Rafael Cadenas: “Poetry is not always in the song”

Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, Venezuela, 1930) read it for the first time Quixote fourteen year old. At that time, he already sensed that Cervantes’ words “contain a lot of poetry”. This is explained by the Cervantes Prize this Thursday at the headquarters of the National Library of Spain (BNE). With his slow and thoughtful speech, the great and shy poet knows that “poetry is not always in song.” He assured this for hours before he started reading continuously the universal novel of Cervantes, which, in his opinion, exudes poetry.

“Get used to my breaks”, he asked in the noblest room of BNE, “intimidated” by the presence of so many cameras and where he arrived dressed in a thick brown velvet suit, a turquoise shirt with a Mao collar, with a folder full of poems and accompanied by Paula and Silvio, two of their three children.

“The language of Quixote I’ve been drunk since I was fourteen. “When I read it a little older and from an adult perspective, I realized that many of Cervantes’ expressions were unintentional poetry,” Cadenas claimed in a performance filled with long silences.

“In it Quixote poetry is in the language,” he added, recalling the book by María Teresa León, Rafael Alberti’s wife, entitled Cervantes, the soldier who taught me to speak. “I wish the soldiers would just talk about it now,” he said with a slight smile.

“Poetry is in the language of everything I write, like Cervantes and in the etymology of words, which is enlightening,” he said. “The essence of poetry is in all arts, in theater, in music, in painting, in sculpture, and sometimes it is not in song. It’s not always in the song,” insisted the author of the legendary lyrics Defeat and Failurecredited to Cervantes in 2022 for “making poetry the reason for its own existence” and “taking it to the pinnacle of excellence in our language” in a vast work “that demonstrates the transformative power of words, distilling their radiant essence, placing them in the dual territory of sleep and wakefulness” and placing them “in a dimension that is both mystical and earthly.”

Simplicity

Cadenas reminded that he is the author of a book with phrases from Quixote, but wanted to dwell on a very special episode in which Master Pedro “addresses a young man who begins to speak very nicely”. “Llaneza, boy, don’t hide that all affectation is bad,” he recalled a passage “I always read to my students in class.”

When he received the news last November that he was the winner of the highest award for Spanish-American letters, he thought he was being played a creepy joke. «I thought it was a fabrication of Don Quixote in one of his wanderings. I wasn’t sure I had won it until I spoke to the Spanish Minister of Culture,” he explained.

Did Cervantes come too late? “He came at my age, after many years as a candidate. Of course, it is desirable to receive it when you are in good physical condition, but what are we going to do with that,” thanked Cadenas at the awarding ceremony, which he will receive on Monday in the hall of the University of Alcalá de Henares from the hands of Felipe VI. “Now it is difficult for me to travel. I was impressed when I arrived at Barajas, an airport so huge that I remembered it being smaller when I was traveling with my wife and where several young ladies took me around in various wheelchairs,” he quipped.

At the age of 93, his intention is to “continue writing” and bring to light a part of the vast poetic oeuvre that remained buried in closets and drawers. “I am very sorry that there are materials from 40 years ago that have remained in folders all this time. Apart from its value, it needs to be preserved and I have been trying to publish it in my country for two years so that it is not lost,” he said.

“I have a lot of manuscripts, but I don’t even understand my own handwriting, which is getting lost due to old age,” lamented the author of twenty collections of poems such as opening songs (1946), Island (1958), Notebooks of exile (1960, 2001), false maneuvers (1966), External (1977), Monument (1977), Lover (1983, 2002), sayings (1992), management (1992), Workshop next door (2005), open envelope (2012), About Basho and other things (2016) or answer (2018).

Cadenas tiptoed through the delicate social situation in his country and the political peculiarities of the Chavista regime of Nicolás Maduro. “Like many Venezuelans, I’m hungry for information about Venezuela and I wouldn’t want to be inaccurate,” he dodged. He also declined to elaborate on the content of his speech on Monday in Alcala, although he admitted that “there are certain similarities to what I just said.”

“Many people believe that I don’t speak, but my wife Milena told me to keep quiet about the many trips we took to Spain, which were very important to me. I hope it improves what I just said,” he asked reporters. “When you speak you feel you’re missing something, but writing has no boundaries,” he said before reciting the poem.

First of all, he advises young people who want to be someone in poetry “not to seek fame”. “A writer and a poet must focus on creation and forget about everything else.” “To study the language, fundamentally, and to read like-minded poets. They should also go to poetry workshops because it shortens the journey,” he recommended.

Cadenas’ appearance was the first act of the Cervantine week, which would include the beginning of a continuous reading Quixote at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, handing over his legacy to the Caja de las Letras Instituto Cervantes next Tuesday and meeting the students on Thursday next week.