On the right, home of Pedro Requena Legarreta
Gaudí to my friend Christian, who died at age 24 on April 4, 2009
I laughed Dead, skins touched, loved, kissed her lips, slept, woke, the admiration of troubled for a moment . And then her life stopped suddenly as to give the image of perfection. As if the river of life, frozen Suddenly, keep the illusion of life. And the moment of happiness would freeze within a drop of amber to be contemplated. Then, it operates an investment that makes us alive; incomplete. Life is still not resolved in us, has not led anywhere. And the dead, since its completion, we look, perfect.
And then there are those dead who fought valiantly and now gives us a nice history lesson, and who went to war to confront his fate and fight in the trenches by interests that fortunately did not understand. They had a rendezvous with death and made his personal destiny a beautiful parable that happily hidden economic motives that led to the deaths of eight million people in the First World War. Iban cheerful with a historic mission on his back and only saw the horror of war when it was not possible to go back.
Then came the influenza, which probably killed a hundred million people worldwide, between 1918 and 1919. It was called English flu, not because he had emerged in that country, but because it was the only government that did not hide the data on the disease had a mortality rate of fifty percent. That
desolate terrain was suitable soil to spring the occult, and collected enormous amounts of testimony of hunches, premonitions and telepathy afterlife. Because "our land ever since it became human, was build on it in such a short time, such a mass of eager young dead survive" (Maurice Maeterlinck, the unknown host.) The desperation of death to give each individual a transcendental sense, to explain the reason why a whole generation dies in his youth, in a sense we understand the dissemination of the work of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), in which the supreme being has the courtesy to send an emissary to warn every man the decision of his death. And yet the dying rose a praise to thank your destination!
year Most important, definitely, 1914, the beginning of the war that "eternity was proud of man" (Antonio Castro Leal). What was sentimental resonance for those who were called to die? The same critic wrote about it: "The best day, weary of the peace, throw us out of our country. On the desk is a manuscript on the bucolic poetry and in his coat pocket we put a few coins and the dialogues of the Buddha. We left. Sometimes to hell is a pleasant country, on again ... The war did not appear, said a soldier, in its moral aspect but in its cosmic aspect. " I do not know if this has served some consolation poet. Do not even know if his own poetry he has served to explain the horror of his fate. But the American poet Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was killed in action at Belloy-en-Santerre, then joined the Foreign Legion to fight for France. TS Eliot, his classmate at Harvard, wrote about it, "Seeger was serious in his work and shed a lot of pain on him. The work is well done, and so outdated that it almost gives it a positive attribute. It's high-flying, heavily decorated and solemn, but its solemnity is all-encompassing, is not a mere literary formality. Alan Seeger, as someone who knew him, I can attest, lived his entire life in this plane, with impeccable poetic dignity. " Seeger lived in Mexico from 1900 to 1902 and attended the bookstores of the capital, according to Castro Leal "infected with the vices of the country, published a literary journal that never appeared on the date ... The picture of the landscape of his poems is very Mexican and there is even a movement in its melodic singing, learned from our land safe. " Rupert Brooke died also (1887-1915), friend of Robert Frost, whom WB Yeats called "the most beautiful girl in England." He died during a battle in the Greek island of Skyros for what its young country was recognized as a new Byron. His friend, the composer WD Browne, who was at his bedside when he died, he wrote in his diary: "I sat with Rupert. At four in the afternoon, began to weaken, and died 4:46 am, with the sun shining on all sides, and the fresh sea breeze blowing through the door and windows protected from the sun. No one could have wished for a quieter end at that lovely bay, protected by mountains and fragrant with sage and thyme. "And he died Leslie Coulson (1889-1916), who only remembers his gentle nature during the day war. Killed more than poets. Killed others, but that was outside poetry.
II
There is a picture of Pedro Requena Legarreta painted in 1917 by Alfredo Ramos Martínez. Peter died in 1918 in New York, at age 25, victim of the influenza epidemic. Then his father, Jose Luis Requena commanded to do to that picture a wooden frame depicting a lyre with broken strings. Both poet and painter, walked through the countryside in search of inspiration. Requena wrote: "And you and I had, blood reservoirs, intuitions and longings of light and cheap, surprises that cause more surprises, wishes creators of new desires. And in the soul loves and ideas OPIM, which express different rhythms tend, you capturing light, I arresting rhymes, Oh life, both drunk on sun and poetry "(" Pictures and Verses ")
When the poet died ended the gatherings at the restaurant El Angelo Street 8, where they met Amado Nervo, José Juan Tablada, Joaquín Méndez Rivas, the Honduran poet Celaya Alfonso Guillén, Antonio Castro Leal, José Santos Chocano and Salomon de la Selva, among others. There, Ruben Dario had praised the talent of Peter. There, Nervo had offered to take him to Argentina to help promote his work. Then, his embalmed body was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, where he remained until October 19, 1920, when his remains were moved to Mexico. In October 1922, at the initiative of José Vasconcelos, Rector of National University, he paid homage to the English graveyard with the participation of Manuel Toussaint and Carlos Pellicer, Requena who spoke these words: "Undoubtedly youth Mexico has lost him his best poet. Beautiful lives of five decades, devoted to love, friendship and beauty. Fervent spirit and gentle hands, for that existed almost exclusively ... suspend this memory without saying the last word. "Requena
claimed to be the best translator Poetry in Mexico, but also made a significant personal work. In New York, she met Tagore at a conference of Nobel writer at Carnegie Hall in 1916. On this meeting, Requena wrote: "The shrill voice of Rabindranath Tagore, a penetrating voice and rather shy, become serious and deliberate when settles the principles of his philosophy, passionate when he speaks in defense of their homeland or against England, and ironic when finely satirizes the moral progress of the peoples of the West "(Universal Magazine, New York, December 1916). Later, Tagore spoke several times with Requena about his writing. Joaquin Mendez Rivas friend of the translator, notes that the translations of Gitanjali were made from the versions that Tagore did his own work into English, but Requena, to try to come as close as possible to the original meaning, he studied the philosophy of the Upanishads and collected data author.
As part of the collection Cvltvra, appeared in 1919, the Anthology of war dead poets (1914-1918) versions of Pedro Requena and an essay and notes by Antonio Castro Leal. The literary anthology is a sample of a generation that died in the war in Europe, there are seven English writers, six French and one American, born between 1868 and 1895. The authors of the anthology New York consulted the extensive literature was appearing after the death of poets. Antonio Carreira, one of the leading specialists in Góngora, considers the poets of the book "beautifully translated" Max Aub and adventure that could compose his book Impossible Sinai (1982, posthumous), a sample of poets and translations apocryphal, inspired by anthology of poets who died in the war.
III
The October 16, 2005, at six forty in the morning, a house collapsed in the street of Santa Veracruz 43. Long been known as Casa Requena, until the name was forgotten and began to call Mazahua mansion for having been home to 42 indigenous families for years. In the center of the courtyard was the old fountain, covered by debris. On the first floor walls were still painted Venetian mosaics hand Requena family sent for Europe to decorate the house. Previously, the Casa Requena had been one of the most famous residences Porfirian by the delirious decoration José Luis Requena had ordered, thanks to the fortune he had made as a mining entrepreneur. On the day of the collapse, someone hit on the front a series of photos of the house with the original decor. Photos of Peter and Art Nouveau furniture for decades the family donated to the University of Chihuahua. The photos of the bedrooms copied from Perrault's tales. The furniture that seemed inspired by the drawings of Julio Ruelas. Pedro Requena
lived in this house during his childhood and adolescence. Although he was sent to study in the United States, returned to join the Law School. He spent those days with friends at the bakery El Globo, in Italian opera theaters presenting and reading the French writers whose books he had brought from Europe, his friend Victor Velazquez adopted son Felix, a nephew of Porfirio Diaz. But his life in the Santa Veracruz ended when his father was about to be assassinated by Victoriano Huerta, for participating in the presidential candidacy of Felix Diaz. Then, the family fled the country and headed to New York. Other circumstances, remoteness is one reason why the work has been completely forgotten Requena. He had a literary destination Gabriel Zaid summed it up this way: "Requena happened to be famous without being read, to be discarded without being read."
(Inland Journal 159, August-September 2009)
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