JOSÉ HIERRO’S “LAS NUBES”: A FUTURIST MANIFESTO

One of the main tenets of Russian Formalism is that a new literary period is marked by a re-interpretation of the role, function, and meaning of poetry. This re-interpretation comes into being by opposing whichever aesthetic principle or poetic dominant the previous generation of poets had. Hierro is classed here as a Futurist poet in light of his opposition to Machado’s Symbolist poetry.

One of the main characteristics of Futurist poetry is its dynamic view of reality, its persistence in redefining the meaning of an entity as it develops. The Futurists depict reality on the move as it is being created or selected. In order to best portray this fluid reality, the Futurists needed to find a new linguistic form or poetic dominant. Phonology provided the basis for an uninterrupted flow free from the confines of the logical pattern of the grammatical sentence.

The phonological sentence allows Hierro to capture the motion of time, the subject matter of his poems. Hierro focuses his conception of time on an understanding of an on-going temporal process. This process entails an interaction of all its temporal points: past, present and future in a variety of combinations. I call this conception of time the “spacious present,” that is to say an all-inclusive present where all temporal points interact. It is by working in this spacious present that Hierro deconstructs Machado’s conception of time. He gives permanence to Machado’s illusory past, not by separating it from the present, as Machado does, but by merging it with the future and the present. In Hierro fantasy and dream become part of reality.

The key that unlocks this new vital reality for Hierro is an understanding of the time-process. His inquiry reveals the present as the focal point,the vital time frame where all other temporal points combine. This interaction presents, without transition, different angles of reality in terms of an on-going time merger.

This simultaneity of different aspects of a temporal process allows a multiplicity of meanings to reveal themselves without the aid of the symbol. Hierro replaces Machado’s static illusory past with the metamorphic speed of his hallucinatory present (a moving all-inclusive present), and Machado’s symbol by a new poetic form “the melodic image.”

It is by consciously discarding the grammatical sentence in favor of a melodic uninterrupted line that Hierro is able to capture the motion of time. This awareness of a poetic process that is destroying an old way of communication in order to offer a new insight into time gives Hierro’s poetry the self assured tone of the poem in total command of the language.

A contrasting look at the way Hierro captures the motion of time through the phonological sentence, with the way Machado immobilizes the grammatical sentence to bring out his essential past, will not only provide an ideal ground to test the major tenets of Russian Formalism, but also give us a better understanding of Machado’s and Hierro’s poetics.

Awareness of the poetic process is reflected in the format of Hierro’s poetry. Each collection of poems has an introductory poem in cursive, which explains the theme and technique of that particular collection. All of them illustrate the development of a poetic technique, a new melodic form, from its simple manifestation (the stanza) to its most complicated illustration (the line). Hierro has often talk about his poetry and what it means to him. In “Palabras antes de un Poema” he summarizes his ideas about the poetic process; there he talks about rhythm being what distinguishes poetry from phrase, and “true” rhythm, as he calls it, what differentiates a good poem from a bad one. He defines true rhythm as one in which the content and the form of the poem meets:

¿Qué entiendo yo por ritmo poético? En principio claro está, estoy de acuerdo con lo de las sílabas átonas y tónicas. Pero niego que el ritmo sea una consecuencia de la ordenación de unas palabras determinadas. Son por el contrario las palabras una consecuencia del ritmo. El poeta, al crear, lo que hace es recordar un poema perdido. Un poema del cual no le queda mas que la tonalidad y el ritmo. Su acierto estriba en poner, en sobreponer al ritmo pre-existente aquellas palabras que por su sonido o por su sentido expresen, sin género de duda para el lector, lo que él entiende perfectamente sin necesidad de palabras. El poema existe, nebuloso, en el poeta, porque en su conciencia existe, ya organizado, un ritmo total, una sucesión de ritmos. Su tarea lo repito, es buscar para el lector, tal vez para su propia conciencia lúcida, no ensoñadora, aquellas palabras de apoyo que guien la razón. (85)

Identification of the phonological components that carry the meaning or rhythm of each of Hierro’s poems is paramount for an understanding of his poetry.

For insight into these phonological elements which form the kernel of Hierro’s poems, we turn first to Tomás Navarro Tomás Métrica española. There he offers an overall look at the poetic elements that traditionally have carried rhythm in Spanish poetry: rhyme, syllable count and stress. Then we go to López Estrada’s “Métrica nueva” for an understanding of the meter of contemporary poetry and his interpretation of what he coins as “línea poética,” the element that carries meaning in contemporary poetry. This melodic poetic line is arrived at by isolating first the traditional phonological elements identified by Navarro Tomás in the above cited work, and then he adds a second element based on his observation that, in contemporary poetry, besides the syllable count and stress, one should take into consideration the way this poetic line cuts into the grammatical sentence.[1] This ungrammaticality or deformation of the poetic language was called “defamiliarization” by the father of Russian Formalism Victor Shklovsky. It is through this ungrammaticality of Hierro’s poetic line that he draws attention to the motion of time. This distortion of the grammatical sentence in Hierro is perceived by the tension between the grammatical sentence and the phonological sentence, which never coincide. It is this “differential factor” as Tynianov calls it, what causes the deformation of the non-dominant elements (grammatical and semantical in this case) in Hierro’s poem.

Since meaning in Hierro is conveyed by phonology we turn to Searl and Sadoka’s speech act theories for an understanding of the phonological phrase. Of particular interest is their classification of phonological phrases according to what they called “illocutionary force.” This illocutionary force is the component of the phonological phrase that captures the intention of the speaker, therefore carries the meaning of the phonological phrase. The above concept can also be found in Navarro Tomás’ study of Spanish intonation. Although Navarro Tomás does not name it illocutionary force, he describes a phonological pattern in two ways: by its physical constituents (rising, falling or sustaining tone) and by the meaning it conveys (assertion, doubt, command, persuasion). In the present analysis of Hierro’s “Las nubes” since intonation is the dominant phonological element which carries the meaning of the poem, we will interpret the phonological pattern in this dual way.

“Las nubes” belongs to Hierro’s 1958 collection Cuanto sé de mí. In this piece of work Hierro asserts himself as a poet by openly rebelling against the previous poetic style: Symbolism. He chooses to mimic the symbolists’ dichotomy of time and division of reality, in order to show its weakness and deconstruct it.

The poem offers a semantic juxtaposition of two meanings. One of the meanings presents a search for the past in order to find the symbolists’ inner reality. The other meaning shows the futility of this search by pointing out the impossibility of materializing this essential reality without merging it with the present reality.

This poem dramatizes the symbolist dilemma by presenting, through phonological means, the pathos of this split reality Machado so well portrayed in his poetry. The poem is written in the form of a “romance,” and it is divided into five stanzas. The two meanings of the poem are conveyed by splitting the phonological pattern in which the stanzas of the poem are formed into two parts. The first part carries the symbolist search for the past; the second part shows the futility of that search by pointing out its error; lack of movement, therefore absence of life:

Search for the Past Futility of that Search

Inútilmente interrogas.

Tus ojos miran al cielo. huellas que se llevó el Buscas, detrás de las nubes, viento.

The phonological pattern in which the first four stanzas of the poem are written, is the type Navarro Tomás defines as “cumulative enumaration pattern.” This phonological pattern consists of a combination of a beginning rising tone or anticadenza (A), followed by a sustained slightly falling tone or semicadenza (c) (which forms the middle of the symbolist enumaration here) and closing section with a pronounced falling tone or cadenza (C) (which yields the second meaning of the poem, the futility of the search): {A x c x c x C}; [“x” represents the links that hold the internal components of the phonological phrase or tonemes together].

Stanza I

A x c x c x C

A Inútilmente interrogas.

c Tus ojos miran al cielo.

c Buscas detrás de las nubes,

C huellas que se llevó el viento.

The semantic meaning or illocutionary force characteristic of this phonological pattern resides in the last member of the series (C) or last line of the stanza. This toneme (C) completes the series by summarizing all the previous members (c x c) which comprise the search for the past. In contrast, the illocutionary force of an incomplete enumaration, which is the phonological pattern the symbolists use to convey their illusory world, is a pattern that allows single words to accumulate in a series without ever being completed:

A x c x c x c

In this poem Hierro splits the cumulative enumaration pattern so that the first part of it illustrates the symbolists’ incomplete enumeration. The other half carries the familiar cadenza ending a cumulative enumeration. The cadenza ending here (C) does not summarize the incomplete enumaration by gathering all possible meanings into an all inclusive image or idea, but rather by pointing out why the image cannot be completed. It mimics Machado’s symbolist style by dwelling on the impossibility of completing the illusory image without killing it. Hierro exposes with this phonological split what he considers to be the flaw of the symbolists. He deconstructs the phonological pattern of the symbolists by completing it, to stress the impossibility of separating the inner from the outer reality:

Splitting of the Cumulative Enumaration Pattern

A x c x c x C

Search for the Past Futility of that Search

A x c x c C

The way a phonological phrase ends, together with the phonological combinations the tonemes undertake to form larger units, constitutes the expressive semantic content of the phonological phrase. A cadenza ending will signal the conclusion or absolute end of the thought or action there illustrated. An anticadenza ending will either emphasize the contradictions or conflicts of the phonological phrase, or will put and end to the phonological tension of the phrase. A semicadenza will point towards an unfinish action or idea. A semianticadenza would stress secondary tensions in the interior of the phrase. Finally, a sustaining ending would convey the incompleteness of the phrase.

Each of the five stanzas in this poem constitutes a phonological pattern. Each octosyllabic verse in the stanza forms a complete phonological toneme. The preferred phonological extension of the toneme in the Spanish language is between seven and eight syllables, hence the use of the octosyllabic verse as the basis of popular poetry. The phonological pattern of the first four stanzas of the poem should read as follows:

CUMULATIVE ENUMERATION

A x c x c x C

Search for the past Futility of this search

A x c x c C

A Inútilmente interrogas.

c Tus ojos miran al cielo.

c Buscas detrás de las nubes,

C huellas que se llevó el el viento.

A Buscas las manos calientes,

c los rostros de los que fueron,

c el círculo donde yerran C tocando sus

instrumentos

III

A Nubes que eran rítmo, canto

c sin final y sin comienzo,

c campanas de espuma pálidas C volteando su

secreto,

A palmas de mármol, criaturas

c girando al compas del tiempo,

c imitándole a la vida

C su perpetuo

movimiento

The first stanza opens the poem by introducing the first

cumulative enumeration pattern, which constitutes the main body of the poem:

Inútilmente interrogas.

Tus ojos miran al cielo.

Buscas detrás de las nubes,

huellas que se llevó el viento.

We have here a dialogue between the narrator and the speaker of the poem. The speaker appears only as the “tú” form whom the narrator addresses. Through this dialogue we are introduced to the search for the past the speaker of the poem is undertaking. From the very first word, “inútilmente,” we know this endeavor will not succeed. In the closing line we are offered an explanation for this failure. The past the speaker is looking for, cannot materialize by isolating it from the present as “past only,” because it is not an independent entity by itself:

huellas que se llevó el viento.

With this introductory stanza, Hierro breaks the mystery of Machado’s introductions to his symbolist poems by pointing out the impossibility of materializing an illusory past in any other reality but the present.

In the next four stanzas we are offered a detailed enumeration of the components the speaker is looking for in this idealized past. It becomes clear from this enumeration that the symbolist’s contradiction lies in trying to freeze the past, by separating it from the present, when all the symbolists want to do is to give it life again, to make it present.

The second stanza points to this symbolist contradiction by stressing the longing of the speaker for the warm touch of those familiar past faces, not just for a visualization of them:

Buscas las manos calientes,

los rostros de los que fueron,

el círculo donde yerran

tocando sus instrumentos.

Hierro offers in this stanza an explanation of the symbolist error. He blames the symbolists for creating the illusion of an independent inner reality. Hierro feels and rationalizes here, the contradiction inherent in the symbol as a literary device whereby an imaginary world is linked with a particular feeling or sensation, without ever making clear, as Bousoño pointed out in his study on symbolism, how this sensation is connected to the real world. Hierro illustrates this contradiction by emphasizing that the symbolists (Machado in particular) do not just want to remember vaguely the faces of the dead but rather to recapture the feeling and emotions they shared with them. They are distressed at their inability to find a poetic way to give the permanence, rather than just a glimpse. Hierro blames the symbol for this inability:

el círculo donde yerran

In the next two stanzas Hierro finds the secret key, the poetic device that will give permanence to the symbolist ideal world, rhythm:

Nubes que eran rítmo, canto

sin final y sin comienzo,

campanas de espuma pálidas

volteando su secreto,

palmas de mármol, criaturas

girando al compás del tiempo,

imitándole a la vida

su perpetuo movimiento

Music here is the soul of poetry. Movement is the core of life, and change is what gives time its permanence. There is no need for a separate ideal world; the present is eternity.

Hierro powerfully deconstructs symbolism by offering, in a symbolist style, the opposite conception of time and poetry. He immobilizes the sentence not in order to bring out the past, or the symbolic power of words, but to show how the movement of the sentence is what poetry and time is all about.

He cleverly uses the disemic symbol of Machado only to destroy it, by blending inner and outer reality in it.[2]. The poem becomes alive when the warm hands “manos calientes” of the man merge with the marble hands of the poet “palmas de mármol.” Together they give poetry the permanence of marble Machado wanted to give to his illusory world, and the zest and warmth of the futurist vision of life.

These four stanzas convey in a powerful image a poet searching for a style. He finds one by joining the two realities of the symbolists into one. The symbolist tradition immobilizes the poetic world through the symbol to create a new inner world of independent reality. Hierro shows here why Machado fails to give permanence to his illusory world. Machado tries to infuse life into his ideal past by immobilizing it. Hierro shows how lack of movement means death, and that both Machado and symbolism are dead. The time has come for a new generation of poets to assert themselves and infuse new life into poetry.

In the last stanza Hierro stresses the end of the symbolist dichotomy by dramatically merging the narrator and the speaker into one character, Hierro himself. By presenting this serious introspection in the form of a lively, humorous dialogue, he destroys the high-priest position of the symbolist poet and the “sacred” quality of their poetry:

Inútilmente interrogas

desde tus párpados ciegos,

¿Qué haces mirando a las nubes,

José Hierro?

The whole of this last stanza draws attention to the logical conclusion we have arrived at the end of each stanza. It does not add anything new. It merely emphasizes what we already know, that the symbolist search for the essential permanent world was a vaporous exercise.

The phonological pattern of the relative question in which the last stanza of the poem is written (a pattern defined by Navarro Tomás as a combination of an anticadenza (A), a semianticadenza (c) and a dramatic circumflex falling-rising ending (C-A), adds to the dramatization of this discovery as Hierro closes the poem with a question that draws attention to the flaw of symbolism:

¿Qué haces mirando a las nubes, José Hierro?

It is a rhetorical question, and we do not expect an answer. Its dramatic circumflexive ending of sharply falling-rising demands attention:

RELATIVE QUESTION

(A x c x c x C-A)

Search for the past Futility of that Search

A x c c x C-A

A Inútilmente interrogas

C desde tus párpados ciegos,

c ¿Qué haces mirando a

las nubes,

C-A José Hierro?

When Hierro asks himself this question, he knows exactly what his poetry should not be like. With this assertive act of rebellion and clever use of parody Hierro here presents himself as a futurist poet. The thrust of this parody resides in the way Hierro conveys two contradictory semantic meanings by splitting the internal components of the two intonation patterns of the poem: “Cumulative Enumeration” and “Relative Question.”

Works Cited

Bousoño, Carlos. Teoría de la expresión poética. Madrid: Gredos, 1970. 200-279.

Hierro, José. “Palabras antes de un poema.” In Elementos Formales en la Lírica Actual. Madrid: Universidad Internacional Menendez Pelayo, 1967. 85-94.

___. Cuanto sé de mí. Madrid: Agora, 1957. 67-68.

López Estrada, Francisco. “La Métrica Nueva.” In Elementos Formales de la Lírica Actual. Madrid: Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, 1967. 97-116.

Navarro Tomás, Tomás. Métrica española. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1974.

___. Manual de entonación española. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1974.

Sadoka, Jerry. Towards a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 1974.

Searle, John R. Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 1974.

[1]He classifies the poetic line into four categories: lines that carry a whole grammatical sentence, lines that carry three quarters, lines that carry half a sentence and lines comprised only of one quarter of a sentence.

[2]I am using here the definition Carlos Buosoño gives to this symbol in his Teoría de la expresión poética, as one that carries two meanings at the same time: one logical one figurative.