Angel González
(Spain)
1925-2008
Born in 1925 in
Oviedo, Spain, Angel González lived his early youth in northern Spain. His
father died two years after his birth, and he was brought up by his mother in
the period of the Spanish Civil War. One brother was killed during the
conflict, and another was left home to fight on the side of the Republicans.
Both his mother and sister lost their jobs, and the family lived in extreme
poverty.
In his early years González displayed a
great interest in music, and might have gone on to study it if were not for
their poverty. He was, however, able to attend the University of Oviedo, where
he studied law, graduating in 1948. During this same period he had begun to
write poetry, particularly during a period when he contracted tuberculosis and
was sent to a small town in the mountains of Léon. Thereafter, he took a job as
music critic for the periodical La voz de Asturias in Oviedo. In 1951 he
traveled to Madrid to take a course at the Official School of Journalism. But
with the extreme propaganda of the time, he decided to abandon journalism and
entered a into government service in the Ministry of Public Works, first in
Seville and later in Madrid, a job he was to retain until the early 1970s.
In Madrid, González became a regular in the
informal meetings of writers and other intellectuals at the Café Pelayo and in
Barcelona. It was there he became acquainted with other Spanish poets, such as
Jaime Gil de Biedma, Gabriel Celaya, Vicente Aleixandre, Carlos Barral, and
Juan García Hortelano. Although he, himself, had largely abandoned his early
poetic efforts, Aleixandre and others encouraged him to continue writing.
In 1956 he published Aspero mundo,
which contained poems mostly written before his move to Madrid. It was
nominated for one of the major literary prizes (the Adonáis Prize), and the
response to the book further encouraged him to continue writing. A trip to
France, Italy, Scandinavia, West Germany, and Czechoslovakia in 1957, further
provided González with new sources and literary contacts. In 1961 he published
his second book, Sin esperanza, con convencimiento (Without Hope, but
with Conviction). His third volume, even more social in its message, was Grado
elemental (Elementary Grade) (1962), a book which assured González's place as
one of the major figures of the "Generation of 1950."
During the early 1970s González traveled
to the Universidad Nacional Autóonoma de México, and from there accepted a
position of visiting professor at the University of New Mexico in the United
States. White teaching he New Mexico, he met Shirley Mangini, a graduate
student, whom he married. Over the next few years, González accepted similar
one-year appointments at various American universities, including the
University of Utah, the University of Maryland, and the University of Texas. He
assumed a permanent position as professor of contemporary Spanish literature at
the University of New Mexico in 1975.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Aspero mundo (Madrid: Rialp,
1956); Sin esperanza, con convencimiento (Barcelona: Literaturasa, 1961); Grado
elemental (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1962); Palabra sobre palabra
(Madrid: Poesía para Todas, 1964; revised and enlarged editions (Barcelona:
Seix Barral, 1968, 1972, 1977); Tratado de urbanismo (Barcelona: Bardo,
1967); Breves acotaciones para una biografía (Las Palmas, Grand Canary
Island: Inventarios Provisionales, 1971); Muestra de algunos procedimientos
narrativos y de las actitudes sentimentales que habitualmente comportan
(Madrid: Turner, 1976; revised and enlarged 1977); Poemas (Madrid: Cátedra, 1980); Antología
poética (Madrid: Alianza, 1982); Prosemas o menos (1984); A todo amor
(1988); Lecciones de cosas y otros poemas (1998); 101 + 19 = 200 poems
(Madrid: Visor, 1999); Otoños y otras luces (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2001);
Palabra sobre palabra (Barcelona: Seix Barral: 2005)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Harsh World and
Other Poems,
trans. by Donald D. Walsh (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Astonishing
World: The Selected Poems of Angel González 1958-1986, trans. by Steven
Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1993); Almost
All the Music, and Other Poems, tr. by E. A. Mares (San Antonio, Texas:
Wings Press, 2007)
Before I Could
Call Myself Ángel González
Before I could
call myself Ángel González,
before the earth
could support the weight of my body,
a long time
and a great space
were necessary:
men from all the
seas and all the lands,
fertile wombs of
women, and bodies
and more bodies,
incessantly fusing
into another new
body.
Solstices and
equinoxes illuminated
with their
changing lights, and variegated skies,
the millenary trip
of my flesh
as it climbed over
centuries and bones.
Of its slow and
painful journey,
of its escape to
the end, surviving
shipwrecks,
anchoring itself
to the last sigh
of the dead,
I am only the
result, the fruit,
what's left,
rotting, among the remains;
what you see here,
is just that:
tenacious trash
resisting
its ruin, fighting
against wind,
walking streets
that go
nowhere. The
success
of all failures.
The insane
force of dismay...
─Translated from the Spanish by Steven
Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta
(from Palabra
sobre palabra, 1964)
Dogs Against the
Moon
Dogs against the
moon, very far away,
bring close
the restlessness
of the murmuring
night. Clear
sounds, once
inaudible,
are now heard.
Vague echoes,
shreds of words,
creaking
hinges,
disturb the
shadowed circle.
Scarcely without
space,
the silence, the
silence
you can't hold,
closed in
by sounds, presses
against your arms
and legs,
rises gently to
your head,
and falls through
your loosened hair.
It's night and the
dream: don't be uneasy.
The silence has
grown like a tree.
─Translated from the Spanish by
Steven Ford Brown
and Gutierrez Revuelta
(from Palabra
sobre palabra, 1964)
Astonishing World
An astonishing
world
suddenly looms up.
I'm afraid of the
moon
embalmed
in the waters of
the river,
the silent forest
that scratches
with its branches
the belly of the
rain,
birds
that howl in the
tunnel of night
and everything
that unexpectedly
makes a gesture
and smiles
only so suddenly
disappear.
In the midst
of the cruel
retreat of things
rushing in
headlong flight toward
nothingness and
ashes,
my heart goes
under in the shipwreck
of the fate of the
world that surrounds it.
Where does the
wind go, that light,
the cry
of the unexpected
red poppy,
the singing of the
gray
sea gulls of the
ports?
And what army is
it that takes me
wrapped up in its
defeat and its flight
─I, a prisoner, a
wary hostage,
without name or
number, handcuffed
among squads of
fugitive cries─
toward the shadows
where the lights go,
toward the silence
where my voice dies.
─Translated from the Spanish by Steven
Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta
(from Palabra
sobre palabra, 1964)
Yesterday
Yesterday was
Wednesday all morning.
By afternoon it
changed:
it became almost
Monday,
sadness invaded
hearts
and there was a
distinct
panic of movement
toward
the trolleys
that take the
swimmers down to the river.
At about seven a
small plane slowly
crossed the sky,
but not even the children
watched it.
The cold
was unleashed,
someone went
outdoors wearing a hat,
yesterday, and the
whole day
was like that,
already you see,
how amusing,
yesterday and
always yesterday and even now,
strangers
are constantly
walking through the streets
or happily indoors
snacking on
bread and coffee
with cream: what
joy!
Night fell
suddenly,
the warm yellow
street lamps were lit,
and no one could
impede the final
dawn
of today's day,
so similar
and yet
so different in
lights and aroma!
For that very same
reason,
because everything
is just as I told you,
let me tell you
about yesterday,
once more
about yesterday:
the incomparable
day that no one
will ever
see again upon the
earth.
─Translated from the Spanish by Steven
Ford Brown
and Gutierrez Revuelta
(from Palabra
sobre palabra, 1964)
The Future
But the future is
different
from that destiny
seen from afar,
magical world,
vast sphere
brushed by the
long arm of desire,
brilliant ball the
eyes dream,
shared dwelling
of hope and
deception, dark
land
of illusion and
tears
the stars
predicted
and the heart
awaits
and that is
always, always, always distant.
But, I think, the
future is also another thing:
a verb tense in
motion, in action, in combat,
a searching
movement toward life,
keel of the ship
that strikes the water
and struggles to
open between the waves
the exact breach
the rudder commands.
I'm on this line,
in this deep
trajectory of
agony and battle,
trapped in a
tunnel or trench
that with my hands
I open, close, or leave,
obeying the heart
that orders
pushes,
determines, demands, and searches.
Future of mine...!
Distant heart
that dictated it
yesterday:
don't be ashamed.
Today is the
result of your blood,
pain that I
recognize, light that I admit,
suffering that I
assume,
love that I
intend.
But still, nothing
is definitive.
Tomorrow I have
decided to go ahead
and advance,
tomorrow I am
prepared to be content,
tomorrow I will
love you, morning
and night,
tomorrow will not
be exactly as God wishes.
Tomorrow, gray or
luminous, or cold,
that hands shape
in the wind,
that fists draw in
the air.
─Translated from the Spanish by
Steven Ford Brown
and Gutierrez Revuelta
(from Palabra
sobre palabra, 1964)
Words Taken from a
Painting by José Hernández
1.─The first light
of day
A rooster sings
stones:
daybreak.
(Thin, pallid,
translucent moon,
immobile, rigid,
fused with sky.)
Against the tiles,
against the glass,
a rooster sings
blood.
(The wind
sifts through the
sleeping trees.)
A rooster's song
crests,
it sings
gall-nuts,
spits its gizzard
against the sky.
Green fruits spill
down
the slopes into
the ravines.
Knocking on doors,
windows,
the rooster's
insistent song warns you.
(Vultures high on
the rocks
stretch their
enormous wings.)
A rooster lays a
stream of fire
across the white
border of night.
Nothing else could
happen: shouts, threats.
It's just been
announced the truce has ended.
2.─End of the last
act
It is the grand
finale
the opera is finished
part of the
platform
an ovation
collapses
explodes against the wall
tearing the paper
decorations
the curtain doesn't fall
a crack
an almost invisible cry
appears, expands
from the last singer
(lizard of ash
hangs for a moment
ant-hill of dust
in the shining
an invading
crystalline
spider
nothingness
that reaches into
everything
sliding at last
with its flexible
forelegs
through the divided
cupola
from the sky's
most frightenting obscurity
into another more
amplified nothingness
frightening
obscurity
where it disappears forever.
An unforseen
sadness breaks away from the roof
slightly stains
the costumes, the
marble, the flowers, foreheads, shadows.
Already nothing is
like before.
No
body returns
to their true
self.
The eyes
can't recognize
what they seek.
The emptiness
(that was stone
((stone that was
flesh (((flesh
that was a cry
((((cry that
was love, fear,
hope?))))))
is enlarge,
deformed,
explodes into a
thousand pieces of emptiness
that strikes the
already impassive faces.
Phrases fly from
gloomy lips,
echoes of banal
dialogues
wander through the
deserted lobby
like dry seeds
suspended in the air
─Where's the exit?
─Yesterday still
lacks so much.
─Excuse
me
But the cold
follows.
─No, it's nothing.
like the smoke
asleep in an extinguished bonfire,
that the
implacable breeze suddenly releases.
─Translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown
and Gutierrez Revuelta
(from Palabra
sobre palabra, 1964)
PERMISSIONS
"Before I Could Call Myself Ángel González," "Dogs Against the Moon," "Astonishing World," "Yesterday," "The Future," and "Words Taken from a Painting by José Hernádez"
Reprinted from
Astonishing World: The Selected Poems of Angel González 1958-1986, trans. by
Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions,
1993). Copyright ©1986 by Editorial Seix Barral and Ángel González. English
language translation copyright ©1993 by Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez
Revuelta. Reprinted by permission of Milkweed Editions.
