There are poems that are like an earthquake, like thunder that goes through your whole being. Despair It is one of them. This work, traditionally by José de Espronceda (Almendralejo, March 25, 1808-Madrid, May 23, 1842), but that some biographers and scholars attribute to Juan Rico and Amat (Elda, Alicante; August 29, 1821-Madrid; November 19, 1870), is one of the most nihilistic and heartbreaking examples of Spanish Romanticism.
Characteristics of dark romanticism
The poem «Despair», by José de Espronceda, is part of what is called «Dark Romanticism», a subgenre that emerged in the XNUMXth century and that it exhibited little optimistic ideas, either about the human being, religion, or nature. Not only do we have Espronceda as an example, but there are many others such as Edgar Allan Poe (perhaps the best known of this genre), Emily Dickinson, or we could even introduce many "cursed poets."
Among the characteristics of this type of literary works, we find the following:
Zero confidence in perfection
For dark romantics, the being human is not perfect, Nor is it ever going to be. For this reason, all his characters are related to sin, to self-destruction, to the vices of life. For them, the human being is a sinner and for that reason they see life as a cluster of situations and activities that do not lead to perfection, but to the opposite side.
They are pessimistic
Although we talk about romanticism, the truth is that dark romantic poems are pessimistic, they always speak negatively, either directly or indirectly, because they understand that, no matter how much something is tried, always you will be doomed to failure.
In this sense, the very lives of poets also greatly influence poems.
The world is bleak
Not just gloomy, but mysterious and negative. What other romantics see as something spiritual and related to divinity, life and light; they see it as the complete opposite. In such a way that for dark romantics it is a place where man brings out all his most negative side, and nature itself, his environment, boasts of that negativity, sinking him even more into his misery.
Despair
Despair it is an ode to the macabre, the grotesque, and the morally questionable. In this sense, it reminds us of stories like The black cat, by Edgar Allan Poe (“Don't we have a constant inclination, despite the excellent of our judgment, to violate what the law is, simply because we understand that it is Act? »), That although it is a story, it shares in essence the spirit, and the twisted character of the poem.
His sonorous seven-syllable verses make us wonder if the protagonist is really passionate about the terrible things he talks about, or that enjoying them is a consequence of the life he has led. Everything is tremendous and horrifying in this poem, which leaves not even a glimmer of hope. Its lines include cemeteries, catastrophes and, in short, all the dark and guilty pleasures that a human being can enjoy. Without a doubt, what captures this work is its fierce exaltation of the dark, of madness, and of everything that society rejects.
You can read it below:
I like to see the sky
with black clouds
and hear the niches
hideous howl,
I like to see the night
without moon and without stars,
and only the sparks
the earth illuminate.
I like a cemetery
of dead well stuffed,
flowing blood and silt
that prevents breathing,
and there a gravedigger
with a gloomy look
with a ruthless hand
the skulls crush.
Glad to see the bomb
fall meek from the sky,
and motionless on the ground,
no wick apparently,
and then raging
that explodes and shakes
and damn a thousand vomits
and dead everywhere.
May the thunder wake me up
with its hoarse boom,
and the world asleep
make you shudder,
what the hell every moment
fall on him without count,
let the firmament sink
I really like to see.
The flame of a fire
let him run devouring
and dead stacking
I would like to turn on;
to roast an old man there,
become all tea,
and hear how it voices,
What a pleasure! What a pleasure!
I like a countryside
upholstered snow,
of stripped flowers,
without fruit, without greenery,
no birds that sing,
no sun let it shine
and only glimpse
death all around.
There, in a dark mountain,
dismantled solar,
I am extremely pleased
the moon when reflecting,
move the weather vanes
with harsh screeching
equal to the scream
announcing expiration.
I like that to hell
carry the mortals
and there all the evils
make them suffer;
open their entrails,
tear their tendons,
break hearts
without them case to do.
Unusual avenue
that floods fertile vega,
from top to top it comes,
and sweeps everywhere;
takes the cattle
and the vines without pause,
and thousands cause havoc,
What a pleasure! What a pleasure!
The voices and the laughter
the game, the bottles,
around the beautiful
glad to hurry;
and in their lustful mouths,
with voluptuous flattery,
a kiss to each drink
happy stamp.
Then break the glasses,
the plates, the decks,
and open the knives,
searching for the heart;
hear the toasts later
mixed with moans
that the wounded throw
in tears and confusion.
Glad to hear one
cry out for wine,
while your neighbor
falls into a corner;
and that others already drunk,
in an unusual trill,
they sing to the bandaged god
impudent song.
I like the darlings
lying on the beds,
no shawls on the breasts
and loose the belt,
showing her charms,
without order the hair,
in the air the beautiful thigh ...
What a joy! What an illusion!
Other macabre poems you should know
Espronceda is not the only poet who wrote macabre poems. There are many poets, both known and unknown, who at some point in their life have written dark poems. Well known by those who like the gothic, we want to leave you here some more examples of this type of subgenre.
All of them have many of the characteristics that we have mentioned before, and they are good examples that you can take into account.
"The Devil's Funeral" (Mary Coleridge)
Good people, the Devil is dead!
Who are the bearers who wear the veil?
One of them thinks he also murdered God
with the same sword that Satan killed.
Another believes that he has saved God's life;
the Devil was always the God of strife.
A purple cloak spread over him!
A king who lies dead.
The worst of kings never ruled
as well as this magnificent King of Hell.
What is the reward for your suffering?
He himself is dead, but hell remains.
He forged his coffin before he died.
It was made of gold, seven times tempered,
with the brilliant words of those
who boasted of having abandoned him.
Where will you bury it? Not on earth!
In poisonous flowers he would be reborn.
Not in the sea.
The winds and waves would set it free.
Lay him on the funeral pyre.
All his life he has lived in fire.
And as the flames rose to the sky,
Satan became an angel of light,
to better do the job
in which he always strove when he lived below.
"The dance of the hanged men" (Arthur Rimbaud)
The dance of the hanged
The best verses of the cursed poets 1
On the black gallows they dance, kind one-armed,
the paladins dance,
the fleshless dancers of the devil;
they dance that they dance without end
the skeletons of Saladin.
Monsignor Belzebú pulls the tie
of their black puppets, who gesticulate to the sky,
and by giving them a good sneaker on the forehead
forces them to dance to the rhythms of Christmas Carol!
Surprised, the puppets clasp their graceful arms:
like a black organ, pierced breasts,
that once gentle damsels embraced,
They brush and collide, in hideous love.
Hooray! Merry dancers who lost your belly,
braid your pranks because the tablao is wide,
May they not know, by God, if it is dance or battle!
Furious, Beelzebub strums his violins!
Rough heels; your sandal never wears out!
They have all taken off their fur tunic:
what remains is not scary and is seen without scandal.
On their skulls, the snow has put a white cap.
The raven is the top of these broken heads;
hangs a scrap of flesh from his skinny barilla:
They seem, when they turn in dark skirmishes,
rigid paladins, with cardboard fences.
Hooray! Let the wind whistle in the waltz of the bones!
And the black gallows bellows like an iron organ!
and the wolves respond from purple forests:
red, on the horizon, heaven is hell ...
Shock me to these funereal captains
that reel, ladinos, with long broken fingers,
a rosary of love for her pale vertebrae:
Deceased, we are not here in a monastery!
And suddenly, in the center of this macabre dance
jump into the red sky, crazy, a great skeleton,
carried by the momentum, like a steed rears
and, feeling the rope still stiff around my neck,
he twitches his short fingers against a crunching femur
with screams that recall atrocious laughter,
and how a mountebank stirs in his booth,
he starts his dance again to the sound of the bones.
On the black gallows they dance, kind one-armed,
the paladins dance,
the fleshless dancers of the devil;
they dance that they dance without end
the skeletons of Saladin.
"Remorse" (Charles Baudelaire)
When you have fallen asleep, my dark beauty,
at the bottom of a tomb made of black marble,
and when you only have for bedroom and dwelling
a wet pantheon and a concave grave;
when the stone, sinking your scary chest
and your torso relaxed by a delicious indifference,
keep your heart from beating and craving,
and let your feet run your risky race,
the grave, confidant of my infinite dream
(because the grave will always understand the poet),
in those long nights where sleep is outlawed,
He will say to you: «What good is it to you, incomplete courtesan,
never having known what the dead cry? ».
"And the worm will gnaw at your skin like remorse."
"Separated" (Marcelone Desbordes-Valmore)
Do not write to me. I am sad, I wish to die.
Summers without you are like a dark night.
I have closed my arms, they cannot hug you,
To invoke my heart, is to invoke the grave.
Do not write to me!
Do not write to me. Let us only learn to die in ourselves.
Ask only God… only yourself, how He loved you!
From your deep absence, to hear that you love me
It is like hearing the sky without being able to reach it.
Do not write to me!
Do not write to me. I fear you and I fear my memories;
they have kept your voice, which calls me often.
Do not show living water who cannot drink it.
A loved calligraphy is a living portrait.
Do not write to me!
Don't write me sweet messages: I don't dare to read them:
it seems that your voice, in my heart, pours them;
I see them shine through your smile;
as if a kiss, in my heart, stamps them.
Do not write to me!
A really desperate poetry, when one has already lost hope. He only wants the pain because he no longer has any hope. It is sad, but understandable. It is not to give to the beloved woman, it is to forget the deception and abandonment of human love.
«A lost» is with h: from the verb have
Who does he mean when he says "the bandaged god"? ... is he Bacchus?
They are cute and ghoulish
I think you mean Cupid.
I read it as a child, in the complete works of Espronceda that my grandmother had in her library. I read it as a teenager looking for it for my memory as a child. As an adult I look for it, and I remember it almost completely by heart, and the impact it leaves at each stage changes so much. The images that represent us go from funny to terrifyingly real of the world we live as adults.