Normally I feel that writing about the act of love works best when it is oblique and suggestive rather than explicit, though this may just be me being a buttoned-up Englishman. There are, for example, certain lines in Robert Frost that I wouldn’t swop for the whole of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’:
‘Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall,
I made him gather me wet snowberries
On slippery rocks beside a waterfall.
I made him do it for me in the dark
And he liked everything I made him do’.
(from ‘The Pauper Witch of Grafton’)
I make an exception, however, for this celebrated poem by the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), which is far from oblique yet is hard to match for sheer sensuality. Even so, its physicality is beautifully augmented by the evocative specificity of the ambience: the night, the river, the barking dogs far off.
The sexual politics of the poem are perhaps debatable. The woman appears to have made all the running and the gypsy portrays himself as only going along with her advances out of a sense of duty – ‘por compromiso’ – and because it would be unbecoming to his male pride to reject her. This seems a bit at odds with his nonetheless enthusiastic participation in the events that follow. Later his post-coital discretion as to what she has told him in the throes of passion is contrasted censoriously with her own indiscreet volubility. This all seems a bit ungallant, and is possibly offensive to women. However, while I have no experience in such matters, my first thought was that if the woman went with the man willingly, was happy to deceive him about her marital status, presumably had a good time and got a new sewing-basket into the bargain, then she didn’t have much to complain about. Then I read the suggestion that by giving her the present of a sewing-basket the man was actually insulting her by a) treating her like a prostitute needing to be paid for her sexual services and b) reminding her to be a good little housewife in future and stick to her domestic duties. This had not occurred to me. I can only say it sounded like quite a nice sewing-basket.
The accompanying translation is my own.
| La Casada Infiel Y que yo me la llevé al río creyendo que era mozuela, pero tenía marido. Fue la noche de Santiago y casi por compromiso. Se apagaron los faroles y se encendieron los grillos. En las últimas esquinas toqué sus pechos dormidos, y se me abrieron de pronto como ramos de jacintos. El almidón de su enagua me sonaba en el oído, como una pieza de seda rasgada por diez cuchillos. Sin luz de plata en sus copas los árboles han crecido, y un horizonte de perros ladra muy lejos del río. * Pasadas las zarzamoras, los juncos y los espinos, bajo su mata de pelo hice un hoyo sobre el limo. Yo me quité la corbata. Ella se quitó el vestido. Yo el cinturón con revólver. Ella sus cuatro corpiños. Ni nardos ni caracolas tienen el cutis tan fino, ni los cristales con luna relumbran con ese brillo. Sus muslos se me escapaban como peces sorprendidos, la mitad llenos de lumbre, la mitad llenos de frío. Aquella noche corrí el mejor de los caminos, montado en potra de nácar sin bridas y sin estribos. No quiero decir, por hombre, las cosas que ella me dijo. La luz del entendimiento me hace ser muy comedido. Sucia de besos y arena yo me la llevé del río. Con el aire se batían las espadas de los lirios. * Me porté como quien soy. Como un gitano legítimo. Le regalé un costurero grande de raso pajizo, y no quise enamorarme porque teniendo marido me dijo que era mozuela cuando la llevaba al río. | The Unfaithful Wife So I took her to the river Thinking that she was a maiden But she had a husband. It was on St James’s night And almost out of duty. The street lamps were turned off, The crickets’ song was kindled. There where the roads ran out I touched her sleeping breasts. At once they opened to me Like sprays of hyacinth. The starch of her petticoat Sounded in my ears Like a piece of silk Tattered by ten knives. The trees have grown, their tops No more moon-silvered, taller. Dogs bark on the horizon Far beyond the river. * Past the bramble bushes, The rushes and the hawthorns, There beneath her spreading hair I hollowed out the earth. I took off my necktie She took off her dress. Me, my belt and revolver, She, her four bodices. No nard, no nacred shell Has skin as smooth as hers, No moonlight upon glass Shines with such radiance. Her thighs slipped from beneath me Like two startled fish, Full of fire above, Chill as earth below. So that night I travelled Upon the best of roads, Mounted on a pearl-white mare, No bridle and no stirrup. As a man I will not say The things she said to me. The dawn of understanding Makes me hold my tongue. Besmeared with sand and kisses I took her from the river. Stiff as swords, the lilies Fought against the air. * I acted true to myself Like a proper gypsy. I gave her a sewing-basket, Large, of yellow satin, But I did not wish to love her Because, having a husband, She told me she was a maiden When I took her to the river. |
David Sutton 