In this anthology, the journalist and academic brings together the great romantic ‘hits’ of Lorca, Alberti, Lope de Vega, Borges or Rosalía de Castro.
Anson says that, fortunately, “the immense minority that in Spain reads and is moved by poetry remains stable, despite the screaming of social networks and the digital explosion.” It is his turn, since he gave up talking about journalism in his admission speech at the RAE and went into – “trembling my pulse” – into the love poetry that he selected from the main world languages.
Perhaps, as Lope de Vega would write, love was rather “the inventor of poems”: love as the “absorbed marrow of poetry and also of popular song”, as the journalist concludes in the reissue of his Anthology of the best love poems in the Spanish language (La Esfera de los Libros).
Garcilaso, San Juan, Lope, Quevedo, Bécquer, Rubén Darío, Juan Ramón, Lorca, Aleixandre, Alberti, Neruda and Paz coexist in this work, with the addendum of the anonymous “My God does not move me to love you”, which is not from San Juan, but, as Anson says, “it deserves to be.” And many others and others. Here is a selection so that you look good on a day like today, on Valentine’s Day, with some of the verses that will never, not in a hundred thousand years, go out of style:
1-Sonnet, Garcilaso de la Vega
Your gesture is written in my soul
and how much I want to write about you;
You wrote it alone, I read it alone
that even of you I keep myself in this.
In this I am and always will be;
that although it does not fit in me how much I see in you,
of so much good what I don’t understand I think,
already taking faith for budget.
I was not born except to love you;
my soul has cut you to its measure;
out of habit of the soul itself I love you;
how much I have I confess I owe you;
I was born for you, for you I have life,
for you I have to die and for you I die.
2-Christ crucified, Anonymous
It doesn’t move me, my God, to love you
the sky that you have promised me:
nor does hell move me so feared
to stop offending you.
You move me, Lord; move me to see you
nailed to a cross and mocked;
move me to see your body so hurt;
I’m moved by your affronts and your death.
Move me, in short, your love, and in such a way,
that even if there was no heaven, I would love you,
and even if there was no hell, I would fear you.
You don’t have to give me because I love you;
Well, although how much I hope I will not wait
3-Sonnet, Lope de Vega
the same that I love you I would love you.
- Faint, dare, be furious,
rough, tender, liberal, elusive,
encouraged, deadly, deceased, alive,
loyal, traitorous, cowardly and spirited;
not find outside the good center and rest,
be happy, sad, humble, haughty,
angry, brave, fugitive,
satisfied, offended, suspicious;
flee the face to the clear disappointment,
drink poison by süave liquor,
forget the profit, love the damage;
believe that a heaven fits into a hell,
give life and soul to disappointment:
This is love: whoever tasted it knows it.
4-Constant love beyond death, Quevedo
- Close my eyes the last
shadow that the white day will take me,
and can unleash this soul of mine
hour of his eager flattery;
but not, from this other side, on the shore,
will leave the memory, where it burned:
swimming knows my flame the cold water,
And lose respect for severe law.
Soul to whom an entire prison god has been,
veins that humor to so much fire have given,
marbles that have gloriously burned,
the body of him will be left, not the care of him; they will be ash,
more will make sense; dust they will be, more dust in love.
5-Rimas, XIII, Bécquer
- Because they are, girl, your eyes
green like the sea, you complain;
naiads have them green,
Minerva had them green,
and green are the pupils
of the houris of the Prophet.
Green is gala and ornament
of the forest in the spring.
Among its seven colors
bright the Iris flaunts it.
Emeralds are green
green the color of the one who waits,
and the ocean waves,
and the laurel of the poets.
It’s your early cheek
rose of frost covered,
in which the carmine of the petals
it shows through the pearls.
And yet
I know you complain
because your eyes
you think they make it ugly.
Well do not believe it.
What their pupils look like
wet, green and restless,
early almond leaves
that tremble at the breath of the air.
It’s your mouth of rubies
purple open pomegranate,
that in the summer invites
to quench the thirst in it.
And yet
I know you complain
because your eyes
you think they make it ugly.
Well do not believe it.
What they seem, if angry
your pupils sparkle,
The waves of the sea that break
in the Cantabrian rocks.
It is your forehead that crowns
I curl the gold in a wide braid,
snowy summit on which day
its last light reflects.
And yet
I know you complain
because your eyes
you think they make it ugly.
Well do not believe it.
That between the blond eyelashes,
next to the temples, they resemble
emerald and gold brooches
that a white ermine hold.
Because they are, girl, your eyes
green like the sea, you complain;
maybe black or blue
turned, you felt it.
6-The fatal, Rubén Darío
- Blessed is the tree that is hardly sensitive,
and more the hard stone because that no longer feels,
because there is no greater pain than the pain of being alive,
nor greater sorrow than conscious life.
To be, and to know nothing, and to be aimlessly,
and the fear of having been and a future terror …
And the sure terror of being dead tomorrow,
and suffer for life and for the shadow
and for what we do not know and hardly suspect,
and the flesh that tempts with its fresh bunches,
and the grave that awaits with its funeral bouquets,
And not knowing where we are going, or where we come from! …
7-Caltrops, Rubén Darío
- What are you crying I understand.
Everything is finished.
But I don’t want to see you
my soul, cry.
Our love, always, always …
Our weddings … ever.
Who is that bandit
that he came to steal
your flowery crown
and your wedding veil?
But no, don’t tell me
I don’t want to hear it.
Your name is innocence
and his is Satan.
An abyss to your plants,
a lewd hand
that pushes you; you roll,
and meanwhile, it goes
your guardian angel
sad and just crying.
But why do you spill
so many tears? … Ah!
Yes, I understand everything …
No, don’t tell me more.
8-Painful Gardens, Juan Ramón Jiménez
- You will look at me crying
—It will be the time of the flowers—,
you will look at me crying,
and I will tell you: Don’t cry.
My heart slowly
it will go to sleep … your hand
will caress the forehead
sweaty from your brother …
You will look at me suffering
I will only have your sorrow;
you will look at me suffering,
you, sister, you are so good.
And you will tell me: What have you got?
And I’ll look down at the ground.
And you will tell me: What have you got?
And I will look up to the sky.
And I will smile
—And you will be scared—,
and I will smile
to tell you: It’s nothing …
9-Unity in it, Vicente Aleixandre
Happy body that flows between my hands,
beloved face where I contemplate the world,
where funny birds are copied fugitives,
flying to the region where nothing is forgotten.
Your external shape, diamond or hard ruby,
shine of a sun that dazzles between my hands,
crater that summons me with its intimate music, with that
indecipherable call of your teeth.
I die because I throw myself, because I want to die,
because I want to live in the fire, because this outside air
not mine but hot breath
that if I approach it burns and gilds my lips from a depth.
Leave, let me look, dyed with love,
your face reddened by your purple life,
let me see the deep cry of your entrails
where I die and give up living forever.
I want love or death, I want to die at all
I want to be you, your blood, that roaring lava
that watering enclosed beautiful extreme limbs
thus feel the beautiful limits of life.
This kiss on your lips like a slow thorn
like a sea that flew into a mirror,
like the brightness of a wing,
it’s still hands, a review of your crisp hair,
a crackling of the avenging light,
light or mortal sword that threatens my neck,
but that it can never destroy the unity of this world.
10-They loved each other, Aleixandre
They loved each other.
They suffered for the light, blue lips in the early morning,
lips coming out of the hard night,
chapped lips, blood, blood where?
They loved each other in a ship’s bed, half night, half light.
They loved each other like flowers to deep thorns,
to that loving gem of the new yellow,
when faces turn melancholy,
Sun-turners that shine receiving that kiss.
They loved each other at night, when the deep dogs
they beat under the ground and the valleys stretch
like archaic loins that feel overhauled:
caress, silk, hand, moon that comes and touches.
They loved each other in the early morning,
between the hard closed stones of the night,
hard as bodies frozen for hours,
hard as kisses from tooth to tooth alone.
They loved each other by day, a beach that grows,
waves that caress the thighs through the feet,
bodies rising from the ground and floating …
They loved each other by day, over the sea, under the sky.
Perfect noon, they loved each other so close,
soaring and young sea, extensive intimacy,
loneliness of the alive, remote horizons
linked like bodies in solitude singing.
Loving. They loved each other like the lucid moon
like that round sea that is applied to that face,
sweet eclipse of water, darkened cheek,
where red fish come and go without music.
Day, night, setting, dawn, spaces,
new, old, fugitive, perpetual waves,
sea or land, ship, bed, feather, crystal,
metal, music, lip, silence, vegetable,
world, stillness, its shape. They loved each other, you know.
11-Sonnet of the sweet complaint, Lorca
I’m afraid to lose the wonder
of your statue eyes and the accent
that at night puts me on the cheek
the lonely rose of your breath.
I am sorry to be on this shore
trunk without branches; and what I feel the most
is not having the flower, pulp or clay,
for the worm of my suffering.
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross and my wet pain,
if I am the dog of your lordship,
don’t let me lose what I have gained
and decorate the waters of your river
with leaves of my alienated autumn.
12-Love sleeps on the chest of the poet, Lorca
Tú nunca entenderás lo que te quiero
porque duermes en mí y estás dormido.
Yo te oculto llorando, perseguido
por una voz de penetrante acero.
Norma que agita igual carne y lucero
traspasa ya mi pecho dolorido
y las turbias palabras han mordido
las alas de tu espíritu severo.
Grupo de gente salta en los jardines
esperando tu cuerpo y mi agonía
en caballos de luz y verdes crines.
Pero sigue durmiendo, vida mía.
¡Oye mi sangre rota en los violines!
¡Mira que nos acechan todavía!
