SOURCE: "'Knowing' and 'Known' in Poems of Consummation and Dialogues of Knowledge," in Critical Views on Vicente Aleixandre's Poetry, edited by Vicente Cabrera and Harriet Boyer, Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1979, pp. 87-96.

[A Spanish poet who began publishing in the late 1960s, Carnero is perhaps the most outspoken critic of the generation of native poets that preceded him for their singleminded focus on social issues and elevation of political content over such artistic concerns as form, style, and language. In the following essay, which was originally published in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos in 1973, Carnero explains that Aleixandre's poetry contrasts vitality—exemplified by such traits as inquisitiveness, impulsiveness, and desire for new experiences—with dogmatism and detachment].

The major premise of Aleixandrine discourse is, as Carlos Bousoño has indicated in his excellent book [La poesía de Vicente Aleixandre], vitality, at least in what is considered the first stage of his poetic production which comes to a close with the publication of The History of the Heart. The vitality to which I refer is double: on the one hand it is the act of recognition of the world which surrounds the poet, or rather his intuition, since the word "recognition" is condemned in Aleixandre's universe as is manifest in the texts which serve as the subject of this study; on the other hand, it is evidence for the poet of his own vitality. In this way, existence in the world is, for Aleixandre, a harmony which is felt and enjoyed and does not need to be provoked because it is given between the being of the individual and the being of reality: between these there is more than communication (communication would presuppose the existence, at least at the beginning, of two expressivities which then turn out to be in agreement). There is a unique expression, which is the language of what is alive in the universe, of which the poet is a part differentiated only insofar as he is endowed with consciousness. I would dare say that there is no communication, because the relationship world-poet occurs at a level of greater identity in which the poet does not feel alien: "I am that happy earth that doesn't bargain for its reflection" ("Ultimate Birth"). The poet feels so full of life that, in a typical Aleixandrine vision, he grows until he touches the clouds and his extended arms take in the four cardinal directions.

As Bousoño has noted, this first long stage is a continuing canto to elemental beings, natural elements and animals, especially wild animals, including those which, like the beetle, wander serenely through a benevolent universe. In their massive, solid, motionless existence, the inorganic elements manifest evidence of life. The animals manifest the preeminence of impulse and instinct: Aleixandre calls "love" the energy of the tiger, endowed with "a heart that knows almost nothing, except love" ("The Jungle and the Sea"). As he states in "The Poet," the vibrant poet sees himself reflected in nature:

After History of the Heart, the poet takes a step backwards; still immersed in the vital plan of the world, he no longer keeps step with it; he separates himself from things and, always ready to jump back into the world, he considers them from a certain distance in the two books which form the transitional stage in the development of his work: In a Vast Dominion and Portraits with a Name. In these two books, the attitude of Aleixandre could be summed up by what Bousoño has called "solidarity" to explain the way the poet approaches the characters of his Encounters. By "solidarity," I understand an attitude toward the world which is becoming tinged with nostalgia; it is not sad because the separation has been voluntary as well as recent: the poet does not yet feel it as an imposition (in all that follows I am referring to the two transitional works, not to the Encounters). The intensity of the relationship to the world diminishes and solidarity is another name for inertia. Separate from the poet, the characters in Portraits with a Name provoke in him an enormous sympathy. It is especially the first chapter in In a Vast Dominion where Aleixandre's fervor for young bodies, for the flesh in all of its manifestations, for youth, sustains an obvious trace of nostalgia: an inventory is made of a series of parts of the human body which Aleixandre contemplates now not with his normal exaltation but rather with amazement at its exact functioning and its perfect mechanisms. This is reminiscent of Leonardo's reflections on the appropriateness of anatomical organization; the enthusiasm has become intellectual, mixed in with the memory the senses bring to bear. This reflective attitude is not yet tinged with disillusion; but what the reading of Poems of Consummation will reveal to us about this attitude is that, in the first chapter of In a Vast Dominion, relationship between Aleixandre and the world is substantially modified.

In In a Vast Dominion, the poet's life pauses to be contemplated and acquires a clear meaning: it is the passage of time which contains moments of immersion into the universe. This immersion still seems possible, and the moment when the poet considers that his past is linked to the past itself there is no break in time because there is no separation from life; the poet thinks that he has simply made a stop on the way, and before resuming the journey, he looks back and takes comfort in it. As Poems of Consummation will show, this stop was not a pause, but rather a definitive stopping. "The Old Man Is Like Moses" well sums up the key idea of this work. Like Moses, the poet sees before him a future life which others will enjoy.

With Poems of Consummation, a new element in Aleixandre's world bursts forth: old age. It is not surprising that it is charged with dark tones if we recall the emphasis on life and on love, the gifts of youth, in the first eight books. Age sets margins: "But the one who passes alone, protected / by his age, crosses without being sensed" ("The Years"); and in "Final Face" it turns the being into a grotesque caricature:

Old age is the ongoingness of an incomplete existence, because living is loving and being loved: "The one who could have been was not. Nobody has loved him" ("The One Who Was"). The world is, by virtue of love, "Lyre opened of the world" ("The Young Lovers"). Life is linked to youth which is its indispensable requisite: "Life is being young and nothing more" ("He Doesn't Know It"). "I was young and I looked, I burned, / I touched, I sounded" ("Sound of War"). And the lesson of age is a paradox: one can only hope for immortality, unaltered permanence in time which is the negation of life: only dead things remain as they are and this state is the only one invulnerable to time: "…the leaves reflected fall. They fall and they last. They live " ("If Anyone Had Told Me").

In Poems of Consummation it is stated clearly: "Knowing is not the same as to know" (first line of the poem "A Term"). As one continues reading the book it becomes evident that the two terms have a meaning which is not usual: Aleixandre goes polishing the meaning throughout the book which, from this perspective, turns out to be its progressive materialization. We witness this process of definition through which the attitude of Aleixandre toward the world becomes determined by the opposition between "knowing" and "known". Through the function of these two terms and their derivatives like "truth," the poet balances his life and exposes a new kind of relationship with the world. Furthermore, he assumes a concrete attitude toward the problem of writing. I shall try to expose the semantic content of these two key words: once the content is determined, Poems of Consummation will reveal a concrete meaning. The book is written in an alogical manner (which is very different from methodical illogicalness), nevertheless it is logically formulable and analyzable. I believe that these two characteristics, alogicalness in the writing and receptivity to logical analysis, permit the recognition of a great work rather than a mystification.

We know that in all of Aleixandre's work, life has been identified with the capacity for feeling love. This love can be understood in two ways: an animal loves when it sets itself in motion impelled by its instincts to communicate with its fellows and with nature: eating, killing, reproducing are episodes of this love. Man adds one ingredient to animal nature: his awareness of sharing animal instinct and especially his need to formulate in some way the attraction he feels toward what surrounds him and also the nature of this environment. Then, in the human being, there exists a supplementary manifestation of love: the desire for knowing and for knowing oneself in addition to knowing the other (conocer). For Aleixandre, love is, combined with sense perception and beginning with not-knowing, a need for knowing. In "Lazarillo and the Beggar," Lazarillo says: "I love because I do not know" (saber). Knowing is not exclusive to man, since it occurs not only on a rational level, but also on an irrational level. The feeling experience, although deprived of awareness, brings knowing; therefore, the bull comes to know his experience of the bullfight and of death: "That bull knows although he may be dying" ("The Maja and the Old Woman"). Although it may be impossible for him to elevate his experience to another level different from the level of feeling because of the limitations of his nature and because the feeling experience immediately precedes his death, he knows his experience. The verb "knowing" has, in the Aleixandrine context, an uncompleted value reinforced by the same value of the other verb which, in the same context, is closely connected to it: the verb "looking." "Knowing" and "looking" embody the unfinished process, the unsatisfied aspiration, the unfinished journey in the same way that "to know" and "to see" indicate termination and completion. "Looking" is the questioning and inquisitive attitude of the one who seeks to apprehend a meaning of which he is still ignorant, and "looking" is associated, in the Aleixandrine text, with youth: "the one who looked and who did not see …youth beating in his hands" ("But Born"); "Knowing, penetrating, inquiring: a passion that lasts as long as life" ("Darkness"); "the one who gropes, lives" ("Sound of War"). For this reason, "knowing," which is equivalent to being alive, is also equivalent to being uncertain about what one is trying to know: in the poem "The Young Lovers" (which I believe took its inspiration from the story of Calixto and Melibea [the young lovers in the Spanish masterpiece La Celestina (1499)]), he says: "…I glimpsed her: I am knowing her. And this garden hides from me behind its walls her form, / not her radiance." Love is born from a sudden vision, from a "radiance," and it impels one to apprehend the significance of the beloved and in this apprehension is its climax because, with the termination of the cognitive process, comes also the termination of the stimulus which attracts to the beloved: "Knowing is loving. To know, to die / I doubted. Never is love life" ("The Old Lovers").

And life lasts as long as the desire to apprehend the world has not been satiated: "What insistence on living. I only understand it / as formulation of the impossible: the real / world" ("The Old Lovers"; italics mine). Let us stress the word formulation; a formula is a condensation of meaning which we consider definitive: a formula is the product of reason, and reason is proper to the old because it produces its edicts when the cognitive process has ended: "Only the child is knowing" ("The Comet"); "I am young and I am knowing" ("The Young Lovers").

When the cognitive process has ended, the one who undertook the process now has a wisdom: knowing is an activiy, and to know is a fixed result. Wisdom comes with age, and since old age is incompatible with vitality, and wisdom is acquired after the process of knowing has been completed, this wisdom is opposed to life: "The one who doubts exists. Only dying is science" ("Without Faith"); "Not knowing is living. To know, dying it" ("Yesterday"). I want to stress the transitive use of the verb "dying." This "it" does not mean the biological life of the poet but all that life means in Aleixandre's context; the transitive value of "dying" shows that death is not a state but rather the result of an activity. Aleixandre means that he is not dealing with the death of the body (that, in Spanish, would be the reflexive use of the verb to die) but with the annihilation of something larger than the body itself but so linked with its survival that the poet cannot say "kill it." With "killing it," he would also die; hence the great suggestive power of the transitive "dying it."

Wisdom is incompatible with youth and life as I have already said: "Because I know it I do not exist" ("You Have a Name").

To know is to be born to science whose subject is the world and, at the same time, it is the death of life. What Aleixandre suggests is that he considers the evolution of the mind and of the body irreconcilable: the body advances through time driven by its senses and its desire for knowing and gradually it provides the mind with facts and experiences from which the mind induces wisdom. When the body stops functioning, the mind takes account and draws up conclusions: there are no conclusions until the acquisition of experience has ceased; these conclusions (to know-known) demonstrate that immersion into life (knowing) has stopped; the moment one "is born" (to the known), one "dies": "More young people see each other. They are the non-dead, since they are the non-born" ("The Young"). Swan, in "That Swan's Way," says:

…I climbed the ladder
of that knowing. But I thought how useless
it was to know it …

So once in possession of the known, the world loses its newness because each new experience becomes foreseeable and explainable by virtue of the known: "looking" becomes equivalent to "seeing" and the effort of "knowing" a new reality becomes frustrated in the "re-cognition" that that reality is similar to a previous reality already codified by the known. To know, which seemed to be the optimal relationship with the world because of the desire for knowing in the one who loves, turns out to be, once achieved, a wall between the lover and the beloved, between man and the world, and the poet tells us that the only desirable knowing would be that which results from an unpremeditated relationship with the world in which no knowing whatsoever was sought, in which only living was sought. Then one would have extracted from the world a known not subject to formulation and not accompanied by the signs of dying: "… the one who doesn't look is knowing" ("You Are Waiting";) "The light, once thought, deceives" ("The Limit"). The desire for the known grew out of a mistaken idea: to consider that the world had to be apprehended in scientific terms, that sensorial contact was not sufficient, that it was necessary to name it and to formulate it, as expressed in "Present, Afterwards":

Thus it turns out that to know is equivalent to being dead: "because I know I am falling asleep" ("Lazarillo and the Beggar"); "the one who remembers is the one who is dying" ("The Young Lovers"); here "to remember" is used with the meaning described above "to recognize": "the one who knows has already lived" ("The Old Lovers"). True wisdom would be, as I have previously stated, having "known" how to maintain an unpremeditated relationship with the world, relating to it in a perpetual knowing which can never be considered definitive, like the Rubén Dario Aleixandre sketched in "Knowing Rubén Darío." This wise man, always wandering and always alive, would be one of the "creatures of the dawn" of whom Aleixandre speaks in Shadow of Paradise: "You encountered the generous light of innocence" (first line of "Creatures in the Dawn"), "naked with majesty and purity facing the world's scream" ("Message"; this does not mean "deprived of majesty and purity," but invested with them by virtue of nakedness); "… being in the movement with which the great heart of men beats extended" ("In the Plaza").

We can, then, establish two series of analogous terms through which the recent Aleixandre expresses himself and orders his vision of the world: on the one hand, knowing—youth—life—looking—experience of the senses; on the other hand, known—old—age—death—seeing—the conclusions of thought. If one undertakes to read Poems of Consummation and Dialogues of Knowledge taking these two master series into account, their deepest meaning emerges.

One could also establish that "light" and "air" used metaphorically, are associated with "knowing" while "sound" is associated with "known." The explanation could be that knowledge is formulated in words and words are articulated sounds. But I would rather pass over these associations which might not be valid, considering the very general value of natural elements in Aleixandre's poetry.

If wisdom is formulated in words, then Aleixandre has articulated the problems of expression and of writing and examined them with an essentially disenchanted view. Words are not always signs of death; they aren't when they rise spontaneously as a manifestation of vitality, as can be seen in "The Words of the Poet":

… words spoken
in moments of delight or anger, of ecstasy or abandon,
when, the soul awakened looms in the eyes

In other situations, which are in fact the majority, words have a sterilizing quality, as in "Sound of War":

… (they) are merely words
that drag you, a dust shadow,
smoke exploded, human as you turn out
like an idea dead beyond nothingness.

Already in Swords like Lips, Aleixandre had established the antithetical nature of words and elemental beings. In "Words," he writes:

Flower you, girl almost naked, alive, alive
(the word, that mashed sand).
…..
(The word, the word, the word, what a clumsy swollen womb).

In "Message," from Shadow of Paradise, we read: "… without looking, cast far away the sad articles, sad clothes, words, blind stakes." The living word is characterized by being a nondefinitive formulation, an attempt to formulate; overly expert expression is symptomatic that one has reached the stadium of wisdom. As is seen in "The Words of the Poet," living words are ordered according to their own logic:

more like light than like expert sound.
…..
… Not with supreme virtue,
but yes with an order, infallible, if they want.

The wise man's desire is that his expert words recover the tremor and the fallibility they had when they were alive. Because wisdom as Aleixandre understands it, provides a kind of truth which the poet rejects after having sought it: only the incomplete and imperfect truth of knowing has value and radiates light and life: "… if it goes out, it is dead" ("The Maja and the Old Woman").