Antonio
Colinas (Spain)
1946
Born
in La Bañeza, Leon on January 30, 1946, Antonio Colinas is a major Spanish poet
vaguely situated as part of the Generation of 1970 and the Spanish novísimos, although his work was not
included in the anthology of their work.
Colinas studied history at the University
of Madrid before teaching, between 1970 and 1974 at the Universities of Milan
and Bergamo in Spanish. He spent two decades in Ibiza before moving to
Salamanca.
His first book of over 40 books of poetry, was Poemas de la tierra y de la sange (Poems of the Land and the Blood), published in 1969 along with, the same year, Preludios a una noch total (Preludes to a Total Night), both of which established him as a kind of classicist with mystical leanings. Yet his work, filled with poetic tradition, philosophical, spiritual concerns defines its own territory, and Colinas’ voice is quite original and, often, astonishing beautiful.
Besides his notable contributions to
poetry, the author has also published numerous books of fiction ( Un año en el sur, 1986; Larga carta a Francesco, 1986; Días en Petavonium, 1994; El crujido de la luz, 1999; and Huellas, 2003), dozens of books of
essays and other genres, as well as translating more than 20 authors.
He won the Premio Nacional de Literatura
prize in 1982 and the Premio de la Academia Castellana y Leonesa for poetry in
2001.
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
This
road lines with dour hundred-year-old fig trees—
where
is it talking me on this uncertain night?The heat has overcome the doves in the wheat field.
Only the cool, innumerable cascades of grapevines,
over the unhoping eye of the partridge tangled
and wounded in a snare at the clearing,
over the sweat of the horses,
The shade creates a sweet, fresh river of shadow,
a deep channel between black trunks,
traced by a divine hand.
When
night falls an enormous sword
comes
after me; it tears at the sky, whistlesdemonically among the branches.
But today I am safe. Goodbye, persistent
and exhausting snares of life.
Safe in the unfathomed channel
of the night road, between the infinite
lines that someone drafted centuries ago.
A channel where nothing bewilders me
but the sickly, sublime aroma
of a procession of mown rose bushes.
—Translated from the Spanish by John DuVal
_____
“The
River of the Shadow” reprinted from Kay Pritchett, ed. Four Postmodern Poets of Spain: A Critical Introduction with
Translations of the Poems (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press,
1991). Copyright ©1991 by Kay Pritchett. Reprinted by permission of The
University of Arkansas Press.
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