anmeldung

The Yearning of Freedom in the

Poems of Antonio Machado and Hasan Kaya

by Ricardo Gustavo Espeja

Córdoba, Argentina

The poetry is an art where the intimate subjectivity is indeed essential. Nevertheless there are metaphors that describe feelings by creating parallel forms. That is what happens to the famous Spanish poet Antonio Machado and the Kurdish writer Hasan Kaya, resident of Istanbul. They come from different traditions that have respectfully been assumed by them in their fullness, that is, with their lights and shades alike. In doing so, Hasan Kaya "rescues the luminosity of the verb... chips words swim between the anxious students/glimpse in the lips" – that is a counterpoint with his previous verses "Sing a hymn of grief/with orations without verbs". And no matter how hard a song is hanging of gifts, as the disciples of Jesus "Each dusk/and each dawn" are an inextinguishable flag, is the literary tradition, the word in action, that persists in erecting. Beyond the "pieces of shame” that is to vivify it by purifying - typical of the Kurdish cultural tradition of Hasan Kaya - one may draw a parallel with the aspiration of Antonio Machado. The latter would express the same idea by writing: "I cannot sing nor I love that Jesus of the log but to which he walked in the sea". In the poetic phenomenology of both authors it is possible to stand out as much to the log in the cross as the mast of the gift, neither like representation of the "tree axis of the world", nor like exaltation of the suffering that will be redemptory. This is not comparable to significance of an oppressive situation, indicated by the same popular sentence of his Saeta: "... to clear the nails to him/to Jesus/the Nazareno", in which Jesus was symbolized by Machado’s own people of Andalusia, especially the Gypsies. It is the very people that are singing on the Andalusian streets and villages: "Jose Maria, tempranillo, bandit of Andalusia that robbed the rich ones to distribute amongst the poor." Such yearning of freedom is demonstrated in Jesus "who walked in the sea" (Machado) as well as in the wind that takes to the sighs and the words and waves to the flag of the literary tradition.

References:

G. Bachelard Poética del Espacio Fondo de Cultura Económica – México.

I. Pintor Iranzo “A propósito de lo imaginario”.

G. Durand “L’anthropologie et les estructures du complexe.

Mircea Eliade “Imágenes y símbolos”.

http ://nicol.club.fr/ciret/bulletin/b13 c10.htm

Anonio Machado: The Saeta (Arrow)

Who lends stairs, to raise the log, to clear the

nails to him to Jesus the Nazareno? Popular Saeta

Oh, the saeta, singing to the Christ of the gypsys,

always with blood in the hands, always with nails in

hands !

To sing of the people Andalusian, who all the

springs walks requesting stairs to raise the cross!

To sing of the Earth mine who compliments to the

Jesus of the agony, and is the faith of my greater!

Oh, you are not my to sing!

I cannot sing nor I love that Jesus of the log, but

to which it walked in the sea!

Antonio Machado

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A Heroic Song hung upon the Gallows

by Hasan Kaya

On the boat of my age

there’re smell of the hand surfeited with arts

and apt paintings of the divine peacock

The gorges of the expreiences of hope

seem too narrow and lonely to us,

like the trails of the future smokes

The frozen pieces of shame from taboos

gathered in the heavy-burdened cabins,

References to the paralysed body, already chewed,

Moths of the exhausted heart,

Jesus who had no real companion -

They are being hung upon the thorny gallows

Every sunset

and every sunrise

All will go with the wind

in your land without banner

All will go with the wind

from the threshing floor of the neck

The wanderers scatter the breath,

gathered up on their way to exile,

and stay out all night

looking for a shelter.

They sing a hymn of complaints

with sentences without verbs

The salty words swim in the boiling pupils

and glimmer on the lips -

like a rag on my forehead

like a knot over your mind

The glass of my heart

is runied into misery,

The joy of my heart

is directed at your camera, just like a gun

The reins of feelings will decay

between the fingers of repentance,

The hostages of literary tradition

stand in front of love

with a holy banner!

All will go with the wind

from the midst of my age…

I came to the water-spring of piety,

an innocent adherent of punctuality,

worthless and unhappy -

as a reward for being in love

I came to the water-spring of mercy,

a night thief of the heart

asking for your breath

to conceal your mystery

It’s a holy banner, oh the hostage of literary tradition!

All will go with the wind

despite love.

All will go with the wind

from the midst of our breasts…

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