Un pájaro de papel en el pecho
dice que el tiempo de los besos no ha llegado
vivir vivir el sol cruje invisible
besos o pájaros tarde o pronto o nunca

—Vicente Aleixandre (“Vida”)

Due to the supposed obscurity of his text, critical approaches to Vicente Aleixandre have remained tentative, at times even fearful. Rarely do we encounter analyses that rise above generalized thematic explorations or sporadic stylistic commentaries. For over fifty years critics have suggested a hidden coherence to Aleixandre while evading in-depth, concrete explications of individual poems.¹ For example, both Paul Ilie and Kessel Schwartz agree that “each poem in itself may be incomprehensible, but as a group they reveal certain motifs and patterns” (Ilie 109, Schwartz 204). Such collective approaches, although not without merit, have tended to devalue specific interpretations that may open Aleixandre's text to new possibilities. To compound this problem, and perhaps as a result, critics have often portrayed Aleixandre as a relatively unsophisticated artist. Santiago Daydí-Tolson and Pere Gimferrer consider the “irrationalism” of Pasión de la tierra and Espadas como labios as reflective of an immature and uncertain stage in Aleixandre's life (Daydí-Tolson 13-15); and in a more recent study, Philip Silver has reinforced this view of Aleixandre as a somewhat ingenuous poet.²

In the pages that follow, I shall attempt to rescue Aleixandre from these confining judgments by offering a specific explication of what many consider the thematic and stylistic center of the poet's text—“El vals.” I will investigate some of the conditions of the poem's contradictions (rather than simply reproducing them as manifest content), and by abandoning the focus on Aleixandre's overt expression of rebellion and addressing his text's more covert expressions I will suggest that the poet should be granted a linguistic and theoretical self-awareness not heretofore perceived. I would argue along with Jonathan Mayhew that Aleixandre's “very distrust of words obliges him to consider the question of language in a way that a more obviously logophilic poet would not” (Mayhew 304). I would further maintain that Aleixandre's theoretical considerations of Freudianism and Surrealism force him to reexamine the question of sexuality, and often in conjunction with the very question of language. Indeed, I would even claim that Aleixandre anticipates the modern theoretical enemies of the philosophy of presence.

Let us begin with the basic logic of the text as movement, as an apparent progression from the repressing bourgeois waltz towards a liberating personal sexual encounter.³ The opening lines of contrast (“hermosa como la piedra” and “oh difunta / Oh viva”⁴) offer us a sense of the powerful dialectic at work in the poem. Aleixandre posits two worlds or discourses: an external world of manners and polite conversation, and an unconscious world of sexual desire, or what Lacan might call that “other” discourse. The superficial world of the dance does not acknowledge sexuality: “ignora el vello de los pubis / ignora la risa que sale del esternón como una gran batuta.” [This physical and emotional representation of an erection comes as no surprise given Aleixandre's fondness for Freud.⁵] The voice indicates the poet's participation in the dialectic, but it also signals a preference among the two discourses. The speaker finds the actual music of the rigidly structured waltz as irritating as the guests' social exchanges: “Esta orquesta que agita / mis cuidados como una neglegencia / como un elegante biendecir de buen tono.” Aleixandre further expresses disdain for the ornamentation of the bourgeoisie with a figuratively, as well as acoustically, violent and perverted diction that exposes the falsity of the women's make-up (“Unas olas de afrecho / un poco de serrín en los ojos”⁶), their dresses (“unas faldas largas hechas de colas de cocodrilos”), and their facial expressions (“unas lenguas o unas sonrisas hechas con caparazones de cangrejos”). The play inherent in “caparazones” implies that reason or truth has been covered. Moreover, if we recall that the verb “capar” also means “to castrate,” the false or self-deceiving behavior of the bourgeoisie becomes a kind of violence against the “truth” of sexuality which remains unacceptable, or even beaten into submission.

Lines 15-16 contain a paradoxical metapoetical commentary that deserves special attention, and we will return to them when we consider the problem of genre. These lines express, with appropriately mundane narration, the desire to unveil the superficiality of the guests, to get beyond this boring charade. They further indicate the presence of two discourses (conscious and unconscious) and the poet's wish to transcend or unite the two. Subsequently, Aleixandre portrays the interaction of the sexes at the dance as a kind of mating ritual. The women, although flustered and apprehensive, repress their sexual desire (they seem “wet” in the erotic sense) and hide their emotional involvement in the selection process: “Las damas aguardan su momento sentadas sobre una lágrima / disimulando la humedad a fuerza de abanico insistente.” [We also note the “insistence” of the unconscious phallic function of the “abanico.”] Equally pathetic, the men parade their sexuality (“bigotes” providing the phallic function here): “Y los caballeros abandonados de sus traseros / quieren atraer todas las miradas a la fuerza hacia sus bigotes.”

These lines refer to the “behinds” of both sexes, and in so doing, suggest a physical self-ignorance that coincides with a psychological one. In other words, we have the following analogy: rear (buttock or even “tail” as in “colas de cocodrilos” and “colas de plomo”) is to front (face) as unconscious is to conscious. The poet takes the position of an analyst (and in this way a sympathetic, if scientific, observer) who comprehends the two separate discourses at work. He sees beyond the ornamental social discourse, and reveals for us the repressed sexual discourse, of which the participants are not conscious (“abandonados”), that will assert itself as the poem progresses. Already we sense a secret desire or sexual force (the “fuerza” of lines 18 and 20) that lurks behind the dance and the poem, not yet ready to explode. In this sense, the “colas de cocodrilos” hint at the repressed sexual and violent animal in each of the guests, and with their conversion to “colas de plomo,” we may take these “colas” as marks of the phallic function—symbols of the fixed subjection to the law of the phallus.⁷

With the arrival of the waltz we begin the dizzying spiral towards the liberation of the sexual act at the conclusion of the poem (Barral 147). The chaotic images come at us with increasing rapidity and incoherence, as if we actually move from the perspective of observers to that of willful (perhaps even guilty) participants, being swept into the whirling center of the dance itself. And all the while the rebellious commentary continues. Physical collision during the dance is like a dry, dead version of the sexual encounter: “es un entrechocar de conchas de tacones de espumas o de dentaduras postizas.” The semantic contrast between the images of the fluid, idyllic sea and the hardness of the shells, dentures, rocks, etc. stands as an organizational reflection of the dialectic sexuality/repression.⁸ We may take the sea here as that primordial place where life began, as well as that prenatal state in our distant past—that state of pure union for which we all yearn.⁹ The waltz imitates the waves of the sea, and so attempts to transcend this distance, but Aleixandre reveals it as no more than an imitation or a substitution, still incapable of fulfilling that desire. The dance inhibits, even restricts, the unconscious desires represented by the now marginalized sea (“Es una playa sin ondas”), and it paradoxically solidifies or congeals any true movement (“Es todo lo revuelto que arriba”). Rather than drawing the dancers out to embrace the chaotic waves of their Danubian unconscious, the waltz brings them into port. In effect, it can only tempt or tease, but never satisfy.

The poet seems to physically tear at the irritating social scene with the irrational chiasmus of lines 25-26. A false “sweetness” settles over the dance and its participants (“dulces tartas,” “‘cabello de ángel,’”¹⁰ “un dulce ‘sí,’” “Un polvillo de azúcar”) as lines 25-33 reveal the perversion of the well-man nered guests. We can sense a kind of introverted panic or Sartrian nausea overcoming the poet as he observes this intensifying display of bourgeois interaction: the social kiss (“un beso sorprendido en el instante que se hacía ‘cabello de ángel’”), the toast (“un dulce ‘sí’ de cristal pintado de verde”), the make-up (“Un polvillo de azúcar sobre las frentes”), the uncomfortable dress (“fruncen los vestidos hechos de esparto querido”), and, above all, the hollow manners and speech (“las manos se acortan más redondeadas que nunca” and “las palabras limadas”). We note the caustic sarcasm of “blancura cándida” in the sense of an “open (or naïve) emptiness.” The heads of the dancers are clouds and the women's skirts almost fly, but in each case repression re-asserts itself: the music “es una larga goma” and the skirts are “de plomo.”

Suddenly, the sexuality of the poem that has remained relatively subtle, although present in a repressed sense, manifests itself. Indeed, the poem itself seems to function like an encounter with the experience of sex, proceeding from a cautious, clothed seduction towards a gradually intensifying focus on the genitalia. The dance has slowly elicited a sexual desire which can now hardly control itself: “el estrépito / se ha convertido en los corazones en oleadas de sangre / en un licor si blanco que sabe a memoria o a cita.” We may take the “white liquor” as both semen and mother's milk that one “tastes” as well as “knows.” In a Lacanian sense, this neatly unites the sexual quest with the quest for maternal union. From here the poem climaxes (“ha llegado el instante”) in a series of chaotic and sexually charged images that will serve as our departure point from the overt rebellion of the poem to its more covert contradictions.

Let us look again at the idea of the poem as movement from repression and ornamentation towards revelation and liberation; or, another way, as the assertion of that “other” discourse. That some sort of truth lies at the poem's conclusion is revealed not only by the poem's increasingly naked sexuality (“un licor si blanco” as semen, and “los vellos van a pinchar los labios obscenos que saben” as oral sex¹¹), but also in its diction. The verb “convertirse,” employed three times in the last 14 lines of the poem, implies a shift towards actuality—an opening (“las ventanas en gritos”) or an illumination (“¡las luces en socorro!”¹²). The use of the verb “saber” as “taste” in the imaging of oral sex suggests the presence of some greater knowledge obtained through the sexual act of these final moments, and it also points to the first part of the poem as a kind of acquaintance, or “conocimiento,” that appears superficial in light of the poem's conclusion.¹³ “Adiós,” which appears three times in lines 38-39, indicates revelation in its religious sense of “to God.” Leaving falsity inevitably means moving towards truth. Moreover, “adiós” injects a religious significance into the words “sangre,” “licor,” “sabe,” “ángel,” “espina,” “beso,” and the image of the hands “más redondeadas que nunca,” all of which now collectively suggest a parallel between oral sex and communion with God—a sexual Eucharist or epiphany. The poem has arrived at the moment of religious/sexual “truth” seen in the circular perfection of the “bola enorme.”

In this sense, we may take the poem as Aleixandre's personal proposal of a kind of utopia based on sexual liberation. I use the politically charged term “utopia” because it is now appropriate to consider the full implications of another aspect of the poem's complexity—its socio-economic commentary. Like the picaresque authors of the 16th and 17th centuries (and other members of the Generation of '27, such as Alberti in his “Invitación al arpa”) Aleixandre concerns himself with a bourgeoisie that wishes to recast the social order and assume the locus of the aristocracy (i.e.—“medrar”) thereby corrupting or falsifying the latter's values. Aleixandre's particular love/hate relationship with the bourgeoisie, however, stems from his perception of the fundamental paradox of this class' situation: the bourgeoisie would embrace the very hierarchy and values that it seeks to modify in order to re-establish itself as the new aristocracy. The poet, himself caught in a Bloomian struggle against the historical hierarchy of literature, can sympathize with the bourgeoisie's desire to rebel as well as with its unavoidable hypocritical betrayal of that rebellion. For the class must emulate the aristocracy it would appropriate and transform just as Aleixandre cannot escape the legacies of Garcilaso, Góngora, and the like. Both poet and class are trapped in the unresolvable contrast between a rebellion against power and a tyrannical use of that very power. Thus, as we have seen, “El vals” resonates the dialectical struggles between movement and quiescence, between the agitating and the static, between the “viva” and the “difunta.”

With the conclusion of the poem Aleixandre reveals his comprehension that any movement towards revelation or liberation (be it sexual, socio-economic, linguistic, or even poetic) must remain problematic. In effect, the instant of revelation never arrives as the future tense devours progress: “el preciso momento de la desnudez cabeza abajo / cuando los vellos van a pinchar los labios,” “el momento en que los vestidos se convertirán en aves,” and “y ese beso que estaba (en el rincón) entre dos bocas / se convertirá en una espina que dispensará la muerte” (my emphasis). The moment of truth seems always already postponed.¹⁴ We note the frustration involved in the attempt to reach this point in time as the poet mentions “instante” or “momento” five times in just four lines; and we sense his microscopic pursuit of Zeno's paradox when he says “el preciso momento,” trying to make a moment even more precise. Yet even such revelation, just out of reach, appears deadly. The social kiss leads to the sexual act embodied in the phallic symbol “espina” which then violently dispenses death. The entire process of stripping away the falsity of the bourgeoisie—the clothes, the manners, the makeup, the dance—will end (and has literally ended for the poem) in a furious sexual rush towards annihilation. It is as if the whole process has proved self-destructive. Discovery becomes apocalypse (which we know from the Greek to be the deadly lifting of the veil); the climax truly becomes an anti-climax.

Exploring all of the implications of this conclusion would be maddening. Of particular interest, however, is the poem's self-referential nature, its metapoetical subversion of language itself and thereby of the processes of artistic transmission and artistic creation. Like Lacan, Aleixandre uses sexuality as a reflection or even creation of language—as another avenue to suggest that endlessly returning moment of symbolization. Indeed, we cannot avoid the text's linkage of sexuality and language apparent in the title of the collection (Espadas como labios¹⁵) and in the focus on the speech of the guests at the waltz (“palabras limadas,” “un elegante biendecir de buen tono,” and “un dulce ‘sí’”). Moreover, Aleixandre explicitly ties the sexual climax to language: In this way, the always already veiled sexual truth of the phallus implies the always already veiled linguistic truth of the endless chain of signifiers; or put another way, Aleixandre unites the search for the source of sexual meaning or satisfaction with the search for a stable point in the structure of language. Likewise, the conversion of “las ventanas en gritos” (which occurs at the instant of oral sex) hints at the endless “opening” of language, where one word or sign can only ever point to another, and the quest for original or true “meaning” ultimately leads one to a frustrating primal “grito.” The text becomes violently self-reflexive because it is itself a structure of signification. The poem recognizes itself as an enemy of presence and therein as an enemy of its own presence as well as of what it seeks to reveal or convey, and Aleixandre becomes a wordsmith who is highly conscious of his fleeting metal.¹⁶

With all of this in mind it is interesting to compare Aleixandre's conclusion of “El vals” to Lacan's interpretation of the “meaning” of the phallus:

All these propositions merely veil over the fact that the phallus can only play its role as veiled, that is, as in itself a sign of the latency with which everything signifiable is struck as soon as it is raised (aufgehoben) to the function of signifier.

The phallus is the signifier of this Aufhebung itself which it inaugurates (initiates) by its own disappearance. This is why the demon of Scham (shame) in the ancient mysteries rises up exactly at the moment when the phallus is unveiled (cf. the famous painting of the Villa of Pompei).

It then becomes a bar which, at the hands of this demon, strikes the signified, branding it as the bastard offspring of its signifying concatenation.

(83)

We can see how Aleixandre's “espina” functions remarkably like Lacan's phallus in that it violently turns on the text's erotic quest for meaning. The word “espina” itself also means “duda” or “dificultad,” and so contains the ephemeral, self-erasing qualities of Lacan's perpetually veiled (unknowable or forever doubtful) phallus with its “signifying concatenation.” The concate nation of “como” (lines 1-8), “o” (lines 11-14), and “de” (line 23), along with the poet's flowing metaphors (lines 22-24), gropingly suggest this same chain of signification. Aleixandre seems to acknowledge the inability of language to find any fixed point of meaning, that its structure is artificial and base on an infinite succession of difference, not truth. The sexual parallel to this linguistic situation is imposed by the Law of the phallus—that undiscoverable dispenser of difference. Indeed, the guests seem “branded” by the phallus subjected to an ignorant existence driven by desire, eternally burdened by “colas de cocodrilos” and “colas de plomo.” They remain condemned to their sexuality and unaware of both its origin and its presence—a presence which itself proves “doubtful,” a “duda” or “dificultad.”¹⁷ In this light, the violent re-assertion of the phallus crushes (or “strikes”) the quest for a true union through sexual (again oral) intercourse “entre dos”; and, on an individual level, it undermines any attempt to reunite the splintered subject, to make oneself conscious of one's unconscious discourse, or to return to that state of prenatal wholeness. This is why the phallus “dispensará la muerte diciendo Yo os amo” (my emphasis). But not only does the phallus dispense death by reasserting differance (postponed or “futurized” difference), it does so through language—“diciendo …” Text here becomes sex, and both are shams, fabrications, or lies of presence that can only function through their inability to reveal, through their eternal frustration of desire.

This constant sense of displacement or slippage pervades the poem. “En un licor si blanco que sabe a memoria o a cita,” by referring to mother's milk or semen, posits sex and maternal union as possible resolutions to the falsity of the waltz, or as “readings” of the “meaning” of the dance. Nevertheless, “blanco” implies an absence in its lack of color and anticipates the poem's fruitless resolution—one in which “presence” destroys. Moreover, the fulfillment (“que sabe”) of desire remains uncertain, for it is a residue of the past (“a memoria”) condemned to the future (“a cita”). Numerous other indications of this effect of deferment permeate the text in the form of “veils” such as “faldas,” “caparazones,” and “abanicos.”

We have already seen how time functions in the poem as an endless displacement that can never realize itself. Likewise, we find a physical displacement that cannot “arrive” at any satisfactory place or residence of “truth.” The place of the dance gives way to the place of the sexual encounter which offers no more resolution than the “rincón” at the dance. We note how the poet mingles this concept of physical displacement with that of linguistic and temporal displacement: “ese beso que estaba (en el rincón) entre dos bocas / se convertirá en una espina / que dispensará la muerte.” The parentheses here linguistically “contain” the physical space of the kiss in the same marginalized, always already removed way that society, the “rincón,” and the text itself contained (and contains) the kiss. The kiss remains ossified, even oppressed, in a state of periphery or deferment. Thus the revelation of the phallus and the moment and the place and the text of that revelation are always already removed or veiled.

This distance in both time and space functions semiotically as the human (the reader's and the poet's) experience of unfolding absence. Ultimately, this experience is one of “betrayal” which extends from the linguistic to the ontological. Aesthetically, this betrayal tantalizes and arouses desire on the part of the reader, i.e.—it allows art to function. Painful as it may be, this erotic betrayal of language generates poetry or text. We have seen how “El vals” concludes with an erotic postponement of meaning, and perhaps Aleixandre's most important and transcendent imagery in this respect revolves around the Christian betrayal. We may extend the erotic inversion of the Eucharist to our understanding of the last four lines of the poem. The “beso” that becomes the “espina” now resonates the kiss of Judas (perhaps the ultimate betrayal of Western culture!), and the spine may now refer to the “espina santa” or the “corona de espinas.” The betrayal of Christ is of course “double” or “two-faced” in that it is at once “of” as well as “by” Christ. What greater postponement than the return of the messiah or the promise of life after death? The Christian betrayal may be seen as generative simply because it allows for salvation and “meaning” in life (indeed, Judas may be seen as the true Christ just as Satan may be considered the true artist or Man himself).¹⁸ Furthermore, the artist/poet is the ultimate betrayer or “tropist” as a creator who presents us with an ever-evasive sign system subject to infinite interpretation. In this sense, the words “Yo os amo,” by way of the love of Christ and God for Man (the “reader” of the religious tragedy), become the words of Aleixandre the poet/creator. They serve as a subtle apostrophe to the reader whereby Aleixandre acknowledges the faith that we have brought to his text (in accepting meaning or “presence” where there can only ever be “absence”), and also forgives our violence against his text when we hermeneutically “sacrifice” the poem.

A brief look at the problem of genre will add yet another dimension to the above. The question of Surrealism and Freudianism remained a permanent problem for Aleixandre and his contact with both schools would seem indisputable.¹⁹ But despite the stylistic presence of both “isms,” Aleixandre's text is not “escritura automática” or “free-association.” Or is it? How can writing ever be (or be anything but) automatic? The actual distance of “El vals” from the unconscious remains impossible to determine. In fact both Surrealism and Freudianism are paradoxical in this respect, for to perceive the imperceptible or to express the inexpressible entails encoding that which is supposedly beyond all codes. Can one translate the ultimate translation? How can the unconscious be made conscious if the conscious implies an unconscious? Will there not always be another dimension to what is presented as the “other dimension? Both Freudianism and Surrealism (perhaps unwittingly) present an end to the infinite concatenation of meaning at the same time that they continually suggest its existence. Aleixandre's avant-garde flight from the restrictive, simplistic symbolization of “modernismo” (“Adiós adiós esmeralda amatista o misterio”) brings him to the spiraling paradox of Surrealism. Perhaps his unwillingness to accept Surrealism (as well as his conclusion to “El vals”) indicates his awareness of the problem that in an infinite chain of symbolization, none of the various “poéticas vanguardistas” can ever be a “truer” discourse or representation than “modernismo” or any other aesthetic system.²⁰ Nevertheless, the particular brand of “aware” Surrealism found in Spain would seem to be the ideal genre for the avant garde poet who remains hyper-sensitive to his aesthetic heritage. For the artist caught between imitation and creation, this type of Surrealism is consciously “two-faced” in that it embraces both extremes. It easily fragments and incorporates a massive spectrum of the aesthetic past (thus acknowledging the Renaissance principle of “imitatio” or emulation), while at the same moment it re-forms the material of the past in an egocentric (because eccentric and esoteric) and original creation (thus acknowledging the Renaissance principle of “inventio” and ultimately the Romantic idea of the artist genius).

We may now reconsider the metapoetical commentary of lines 15-16: “Todo lo que está suficientemente visto / no puede sorprender a nadie.” At the same instant that these lines appear as a sort of Surrealist manifesto they also express the paradox of the Surrealist position. They surprise us precisely because they contrast so sharply with the surreal imagery that surrounds them. This serves as ironic commentary on Surrealism's intent to unsettle, for the reader inevitably becomes desensitized to surrealist imagery, and the artist creates his problem of “how to shock?” as he attempts to solve it. Moreover, if Surrealism takes the revelation of the unconscious as one of its goals, then its love of irrational expression subverts that very revelation. Denial leads inevitably to assertion and art cannot help but become artificial.

In the particular situation of “El vals,” the poem inevitably becomes the very dance that it seeks to subvert. “El vals” becomes “el vals” or “El vals”. … In other words, the transparency that “El vals” seeks to achieve vies with its own linguistic innovation. “El vals” is not only about poetry writing, it subverts poetry writing. In this sense, “espina” comes to represent the phallus by way of the pen—a link suggested by the artificial presence of parentheses in the poem's concluding moment. The poem admits that the waltz (the music, the dance, as well as the social event) unconsciously expresses repressed sexual urges, and in so doing it points to itself as nothing more or less than a similar discourse—a form of art likened to the waltz. Every progression or shift in the poem (social to private, artificial to real, invisible to visible, hollow manners to sexual encounter, clothing to nudity, bourgeoisie to aristocracy, inspiration to expression, etc.) is ultimately subverted. If the waltz is “todo lo revuelto que arriba” and “una playa sin ondas,” the poem “El vals” is likewise a dead end (literally) or a dead ending—a “ceasing” in motion—in its quest to reveal the unrevealable. This textual self-reflexivity appears perhaps most overtly in the concluding line “Yo os amo,” which suddenly brings the entire focus of the poem onto its creator and foregrounds the poet's empathetic identification with his human subjects who are themselves subjected to a law which decenters and divides.

Whether we consider Barthes' idea of an endlessly shifting sign system with no consistent state of (un)dress, no finality to the act of unveiling, or Lacan's “contract of desire,” we perceive that solidifying these processes means death. To end the act of symbolization, to break the concatenation of meaning, or to discover the final “truth” is to destroy. Like Lacan, Aleixandre cannot accept substitutes for the “THING” or any “object” of desire, and like Barthes, he acknowledges that the true erotic nature of his text lies in its plurality of registers. The futuristic and impossible death that concludes “El vals” is that imaginary impossible castration that occurs when the phallus is revealed or when plurality is terminated. And the union of love with that murder is the acknowledgment that the process of revelation is at once suicidal and human or “difunta” and “viva.”

Notes

1. There are only two well-known articles that treat “El vals” exclusively: Carlos Barral's short and sentimental “Memoria de un poema,” in Vicente Aleixandre, Ed. José Luis Cano, Madrid: Taurus, 1977, pp. 144-147; and Jorge Urrutia's more extensive, if reductive, “La palabra que estalla (a la vista): ‘El vals’, de Aleixandre,” Insula, Nos. 368-9, July-Aug. (1977), p. 14. Other critics merely cite the poem as an example of the particular “pattern” or “motif” that concerns them. These range from the more general (C.B. Morris' A Generation of Spanish Poets, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969; or Carlos Bousoño's La poesía de Vicente Aleixandre, Madrid: Insula, 1950) to the more specific (Alejandro Amusco's “El motivo erótico en Espadas como labios de Vicente Aleixandre,” Insula, No. 361, Dec. (1976), pp. 1, 12; or Hernán Galilea's “El mar en la poesía de Vicente Aleixandre,” in Vicente Aleixandre: A Critical Appraisal, Ed. Santiago Daydí-Tolson, Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp. 238-244).

2. See Philip Silver's La casa de Anteo, Madrid: Taurus, 1985. Jonathan Mayhew does much to dismiss this unfair characterization in his “‘Límites y espejo’: Linguistic Self-Consciousness in the Poetry of Vicente Aleixandre,” MLN, Vol. 105, No. 2 (Mar. 1990), pp. 303-315.

3. This is generally accepted by critics, although not expressed in such terms, for they seem to miss the sexual undercurrent. Daydí-Tolson writes that “El vals” refers “to a false world of social disguises and cruel insensibility which constitutes a constant motive in Aleixandre's view of creation: some manifestations of life are false and therefore nonexistent” (24); and Urrutia writes of “la necesidad para el poeta de seperarse de una sociedad que ignora la verdad, el amor físico y la risa sincera” (14).

4. All quotations of “El vals” are from Gerardo Diego's anthology Poesía española contemporánea, Madrid: Taurus, 1987, pp. 477-479, which preserves the absence of punctuation in the original version.

5. For more on Aleixandre's erotic diction see Amusco's “El motivo erótico,” and Yolanda Novo Villaverde, “Pasión de la tierra y Espadas como labios: Aspectos cosmovisionarios y simbología surrealista” in Vicente Aleixandre, Ed. Daydí-Tolson, pp. 122-144.

6. Urrutia also sees women's makeup here: “los rostros cubiertos […] por maquillajes similares a olas de afrecho” (14, Urrutia's emphasis).

7. Schwartz, who takes a Freudian approach to Aleixandre, points out that “to wish to be eaten or possessed by menacing animals often represents a death fantasy equivalent to a fear of castration” (208).

8. Urrutia indicates these “dos campos semánticos directores del poema: el mar y la dureza” (14), but does not consider their link to the womb or the phallus.

9. “Water, sea, and ocean may mean ‘mother’ in association with youthful innocence, happiness, the breast, absorption, and death” (Schwartz 208).

10. The line “un beso sorprendido en el instante que se hacía ‘cabello de ángel’” has puzzled me for some time. According to Ilie, Aleixandre's “search for understanding [is] symbolized by a parallel imagery of wings, angels, and heavenly bodies” (105). In this light, the kiss seems interrupted by the inhibiting waltz just before it is able to transcend the falsity of its social setting. Moreover, the common phrase “cabello de ángel” acts as a kind of surrealistic “moment”—a brief glimpse behind the lie of everyday language.

11. Both Amusco (12) and Novo Villaverde (136) support the interpretation of these lines as oral sex.

12. Daydí-Tolson (17) and Ilie (104) find “luz” to represent the desired end of Aleixandre's quests.

13. Guillermo Carnero investigates the relation “conocer/saber” in his “Conocer y saber en Poemas de la consumación y Diálogos del conocimiento de Vicente Aleixandre,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, No. 276 (1973), pp. 571-579. He sees “saber” as a static and deadly form of knowledge while “conocer” remains dynamic and alive. We may expand and invert the value of this relation by seeing it as a reflection of the quest for the self, or for total knowledge—that point of pure transcendence and total destruction. “Saber” is the ultimate and impossible end of “conocer.”

14. See also this article's epigraph, the first four lines of “Vida” published in 1935, three years after “El vals.” If we take “un pájaro de papel” as a poem and “tiempo de los besos” as the sexual act, then these lines seem to acknowledge the “always already distant” as intrinsic to sexuality, language, and art (“besos o pájaros tarde o pronto o nunca”)—wisdom perhaps gained through the experience of “El vals.”

15. Gustavo Correa analyzes the subversive quality of this title in “Los títulos de los libros de poesía de Vicente Aleixandre,” in Vicente Aleixandre, Ed. Daydí-Tolson, pp. 88-89, but he does not consider the phallic importance of “espadas.” I would like to add the deconstructive and homosexual implications of “como” as the first person indicative of “comer,” which links sexuality to the ephemerality of language. See also note 16 and my discussion of Lacan's phallus.

16. This adds meaning to the rubric of Espadas como labios which is a quotation from Byron: “What is a poet? What is he worth? What does he do? He is a babbler.” This is more than a surrealist's apology, it is Aleixandre's philosophical position.

17. The word “espina” can also mean “fishbone,” which combines the quest for the phallus with the desire for maternal union with the sea. As Schwartz (208) vaguely puts it: “The fish inhabiting the life-giving seas represent a vital sexual destructive capacity.” I would add that the sea is associated with endlessness or infinity, the termination of with would reveal a dead (and deadly) fishbone.

18. The Christian betrayal mirrors the betrayal of the phallus. Judas seeks to unveil and to test that which refuses to be tested, and instead of revealing awesome phallic power, Christ vanishes behind death—once again leaving faith in His wake as the impenetrable center of human existence.

19. Aleixandre's debt is well known. Bousoño quotes a personal letter in which the poet writes: “Joyce, Rimbaud, confluyeron casi simultáneamente en mis lecturas. … Freud, en 1928, abrió, sajó honduras de la psique con un borbotar de vida profunda más que nunca escuchable” (15). Aleixandre also refers to Freud as “psicólogo de vasta repercusión literaria” in his introduction to Pasión de la tierra, in his Obras completas, Madrid: Aguilar, 1968, p. 1461.

20. Critics are constantly rescuing Aleixandre from the surrealist label: see, for example, Schwartz (200-204), or Daydí-Tolson (8-9). In this rush to differentiate the poet from the French school, critics often miss the paradoxical implications of their own arguments. Schwartz states that “in reality Aleixandre does not share their [the surrealists'] radical transformation of values through total liberation of the unconscious” (203). At what point is one's unconscious totally liberated? Daydí-Tolson seems to stumble onto the problem, but fails to consider it in relation to Aleixandre's particular vision of Surrealism: “This voice of the unconscious follows its own rules, if it is possible to use such a term in reference to a discourse apparently devoid of any form of predetermined governing pattern” (8).

Works Consulted

Aleixandre, Vicente. Obras completas. Madrid: Aguilar, 1968.

Amusco, Alejandro. “El motivo erótico en Espadas como labios de Vicente Aleixandre, Insula, No. 361, Dec. (1976): 1, 12.

Barral, Carlos. “Memoria de un poema.” In Vicente Aleixandre. Madrid: Insula, 1950

Bousoño, Carlos. La poesía de Vicente Aleixandre. Madrid: Insula, 1950.

Carnero, Guillermo. “Conocer y saber en Poemas de la consumación y Diálogos de conocimiento de Vicente Aleixandre.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, No. 27 (1973): 571-579.

Correa, Gustavo. “Los títulos de los libros de poesía de Vicente Aleixandre.” In Vicente Aleixandre. Ed. Daydí-Tolson. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp 88-89.

Daydí-Tolson, Santiago. “A New Voice of Tradition.” In Vicente Aleixandre. Ed. Daydí-Tolson. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp. 13-15.

———Ed. Vicente Aleixandre: A Critical Appraisal. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981.

Diego, Gerardo. Ed. Poesía española contemporánea. Madrid: Taurus, 1987.

Galilea, Hernán. “El mar en la poesía de Vicente Aleixandre.” In Vicente Aleixandre. Ed. Daydí-Tolson. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp. 238-244.

Gimferrer, Pere. Prologue to Antología total. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1976.

Ilie, Paul. “Decent and Castration.” In Vicente Aleixandre. Ed. Daydí-Tolson. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp. 104-121.

Lacan, Jacques. “The meaning of the phallus.” In Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne. Ed. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. New York Norton, 1982.

Mayhew, Jonathan. “‘Límites y espejo’: Linguistic Self-Consciousness in the Poetry of Vicente Aleixandre.” MLN, Vol. 105, No. 2, Mar. (1990): 303-315.

Morris, C. B. A Generation of Spanish Poets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Novo Villaverde, Yolanda. “Pasión de la tierra y Espadas como labios: Aspectos cosmovisionarios y simbología surrealista.” In Vicente Aleixandre. Ed. Daydí-Tolson. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp. 122-144.

Schwartz, Kessel. “Eros and Thanatos: The poetry of Vicente Aleixandre—Surrealism or Freudianism?” In Vicente Aleixandre. Ed. Daydí-Tolson. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press, 1981, pp. 200-220.

Silver, Philip. La casa de Anteo. Madrid: Taurus, 1985.

Urrutia, Jorge. “La palabra que estalla (a la vista): ‘El vals’, de Vicente Aleixandre.” Insula, Nos. 368-369, July-Aug. (1977): 14.