Mariano Brull Caballero (February 24, 1891 – June 8, 1956) was a Cuban poet usually associated with the French
Symbolist
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
movement. Two Symbolists who strongly influenced him were
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
and
Paul Valéry
Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, mus ...
. Among Cuban poets of the first half of the 20th century he was the most outstanding of those who wrote
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
for poetry's sake, as opposed to poetry that addressed social issues or poetry that was inspired by the culture of Cubans of African descent. Because of his interest in the sounds of words, he is known for a type of poetry called "jitanjáfora" in which the words are virtually meaningless, their sounds all-important. A diplomat by profession, he lived many years in various countries of Europe and the Americas.
Biography
Brull was born in
Camagüey
Camagüey () is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third-largest city with more than 321,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province.
It was founded as Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe in 1514, by S ...
, in eastern
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
, where his father, Miguel Brull, a Spanish army officer, was stationed. His mother, Celia Caballero, was descended from a family that had resided in Cuba for many generations.
Early life
As a child he lived in
Ceuta
Ceuta (, , ; ar, سَبْتَة, Sabtah) is a Spanish autonomous city on the north coast of Africa.
Bordered by Morocco, it lies along the boundary between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of several Spanish territorie ...
and
Málaga
Málaga (, ) is a municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia after Seville and the sixth most pop ...
in Spain. It was during his teenage years, as a student in Camagüey, that he discovered his passion for poetry. He and other students founded a short-lived magazine for which they wrote poems and essays. Eagerly reading all the poetry he could, young Brull was especially struck by the work of the French Symbolist poets.
In 1908 he moved to
Havana
Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. where he attended the university, graduating with a Doctor of Law degree at age 22. He worked in a law office but also wrote poetry for the magazine ''El Fígaro''. During 1914 and 1915 he was a member of the small group that formed around the Dominican literary critic,
Pedro Henríquez Ureña
Pedro Henríquez Ureña (June 29, 1884 – May 11, 1946) was a Dominican essayist, philosopher, humanist, philologist and literary critic.
Biography
Early works
Pedro Henríquez Ureña was born in Santo Domingo, the third of four siblings. He ...
. Henríquez, believing Brull had a future as a poet, became his mentor, introducing him to editors and suggesting he read poets whom Brull was not familiar with.
In 1916 Brull published his first book of poetry, ''La casa del silencio''. Shortly afterwards he married Adela Baralt and, switching careers, entered the Cuban diplomatic service. Brull was determined to leave Cuba where, exhausted by years fighting for independence and preoccupied by problems facing any new country, the arts were confused and anemic, uninterested in the great experiments (
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
,
futurism
Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such ...
, etc.) taking place in Europe.
Diplomatic life
Though impatient to reach
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, the first two countries he was sent to as a diplomat were the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Peru
, image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg
, image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg
, other_symbol = Great Seal of the State
, other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal
, national_motto = "Fi ...
. In the mid 20s he was stationed in
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
. There he had the good fortune to participate in the reunions of the literary cafés frequented by many of the best poets Spain was to produce in the 20th century:
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...
,
Rafael Alberti
Rafael Alberti Merello (16 December 1902 – 28 October 1999) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. He is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the so-called ''Silver Age'' of Spanish Literature, and he won numerou ...
,
Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén Álvarez (; 18 January 18936 February 1984) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27, a university teacher, a scholar and a literary critic.
In 1957-1958, he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard Un ...
,
Vicente Aleixandre
Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo (; 26 April 1898 – 14 December 1984) was a Spanish poet who was born in Seville. Aleixandre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977 "for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man ...
, and many others. While in Madrid, some of Brull's early poetry was published in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
in a French translation.
In 1923 Brull joined about 60 young professionals of Havana who decided to take a public stance against the reigning passivity and mediocrity in politics and culture. Called El Grupo Minorista (the Minority Group), they demanded an end to years of cultural backwardness and an aggressive affirmation of the new artistic tendencies coming out of Europe. In politics, they denounced dictatorships and called for the formation of a Cuban government more responsive to the people.
In 1928 he published his second book of poetry, ''Poemas en menguante''. Though also published in Paris, where he was now living, it was written in Spanish. All of his books were small editions for friends and family, paid for out of his pocket.
The Brulls lived in Paris from 1927 to 1934 with only two interruptions: a year, each, in Berne and Havana. The return of the Brulls to Havana coincided with numerous riots and demonstrations as students clashed with the police of the government of President
Gerardo Machado
Gerardo Machado y Morales (28 September 1869 – 29 March 1939) was a general of the Cuban War of Independence and President of Cuba from 1925 to 1933.
Machado entered the presidency with widespread popularity and support from the major polit ...
, an increasingly ruthless
dictator
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times ...
.
Brull spent the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
back in Paris. Two or three times a year found him traveling. He frequently visited Havana, on business; southern Spain, the land of his childhood; and
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
where he called on his friends
Gabriela Mistral
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (; 7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957), known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral (), was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and humanist. In 1945 she became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Lite ...
, the Chilean poet,
Alfonso Reyes
Alfonso Reyes Ochoa (17 May 1889 in Monterrey, Nuevo León – 27 December 1959 in Mexico City) was a Mexican writer, philosopher and diplomat. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times and has been acclaimed as one of th ...
, the Mexican man-of-letters, and others.
In 1934 his third book of poetry, ''Canto redondo'', was brought out in Paris. He was stationed in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
between 1934 and 1937 where
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
was alive and thriving.
After moving to
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
(for the second time) at the end of the 1930s, Brull was in charge of attending to the many German
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
who, seeking
visas
Visa most commonly refers to:
*Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company
** Visa Debit card issued by the above company
** Visa Electron, a debit card
** Visa Plus, an interbank network
*Travel visa, a document that allows ...
to emigrate, had lined up before the
legations
A legation was a diplomatic representative office of lower rank than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an ambassador, a legation was headed by a minister. Ambassadors outranked ministers and had precedence at official events. Legation ...
and
embassies
A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...
of numerous countries. During these years he was Cuba's delegate to the XVII Reunion of the Assembly of the
League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
and, also, Commissioner for the repatriation of Cubans fleeing the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
. Brull had decided that an all-European war was imminent—though most of his colleagues and friends disagreed—and pressured the Ministry to be sent back to Havana. He left in June, 1939. The ship carrying all of the Brull's household effects to Cuba, a year later, was torpedoed by the Germans and sank.
In 1939, a bilingual (French-Spanish) book, ''Poëmes'', came out in Paris, with a preface written by one of the greatest literary figures of France at the time, Paul Valéry. Brull worked for many years on a translation into Spanish of Valéry's most famous, and difficult, poems: "Le Cimetiére Marin" (The Graveyard by the Sea) and "La Jeune Parque" (The Young Fate).
In Cuba, Brull was one of the principal organizers of a conference of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, held in 1941. This organization was made up of major intellectuals who believed that the interchange of ideas would help lead to a solution to the tension of the 1930s and the violence of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Brull admired people who were capable of both action and thought. He had no use for the static attitude of
Rodin
François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
´s famous statue, "The Thinker". Brull's hero was the Cuban journalist and poet,
José Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez (; January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the libera ...
, who was responsible for organizing the Cuban resistance to Spain and died in a skirmish with Spanish soldiers during the War of Independence.
His fifth book of poetry, ''Solo de rosa'', appeared. His poems also were printed in the foremost literary publications: ''Social'', ''Gaceta del Caribe'', ''Espuela de Plata'', ''Clavileño'', ''Orígenes'' and ''El Fígaro''. He had long conversations with the exiled Spanish poet,
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón (; 23 December 1881 – 29 May 1958) was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which in the Spanish language constitutes an example of high ...
, who wrote a similar type of poetry.
During the Second World War, Brull was stationed in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, and in 1945 was sent to
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
to establish the first Cuban diplomatic mission in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
.
In Brussels, once more, in 1950, he published ''Temps en peine. Tiempo en pena'', a bilingual edition. Here, too, his wife died after many years of fighting
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
.
His last post was as Cuban ambassador to
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
. However, he refused to comply with an order from the Cuban dictator,
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (; ; born Rubén Zaldívar, January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator ...
, and he resigned abruptly, ending a career of 47 years in the Cuban diplomatic service. That same year (1954) the final book of poems he would publish, ''Rien que... (Nada más que...)'', came out in Paris.
Final years
Back in Havana, he turned to modernizing the cattle ranch he had inherited from his mother. But a growing
brain tumor
A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...
weakened him bit by bit and eventually left him in a
coma
A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...
. He died at the age of 65 in 1956.
Literary characteristics
Beginnings
Brull's first book, ''La casa del silencio'', is a good example of
Hispanic
The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad.
The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
modernismo
''Modernismo'' is a literary movement that took place primarily during the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century in the Spanish-speaking world, best exemplified by Rubén Darío who is also known as the father of ''Modernismo''. The ter ...
, though it has its share of intimate, Symbolist influence and a touch of tropical
romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
. Already one finds themes that would stay with him always: the ideal of beauty and the exploration of the interior world of one's heart as an escape from the ungrateful reality of the world, of time and of history.
Evident is the influence of the Spaniard, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and the Mexican,
Enrique González Martínez
Enrique González Martínez (April 13, 1871 in Guadalajara, Jalisco – February 19, 1952 in Mexico City) was a Mexican poet, diplomat, surgeon and obstetrician. His poetry is considered to be primarily Modernist in nature, with elements of Fre ...
. But these poems are the works of an apprentice. Nine years pass between the publication of his first and second collections of poetry, years in which he matured, especially after he arrived in Europe.
In his second book, ''Poemas en menguante'', Brull embraces Symbolism (pure poetry) though the poems show him still struggling to assimilate the new style completely. He finds himself immersed in the heated discussion of the poets of his generation as to whether Symbolism, art as pure
abstraction, meant the
dehumanization
Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are c ...
of art. Brull made clear that poetry was the purification of thought and form, but never abstraction. Nevertheless, Symbolism and dehumanization were firmly linked in the minds of many. Harsh criticism of Symbolism was heard frequently, including in Cuba.
Sound
A cornerstone of Brull's poetry is the word as sound material. This interest in sound can be found in the efforts of Mallarmé and Valéry to achieve pure poetry but also in the neo-popular
romances of the Spanish poetic tradition—a source that attracted other poets writing in Spanish, most famously García Lorca. Similar experiments involving playing with the sounds of words were to be found in Italian, German and English literature of the 1920s and before.
Brull's creativity involving the use of sounds, through
tongue-twisters
A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. Additionally, they can be used as exercises to improve pronunciation and fluency. Some tongue twisters p ...
and various
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
experiments, could create a world of “magical enchantment.” These sounds and
lexicological permutations combined, at times, to reach a level of senselessness which resulted in poetry that has come to be known as “jitanjáfora” after the use of this word in Brull's poem “Filiflama…”, a poem entirely made up of invented words.
:Filiflama alabe cundre
:ala olalúnea alífera
:alveola jitanjáfora
:liris salumba salífera.
:Olivia oleo olorife
:alalai cánfora sandra
:milingítara girófora
:zumbra ulalindre calandra.
Yet such an extreme interest in sound was but one strand in Brull's poetry. The “jitanjáfora” was “a verbal joke, created by Brull at the margin of the main body of his work, but as an extreme consequence of this work’s development”.
Childhood
Brull revealed an interest in childhood in a number of his poems through the subject matter or through the use of language and
rhythms
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recur ...
associated with children's verses or both. The verses he learned in southern Spain, as a boy, had a lasting impact on him. These verses were part of the traditional, popular poetry that was so appreciated by his generation of poets.
Typical features
Though he used
alliteration
Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
and
metaphors
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with ...
abundantly, there are features of his work that differentiate it from the work of others. These include:
* rare word associations
* using a word twice in the same line but in totally different ways
*
punning
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic ...
* combining or coupling words that mean the opposite or clash in their meanings (“the melody of the perfume”), usually placed within
dashes
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
, and
*illogical sound games and
onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
where one sees the influence of futurism and
Dadaism
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris ...
.
Brull favored
free verse
Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French ''vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.
Definit ...
, followed by
blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and P ...
, though he occasionally turned to the
sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
and other poetic forms. His poems are usually short, and the total number of poems he wrote was rather limited, both rare attributes in comparison with most Hispanic poets.
The rose
The rose is the principal
motif in Brull's poetry, his preferred symbol for “a standard of perfection and permanence in a transitory world.”
Mallarmé had defined a flower as the absence of the stem and leaves, his way of stating that the finality of art is the concentration on the
essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
. No other Cuban poet went as far as Brull in immersing himself in this conception of poetry. But his Latin American origin do not allow him to forget the stems and leaves altogether. Brull's contribution to the poetry of Cuba is this counterpoint between the concrete and the ideal.
An equilibrium between the sensual and the abstract is most fully reached in ''Solo de rosas'', a collection of poems in which the poet praises the rose in its pure essence, fragile and wondrous, and not corrupted by the passage of time.
''Epitafio de la Rosa (Epitaph For a Rose)''
:Rompo una rosa y no te encuentro.
:Al viento, así, columnas deshojadas,
:palacio de la rosa en ruinas.
:Ahora—rosa imposible—empiezas:
:por agujas de aire entretejida
:al mar de la delicia intacta,
:donde todas las rosas
:--antes que rosa—
:belleza son sin cárcel de belleza.
: (I take apart a rose and I don't find you.
:To the wind, thus, columns of floating petals,
:the palace of the rose in ruins.
:Now—impossible rose—you begin:
:by needles of interwoven air
:to the sea of the intact delight,
:where all the roses of the world
:--before they were a rose—
:are beautiful without the prison of beauty.)
Nothingness
In his last works, ''Tiempo en pena'' and ''Nada más que…'', Brull's poetry takes on a melancholy, somber and reflective tone, that of a journey toward the black hole of
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
, possibly intensified by personal tragedy (the death of his wife) and the world around him seemingly falling apart (the Spanish Civil War followed by the Second World War).
Throughout the years one can find, beneath the formal and expressive clarity, Brull's increasing concern of what he saw as a world in permanent deterioration. The roots of this desolation are evident in his first poems in which absence and silence—often depicted as quietness—are present yet any discomfort is dispelled by the vision of ideal beauty. By the 1950s, absence is no longer a friendly notion as it veers into nothingness. Brull is consumed by a tragic vision of life in which all things, including beauty, are conceived of as subject to destruction or, a word he often chose, ruin. Once time has done its task, only nothingness remains. “Never had Cuban poetry reached so far into desperation with such discreteness and solitude.”
[Brull. ''Obras''. ed. de Armas. p. xlvi.]
Quotes
"La prosa es escrita con el tesoro del conocimiento mientras que la poesía es escrita con el tesoro de la ignorancia."
''“Prose is written with the treasure of knowledge whereas poetry is written with the treasure of ignorance.”''
References
Books of poetry
*''La casa del silencio'' (1916)
*''Poemas en menguante'' (1928)
*''Canto redondo'' (1934)
*''Poëmes'' (1939) (Bilingual anthology: Spanish-French)
* ''Solo de rosa'' (1941)
*''Temps en peine/Tiempo en pena'' (1950)
*''Rien que ... (Nada más que ...)'' (1954)
Further reading (sources not mentioned in references)
* Gastón Baquero. ''Mariano Brull. La casa del silencio (Antología de su obra:1916-1954)'' (1976).
* Diego García Elio. ''Una antología de poesía cubana'' (1984).
* Ricardo Larraga. ''Mariano Brull y la poesía pura en Cuba'' (1994).
External links
Brull at CubaLiteraria.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brull, Mariano
1891 births
1956 deaths
Cuban male poets
Cuban people of Catalan descent
Cuban diplomats
Ambassadors of Cuba to Uruguay
20th-century Cuban poets
University of Havana alumni
20th-century male writers
Cuban expatriates in Spain