“Yo no canto a la defense de stalingrado” picks up and unites two separate streams of poetic thought which have been constant themes throughout the Epigramas: Love’s relationship to contingent temporality and history as mediated by the poetic form, and also Love’s relationship to society as mediated by money. The poem is divided into two extended adversative conjunctions, involving clauses of negation and affirmation which take place over a four plus one lines. (four lines of negation, one of affirmation) .
Yo no canto a la defensa de Stalingrado (negation)
Ni la campaña de Egipto (negation)
Ni el desembarco de Sicilia (negation)
Ni la cruzada del Rhin del Gral. Eisenhower: (negation)
Yo solo canto a la conquista de una muchacha (affirmation)
Ni con las joyas de la joyería Morlock (n.)
Ni con perfumes de Dreyfus (n.)
Ni con Orquídeas dentro de su caja de mica (n.)
Ni con Cadillac (n.)
Sino solamente con mis poemas la conquisté (a.)
Y ella me prefiere, aunque soy pobre, a todos los millones de Somoza.
Formally speaking, this poem divides nicely into both streams: the first conjunction expressing the first, the second expressing the second, and the final verse synthesizing the two under the rubric of disinterested love.
In the first conjunction the poet does two things simultaneously: he denies the role of the poet as the official voice of history whose purpose is to glorify large-scale events. At the same time, the poet introduces contemporary temporal markers into a poetic structure which would normally be occupied by references to great battles of antiquity. As noted in the previous epigram “recibe estas rosas costarricences Myriam” Cardenal uses the poetic form as a means of collapsing time by utilizing the format and themes of the Roman love lyricist Sextus Propertius and introducing into it references to 3 major historical battles which took place during WWII: The defense of Stalingrad, The allied invasion of Sicily and Eisenhower’s advance on the Rhine, all of which simultaneously occurred within the lifetime of the poet. If we take the fourth battle–the “campaña de egipto” as a reference to the French Campaign in Egypt during the Napoleonic wars. Then one can see very clearly Cardenal’s attempt to create an equivalence between events in his time, major events in history and the world of Propertius. Time has essentially collapsed. The poet is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, singing of love in a world populated by the monumentalist ambitions of war-generals, imperators and dictators. The act of legend-making, of serving the construction of a monumental (and ultimately dehumanizing ) capital H history is roundly refused by the poet, in four anaphoric beginning with “ni” (nor), while the affirmation of love, is given a line of it’s own at the very center of the poem. In this sense, love sets itself in opposition to both historical monumentalism and political ambition. In “Recibe” we saw how love itself becomes simultaneously fleeting and intemporal, contingent and monumental due to its emotionally fickle nature and it’s role as the motivator for poetry. In “Yo no canto a la defensa de Stalingrado” love almost acts as a kind of temporal goad to monumentalist ambitions. The poet will apply his intemporal privilege to hallowing a contingent and simple reality, the conquest of a girl, and not to the monumentalist cause of enshrining great events.
This goading of monumentalism and ambition is carried into the next stanza, the second adversative conjunction which unlike the first places the subordinate clause, composed of four anaphoric lines, first, and the main clause at the end. In the anaphoric lines which make up the subordinate clause, the goad is both economic and temporal. Cardenal refers to contemporary brands and entities which act as signifiers of wealth and prestige in his own time, Morlock, Dreyfus, Cadillac, entities which Somoza uses as a means to attain not only privilege but monumentality. Somoza fancies himself a millionaire whose wealth automatically confers political and temporal dominion. Once again one cannot fail to notice the parallel drawn between Somoza and the Roman imperators whose monumentalist ambitions involved both public demonstrations of lavish wealth as well as military glory. The poet, however, demonstrates that the conquest of the young girl is not done through riches, through perfumes, cars, jewelry or orchids, but rather through poems. For all the political power that Somoza boasts of through his wealth, for all the military glory that the United States claims, neither is able to do something as simple as attract the attention of a young girl who responds only to simple poems from a pure-hearted man without a cent to his name.
Tú has trabajado veinte años
This goading of Somoza’s ambitions is taken up again in the following epigram, addressed directly to the dictator. Cardenal sets up a contrast between the people and the dictator, once again dividing the epigram neatly into a four-line adversative conjunction. The first two lines describe the dictator’s activities, the second describe that of the people and their negation of him as a model. The dictator is described as someone who “has worked for twenty years to make twenty million pesos” while the people “would give twenty million pesos to not work as you have done”. As in the previous epigram, and in other “money” epigrams, economics provides a convenient shortcut into the motivation of the poem’s subject. In “Ella se vendió a Kelly y Martínez Cia Ltda.” The poet’s beloved sells herself for expensive gifts, ignoring the poet’s supplications and revealing a base and ambitious character. In this epigram, Somoza’s work is primarily motivated by political ambition, and the activities he engages in are distasteful to the people, who would prefer to pay money NOT to do the things that Somoza did.
Hmm, presumably you mean not “Love’s relationship to society as mediated by money” but rather “love’s relationship to a society that is mediated by money” or some such. For isn’t the point here that poetry’s purity is defended, and also its innate superiority to the attempt to buy love through money?
As to what this gesture says about society… doesn’t it imply that poetry (and literature) are not so powerless after all, while political and economic power are shown to be strangely powerless–literally, emasculated. So society is not in fact as colonized by the profit motive or dominated by dictatorship if the poet can still get the girl who slips through Somoza’s hands.
I think I meant how money becomes the means through which love relationships happen, either because of the beloved’s own preference for a lover who can provide her with expensive gifts such as in “Ella fue vendida…” or because of the way class determines which matches get made, something implicit in “Recuerdo estos cines Claudia”. But yes, poetry provides an alternative, purified field for love.
I think the implication that poetry has the upper hand is exactly what Cardenal is driving at. The whole “monumentality issue” is a direct indication of poetry’s dominant position. Political ambition struggles for monumentality, or an intemporal position in which the names and feats of the dictators/imperators will be remembered eternally. But Cardenal argues throughout the epigramas that poetry alone possesses this monumentality, that poets are the only ones with access to it and the ones who are “pure of heart” will put it in the service of love, not political ambition.