SOURCE: "Villaurrutia and Baudelaire," in Hispania, Vol. XLIII, No. 2, May, 1960, pp. 205-8.

The influence of various French authors on Villaurrutia has already been noted: Alí Chumacera in his introduction to the complete works of Villaurrutia¹ has pointed out (p. xxii) the importance of Proust, Cocteau, Supervielle, Giraudoux, the surrealists, the intellectual example of Gide, for the Mexican poet. Behind them all, however, stands the figure of Baudelaire, whose work forms the beginning of modern French poetic theory and attitudes. The present paper is an attempt to indicate some relationships between the author of the Fleurs du mal and the Mexican contemporáneo, not so much in the way of direct imitation but more in the way of comparisons which seem significant. These relationships center about those themes of death, night, and dream, usually present in a discussion of Villaurrutia's poetry.

The theme of death is an important one for both Baudelaire and Villaurrutia. The Fleurs du mal has a section of six poems entitled "La Mort." In the first of these poems, "La Mort des amants,"² we find a note of a certain exaltation, the angel who "entre "ouvrant les portes,/Viendra ranimer, fidèle et joyeux,/Les miroirs ternis et les flammes mortes." Thus life is associated, in Baudelaire, with memory, remembrance of things past. There is also an essential association with death and its necessary opposite, or complement, life. This parallel is basic in Villaurrutia. In the poem, "Canto a la primavera," it is the poet who poses this question which is the beginning of all poetic activity, the origin of love and its end, or a repetition of the love-death motif which can be found in the Baudelaire poem. Inherent in the Baudelaire piece is the idea of regeneration or rebirth: there is in the figure of the Angel the possible announcer of the final judgment, which is to be the beginning of another life. In Villaurrutia there is a similar innate impulse towards regeneration, but with the modification that it counts less in a moral or intellectual decision on the poet's part and is more natural in origin, somewhat comparable to Bergson's élan vital. With this association of the quest for an answer the poem follows a series of possibilities. First, from the earth characterized as sumisa, dormida, fatigada, herida, and which includes the past (olvidado) and death, emerges the dream of rebirth, of renascence:

desde la muerte misma,
germina o se despierta
y regresa a la vida.

(p. 60)

And for Villaurrutia it is through poetry that the poet, like the star, will continue, even though there has been a death of the body. For both Baudelaire and Villaurrutia the symbol is that of a guiding light or star; for the French poet, "C'est la clarté vibrante à notre horizon noir. . . ." ("La Mort des pauvres") In Villaurrutia the conceit is similarly that of the star, dead for centuries, which continues to give off light, as the poet—dead through the abandonment by love—continues to live.

Estrella que te asomas, temblorosa y despierta,
tímida aparición en el cielo impasible,
tú, como yo—hace siglos—, estás helada y muerta,
más por tu propria luz sigues siendo visible.

("Estancias nocturnas," p. 51)

So that the eventual primavera is possible:

Dicen que he muerto.
No moriré jamás:
¡estoy despierto!

("Epitafios," p. 75)

In Nostaligia de la muerte the first part reproduces an earlier volume, Nocturnos. The title associates night and death. In Baudelaire's "La Fin de la journée" there is the comfort of death, an association with death and the finality of a certain cessation of troubles, of the need for an end to the difficulties, the struggle for existence, that called forth the "héroïsme de la vie moderne": "La nuit volupteusement monte, Apaisant tout. . . ." In Villaurrutia there is a longing for death for a similar reason. The "Nocturno" is a category type, listing all the emotions—placer, vicio, deseo, sueño—which arise in a sensual pattern during the night. At the end of the poem, as does Baudelaire, he subsumes all in one word todo: the complete emotional pattern, all his love, his actions, which

circula en cada rama
del árbol de mis venas,
acaricia mis muslos,
inunda mis oídos. . . .

("Nocturno," p. 32)

The secret vitality of this emotional response lies in the contrast between life and death; or rather, in that the means of expression are limited by the eyes (vive en mis ojos muertos) and the lips (en mis labios duros). In "Nocturno Grito" a parallel Baudelairean spleen or acedia, an emotional impotence, is noticed: when the poet wishes to enquire of his heart what it contains, his hands will be "duros/pulsos de mármol helado." ("Nocturno Grito," p. 33)

Villaurrutia could probably have had in mind these words from Baudelaire: "Who among us is not a homo duplex? I mean those whose minds since infancy have been touched with pensiveness; always double, action and intention, dream and reality; one always harming the other."³ The modern poet is a person who is trying to find out what sort of person he is; the problem is one of solitude, as for example when he hears "el grito de la estatua desdoblando la esquina." ("Nocturno de la Estatua," p. 33) He wonders what is to be his response, In Baudelairean terms this type of inquiry or self-interrogation illustrates the difference between "action and intention, dream and reality." The essence of this division can be stated in phrases reminiscent of Baudelaire: ennui (moral) and spleen (physical) of a constant frustration:

querer tocar el grito y sólo hallar el eco,
querer asir el eco y encontrar sólo el muro
y correr hacia el muro y tocar un espejo.

("Nocturno de la Estatua," p. 34)

Furthermore, as Baudelaire has pointed out in the Journaux intimes, there are two "sentiments contradictoires: l'horreur de la vie et l'ectase de la vie."⁴ These feelings are most poignantly expressed in a time of solitude, "en esta soledad sin paredes." For Baudelaire there is a conflict when the contrasting emotions are struggling with one another and which the French poet describes as "simultanées." The resulting mood is one of despair:

en un interminable descenso
sin brazos que tender
sin dedos para alcanzar. . . .

("Nocturno en que nada se oye," p. 34)

For Baudelaire, moreover, there is a further pair of opposing elements, volupté and extase. The former is more physical, felt by the senses. The latter is more intellectual, or, at times, more deeply aware of, say, religious values. They are, for Baudelaire, as for Villaurrutia, fleeting states, not the inherited part of man's nature, but more those states which tend to come and go, depending on the moment. They are related to love and death.

These themes of love and death are inextricably intertwined in both Baudelaire and Villaurrutia. If the Mexican poet lacks the sardonic humor, the bitterness, of the French poet, he is close to the feeling of the nearness of death in any poetic mood. For Baudelaire in "Le Rêve d'un curieux":

—J'allais mourir. C'était dans mon âme amoureuse,
Désir mêlé d'horreur, un mal particulier. . . .

For Villaurrutia there is the same attraction of love and death. In "Amor condusse noi ad una morte," the theme is that of the dark night of the soul transposed to a secular and more sensuous plane. The fear is not only that of knowledge, but also of the non-fulfillment of love, the lack of the total giving of oneself to love, "acaso en otros brazos te abandonas." (p. 63) And eventually what Freudians have termed the death-wish, and what certain critics have called the morbidity of Baudelaire, takes place: the act of love which is a kind of death:

y morir otra vez la misma muerte
provisional, desgarradora, oscura.

("Amor condusse noi ad una morte," p. 63)

The paradox is carried out to its ultimate conclusions: that of hope and not hoping; of hoping that something will happen, and when it does happen, of hoping for the death of hope:

la sola posesión de lo que espero,
es porque cuando llega mi esperanza
es cuando ya sin esperenza muero.

("Soneto de la esperanza," p. 65)

For Baudelaire, in "Le Goût du néant":

Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte,
L'Espoir, dont l'éperon attisait ton ardeur,
Ne veut plus t'enfourcher!

The ultimate result of this paradox is the corresponding reaction on the part of the woman, who also fears the end of love, the abnegation of the individual personality, the incomplete giving of oneself. For Villaurrutia the problem is similar:

de tal suerte
que si no me dejas verte
es por no ver en la mía
la imagen de tu agonía:
porque mi muerte es tu muerte.

("Décimas de nuestro amor," III, p. 66)

The basic theme is that of sueño, souvenir, dream. Dream, with all that is implied in the dream act: the reorganization of the past, the search for significance and meaning to one's actions, the adjustment to one's surroundings. For Baudelaire there is the implication of nostalgia:

Ainsi dans la forêt où mon esprit s'exile
Un vieux Souvenir sonne à plein souffle du cor!

("Le Cygne," II)

For Villaurrutia the poem, "Canto a la primavera," represents a posing of the problem of the dream in relation to its origins and to its rôle as a means of identification with primavera; additionally, the essentials of mystic rites are explored. In Villaurrutia the function of verse has this prophetic note, a Mallarmean ritualism, which is close to a kind of earth-worship, an almost Blake-like pantheism. For earth is the romantic repository of mystery, elmisterioso sueño, to which the poet must go for an answer. In the Fleurs du mal, le souvenir (or the remembrance of the past) is necessary to complete the past, to give to the past the fullest possible identity. It comes near to Proust's mémoire involontaire. Sueño is similarly a principal theme; it recalls Hamlet's line, and in that sleep what dreams may come, and the whole tradition of Hamletism so important in nineteenth-century French poetic outlook and in Baudelaire. In Villaurrutia sleep (a type of death) and death are inevitably joined, estoy muerto de sueño. The central difficulty in his discussion of death is one of definition, both of himself and what has happened to him, during a period of silence of a night: "en medio de un silencio .. . sin respirar siquiera para que nada turbe mi muerte . . ." ("Nocturno en que nada es oye," p. 34) As Reyes Nevares has indicated: "Esta carecía de motivos, que es tal carecía para el amante, quien no puede en un momento dado decifrar la conducta del otro, es verdaderamente la muerte en el amor. La muerte que aflora en la superficie del episodio erótico."⁵ The image is reciprocal, the lover and the loved one; it is a means whereby the poet keeps alive his love, even though he has no hope of finding it:

Mi amor por ti. Ino murió!
Sigue viviendo en la fría,
ignorada galería
que en mi corazón cavó.

("Décimos," X, p. 68)

Thus Baudelaire fights against time:

Noir assassin de la Vie et de l'Art.
Tu ne tueras jamais dans ma mémoire
Celle qui fut mon plaisir et ma gloire!

("Un fantôme," IV, "Le portarait")

This deeply personal type of experience might be described as characteristic of one point of view. The problem is further heightened by the fact that each experience is an individual one, but one in which some one else is affected. Who can afford to give up his identity; is it possible to share what is usually referred to as the death-wish. The modern individual, and especially Baudelaire, is torn by the belief that without individualization there is no generalization possible; that in the love-death relationship the individual emotion and the individual death must remain, with the parallel notion of love and life. As a Mexican critic has written: "La muerte y la vida caminan juntas; así, al descubrir la muerte, se ve la vida."⁶

The essential difference between Baudelaire and Villaurrutia lies in the rôle the intellect plays. For both poets fatalism is evident. For Baudelaire, however, because of the Catholic tradition within which he worked, the notion of love was linked with sin, that of death with pride. The dream motive in Baudelaire is an escape motive, even in the sense of an ideal world where an ideal Beauty can be attained, whatever its origins. This dualism is the source of much of Baudelaire's spleen and ideal:

Trois mille six cents fois par heure, la Seconde
Chichote: Souviens-toi!—Rapide, avec sa voix
D'insecte, Maintenant dit: Je suis Autrefois,
Et j'ai pompé ta vie avec ma trompe immonde.

("L'Horloge")

And even though Villaurrutia has little concern for this Christian world-view, there is still an intellectual inquiry which relates him to the French poet. As an American scholar has said concerning Nostalgia de la muerte: ".. . la melancolía se ha hecho angustia y la soledad es amenaza. En este libro una afirmación de las realidades filosóicas que persiguen al poeta en la lucidez desesperada de la noche."⁷ The moments of anguish remind the reader of twentieth-century philosophy of crisis, of Existentialist Angst.

Si nuestro amor no fuera
en el sueño doloroso
en que vives, sin mí,
dentro de mí una vida
que me llena de espanto. . . .

("Nuestro amor," p. 69)

In summary: there is little evidence of a direct imitation of Baudelaire by Villaurrutia. As is generally true in France, Baudelaire's influence is indirect, through a similarity of approach to problems of love, death, dream. These themes are interrelated in the poetry of Baudelaire and Villaurrutia in a similar outlook: that the poet is truly only alive and functioning in these moments of extreme anguish, or even fear; that eventually there is an affirmation of poetic vitality and purpose, which affords a reason or a kind of explanation for the suffering and the doubts experienced. Can we not say that there is in poetry, as in science, a common basis of thought in which one poet is indebted to another?

NOTES

¹ Xavier Villaurrutia, Poesía y teatro completos (México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953). Titles of poems and page numbers after citations refer to this edition.

² Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Editions de la Pléiade, 1951). Titles of poems in text refer to this edition.

³ Ibid., p. 1008. In a review of La Double Vie by Charles Asselineau; the English phrase appears in English in the French text.

⁴ Ibid., p. 1220. Section LXXIII of Mon coeur mis à nu.

⁵ Salvador Reyes Nevares, El amor y la amistad en México (México: Porrúa y Obregon, 1952), p. 53.

⁶ Albert R. Lopes, "La Poesía de Xavier Villaurrutia," in Memoria del segundo congreso internacional de catedráticos de literatura iberoamericana (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1941), p. 255.

⁷ Frank Dauster, "La poesía de Xavier Villaurrutia," Revista Iberoamericana, XVIII (enero-sept., 1953), p. 346.