McGrady, Donald. “Two Unknown Poems by José Asunción Silva.” MLN 81, no. 2 (March 1966): 233-37.

[In the following essay, McGrady reviews two previously undiscovered poems by Silva, first printed in the Bogotá newspaper Gil Blas upon the sixteenth anniversary of Silva's death.]

The works of José Asunción Silva are only partially and imperfectly known. Silva published a small portion of his total production during his lifetime, and most of his extant poems were published posthumously by friends or descendants. These friends and relatives did not always respect the poet's work, but frequently retouched those passages that they considered unsuitable. Sometimes the changes reflect the prudery of the self-appointed censor;¹ in other cases the editor merely seems to have preferred a different word, occasionally introducing another grammatical form.² Furthermore, according to one critic,³ some poems were reconstructed by those who had been present at the readings Silva held for his intimate friends. The result is that there are variants in even Silva's best-known poems, and his work consequently has the air of traditional poetry.⁴

An undetermined part of Silva's work is still buried in periodicals and private archives. An indication of this is my recent discovery of two unknown poems by Silva, entitled “Resurrexit” and “Necedad yanqui.” These poems are found in a Bogotá newspaper: Gil Blas, Año III, No. 247 (May 24, 1912). Unlike its French namesake, this Gil Blas did not usually devote much space to literary matters. However, the issue of May 24, 1912 was dedicated in its entirety to the commemoration of the sixteenth anniversary of Silva's death. Ten poems by Silva, eight of them unpublished, were given the place of honor. The issue also contained articles on Silva by several of his closest admirers: Pedro Emilio Coll, Emilio Cuervo Márquez, Clímaco Soto Borda, Daniel Arias Argáez and Tomás Palacio Uribe.

The poems published in Gil Blas are: “Paseo,” “El recluta,” “Avant-propos,” “Egalité,” “Resurrexit,” “Idilio,” “Madrigal,” “Necedad yanqui,” “Psicoterapéutica,” and “Zoospermos.” Of these poems, only “El recluta” and “Avant-propos” had been previously published. Today, all except “Paseo,” “Resurrexit” and “Necedad yanqui” are well known. “Paseo,” which is easily the most mediocre poem of Silva that has been printed, was recently republished by Daniel Arias Argáez⁵ and will not be considered here.

With the exceptions of “Paseo” and “El recluta,” all the poems published in Gil Blas belong to the vitriolic Gotas amargas, the collection in which Silva gave expression to his skepticism and misanthropy. During his lifetime, Silva refused to publish the collection.⁶ This made it possible for his censors to suppress offensive Gotas amargas, or so they thought. However, when the first edition of Silva's poems was published,⁷ there were many protests against the mutilation of the poet's work. Guillermo Valencia's reaction was typical: “(… El mismo sentimiento zalamero e hipócrita que así fue osado a poner mano sacrílega en los escritos del poeta, ha suprimido la mayor parte de Gotas amargas. De éstas echamos menos: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité; El conocido sabio Cornelius; Al través de los libros amó siempre; Omne animal; Cápsulas; Es en el siglo XXIV).”⁸ The editor of Gil Blas, B. Palacio Uribe, may have had Valencia's protest in mind, for the memorial number is primarily an attempt to make known suppressed Gotas amargas.

Let us now turn our attention to the unknown poems. The text of “Resurrexit” is as follows:

“RESURREXIT”

          Para qué arrepentirnos, si es bastante
a purgar nuestro mísero pecado
el doliente recuerdo de un pasado
cada vez más cercano y más distante;
          Si no hemos de encontrar más adelante
todo lo que nos hubo conturbado,
ni las bocas que ya nos han besado
ni el loco amor ni la caricia amante,
          Ríe y no te arrepientas, que mañana
nuestras dos almas solas irán juntas
a explorar los misterios del Nirvana. …
          Mientras que Magdalena, la divina,
entre el coro de vírgenes difuntas
hace un triste papel de celestina.

(Gil Blas, No. 247; no pagination)

“Resurrexit” is the most sacrilegious poem by Silva that has been preserved. Its title seems to be a contumelious reference to Christ's resurrection, as contained in the Scriptures and the Creed. The theme is “Let us love today, for tomorrow we die and everything ends.” This hedonistic philosophy is the result of Silva's morbid preoccupation with death and the afterlife.⁹ Several of the Gotas amargas reflect the pessimistic conclusions at which Silva arrived concerning the hereafter. However, no other poem is so bitter as “Resurrexit,” which lashes out spitefully at the beliefs held by Christians. The call for non-repentance and the ill-humored scoffing at Christian doctrine are reminiscent of Nietzsche, who exercised a decisive influence on Silva.¹⁰ The basic themes of “Resurrexit”—preoccupation with death, disbelief in a hereafter, refuge in riotous love—are all found in “Filosofías,” another Gota amarga. “Filosofías” also shares with “Resurrexit” a reference to the Buddhist nirvana, a word that does not appear elsewhere in Silva's poetry. The similarity of themes and the new interest in nirvana probably indicate that “Resurrexit” and “Filosofías” were written within a short time of each other.¹¹

“Necedad yanqui” appears in Gil Blas as follows:

“NECEDAD YANQUI”¹²

          En Nueva York. Cenando con William W. Breakhart,
comisionista yanqui de fortuna notoria,
y que, según los cálculos de gente respetable,
no baja de 350,000 dollars,
le oí decir las frases siguientes, que atribuyo
a embriaguez producida por quince o veinte copas:
          “¿Amigos suyos? Perfectly. Yo nunca tiene amigos.
¿Usted cree en esto? Ensáya. Está usted en Europa,
préstales por servicio your francs if you are in Paris
your pounds if you are in London if in Spain your onzas
well. … il amigo suyo es muy agradecido;
usted es very plased. … Entonces il es desagradado
I d'ont pay a usted nada. … y no es su amigo ahora
o bien el paga todo. … and that's is very silly
yo no es su buen amigo y dice usted le roba …”
          Yo he atribuído siempre aquel discurso estúpido
a embriaguez producida por quince o veinte copas

(Gil Blas, No. 247).

“Necedad yanqui” is a protest against materialism. It seems reasonable to assume that Silva wrote this poem during the period in which he was struggling desperately to re-establish the family fortune. After his bankruptcy of 1894, Silva was ever looking for a scheme to get rich quick. His repeated failures no doubt made him envious of successful entrepreneurs. Therefore “Necedad yanqui” is probably not a reflection of antipathy toward the United States, but a sour-grapes attitude toward the symbol of commercial success, the enterprising and well-heeled Yankee.¹³ Silva ridicules the antisocial Mr. “Breakhart” by making him speak fractured Spanish, and by his intemperance.¹⁴ Presumably, the mistakes in Mr. Breakhart's English are not intentional; it is impossible to say whether they are to be attributed to Silva or to the typesetter. The rhyme and the uneven number of lines indicate that a verse is missing after line eleven.

“Resurrexit” and “Necedad yanqui” give us additional insight into the poetic work of José Asunción Silva. Further investigation in Colombian periodicals and archives will undoubtedly yield other poems. Silva's genius cannot be definitely evaluated until all his extant work is brought to light.

Notes

1. The most famous example is that of the “Nocturno I” (also called “Ronda” or “Poeta, di paso”). Roberto Suárez, a friend of Silva who had the manuscript, introduced several prudish changes in the version he published in Repertorio Colombiano, XVII (1898), p. 358: “severo retrete” for “señorial alcoba” (or “nupical alcoba,” according to other versions), and “rendida tú a mis súplicas” for “desnuda tú en mis brazos.” Many subsequent editions reproduced these versions.

2. Numerous examples can be found by comparing almost any two editions of Silva's poetry. An example of a different grammatical form is the substitution of “zapatitos” for the typically Colombian “zapaticos” in “Crepúsculo.”

3. Baldomero Sanín Cano, note 5 in his edition of Silva's poetry (Paris, Buenos Aires: L.-Michaud, 1923?), reproduced in the Aguilar edition (Madrid, 1952), pp. 196-197.

4. On occasion, poems have been mistakenly attributed to Silva. See Daniel Arias Argáez, Bolívar, No. 5 (November-December, 1951), pp. 943 and 962.

5. Ibid., pp. 942-943. Arias Argáez publishes other unknown poems by Silva on pp. 942, 946, 949 and 950. These poems have not been included in later editions of Silva's verse.

6. Roberto Liévano, En torno a Silva (Bogotá, 1946), pp. 30-31.

7. Poesías (Barcelona: Imprenta de Pedro Ortega, 1908).

8. Bolívar, No. 4 (October, 1951), p. 620. Most of these omitted Gotas amargas appeared in subsequent editions, but under different titles than the ones Valencia gives, which are usually the first lines; only “Cápsulas” remains the same. “Omne animal” is still lost, as is another Gota mentioned by Sanín Cano (Aguilar ed., pp. 196-197). Valencia's punctuation, if it is faithfully reproduced here, indicates that “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” is one title; but according to Liévano (p. 25), “Liberté” and “Fraternité” are different poems that have been lost. The fact that there is a known Gota amarga called “Egalité” supports Liévano's statement. Other poems by Silva have appeared under different titles: those called “Juntos los dos,” “Poeta, di paso” and “Nocturno” in the Aguilar ed. are “Risa y llanto,” “Ronda” and “¡Oh dulce niña pálida!” (or “Dime”) in earlier editions. This confusion would seem to indicate that Silva, like his admired Baudelaire, left many poems without titles, and that these were later supplied by editors.

9. Silva's obsession with death and the hereafter is evident even in his earliest poems—for example, in “Crisálidas,” written when he was only fifteen.

10. See Rafael Maya, introduction to Silva's Obra completa, 2nd ed., Biblioteca de Autores Colombianos, No. 99 (Bogotá, 1956), p. 16. Looking in the other direction—not of Silva's sources, but of his possible influences—we find an affinity of “Resurrexit” with the novel María Magdalena (Barcelona, 1917), by José María Vargas Vila, the enfant terrible of Colombian literature. Silva's Magdalene follows his advice of “no te arrepientas” and reverts to her former immoral life, now acting as go-between among dead virgins; Vargas Vila's Magdalene goes a step farther and revels with a depraved Christ.

11. The word “nirvana” occurs twice in Silva's autobiographical novel De sobremesa [Bogotá, 1925], pp. 243 and 356 of the cited Obra completa ed. Since the themes of death, disbelief and refuge in mercenary love are also present in De sobremesa, it would seem reasonable to conjecture that Silva wrote the poems at more or less the same time as the novel. Silva reconstructed De sobremesa shortly before his death, after the original manuscript was lost in the shipwreck of the Amérique (1895).

12. I reproduce this poem exactly as it appears in Gil Blas, without correcting spelling or supplying missing punctuation.

13. I have found no evidence of anti-American feeling in Silva's other works. On the contrary, José Fernández—Silva's alter ego, the hero of De sobremesa—expresses admiration for American enterprise: “… mientras me consagro en alma y cuerpo a recorrer los Estados Unidos, a estudiar el engranaje de la civilización norteamericana, a indagar los porqués del desarrollo fabuloso de aquella tierra de la energía y a ver qué puede aprovecharse, como lección, para ensayarlo luego, en mi experiencia” (p. 244). Also see pp. 200 and 229.

14. There are also a couple of hard-drinking Yankees in De sobremesa, p. 271.