Antonio Machado ‘enters’ on the SAR a century later with the studying of the speech he ready: “What is poetry?” | Culture | EUROtoday

“What is poetry?” He questioned, nothing much less, Antonio Machado in 1931 within the speech of admission to the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) that he ready, however by no means learn. “What is poetry?” The actor José Sacristán has been requested this afternoon, within the auditorium of this establishment, in a tribute to the Sevillian author for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his start, which shall be fulfilled on July 26. Sacristán has been in command of declare a abstract of Machado’s speech, a textual content that “he only needed to finish off the end,” mentioned the director of the SAR, Santiago Muñoz Machado, in statements to El País final Monday.

Muñoz Machado opened an act during which there have been greater than 500 visitors, together with the president of Congress, Francina Armengol. The climax has put the one who has finest picked the verses of Machado, Joan Manuel Serrat, who has sung, accompanied by pianist Ricardo Miralles, 4 songs: Portrait, Crying and couplets, The Saeta: “Oh, you are not my singing/ I cannot sing or want that Jesus of the Madero/ but the one who walked in the sea.” AND SingS: “When walking he makes his way/ And when he looks back/ the path is ever/ he has to step on/ walker there is no way, but steles in the sea.”

In the speech, Machado started apologizing to the teachers who have been going to listen to him: “Forgive me that it took more than four years to introduce me to you.” The creator of Campos de Castilla He had been chosen for the Chair V of the Academy, on March 24, 1927, “in somewhat thin circumstances,” wrote the educational Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, in an article within the nation, on January 24. Machado had been endorsed by three lecturers, as the home laws ship: José Martínez Ruiz, Azorín; Ricardo León and Armando Palacio Valdés, for an honor to which the political Niceto Alcalá-Zamora aspired (who on December 2, 1931 could be elected president of the Republic).

Why had these “more than four years” moved to put in writing their speech? Currently, a interval of two years is given to the elected for the solemn second of admission. “It is a dispensable deadline, this expiration does not apply,” mentioned Muñoz Machado.

The poet justified that delay: “All that time has been necessary for certain scruples of consciousness to come. I have a very high idea of ​​the Spanish Academy […]. You have honored me a lot, too much, when I choose academic, and the excessive honors always disturb the psychic balance of every moderately reflective man, ”he has heard from the deep and envelope of sacristan, dressed fully black.

What did the outdated instructor imply? Álvarez de Miranda recalled in his article that the opposite candidate for the educational chair, Alcalá-Zamora, had a minimum of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, the dictator who dominated the nation since 1923 and “very much to interfere in the life of the corporation.” So the coup president He urged to lecturers to decide on a author and never a politician. “There is the existence of letters to academics threatening them,” says Muñoz Machado.

On the day of the vote the creator of Loneliness He gained by 16 votes in opposition to eight. Álvarez de Miranda mentioned that when Unamuno congratulated the poet, he mentioned: “It is an honor to which I never aspired […]. But God gives a handkerchief to whom he has no noses. ”

The director of the SAR factors out the speculation that maybe Machado “felt self-conscious about that political support for his candidacy and did not run in the presentation of his speech, so that Alcalá-Zamora could also be elected,” because it occurred shortly earlier than he was appointed president of the Second Republic.

But returning to the speech, Machado traces in him an self -portrait of his proverbial modesty. “I don’t think I possess the specific skills of the academic. I am not a humanist, nor a philologist, nor scholarly. I am very lazy in Latin, because it made me hate a bad teacher. I studied the Greek with love, for eager to read Plato, but late and, perhaps because of that, with little use.” And I delved into his semblance: “Poor are my lyrics […]Well, although I have read a lot, my memory is weak and I have retained very little. If I studied anything more of philosophy than threat literature. ”

However, the circumstances compelled him to get to work: “You made me academic and I should not insist on the subject of my ineptitude to be. Something will be in me that at your diletion I recommend me. In addition, I accept the honor that you have conferred me as a loan that you generously grant me about my future work. To recognize this debt I come to your home, confident that, next to you, next to you. Sincere my will to pay it. ”

If Machado had this speech written in 1931, why did not he learn it? “The theatrical activity with his brother Manuel in Madrid is very intense since 1931. His joint works were very represented,” in line with Muñoz Machado. In addition, that 12 months the grouping on the service of the Republic was headed with different intellectuals. “It gets fully into the political maelstrom.” Shortly after, Machado is put in in Madrid “and the great cultural activity of the capital is eaten.”

To all that is added “that the world of academies was not very well seen by the Republic,” provides the director of the SAR. “With the arrival of the Popular Front [febrero de 1936]there is even a proposal to suppress them. This allows us to think that, for Machado, reading at that time a speech of admission to the SAR was not the most politically convenient. He did not enter the academy because he did not want. ”

What happened next is known history: the failed military coup of July 18, 1936 degenerated into the Civil War. Given the situation in Madrid, Machado left for Valencia in November of that year, then to Barcelona and finally into exile in France, at the end of January 1939. Until his death in Collioure, on February 22 of that year.

What is poetry? He had wondered crushed eight years before. “Without the examination of conscience that the act of introducing myself to you forces me, poetry wouldn’t have been for me a subject of reflection. With the exception of some poets, the attractive letters by no means passionate to me,” I confessed. “I need to inform you extra: I’m not very delicate to the primers of the shape, to the neatness and polidity of the language, and every part in literature shouldn’t be advisable by its content material.”

Thus he approached the heart of the matter. “The effectively -said seduces me solely when it says one thing attention-grabbing, and the written phrase fatigue me when it doesn’t remind me of the spontaneity of the spoken phrase.” The writer who sounded well in his ear was not interested if he was not accompanied by philosophical depth and the breath of the human being. “I really like nature, and artwork solely when it presents or evokes it, and I didn’t at all times discover magnificence the place it actually is guided.”

In his exegesis about poetry, Machado did not hesitate to point out some voices that did not attract him: “When we read a poet of our day – let’s remember Paúl Valéry among the French, Jorge Guillén among the Spaniards – we look in his work in his work in affirming it […]”.

As Machado could not read his speech, nobody could answer him for the SAR. This afternoon he wanted to close that circle with the replica that could have pronounced one of his worthwhileness, Azorín. It has been with a text prepared by Muñoz Machado based on a comment by the novelist about Campos de Castillaand that the playwright and academic Juan Mayorga has read with an emotional final: “Welcome, Antonio, to which it was at all times and shall be your private home.”

Finally, former government president Alfonso Guerra has talked about the exhibition The Machado. Family portraitwhich hosts from Wednesday the RAE, until June 29, which could already be seen in Seville, and of which he is commissioner: “It is an exhibition of two nice poets, not of an ideal poet and one other minor.”