SOURCE: Roberts, Jack. “Life and Death in the Poetry of José Asunción Silva.” The Southern Quarterly 10, no. 2 (January 1972): 137-65.

[In the following essay, Roberts examines the pessimism and sense of futility that characterized Silva's life and work, pointing to the influence of Comte and Schopenhauer on his poetry.]

When any man takes his life, it is a tragic event, but if that man happens to be a promising literary figure, the public seems particularly shocked, and, doubtless, many wonder what could have compelled him to such a choice. José Asunción Silva is usually considered the most pessimistic of the modernists. There is within his work a deep melancholy, a sense of helplessness, a lack of purpose, a feeling of anxiety and desperation unequalled in modernist poetry. A suicide at the age of thirty, Silva apparently either could not cope with his particular circumstances in life or he did not think life worthy of being prolonged.

Possessor of an extreme sensitivity from earliest childhood, Silva exhibited a search for knowledge, faith, and purpose that evaded him constantly during his short life. Added to this inherent sensitivity and quest for purpose were disastrous personal blows such as his failure in the business world, the death of several members of his family, and the loss of some manuscripts which Silva felt certain would bring him the recognition he so ardently pursued.

In the reactionary clime of Bogotá, José Asunción could not feel free to discuss new philosophies or to satisfy his voracious appetite for knowledge. Groping for a certainty to which to cling, he became entangled in various philosophical systems, especially those of positivism and of Arthur Schopenhauer. Silva could see no hope wherever he turned, and this desperation is expressed in his poetry. He could never reconcile intellect with religion. In complete agreement with Schopenhauer concerning the vanity of existence, he took his life May 25, 1896.

The poet's mind, personality, and education were such that, compounded with other circumstances, they instilled in him a sense of futility that ultimately terminated in suicide. José Asunción Silva was surely not the only man to be faced with such devastating obstacles to happiness, but he chose to commit suicide rather than combat a life filled with disappointments. What, then, in more specific terms, were those forces that determined his destiny? His poems, though few in number, give us reflections of his anguished soul, and it is there we shall turn ultimately to analyze the course and depth of his despair. The answer to why he chose as he did and why his poems manifest an increasing obsession with death is complex and must be examined in several stages. I have divided these into: (1) background and temperament; (2) positivism; (3) Schopenhauer; (4) early poems; (5) the forgotten dead; and (6) “El mal del siglo.”

Since there can be no adequate comprehension of Silva's spiritual life as mirrored in his poetry without a previous knowledge of the external circumstances, let us consider the first stage.

I BACKGROUND AND TEMPERAMENT

José Asunción Silva was born the twenty-seventh of November, 1865, in Bogotá, Colombia, the oldest of six brothers and sisters. His father, don Ricardo, was an importer, a model of community life, and a costumbrista essayist of some repute, at least in Bogotá. Don Ricardo has been described as “un tipo de caballero perfecto,” and seems to have had a charm in conversation and an acute power of observation which he passed on to José Asunción. From his mother, doña Vicenta Gómez, Silva inherited his physical attractiveness. Silva's parents were patrons of the arts and their home was a gathering place for prominent literary figures of the day. Jorge Isaacs and Rafael Pombo were frequent guests and doubtless influenced young José to demonstrate a penchant for literature, and especially for poetry, at a precocious age.

Besides being patrons of the arts, Silva's parents were at least moderately wealthy. This is one of the primary factors of Silva's youth that we must keep in mind. He did not want for anything. He grew in a carefree atmosphere, not burdened by the rigors of poverty; and more important, he became accustomed to wealth as the earliest way of life he could remember. The significance of this would be apparent later after the family lost its fortune; it would leave a bitterness in Silva that accompanies the major portion of his poetry.

Silva was reserved and taciturn by nature and some of his schoolmates, noting his fine clothes and delicate handsomeness, misinterpreted his aloofness as haughtiness and snobbery. While other children participated in the customary juvenile games, Silva sat amidst the luxury of his perfumed room and read or meditated. Arias Argáez, an intimate friend of the poet, relates how Silva stimulated the jealousy of his comrades even at the tender age of twelve by wearing his imported European suits:

… sus zapatillas de charol, sus flotantes corbatas de raso, su reloj pendiente de bellísima leontina de oro y, sobre todo (detalle único entre los niños de esos tiempos) su cartera de marfil, en la cual guardaba tarjetas de visita litografiadas, que, bajo cubiertas de fino papel timbrado, enviaba en los días de cumpleaños a los amigos de su casa.¹

It is true that Silva did not mix with the common people, but after all he was of the aristocracy by birth, and Bogotá at that time maintained a strict division of social strata: the refined class of transplanted Spaniards, and “la gran masa ignara,” composed of mestizos and Indians. Since Silva was reflective and literarily inclined, it was most probably the natural bent of his personality that prevented his mingling freely rather than a deliberate attempt to be antisocial. Throughout his entire life Silva had only a very few intimate friends in whom he confided and to whom he made known his poetry. Thus he early manifested a tendency toward isolation and introspection that would characterize his most pessimistic poems.

The atmosphere of Bogotá itself cannot be left unmentioned, for in a general way it too influenced Silva. Carlos García-Prada describes Bogotá in this period as a “ciudad en busca de sí misma y de su americanidad;”² as a place where the ancestral mansions contained perfumed parlors that bubbled with scintillating ladies and dashing gentlemen engaged in lively conversation or dance:

Eran los cachacos santafereños, jóvenes y viejos distinguidos que vestían de negro siempre y según las últimas modas de Londres y de París; que charlaban por lucir el implacable estilete de su gracia, y montaban a caballo, iban a pelear en las guerras civiles, sembraban café en sus haciendas de tierra caliente, componían endechas y epigramas, cultivaban la delicadeza—forma suprema del honor—y llevaban una flor en el ojal y en el bolsillo una pistola de dos tiros cuando iban a ver a las damas de su preferencia, mujercitas adorables que en los bailes guardaban el compás de la música con abanicos de plumas de avestruz y se acariciaban los bucles rizados del cabello con sus dedos perfumados, y que todos los domingos sin falta concurrían a misa mayor envueltas en sus mantillas negras de moaré o de crespón, y sonreían al salir ante la lluvia de flores y piropos que a su paso derramaban sus galanes.³

From such an account it is evident that everything in Silva's life was directed toward refinement, tactfulness, and subtlety of thought and expression. But it should also be remembered that the elite were in the minority and among such a diminished number almost everyone would have more than a superficial knowledge of what all the rest were doing. This created many tensions and volatile situations and made José acutely conscious of what was expected of him. Silva himself best explained the society of Bogotá in an interview he granted in Paris to a Czech ethnographer:

… Todo el mundo conoce a todo el mundo. Las preocupaciones principales son la religión, las flaquezas del prójimo y la llegada del correo de Europa … Los nervios en ese aire seco, rarificado, de una misma temperatura durante el año, están en tensión constante. Para hacerse usted agradable en una sociedad en que todo el mundo conoce a todo el mundo, es necesario que se documente sobre las menudas preocupaciones del prójimo … Cada uno de nosotros cree estar en posesión de la verdad. Hablamos en voz alta, con cierta precipitación, golpeando los adjectivos y gesticulando copiosamente. La contradicción nos mortifica. Hemos querido hacer el mundo a nuestra imagen y semejanza, y cuando sorprendemos entre él y nosotros pequeñas diferencias, reaccionamos violentamente.⁴

Such was the tension under which Silva daily lived.

The education of this poet is of primary importance, for he could never satisfy his desire to learn. His earliest lessons were administered in the home. Later he was enrolled in the school directed by don Luis M. Cuervo, and then in another managed by Ricardo Carrasquilla. His earnestness in study sometimes provoked the anger of his classmates, who generally considered him a prideful boy. At the age of sixteen Silva left school to aid his father in the business. Though the store took up most of his time during the day, he reserved the nights for reading, an avocation of which he never tired. José had an amazing capacity for assimilation; he taught himself languages, read philosophy, science, history, and psychology. He seemed to be trying to absorb the whole of all fields of knowledge. This avid search for knowledge and especially for truth would be a recurrent theme in his poetry.

In 1885 the youth received what in his opinion was the opportunity of a lifetime—to visit Paris. His great uncle, Antonio María Silva, had invited him; José was elated at the prospect of meeting some of the authors whose works he knew. In his two short years in Paris the writings of Verlaine, Mallarmé, and particularly Baudelaire had a profound effect on his literary taste. This period in Europe was also the era of advances in the sciences, of conflict between science and religion. The positivistic doctrine of Comte was widely propagated, as were the philosophies of Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. In varying degrees all these influences came to bear upon Silva; the pessimism of Schopenhauer would be noticeably evident in the Colombian's writing.

While José gloried in the literary clime of Paris, civil war erupted in Colombia. Bogotá was practically incommunicado for some time. The government eventually triumphed, but the badly depleted gold supply necessitated the issuance of paper money which did not have the people's confidence. Don Ricardo's trade was ruined. José cut short his happy sojourn and returned to try to keep the bill collectors from forcing his father into bankruptcy.

In 1887 José suffered a serious jolt with the world of reality—he was never to recover from it. His father died and he was left head of the household. This twenty-two year old, extremely sensitive young man was now the head of a business to which he was suited neither by inclination nor talent. But he was head of the family now, and he tried to preserve its good name and to pacify the creditors.

For seven years Silva tried to pay off his father's debts, but they were too many and he lacked business sense. He filled the store with imported rugs and exotic items which doubtless appealed to him but were quite expensive and difficult to sell. In an effort to raise more money he accepted the position of secretary of the Colombian Legation in Caracas. During the years of his failures in commerce and his brief stay in Caracas, Silva wrote his most bitter and introspective work.

Before discussing events subsequent to his departure from Caracas, one other chief point should be emphasized regarding his family. Of his five brothers and sisters, three died in infancy. His favorite sister, Elvira, died in the bloom of youth in January of 1892. Her death more than that of the others affected Silva and was responsible for the beautiful “Nocturno III,” for which he is best known.

With the hope of being named minister plenipotentiary to Caracas, José returned to Bogotá on the Amérique in 1895. Not far off the Colombian coast the ship was caught in a tempest that lasted three days. Most of the survivors considered themselves lucky to be alive. But Silva could think only of the manuscripts he had lost—Cuentos negros, Las almas muertas, Los poemas de la carne, De sobremesa—work which he had believed would bring him the recognition he so fervently desired. It seemed that each goal for which he strove existed only to augment his suffering.

There was yet a glimmer of hope, a spark of light. In Caracas he had made plans for a cement and tile factory. Through his persuasiveness he borrowed the capital and built the factory. He was sure this would be the plan that would make millions. But this too failed; no fewer than fifty-two suits were brought against him. Silva now began to fear for his health. He suffered from insomnia, almost certainly aggravated by thoughts of his unrealized ideals.

Though outwardly unchanged, the poet had become completely disenchanted with life. He paid a visit to Doctor Juan Evangelista Manrique on the twenty-fourth of May, 1896. Manrique relates that Silva was curious about the exact location of the heart and had him trace it on José's shirt. That night there was a gathering of ten close friends at the Silva home. They chatted amiably; no one observed any difference in Silva's behavior. The next morning they found him dead in his bed, with a bullet in his heart.

So ended the life of this man whose share of adversity seems almost incredible. We have already seen how frequent and great his disappointments were—these give us clues to many themes in his poems. But before we consider the poems themselves, there remain to be discussed two major influences on Silva's life, for without them we cannot truly appreciate the inspiration for much of his writing: positivism and Arthur Schopenhauer.

II POSITIVISM

In the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century the world witnessed grave conflicts between science and religion. Numerous philosophers were advocating systems that dispensed with God as an explanation of the universe. Men such as Comte, Spencer, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Darwin stated that God was no longer essential, and, in some cases, that He was a ridiculous explanation for life. Doubtlessly, Origin of the Species in 1859 created more dissension and bewilderment among the followers of Christianity than any other book in the last half of the century. The story of the creation had been repudiated. Science and philosophy were exterminating God. In what would men place their faith? Many would cling tenaciously to their Christianity; some would seek other answers. One of those answers was positivism.

The term positivism in a broad sense may be applied to any philosophical system that confines itself to empirical, observable data, and excludes a priori and metaphysical speculations. In this respect the philosophers Locke and Hume belong, in varying degrees, to this classification.

In a narrow sense, the one with which we are primarily concerned, positivism refers to that philosophy devised and systematized by the Frenchman Auguste Comte in the first half of the nineteenth century. The purpose of Comte's philosophy was to explain both the existing social organizations and to guide social planning for a better future. Comte's basic theory was the “Law of the Three States.” This was the law of the evolutionary progress of man's reasoning power. Human thought, said Comte, had passed through two stages, theological and metaphysical, and was now entering the positive or scientific stage. During the theological or supernatural stage, man had explained phenomena as being the acts of the gods. In the metaphysical period, these super-human agents were depersonalized and regarded as abstract forces or powers. In the positive or scientific era, the belief in powers and agents was to be discarded and pure description of observable data would represent true knowledge. As an example of this we might consider possible explanations for gravitation: (1) In the theological state men would say that divine beings moved the planets. (2) The metaphysical state would attribute gravitation to an abstract force or power of attraction and repulsion. (3) In the positive state the solution would be a simple mathematical formula on the basis of which predictions could be made, the terms of which mass and distance, are calculable from direct observation.

Comte further held that each science passed through the three evolutionary states. Sociology, which he named, arose because of practical politics. The Frenchman believed that the origin of all sciences was man's attempt to manipulate the world about him to his practical ends. Francis Bacon, Nicholas de Malebranche, and Jacques Turgot had all exhibited positivistic tendencies, but no one until Comte had systematized the thought and applied it to the history of each science. From the abbé of Saint-Pierre, Montesquieu, and Saint Simon he appropriated the concept of a need for a basic and unifying social science to explain existing social structures and devise improved ones.

Comte recognized that the religious impulse would survive the decay of revealed religion and should have an object of worship. He proposed humanity as this object. He could see the desirability of a religious framework, but he wanted the worship to be of a secular nature—reason and humanity instead of God. The Frenchman believed that the organization of the Catholic Church, divorced from its supernaturalism, might be a good model for the positivistic society. He went so far as to create a calendar, a hierarchy, and a catechism for the worship of the “Great Being,” humanity.

These are the basic tenets of the positivist philosophy. The key factor to be born in mind is that this system rejected theological and metaphysical speculations. It considered essences and causes as inaccessible and dealt with effects and relationships. Upon these grounds, the positivistic philosophy failed to satisfy Silva; for, as we shall see, in his bitterest poetry he was concerned with questions that could not be answered by empirical and observable data.

III ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

In one of his poems Silva has a character say that he suffers from “… el mal del siglo … el mismo mal de Werther, de Rolla, de Manfredo, y de Leopardi. Un cansancio de todo, un absoluto desprecio por lo humano … un incasante renegar de lo vil de la existencia …”⁵ This was the illness that weighed upon the poet's mind. Life had become unbearable, detestable. The poem quoted is one of a bitter series through which runs a philosophy of pessimism and a desire for death. Although the Colombian mentions several philosophers, Schopenhauer is the only one whom he calls “mi maestro.” For this reason and because the German philosopher's special brand of pessimism is particularly akin to Silva's thinking, he is singled out here as worthy of individual study.

Besides Schopenhauer's innate pessimism, the levity with which his work was greeted when it first appeared guided him toward an even darker outlook on life. As a young professor in Berlin, he had to struggle against the cult of Hegel so steadfastly imbedded in German thinking in the first half of the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer was, to a degree, an admirer of Kant and of the English empiricists Hume and Locke. He adhered to the principle that metaphysical theories that professed to describe the nature of the world a priori and without reference to observed data were paths in the woods leading to nowhere.

The basis of Schopenhauer's philosophy is the will. Will is the concept in terms of which all that exists and manifests itself in the world can finally be made known. This will attains consciousness only in the existence of the individual, and man's overt behavior expresses his will. In Schopenhauer's opinion man possessed an unchangeable will or nature which did not permit him to make free choices. A man knew what he was from the expression of his will in overt acts. He could not choose to be this or that—he simply was. The metaphysical will was blind, without conscious purpose or direction; therefore, people merely deceived themselves into believing that they acted upon the dictates of reason. The intellect's only function was to aid the will in achieving its goals.

Schopenhauer pictured life as one long uphill battle that contains only temporary satisfactions. If existence had any intrinsic, positive value, he reasoned, we should be content simply to exist. But we are happy only while we are chasing something our will desires. If we obtain it, we fall into a state of boredom until the will stimulates us to some new hunt:

Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all; mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; …⁶

The German philosopher felt that unless suffering was the direct and immediate object of life, that our existence fell entirely short of its aim. It was absurd, he said, to look upon the enormous amount of pain in the world and think that it existed solely by chance and with no purpose. He concluded that work, worry, and trouble form the lot of most men their entire lives. The only consolation he could find was that if there were no obstacles to overcome, man, in his leisure time, would inflict more misery upon his neighbor than they both already endured at the hands of nature. He describes life as an “… unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.”⁷ Bitterly he states that “… the longer you live the more clearly you will feel that, on the whole, life is a disappointment, nay, a cheat.”⁸

What, for Schopenhauer, was the value of the Christian religion? Was this the best of all possible worlds? Had a God purposefully created this world?:

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be. These things cannot be reconciled with any such belief. On the contrary, they are just the facts which support what I have been saying; they are our authority for viewing the world as the outcome of our own misdeeds, and therefore, as something that had better not have been. Whilst, under the former hypothesis, they amount to a bitter accusation against the Creator, and supply material for sarcasm; under the latter they form an indictment against our own nature, our own will, and teach us a lesson of humility. They lead us to see that, like the children of a libertine, we come into the world with the burden of sin upon us; and that it is only through having continually to atone for this sin that our existence is so miserable, and that its end is death.⁹

With such views it is interesting to note that Schopenhauer did not advocate suicide as the solution to boring, painful life. However, he did not condemn suicide on moral grounds. Lashing out against the Christian religion, he states that nowhere in either the Old or New Testaments is there any prohibition or positive disapproval of suicide. Religious teachers, in his opinion, simply fabricated a condemnation of this act and declared it morally wrong. Schopenhauer believed that monotheistic religions denounced suicide to escape being denounced by it, because a person's voluntarily surrendering his life would be a bad compliment for Him who said that “all things were very good.”¹⁰ He then points out the fact that the ancients entertained quite a different view toward suicide. To support his point, he quotes Pliny, Seneca, and several other Stoics. Convinced that there was no greater right that a man should have than to his own life and person, he concludes that suicide is not wrong morally.

But Schopenhauer considered suicide as a substitute escape from life. True moral freedom—the highest ethical goal—was to be achieved by the denial of the will to live, the fleeing from pleasures of this life. Now if a man committed suicide, he was, according to Schopenhauer, asserting the will to live if he could do so with satisfaction. When he destroys his existence, he is escaping the painful circumstances of his life, rather than denying his will to live. The German philosopher believed that few men would not end their lives at an early age if the act constituted a purely negative character, a stoppage of existence. But there is a positive aspect involved. It is the destruction of the body, and since the body is the manifestation of the will to live, men shrink from this act.

Thus, in Schopenhauer's eyes, suicide, though not a crime, was a “clumsy experiment.”¹¹ In killing himself, a man was asking what change death would produce in his existence, but at the same time he was destroying the body, which was the manifestation of the consciousness that asked the question and awaited the reply.

I have tried to present the fundamental parts of Schopenhauer's philosophy which I believe exercised the strongest influence upon Silva. We shall see that the poet came to agree almost wholeheartedly with the philosopher. The main discrepancy, obviously, is the choice Silva made concerning suicide.

Now that we have the proper tools and insight with which to penetrate and appreciate Silva's work, we may make a more rewarding study of his poetry and observe in it the fatal trajectory traced by his mind and soul in his hopeless struggle with life—and his obsession with death.

IV EARLY POEMS

Memories of childhood were always a chief theme for the poet, for those were his happiest days. He had not yet encountered the harsh reality that was to buffet him mercilessly. In Los maderos de San Juan the chief themes are the cycle of life and the ubi sunt motif:

Mañana, cuando duerma la anciana, yerta y muda,
Lejos del mundo vivo, bajo la oscura tierra,
Donde otros, en la sombra, desde hace tiempo están
Del nieto a la memoria, con grave son que encierra
Todo el poema triste de la remota infancia
Cruzando por las sombras del tiempo y la distancia
De aquella voz querida las notas vibrarán! …(12)

Balancing her grandchild on her knee in the midst of joyful play, the grandmother has a premonition or fear of what pain and sorrow the future may hold for the infant. From the description she herself is well acquainted with grief; her eyes are tarnished mirrors that once reflected things and beings never to return. Tomorrow, when his grandmother is dead, the child will recall with great melancholy these times. This poem could well be taken as a parallel to Silva's life. There was nothing to mar his youth, but later events made him look back to those years with an often repeated ubi sunt upon his lips. Deep melancholy is present but true pessimism has not yet appeared.

A further development of the ubi sunt motif, plus a new element, is evident in Los muertos:

Y en las almas amantes cuando piensen
En perdidos afectos y ternuras
Que de la soledad de ignotos días
No vendrán a endulzar horas futuras
Hay el hondo cansancio que en la lucha,
Acaba de matar a los heridos,
Vago como el color del bosque mustio
Como el color de los perfumes idos,
          Y el cansancio aquel es triste
          Como el recuerdo borroso
          De lo que fué y ya no existe …(13)

The new element is his changing view of death; the fatalistic mentality is now beginning to germinate. Death is pictured here as that which terminates. Silva seems to have a greater awareness of death in this poem. In Los maderos de San Juan the child remembers his grandmother and joyful youth; he can still hear her voice recounting tales to him. There is not the finality, the break with the past expressed in the refrain “De lo que fué y ya no existe.” The view of death in Muertos does not contain the consolation present in Los maderos. In Muertos the memory of things past is not a comfort but a profound weariness that finishes killing the wounded. There was much in Silva's life that had been and ceased to be: his wealth, some of his loved ones, his dreams of fame. The poet's constant reflection upon this theme eventually proved fatal.

Even when he turned his thoughts to artistic endeavors, Silva could not rid himself of this enchantment with death. In Un poema he tells us that he dreamed of forging a poem. What would be the mood of this poem? “Un asunto grotesco y otro trágico.” And the subject matter:

Era la historia triste, desprestigiada y cierta
De una mujer hermosa, idolatrada y muerta, …
Le mostré mi poema a un crítico estupendo …
Y los leyó seis veces y me dijo … ¡No entiendo!(14)

He chose the history of a dead woman. That his readers might feel the bitterness of her life he joined sweet syllables and created vague suggestions of mystic sentiments and human temptations. Certain that his readers would enjoy this work, he presented it to a critic, who, after reading it six times, replied that he did not understand it. The critic's statement may be applied to the poet's life. Faced with overwhelming adversities and the inability to reconcile science and philosophy with religion, Silva reached the point where this thought dominated his mind: “No entiendo.” Just as the critic could not comprehend the story of the dead woman, few if any of Silva's friends understood him or the depth of his despair.

Silva would much rather have spent his time in pursuit of the ideal in art. But his father died, leaving him to assume responsibility for the business. An excellent parallel to the changes forced upon Silva by his father's death is the fate of the soldier in El recluta. This poem centers about a young man whose life was uncomplicated until war broke out:

sólo conoció dos órdenes
de detención y de cepo,
un planazo en las espaldas
y el modo de gritar: “Juego!”
hasta la tarde en que, herido
en el combate siniestro,
cayó, gritando: “Adios, mamá!”,
el pobre recluta muerto.(15)

This unfortunate recruit led a tranquil life until war came and forced its senselessness upon him. He did not know why he had to fight; he knew only how to take orders. Though not involved in a war, Silva had to adjust to a way of life not of his choosing. Instead of devoting himself wholeheartedly to reading and composing, he had to try to sell rugs and tapestries, a task for which he had no inclination. Both the soldier and the poet, in circumstances painfully incongruous with their true natures, were fighting battles from which neither could hope to emerge victorious. The recruit struggled along until a bullet ended his plight; Silva encountered one hardship after another until he voluntarily ended his life.

A new facet of this preoccupation with death is evidenced in Silva's thoughts on the deaths of certain friends and, in particular, of his sister, Elvira. As he watched those around him die, he became aware of a new emotion that death might evoke: angustia y frío. Death now assumes a more active role—the thief of something precious. The anguish caused by the loss of a loved one is no better expressed in Silva's poetry than in “Nocturno III,” inspired by the death of his sister Elvira, whom he loved intensely. She was undoubtedly a source of comfort to him in his economic difficulties and her loss left him quite bitter:

                                                                                          Esta noche
                                                                                          Solo, el alma
Llena de las infinitas amarguras y agonías de tu muerte
Separado de tí misma, por la sombra, por el tiempo y la
                                                                                          distancia,
                                                  Por el infinito negro,
                                                  Donde nuestra voz no alcanza,
                                                  Solo y mudo
                                                  Por la senda caminaba, …
                    Sentí frío, era el frío que tenían en la alcoba
                    Tus mejillas y tus sienes y tus manos adoradas,
                                                            Entre las blancuras níveas
                                                            De las mortuorias sábanas!
                    Era el frío del sepulcro, era el frío de la muerte,
                                                            Era el frío de la nada …
¡Oh las sombras que se buscan y se juntan en las noches de
                                                  negruras y de lágrimas! …(16)

The vocabulary he employs here gives us a profound insight into Silva's state of mind: infinitas, amarguras, agonías, frío, negruras, muerte, nada. The length of the lines here is particularly effective. As he introduces himself, alone, the verse is short (four or five syllables), perhaps indicative of his feeling of isolation and insignificance. When he begins to speak of Elvira and the barriers that separate them, the lines become almost disproportionately long—as if in telescoping the lines he tries to express both visually and poetically the great distance between them. The sense of separation, loneliness, and frustration is overwhelming. The contemplation of death, the infinite, and nothingness has indeed taken root; it will feed upon the poet's mind to bring forth a fatal blossom.

V THE FORGOTTEN DEAD

There are several moving poems in which Silva is concerned with how quickly the dead are forgotten by the living, whether they be merely friends or lovers. In these works he skillfully intertwines the themes of death, oblivion, the Nietzschean idea of Eternal Return, and a type of posthumous infidelity—as if the now deceased beloved could be hurt by his surviving mate's treachery. There are variations within the poems, but they all share one element in common: death.

With rare poetic insight he uses a window through which to view the passage of life in La ventana. This particular window was constructed in colonial times. Who, he asks, would not expect to see at this window some severe-looking old patriarch or a fair-complexioned, red-lipped lady from Andalucía? Does it retain visions of its past occupants?:

Inútil, allí, a solas
ella miró pasar generaciones
como pasan, con raudo movimiento,
sobre la playa las marinas olas, …
ly ora mira la turba de los niños
de risueñas mejillas sonrosadas,
que al asomar tras de la fuerte reja
sonriente semeja
un ramo de camelias encarnadas!
¡Ay todo pasará: niñez risueña,
juventud sonriente,
edad viril que en el futuro suena,
vejez llena de afán …
                              Tal vez mañana
cuando de aquellos queden sólo
las ignotas y viejas sepulturas,
aún tenga el mismo sitio la ventana.(17)

Even in children at play Silva can see only their ceasing to exist. In one glance his mind spans their days of childhood, maturity, old age, and death. They will occupy unknown graves; yet the window, “Inútil, allí, a solas,” will keep its same place to watch other generations pass and record no trace of them. By personifying the window through a type of stream-of-conscious process, Silva effectively employs Nietzsche's theme of Eternal Return. The joys and sorrows of countless generations appear different only to the casual observer—they represent a monotonous circle of constancy to the window. Notice also the complete lack of emotion, of even compassion, on the part of the window; it merely observes, never comments, never consoles. Perhaps the poet is suggesting that there is no appropriate comment—that life makes no sense. As he looks at the children's rosy cheeks, he is obsessed with the idea of the oblivion awaiting them. This line of thinking will lead to the question dominant in his most pessimistic poetry: What is the meaning of life?

Silva sought happiness in life in many forms: art, science, philosophy, love. A man of such upbringing and refinement as his was bound to be attractive to the ladies. Many of his earliest poems he wrote in diaries and albums of the girls he courted. Once when there was a small fire in the family store, José lamented the fact that his butterfly collection had been destroyed; the butterflies had been pinned to curtains—and each one was named for a girl he had wooed. Why did Silva not marry? It is quite plausible that he believed that outside the sexual facet of love there was no lasting bond between the partners. We know from his poetry that he saw examples of this around him, of both men and women who mourned briefly for their dead mates and then resumed the social circuit as though nothing had happened. To the mind of one as sensitive as he, the facility with which dead lovers were forgotten was a shock. Santiago Argüello has commented on the place love occupied in the poet's thinking:

El engañado de la vida, fué asimismo un equivocado del amor. Creyó que éste se bebe únicamente en la copa sexual; y como el fondo de esa copa se llama agotamiento; y como su licor se evapora como todo licor, y es finito y cambiante como todas las cosas que se hallan bajo el sexo, el poeta concluye en la negación total de ese divino dios del mundo y de los mundos.¹⁸

An ironic study of the fickleness of love is found in Luz de luna. Silva first presents us with the scene of two young lovers in a moonlit garden. The palpitating kisses upon their lips, the movements of their hands, the supreme joy each brings the other—surely they can never be happy separated from each other. Some months later the man dies. For about a year the girl mourns him, or at least she does not reveal the fact that she can ever love another. Then there is a party:

¡Oh girarde desnudas espaldas!
¡Oh cadencias del valse que mueve
Torbellino de tules y gasas!
Alli estuvo, más linda que nunca,
Por el baile tal vez agitada …(19)

More beautiful than ever she appears. In her backless gown she is as gay as anyone amidst the waltzes, odor of perfume, and bubbling champagne. She leans slightly on Silva's arm; they leave the dance and go to the spot where only a year before the moon had watched her and her lover embrace. Will not deep sadness sweep over her? Can she help but remember his hands, his words, his kisses? But not even a sigh comes to her breast, no tear in her eyes. She says only: “Que valses tan lindos!!Que noche tan clara!” With these trifling remarks Silva provides the ironic ending of the poem. He is at a loss to understand how the girl can fail to remember one with whom she shared such intimate moments. Was this love? Had her lover meant so little to her that she is incapable of being moved? So easily are the dead forgotten!

Without a doubt the most poignant and bitter of the poems dealing with the forgotten dead is Día de difuntos. In my opinion there is no more vivid, suggestive, or emotionally moving composition among Silva's works. With exquisite taste he chooses his words and creates an atmosphere to rival the best lines of Edgar Allan Poe. The day is opaque, the light vague. A steady rain wets the cold, deserted city. An unseen hand seems to hurl a veil of lethal melancholy that arouses unrest in the depths of each soul. Then through the gray mists of the shadowy atmosphere the bells are heard. They ring with sad, uncertain, languid accents that speak to the living of the dead. Suddenly there is an inharmonious note present. One bell is laughing, not crying:

                    Mas la campana que da la hora,
                    Ríe, no llora.
Tiene en su timbra seco sutiles ironías,
Su voz parece que habla de goces, de alegrías,
De placeres, de citas, de fiestas, y de bailes
Es una voz del siglo entre un coro de frailes,
                    Y con sus notas se ríe,
                    Escéptica y burladora,
                    De la campana que ruega,
                    De la campana que implora
                    Y de cuanto aquel coro conmemora,
                    Y es porque con su retintín
                    Ella midió el dolor humano
                    Y marcó del dolor el fin …(20)

The bell that marks time has no pity upon the dead. It has marked the end of their joy and of their grief. This bell speaks only to the living; it entices them away from morbid thoughts. It tells of dances and pleasures to be had, and it mocks the dead. Silva asks the commemorative bells not to listen to the skeptical one:

¡No la oigáis, campanas!
Contra lo imposible que puede el deseo?
La campana del reló
Suena, suena, suena ahora.
Y dice que ella marcó …
De los olvidos la hora …
En que con la languidez
Del luto huyó el pensamiento
Del muerto, y el sentimiento …
Seis meses tarde o diez …(21)

In six months all thought of and sentiment for the dead will have vanished. Amidst the chorus of bells the poet inserts a personal note: “Contra lo imposible que puede el deseo?” It seemed just as impossible for him to achieve what he desired as for that bell to cease measuring the end of life. Toward the end of the poem we find the recurrence of the forgotten lover:

Ella que ha marcado la hora en que el viudo
Habló de suicidio y pidió el arsénico, …
Y ha marcado luego la hora en que, mudo …
A la misma iglesia fué con otra novia …
Y sigue marcando con el mismo modo
La huída del tiempo que lo borra todo.
                    Y eso es lo angustioso y lo incierto,
                    Que flota en el sonido,
Esa es la nota irónica que vibra en el concierto
                    Que alzan los bronces al tocar a muerto
                    Por todos los que han sido …(22)

In this poem we see firmly established the eradication of existence and memory caused by death. Making excellent use of personification and contrast, Silva almost convinces us that the two groups of bells are people who look upon life from very different points of view: one urging the living to remember the dead; the other shouting its carpe diem philosophy, mindful only of the living. In a broader sense this is the ubi sunt motif again, but it has been expanded and treated from a most pessimistic approach: neither bell really has any meaning because the dead can hear none and the living will soon join them—after having experienced the same bitterness and disillusion as those who preceded them.

Already we have seen the poet's melancholy turn to pessimism and now it becomes bitterness. There remain to be discussed only the most agonizing problems and mal del siglo philosophy that will finally lead Silva to seek the oblivion of death.

VI EL MAL DEL SIGLO

Previously I have singled out tendencies and traits inherent in Silva which later were intensified by his study of positivism and Schopenhauer. We come now to that group of poems that best illustrates the influence of positivism and Schopenhauer. I have arranged them in ascending order, in my opinion, of pessimism and despair. In the first three we shall examine, the philosophical and metaphysical problems that hounded Silva are clearly evident—“el mal del siglo”; the theme of suicide dominates the second; and the third is an intriguing, if fabricated, version of what might have happened to Lazarus (according to Silva) after his resurrection. Schopenhauer is named in two of the three selections.

The patient in El mal del siglo epitomizes the internal monster that fed upon Silva's mind:

EL paciente:
Doctor, un desaliento de la vida
que en lo íntimo de mí se arraiga y nace,
el mal del siglo … el mismo mal de Werther …
… renegar de lo vil de la existencia
digno de mi maestro Schopenhauer;
EL médico:
—Eso es cuestión de régimen: camine
de mañanita; duerma largo; báñese;
beba bien; coma bien; cuídese mucho:
¡Lo que usted tiene es hambre! …(23)

Here Silva first mentions his philosopher mentor and describes the demon that takes root and grows in his most intimate being: a lassitude of everything; an absolute scorn for humanity; a detestation for the vileness of existence. These are traits certainly worthy of Schopenhauer. Analysis does nothing but augment the pain. What shall be the prescription? The doctor ironically replies that it is simply a question of regimen. Proper sleep, drink, and food will dissolve these problems. How exasperated the patient must have been when told, “You are hungry!” He was indeed hungry—hungry for the ideal, the infinite, the purpose of life. A diet would hardly suffice. Cognizant of the poet's solution to life's problems, we may venture, with relative certainty, that the young man in this poem will find only one permanent respite from his tortures—death.

Juan de Dios in Cápsulas reaches the same conclusion about life. Disappointed twice in love, he suffers, as a result of each affair, an attack of some disease (psychosomatic?). He is cured in both cases and the prognosis appears favorable. But then he begins to fathom the depths of life:

Luego, desencantado de la vida,
                    filósofo sutil,
A Leopardi leyó, y a Schopenhauer
          y en un rato de spleen,
Se curó para siempre con las cápsulas
                    de plomo de un fusil.(24)

Some inexplicable disenchantment with life has taken possession of him. He must find the cure for this last pernicious disease. After reading Schopenhauer and Leopardi, the answer is clear: what he needs is more capsules—of lead. In this last strophe Silva has given us a foreshadowing of what his solution to life's sorrows will be. Note that the name of Schopenhauer reappears, although Juan de Dios failed to follow his advice to the letter. As we have seen, the pessimistic German would have urged a withdrawal from participation in life and a cultivation of the denial of the will to live. In Schopenhauer's eyes, Juan de Dios was affirming his will to live if he could do so under more pleasant conditions.

The gloom that filled the poet's soul is poignantly expressed in Lázaro. How different is the poet's version of the revived man from that given in the New Testament! The Savior's voice awakens Lazarus; with trembling steps he attempts to walk. Slowly he regains his senses. He smells, palpitates, recovers his sense of touch. He is alive! His first reaction is to cry out in joy and weep from contentment. Life has been restored. Is it not a miracle, the gift of a gracious God?

Yet when we visit the graveyard again, four moons later, there is a figure weeping disconsolately:

Cuatro lunas más tarde, entre las sombras
Del crepúsculo oscuro, en el silencio
Del lugar y la hora, entre las tumbas
De antiguo cementerio,
Lázaro estaba, sollozando a solas
Y envidiando a los muertos.(25)

It is Lazarus, alone and sobbing in the obscure twilight. Far from rejoicing in life, he now envies the dead. It would seem that Lazarus had forgotten the misery of existence in the temporary ecstasy of regaining consciousness. It is difficult to imagine how much Silva must have hated living. The choice and treatment of his subject in this poem evidence the depth to which his soul had sunk.

One of the most interesting of Silva's poems, although not in the same vein as the majority, is Zoospermos, the portrait of a distinguished scientist who goes insane. Doctor Cornelius Van Kerrinken has become almost blind from looking through his microscope for extensive lengths of time. In his last years he has developed a mania for observing spermatozoides and delights in conjecturing about the future that each one might have. As the cells scurry back and forth seeking to combine and form a life, Van Kerrinken can see a definite personality in every one. One would have been a Werther, another a poet, another a loan shark. But instead of being awed by the astronomical possibilities of life in its inchoate stages, he reacts thus:

Afortunadamente
perdidos para siempre
os agitáis ahora
¡oh puntos que sois hombres!
entre los vidrios gruesos
translúcidos y diáfanos
del microscopio enorme;
afortunadamente,
zoospermos, en la tierra
no creceréis poblándola
de dichas y de horrores;
dentro de diez minutos
todos estaréis muertos.
¡Hola! espermatozoides.”
Así el ilustre sabio
Cornelius Van Kerrinken,
que disfrutó en Hamburgo
de una clientela enorme
y que dejó un in-folio
de setecientas páginas
sobre hígado y riñones,
murió en Leipzig maniático
desprestigiado y pobre,
debido a sus estudios
de los últimos años
sobre espermatozoides.(26)

The question arises of why the scientist uses the term “afortunadamente” in addressing the cells. These are embryonic lives. Why will they be fortunate to die shortly rather than to realize their ultimate destination and form a human being? Judging from the rest of Silva's poetry, I think that Van Kerrinken believed that the lives the cells would engender would not be worth living; apparently he held life in general in low esteem. Some philosophers in vogue during this period maintained that the greatest good the human race could accomplish would be to let itself become extinct, thereby sparing unborn generations the recurrence of suffering and life's innate worthlessness. When man denies God, as was the intellectual fashion of the times, he must replace Him with something—positivism, humanism, psychoanalysis—or lose his mind. And let us note the scientist's fate: he went mad.

The two poems which best demonstrate the illness from which Silva suffered are Psicopatía and La respuesta de la tierra. Both have tremendous philosophical significance and excellent insight into the final stages of frustration that brought about his suicide.

A park on a beautiful spring morning is the setting of Psicopatía. Flowers are in bloom, the birds sing—spring seems to say, “live.” There is an effervescence that should dispel the deepest gloom. But through this exuberance walks a young philosopher dressed in black:

… E impertérrito sigue en su tarea
De pensar en la muerte, en la conciencia
Y en las causas finales! …
Y él sigue su camino, triste, serio,
Pensando en Fichte, en Kant, en Vogt, en Hegel,
Y del yo complicado en el misterio!(27)

A doctor and his small daughter happen to observe the young man so completely lost in thought. The doctor's daughter asks how it is possible that a man can go around with a gloomy countenance on such a lovely day. Is he sick perhaps?:

—Ese señor padece un mal muy raro,
Que ataca rara vez a las mujeres
Y pocas a los hombres …, hija mía!
Sufre este mal: … pensar …, esa es la causa
De su grave y sutil melancolía …
El mal, gracias a Dios, no es contagioso
Y lo adquieren muy pocos …
… Pero joven aquél es caso grave,
Como conozco pocos,
Más que cuantos nacieron piensa y sabe,
Irá a pasar diez años con los locos,
Y no se curará sino hasta el día
En que duerma a sus anchas
En una angosta sepultura fría,
Lejos del mundo y de la vida loca,
Entre un negro ataúd de cuatro planchas,
Con un montón de tierra entre la boca!(28)

Webster's New World Dictionary defines a psychopathic personality: “A person characterized by emotional instability, lack of sound judgment, perverse and impulsive (often criminal) behavior, inability to learn from experience, amoral and asocial feelings, and other serious personality defects: he may or may not have psychotic attacks or symptoms.”²⁹ Sadly the young man ponders various philosophers, trying to discover a concrete basis that will tell him definitely which one is right. Not mindful of his cheerful surroundings, he contemplates death, conscience, and final causes. To this young man, representative of another side of Silva's multi-faceted personality portrayed in his poetry, the doctor could offer only this simplistic prescription: “Do not think.” The contrasting attitudes of the doctor and the young sceptic—Silva—provide us with yet another parallel to the manner in which intellectual curiosity was greeted in Bogotá. Silva asks, “Why?” Dogma says, “Believe.” Such a response was small consolation to one so afflicted as he.

In my opinion La respuesta de la tierra is the apex in Silva's futile attempt to fulfill his need for knowledge and purpose. He enumerates every question that has exasperated him and for the last time poignantly requests an answer:

Era un poeta lírico, grandioso y sibilino
que le hablaba a la tierra una tarde de invierno,
frente a una posada y al volver de un camino:
—¡Oh madre, oh Tierra!—díjole,—en tu girar eterno
nuestra existencia efímera tal parece que ignoras.
Nośotros esperamos un cielo o un infierno,
sufrimos o gozamos, en nuestras breves horas,
e indiferente y muda, tú, madre, sin entrañas,
de acuerdo con los hombres no sufres y no lloras.
¿No sabes el secréto misterioso que entrañas?
¿Por qué las noches negras, las diáfanas auroras?
Las sombras vagorosas y tenues de unas cañas
que se reflejan lívidas en los estanques yertos,
¿no son como conciencias fantásticas y extrañas
que les copian sus vidas en espejos inciertos?
¿Qué somos? A do vamos? Por qué hasta aquí vinimos?
¿Conocen los secretos del más allá los muertos?
¿Por qué la vida inútil y triste recibimos?
¿Hay un oasis húmedo después de estos desiertos?
¿Por qué nacemos, madre, dime, por qué morimos?
¿Por qué?—Mi angustia sacia y a mi ansiedad contesta.
Yo, sacerdote tuyo, arrodillado y trémulo,
En estas soledades, aguardo la respuesta.
La Tierra, como siempre, displicente y callada,
al gran poeta lírico no le contestó nada.(30)

The poem leaves little to say about José Asunción; it is a succinct autobiography of his soul. The earth seems not to take note of man's plight. Silva unravels the thread of human emotions and aspirations and wonders about the reasons for them. Why are we born? Why do we suffer? Why do we die? What are we? Then he thinks perhaps the dead know the secret of this sad and useless life. Is there an oasis after the desert of existence? Trembling, upon his knees, the poet awaits the reply that will slake his thirst. But the earth “… al gran poeta lírico no le contestó nada.”

Silva always sought an elusive ideal, a reality, but he pursued it only with the intellect and could not accept an intuitive truth not logically explicable. The questions he asked are metaphysical and theological, but he tried to answer them in the manner of a positivist and found it impossible. Santiago Argüello has commented in detail on the influence of positivism upon the poet:

… Y al llegar Silva, con su ansiedad ideal, con su diamante presentido, busca el agua que su sed le demanda; pero la busca con la única linterna que se vendía entonces, la del positivismo … y, pensando con el intelecto como único instrumento y con el beneficio ególatra como única finalidad, habría de topar con el negro desencanto del pensar, como había antes topado con el otro desencanto, negro también y frío, del amar … Quebró su microscopio porque no le descubrió las estrellas.³¹

We have seen the maze of philosophies in which Silva became entangled. Positivism with its demand for empirical facts and Schopenhauer's writings on the vanity of existence profoundly affected the poet. This intellectual cultivation led him to an abandonment of religion and a scorn for humanity. Reality and practicality constituted, in Silva's opinion, mediocrity, and he held only contempt for those who believed in them: “… La realidad? … Llaman la realidad todo lo trivial, todo lo insignificante, todo lo despreciable …”³² He was a man who had to have the final answers. Life as he saw it was intolerable; he strove constantly to bring order out of the chaos.

Shortly after Guy de Maupassant went insane, Silva expressed a fear of suffering the same fate:

¿Loco? … ¿y por que no? Así murió Baudelaire, el más grande, para los verdaderos letrados, de los poetas de los últimos cincuenta años; así murió Maupassant, sintiendo crecer alrededor de su espíritu la noche y reclamando sus ideas … ¿Por qué no has de morir así, pobre degenerado, que abusaste de todo, que sonaste con dominar el arte, con poseer la ciencia, toda la ciencia, y con agotar todas las copas en que brinda la vida las embriagueces supremas?³³

It was his pretension to master knowledge and art; his failure to do so never let him rest.

Finally, José Asunción Silva was a man who, paradoxically, desired faith but could not accept it intellectually. Miguel de Unamuno, another philosopher famous for his interminable struggle with life, best describes the poet's tragic life: “¿Qué hizo en su vida? Sufrir, soñar, cantar. ¿Os parece poco? Sufrir, soñar, cantar y meditar el misterio.”³⁴

Notes

1. Luis Alberto Sánchez, Escritores representativos de América (Madrid, 1957), 144.

2. José Asunción Silva, Prosas y versos (México, 1942), xv.

3. Ibid., xv-xvi.

4. José Asunción Silva, Poesías completas (Madrid, 1952), 199.

5. Silva, Prosas y versos, 118.

6. Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism (Edinburgh, 1937), 38.

7. Ibid., 32.

8. Ibid., 34.

9. Ibid., 24.

10. Ibid., 21.

11. Ibid., 22.

12. Silva, Poesías completas, 43.

13. Ibid., 97-98.

14. Ibid., 86.

15. Ibid., 152.

16. Ibid., 68-70.

17. Ibid., 158-60.

18. Santiago Argüello, Modernismo y modernistas (Guatemala, 1935), 150.

19. Silva, Poesías completas, 94.

20. Ibid., 109-10.

21. Ibid., 111-12.

22. Ibid., 113.

23. Ibid., 118.

24. Ibid., 123.

25. Ibid., 93.

26. Ibid., 132.

27. Ibid., 101.

28. Ibid., 102-04.

29. Webster's New Word Dictionary, College Edition (New York, 1962), 1176.

30. Silva, Poesías completas, 119-20.

31. Argüello, Modernismo, 152-54.

32. Silva, Prosas y versos, 35.

33. Ibid., 34.

34. Silva, Poesías completas, 22.