Miguel Hernández: 80 years in our memory

3/4/2022

Aunque bajo la tierra
mi amante cuerpo esté,
escríbeme, paloma,
que yo te escribiré."

(Though under the ground / my lover body is, / write to me, dove, / that I will write to you.)

Miguel Hernández.
Tus cartas son un vino, El rayo que no cesa (1936)
Your letters are a wine, The lightning that does not stop

He died with his eyes open, and with them open he went to his grave. No one could close them. It was his penultimate act of rebellion against that hostile world in which he never found the accommodation that he would have needed to feel loved, the same world that insisted on fighting him until his spirits were faded velvet.(1)

He passed away with his eyes open, blue as the sky and big as his curiosity and his vital impetus; those wild and expressive eyes, vehement as he himself was, with quick and sharp words, but a tender heart. He died on March 28th 1942, the Saturday before Easter, in Alicante. But not completely, because whoever is eternal never disappears.

In Orihuela, his town and mine (2)

Pintada, no vacía:
pintada está mi casa
del color de las grandes
pasiones y desgracias.

(Painted, not empty: / my house is painted / of the color of the great / passions and misfortunes.)

Miguel Hernández.
Canción última, El hombre acecha (1939)
Last Song, The Man Stalks (1939)

Miguel Hernández Gilabert was born on October 30th 1910 in Orihuela, a small town located in the Segura orchard, south of the province of Alicante although closer to Murcia. With a rural spirit and almost nineteenth-century cacique forms, the city had more than thirty churches, a diocese and a seminary to its credit. All very catholic apostolic.

House-museum of Miguel Hernández, Orihuela. © Juan Nepomuceno 2022

Son of Concheta and Miguel, a former watchman turned rancher who owned a large herd and sold cattle to Valencia and Barcelona, which gave him a certain position despite the fact that his family did not enjoy privileges of any kind. As a teenager, he received a scholarship to study at the Jesuit school of Santo Domingo in Orihuela. From the first moment he showed great intelligence and a mastery of language for which he won titles and accolades. But his father decided that, at 15 years of age, his knowledge was enough, and took him away from his studies to take care of a herd of goats. Far from settling down, Miguel continued to train during the following years on his own and with the help of the clergyman Luis Almarcha and under the influence of his friend José Marín.

Miguel and Marín met through their friend, a baker and poet, Carlos Fenoll. Marín was younger, bourgeois, sickly, studious and deeply Catholic. He soon developed the pseudonym by which he would be known: Ramón Sijé (anagram of his own name). Living in such a conservative and oppressive environment, and with such powerful influences, the first poetic productions of the young Miguel Hernández could only have a marked religious sign. He tried to escape from this in his first book: Perito en lunas (1933), which caused his first estrangement from Sijé.

House-museum of Miguel Hernández, Orihuela. © Juan Nepomuceno 2022

Jesuit school of Sant Domingo in Orihuela. © Juan Nepomuceno 2022

After several unsuccessful attempts in which he made contact with important figures of the literature of the time such as José Bergamín or Federico García Lorca (with little success), Miguel settled in Madrid definitively in 1935. Once there, he struck up friendships with figures as important as Pablo Neruda, Vicente Aliexandre (both received the Nobel Prize for Literature years later), the philosopher María Zambrano or the surrealist plastics artists of the Vallecas School. Reinforced by these new friendships, he strengthened his pantheistic beliefs and his rejection of Catholic indoctrination, increasing his social vocation. Sijé, for his part, took the opposite path, exaggerating his Catholicism and remaining even in a more radical position than the fascist movements that were booming at the time.

During the following months, Miguel got a good job at the Espasa-Calpé Publishing house as editor of the bullfighting encyclopedia, under the command of José María de Cossio, a renowned Falangist who, however, was his great friend and helper. With the support and influence of Aleixandre and Neruda, Miguel finds his own path and, far removed from his Orihuela Catholic past, writes El Rayo que no Cesa. This collection of poems became the greatest exponent of the Hernandian worldview (life-love-death), in it he fully exploited his mastery of learned poetic forms and confirmed him as one of the most important figures in contemporary poetry. Shortly before its publication, on Christmas 1935, Sijé died of an unknown illness. Both were irreconcilably distant, but Miguel wrote Elegía, a poem in a style opposed to that defended by Sijé, but which served to immortalize him.

"We poets are the wind of the people"

We poets are the wind of the people: we are born to blow through their pores and guide their eyes and feelings towards the most beautiful peaks. Today, this today of passion, of life, of death, pushes you, me, and several of us towards the town in an imposing way. The people wait for the poets with their ears and souls outstretched at the foot of each century."

Miguel Hernández, dedication of Viento del pueblo to Vicente Aleixandre (1937)

When the fascist uprising took place in the summer of 1936, which marked the beginning of the Spanish civil war, Miguel was in Madrid, working for the bullfighting encyclopedia. Months before, he had enrolled in the Pedagogical Missions of the Second Spanish Republic (an educational project that aimed to bring culture to disadvantaged rural areas). During his stay in Madrid, he had developed his class consciousness, reinforced by his origins, and after suffering several violent episodes by the Civil Guard, he had joined the Communist Party a few months before the outbreak of the war, sponsored by the poets Rafael Alberti and Maria Teresa Leon.

Despite being a literary character of proven influence in the cultural world of the time, and a member of the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals, conscientiously faithful to his humble principles, he decided not to abuse his privileged position and enlisted as an anonymous volunteer in the 5th Regiment of the popular republican militias, leaving for the front in Toledo and Extremadura and working as a sapper digging ditches. When the word spread that the poet was in such tasks, he was called to occupy positions of greater relevance and more in line with his intellectual capacity, being appointed Military Political Commissioner and employed in propagandistic tasks, a performance that led him to serve in Andalusia and Teruel. It was at that time when his urgent war poetry flowed and Viento del pueblo (Wind of the People) was born, a book committed to those who suffered the most on the front lines of battle, with whom he felt most identified.

Shortly after his civil marriage to Josefina Manresa (daughter of a Civil Guard assassinated at the beginning of the conflict) in March 1937, he moved to the Jaén Front, province where she was from although she grew up Orihuela. The relationship they maintained was eminently epistolary, beginning before the poet's establishment in Madrid in 1935 and temporarily interrupted during the period in which he came into contact with the members of the Vallecas School, and especially with the painter Maruja Mallo (artistically and sentimental), to whom he gave the dedication and most of the sonnets of El rayo que no cesa. But Miguel's rustic candor found no connection in that modern-sentimental world, and he returned with Josefina shortly before the start of the fight. Far from the idealized platonic romance that they had maintained in their youth, both already belonged to very different worlds; She, conservative and convinced Catholic, did not understand or share his creative or political work. In the words of Eutimio Martín, the bond between the two lived in "affective misery". However, it is fair to recognize that, without the work of the widowed Josefina, much of Miguel Hernández's work would not have been preserved.

After returning from his diplomatic trip to the USSR as part of the committee of republican intellectual representatives and his tour of Europe in the autumn of 1937 (in Paris, the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier made the only voice recording that is preserved of the poet), the pessimism of Miguel about the war increased. He felt that the European nations had abandoned Spain to its fate, and saw the Republican defeat as imminent. His health accused him, worsening old lung and brain ailments, and the death of his son Manuel Ramón, his first son with Josefina, when he was only ten months old only accelerated the evolution of a poetry that focused more on denouncing injustices and the situation of the weakest than in the propagandist work that had previously occupied him. These events gave birth to El hombre acecha, a book that was printed but not published at the end of the civil war and that became an early sample of social poetry.

Santiago Álvarez, a commissioner of the 5th Regiment of which Miguel was part of, said of him that he was not like Alberti or other poets and intellectuals who went to the front, attended an event and returned to Madrid. "He was there all the time, like one more combatant. What happens is that he was an exceptional poet." And, indeed, without detracting from the adherence to the republican cause of other contemporary authors, none can be equal in commitment and fidelity to the principles of him to Miguel Hernández. Most of his companions did not have time to go into exile from the defeated Spain, in all his rights. But few did anything to help him get to safety. It is also the result of his ingenuity and well-thought-out humanity, he himself insisted on returning to Orihuela with his family, where he was arrested and tortured before the indulgence of the same people who had been his countrymen years ago. Hatred was muffled behind the windows. (3)

Dead and twenty times dead (4)

Si me muero, que me muera
con la cabeza muy alta.
Muerto y veinte veces muerto,
la boca contra la grama,
tendré apretados los dientes
y decidida la barba." (4)

Miguel Hernández.
Viento del pueblo (1939) (Wind of people)

Miguel's prison journey was overwhelming: thirteen prisons in less than thirty months; three summary processes crossed and overlapped against all rights; a death sentence commuted by Franco himself (to avoid another Lorca case, which was detrimental to the fascist regime's propaganda in international eyes); and a final sentence of 31 years in prison that he never served.

In an ironic and disastrous way, 31 years ended up being the time he lived in this always hostile land where he never found the accommodation he deserved. The pressures from the ecclesiastical establishment (headed by his former supporter Luis Almarcha in the role of Franco's supreme inquisitor) to renounce the rights to his work in exchange for the commutation of his sentence were unsuccessful, Miguel always remaining faithful to his principles.

A few days before his death, he contracted a Catholic marriage with Josefina, with the purpose of ensuring for her and Manuel Miguel (his second son) the legal rights of his work, the only legacy he could leave them, being part of it Cancionero y romancero de ausencias (Songs and Ballads of Absence), written in prison, unfinished and published in Argentina in 1958. On March 28th 1942, at half past five in the morning, almost three years after the end of the civil war and after more than two in captivity, Miguel Hernández died in the Reformatory of adults in Alicante, the last of the destinations in his particular martyrdom.

Miguel died for Spain and prison, condemned and tortured by those who were his judges, executioners and jailers; he also died due to forgetfulness and abandonment of a few others who, even being on the same side, preferred to look to another when they could have done something else. He died of typhus, tuberculosis, hyperthyroidism and many other lung and brain ailments that accompanied him throughout his short life of 31 years. But also, in part, imprisoned by his own pride, obstinacy and principles. His last act of rebellion, once dead, was to be mistakenly buried feet first in niche 1009 of the Alicante cemetery, a ritual reserved for ecclesiastics. Dead and twenty times dead, gritted teeth and determined beard.(4)

I bleed, I fight, I live (5)

I am aware that there is no possible good translation for poetry. It is so emotional and linked to the language in which it is written that rhymes, intonation, rhetorical figures or its very soul cannot be translated without corrupting its essence. Because poetry is the fruit of life that matures in a moment of the poet's existence. Something similar happens with music. However, there is something universal, a feeling that verses can transmit, both recited and sung, that can cross all these borders and overcome the barriers of linguistic isolation. There are many sung versions of the poetry of Miguel Hernández, and following my tradition of creating a playlist of songs to commemorate different anniversaries (you can listen to them all by visiting my Spotify profile, click here), I have put together 80 songs in this list for the 80th anniversary of his death. It is a very eclectic list, which ranges from classic singer-songwriters to rock, passing through flamenco and contemporary music. I hope you can enjoy it, and that, despite the language barrier, it can convey something of Miguel Hernández's feeling to you.

In short, over the last few months I have done a great deal of compilation on so many fronts with the sole intention of doing my bit to keep the memory of Miguel Hernández alive. The main inspiration and source of information has been the biography of the poet written by José Luis Ferris and called "Miguel Hernández: pasiones, cárcel y muerte de un poeta” (Miguel Hernández, passions, prison and death of a poet). Also the graphic novel "Piedra viva", by Román López Cabrera and Marina Armengol Más, but also the studies and publications of other authors. My only wish is to pass on at least a little bit of the passion I feel for Miguel Hernández. I hope you like it so much that you want to know more and share how much I have shown you here.

Allí yo mucho tiempo,
y detrás tu silencio
tu estar, tu oírme.
Tú, el puro y verdadero;
tú, el más real de todos;
tú, el no desaparecido".

Vincent Aleixandre, farewell to Miguel Hernández in the Alicante cemetery (1952),

(I was there for a long time / and behind your silence / you be, you hear me.
You, the pure and true; / you, the most real of all; / you, the not disappeared".)

Notes:

Faded velvet = terciopelo ajado.
Fragment of Elegía a Ramón Sijé (Elegy to Ramón Sijé), 1936 poem.

Tu corazón, ya terciopelo ajado,
llama a un campo de almendras espumosas
mi avariciosa voz de enamorado.

(Your heart, already faded velvet, / calls a field of sparkling almonds / my greedy voice of loved.)
In Orihuela, his town and mine = en Orihuela, su pueblo y el mío.
Preface of Elegía a Ramón Sijé (Elegy to Ramón Sijé), 1936 poem.

En Orihuela, su pueblo y el mío,
se ha muerto como del rayo Ramón Sijé,
con quien tanto quería.

(In Orihuela, his town and mine, / Ramón Sijé has died like lightning, / with whom I loved so much.)
Hatred was muffled behind the Windows = el odio se amortigua detrás de la ventana.
Verses of Canción última (Last song), 1939 poem.
Dead and twenty times dead = muerto y veinte veces muerto.
Fragment of Viento del pueblo (Wind of the people), 1937 poem.

Si me muero, que me muera
con la cabeza muy alta.
Muerto y veinte veces muerto,
la boca contra la grama,
tendré apretados los dientes
y decidida la barba.

Cantando espero a la muerte,
que hay ruiseñores que cantan
encima de los fusiles
y en medio de las batallas.

(If I die, let me die / with my head held high. / Dead and twenty times dead, / the mouth against the grass, / I will grit my teeth / and determined beard.

Singing I wait for death,/ that there are nightingales that sing / above the rifles/ and in the midst of battles.)
I bleed, I fight, I live = Sangro, lucho, pervivo.
Verses of El herido; para el muro de un hospital de sangre. II (The wounded; for the wall of a blood hospital. II), 1937 poem.

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