Álvaro Mutis

The publishing houses Kultrum and Zalipoli pay tribute to Alvaro Mutis on the centenary of his birth with the publication of Nocturna, a compilation of his 'Nocturnos' poems, edited and introduced by Gonzalo García Barcha, and with enthusiastic support from the writer Mateo García Elizondo.

Throughout his life, Alvaro Mutis worked in public relations, was an itinerant salesman, wrote adventure novels, and was a poet of wanderings and the sea. He was once a prisoner in the Palacio Negro de Lecumberri for 'lyrical and gastronomic crimes.' He was a passionate lover of history and an unrepentant billiards player. 'A poem should be like a carom shot,' he once said, 'you hit the ball that's going to set things in motion, and it, in turn, hits the other two harmoniously, and that's a poem.'

In this volume, we collect the verses composed by Mutis between twilight and feverish insomnias, embracing the dark mantle that wrestles with the lamplight, conquering the day and enveloping everything. Behind that darkness, the contours of a landscape are revealed—sometimes dizzying, sometimes somber, but almost always accomplice and welcoming.

With the lucidity granted by the night, Mutis evokes in these pages the inhospitable winds, the rain over coffee plantations, the silence of a mirror that witnesses all intimacies, and the rivers that carry rusted ships, leaving a wake of vapor in their path. Saints, kings, and generals parade through these poems, and time marches on, conquering all, drawing us toward destiny and sweeping away the most glorious existence, except for the night, which always returns, ever-changing but identical to itself since the world's memory began.

One hundred years after Alvaro Mutis's birth, this volume reaches the hands of the reader, bearing witness to the powerful craft that earned him the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry and the Cervantes Prize. Above all, it brings us the vision of a man who turned his literature into a comfort for the lonely nights of those who know they are passing through this world. The poems compiled here are like those of a sailor navigating through darkness to reach the shores of dawn, or like those of a general waging, word by word, a battle with a predetermined outcome.