Rafael Cadenas

Selección y nota introductoria de Julio Ortega.

"Heredar un texto de Intemperie es aceptar una inmediatez profusa. Intemperie es un encuentro, a cuentagotas, de un hombre y su voz; en su voz. Un hombre que nos enseña que se puede sufrir asombros por la palabra que identificándose a sí misma, toma vuelo; se aleja de un decir determinante: Me retomo. / Hace tiempo me dejé en un borde. / Allí donde el azufre del monólogo / hacía imposible respirar.

El poeta sigue su camino hacia tierras recónditas de su pensamiento. Mensajero y caminante, va recogiendo voces y azufre de los condenados a vagar. El poeta Zen, Ko Un, se interpreta a la intemperie: un siglo en tu regazo / sin patria / sin amigos / sin camino/ que pueda aprender / Qué delirio, / el territorio de oscuridad. El poeta Cadenas se sabe cercano al abismo; sin embargo, este contexto es también claridad, un estar vertiginoso." Ernesto Román Orozco

Publicado originalmente en 1979, Realidad y literatura no solo es el más extenso ensayo escrito Rafael Cadenas, sino un texto clave para comprender la transformación que en ese período experimenta su obra. Bajo su aparente sencillez y su sosegada prosa, oculta una compleja pluralidad en la que confluyen la reflexión existencial, el comentario literario, el diagnóstico cultural y el manifiesto poético. En su conjunto, todos esos aspectos configuran el escenario de la trama de tensiones que confiere a este libro tanto la fuerza retórica que despliega como la honestidad que lo atraviesa. Reflexión, ensayo, diagnóstico, manifiesto… Realidad y literatura es todo eso y, a la vez, la puesta en escena de una lucha interior, la encarnación de una búsqueda y una transformación. 

In this anthology the Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas describes the hesitant manner in which he initially approached the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, the absolute protagonist of this book, which is simultaneously a tribute, critical reading, and testimony of an elective – and spiritual – affinity that has endured for decades. Cadenas' writing, always intense and austere, is sharpened even further in the poems that articulate this moving and powerful dialogue with the author of Elegías de Duino, one of the central poets of the 20th century.

The present anthology aims to bring the reading public closer to the most representative compositions of Cadenas's poetic career, including poems that allow us to appreciate the stylistic and conceptual evolution of the author's work as a whole. When the Poem is Born, it also takes its name from the composition that opens "Una isla" (1958), as a poem that underscores the way poetry inhabits the soul and embodies the body. Poetry in Cadenas reflects a commitment to the political and the human, but also a dialogue with the essential mystery of the world, like a mantle that envelops his verses in an unalterable way. It is a lyric that—from his early compositions to his latest poems— is made of perceptions and emerges from honesty. Cadenas, without succumbing to the weight of recognition, shuns notoriety and fanfare, because, above all, there is the poem.

We are celebrating the award of the 2022 Cervantes Prize to the poet Rafael Cadenas with a new anthology titled Florecemos en un abismo.
Its pages cover most of his most important books (Una isla, Los cuadernos del destierro, Memorial, Amante...), together with a compilation of six unpublished poems under the title of Poemas de Trinidad.
Some of the themes that appear in all of Cadenas’s work can be found here: love and women, the notion of life as a poetic experience and an “island”: that all-encompassing image of fragile frontiers that links us, at the same time, to exile as an existential condition and to the deployment of the poetic subject.

“'Humble, silent and rebellious’ are words Cadenas used to describe himself in his poems. In fact, his tendency to keep quiet has resulted in a less and less embroidered style of writing. The Cervantes Prize jury has highlighted this condition by rewarding a body of work that “demonstrates the transformative power of the word when language is pushed to the limits of its creative possibilities.”
El País