tion ensures that the interpretation of any poem must recognize its opposite.
The subject's integration into the social and cosmic struggle, for instance, also

spells his disintegration, his erotic union with the other also spells his death

and, consequently, the annihilation of self and other.

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 269

In a recent publication entitled Vida y milagros de un manuscrito de Lorca: en

pos de Poeta en Nueva York, Nigel Dennis traces the manuscript's tortuous
numerous acts, until its reappearance inMexico
journey and disappearing
followed by its almost being auctioned off"at Christie's of London. There, in
November of 1999, Professor Dennis had the opportunity to examine it and
confirmsthat it is theoriginal,given toBergamin in Julyof 1936by Lorca
himself.At thedate ofwriting thisstudy,themanuscript isbeing held at
Christie's of London pending settlement of a legal dispute over ownership:
"Mientras se espera una decisi?n definitiva sobre la cuesti?n de la titularidad
- -
del manuscrito, ?ste sigue durmiendo tranquilamente quiz?s so?ando s?lo
una a su
que ahora en caja fuerte, devuelto invisibilidad anterior" (Dennis 54).
This discovery is expected to disprove the theories of Eisenberg, Eutimio Martin
and Garcia Posada, in favour of those who maintain that Lorca had given
a detailed and definitive of poems, published in the
Bergamin configuration
S?neca edition of 1940.
8 While most in pny to the degenerate
of the references and exploitative ruling
class it asWhite, in his and lecture on pny, Lorca levels
identify correspondence
many criticisms specifically at the United States. Reading pny within the wider
context of Lorca's writings suggests that he elaborates a m?tonymie relationship
among theWhite race, European and Western culture, and the excessively
materialistic form it takes in the United States.

9 The social necessity of shared meaning is central toMario Vald?s's

phenomenological theory of interpretation: "The essential aim of this mode of

literary criticism is not to establish any mirage of objective truth about the text,
but rather to elucidate the shared experience of reading the text with the
essentialclaim of the stock-taking fourth dimension of the text being that the

only form of truth

we encounter is the truth of self-knowledge" (67). Even ifwe
harbour no illusions about a definitive two of the
reaching interpretation,
as an of the
questions proposed important basis in the dialogic experience
reader-text relationship could be further troubled. Itmust be understood that
what the text speaks about and what it says tome are not just different forme
in relation to other readers, but that it speaks about contradictory things in
ways I cannot resolve, even inmy own reading experience.
10 Here it is important not to confuse Oriental or Judaic resonances with direct

biographical reference. While Lorca elaborates suggestive images of Oriental

characters, it is not clear whether he read Oriental philosophy in any depth or
was more intuitively influenced by certain art forms. Any creative reading of
pny must differ significantly from exegesis, and requires the kind of play
alluded to by Lorca in the title of his lecture on the duende.

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 270

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derrida, jacques. Writing and Difference. Trans, and Intro. Alan Bass. Chicago: U
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