Conferencia leída en el IV Encuentro de Poesía y Arte Erótico POETRY AND EROTICISM
For
Juan Carlos Céspedes (Siddartha)
Man has always been a friend of the definition and classification in an attempt to find and understand, but unfortunately for him, or rather, for his fortune, some things are indefinable in its real and true dimension.
On one occasion, according to the Argentine Roberto Curto account in the preface of the book "The Art of Zen Master" of Tao Yuan, a well-dressed lady approaches the great Louis Armstrong and asks:
─ What is jazz Mr Armstrong?
And he wisely replied:
─ Madam, if you need to ask, never know.
I always thought that poetry is indefinable, no matter that every poet has his version, it is natural and understandable we make attempts to not go so lost in a world where every day abounds more information, more technology, but also more loneliness. No wonder the English writer Pio Baroja rightly said: "The man poet everything away."
Indeed, for those who like and feel the poetry, it is easy to know what it is. But when they have to explain, the words start coming and going without much significance. Once
jazz pianist Bill Evans, known as the poet of the piano, said: "Trying to define the jazz is like trying to define Zen as you say what it is, you're wrong." I appropriated for these delicious words of the master Evans to apply to poetry.
And if it is difficult to define poetry, the more the eroticism. Looking for help in the great literature, Octavio Paz, the older brother, said: "Erotica and poetry: the first is a metaphor for sexuality, eroticism second a language."
For the Greeks the question of love was less complicated for us because they had specific words for the ramifications of this feeling. Storge love, as it was somehow special affection, which feels for the family members.
The subsidiaries and Fili, is brotherly love, mutual, conditional love that type "If you treat me right, I'll treat you right."
The agape, unconditional love based on the behavior of others, regardless of its merits. It is the Christian canon.
ludus love, love, playful, hedonistic and without obligation. And
eros, erotic love, feeling based on sexual attraction.
I will not bore you with an explanation of the origin of the word eros, it is sufficiently well known to all of you.
In our current Western culture all these feelings we have drifted into a single word: love. This is due to degradation and handling a word and its disastrous consequences, but the poets say. Frenchman Jean
Cocteau, artista integral, decía: “Yo sé que la poesía es imprescindible, pero no sé para qué”. Si no se puede definir qué es, sí costará mucho trabajo, en un mundo utilitarista, precisar para qué sirve.
Una de las certezas que primero se aprende en los talleres literarios, los que tienen la fortuna de estar o pasar por ellos, es comprender que la poesía es un horizonte siempre al frente, inalcanzable, inaprensible. Sucede a veces, por esos misterios del arte de la palabra, que alguien logra un texto casi perfecto, y pareciera que todo se definiera con claridad meridiana. Pero al cabo percibimos, incluido su autor o autora, que no es más que una ilusión. Es como si al clear up a mystery, it would open many more. It is the Matrioska or Russian doll, which is made smaller, but its significance is gigantic.
If the words of García Lorca: "Poetry is something that walks on the street", "is telling us that all is poetry? Then we, as part of the whole, we fit perfectly in the expression of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer: "poetry ... ere you are."
I've always said that the day we can unquestionably define poetry, and writing would not make sense. Armageddon will be like a superficial peace, if I may say so. But the puzzle filling what next?
Algunos expertos han afirmado que la poesía es una sola, y los apellidos que le colocan sólo tienen un afán de diseccionarla para poder estudiarla más fácilmente. Yo comparto esta posición. Pero no quiere ello decir, que descarte de tajo a quienes están en la otra orilla. Es más, esta calificación desbroza un poco el gran trigal que es la poesía. Por esto la denominación erótica es perfectamente plausible para entender un poco el largo discurrir histórico del arte de la palabra.
¿Qué tal si expresamos que poesía erótica es decir con palabras lo que la piel quiere sentir? ¿Todo quedaría simplificado? La respuesta es no. De ninguna manera puede ser tan sencillo.
French philosopher Henri Bergson, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, to teach philosophy to his students said that to understand it was necessary to live, and this gave the example of someone who does not know Paris, and your room will have plenty of maps and postcards of the city, so I had a theoretical knowledge of it. But that was in the background with a simple walk through any of the streets of Paris.
This could also apply to poetry and eroticism. Can there be anything more erotic than the crossing of the legs of actress Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct"? Or
"Nine weeks average "of Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke? Not forgetting, of course, "The Postman Always Rings Twice," starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Now, I would note, that eroticism is not only the physical act of sex, but goes beyond, in the sensory, emotional ... It is a complex whole that allows a relationship, regardless of its members, has a dose of "magic" (did not want to use this word because it is considered worn by the poets), the ineffable mystery that is the poetry of the body. Long and inexhaustible
would discuss this issue, but neither my expertise nor the time, let me entrar en mayores honduras.
Entonces ¿cómo aplica poesía y erotismo? Hacer poesía con el tema erótico como sustrato es el quid. Parece fácil al decirlo, pero no lo es, de ninguna manera, el hacerlo. No cualquier deseo llevado al papel es arte, ni una experiencia por más interesante que sea, la vuelve poesía erótica. No es el componente sexual el que da el nombre de erótica a la poesía. Tiene que haber el ingrediente artístico.
A mi modo de ver la gran característica de la poesía erótica es la sugerencia, no por falsos pudores ni nada parecido, sino porque permite jugar con una cantidad de posibilidades, y la eventualidad de que los lectores puedan interactuar con el texto.
Milan Kundera, the great Czech writer argues: "I dare say that there is no genuine erotic art of ambiguity, where ambiguity is powerful, more lively the excitement." When the young poet
Cartagena Kenny Castro, says in his poem:
I wait with my fingers ready
on the switch.
We are opening a whole universe of possibilities, and each one can imagine what will happen after the light turns off.
In the 2008 version of the Encounter Erotic Poetry and Art, artist and graphic designer, Juan Manuel Galindo Diago, was devised for the festival poster, a picture where we see the sparrow o agujero de la cerradura de una puerta, y la idea que transmitía el mismo era que cada cual podía ver por esa ventana al erotismo, todo lo que su imaginación le permitiese. Yo creo que es la mejor alegoría que se podría buscar para la poesía erótica, o una clave sumamente contundente.
Por nada del mundo pensaría que un relato de revistas como Play Boy, Penthouse, Hustler y otras tantas que abundan en los quioscos de muchas ciudades del mundo pueda ser poesía erótica. Tal vez sean eróticas, tal vez tengan algún valor narrativo, pero a mi modo de entender, jamás serán poesía, entendida ésta en su doble connotación de prosa y verso.
Ahora, ¿dónde termina eroticism and pornography begin? I think it's an answer that each of us should be. There seems to be a fine line that some fail to appreciate. Maybe we can not explain clearly what is pornography, but recognize it when we see.
I do not see the apple, but I can smell perfectly on my task in erotic poetry. You have yours and I respect that. Each poet or writer manages its own ideas and their own systems, which you can serve at any given time. Tomorrow, everything is possible, as any Crusoe, leave the security of their island, will leave Friday and will be looking for other possibilities.
I can not conclude without tell one of the teachings of Zen master Ikkyu Sojun, who preached the "Zen of red thread" and explained: "No one can enter this world without being born of man and woman, are united to sex by the" red thread " of blood from birth. " From this, sensei shows us how "many roads lead from the foot of the mountain, but at the top, all to the moon we see unique and brilliant", and sexual experience is, of course, one of these paths to lighting.
Somewhere stated that García Márquez wrote to his friends want more. I do not know if this was said or not, but in my case writing to be free, and eroticism and poetry are forms of freedom, so things are not looking here to show solidarity or party. Before, however, respect dissent and criticism welcome, nave leading to the truth.
