H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
JAMES RUGGIA
March 27, 2009
Stations of the Cross #3 is probably Fernando Pessoa's most
quoted poem by those who
read him in English translation. I have issues with the English
rendering of the poem by
Peter Rickard, as I think, he clung to close to the original
syntax of the Portuguese in the
final two lines. It's a 14
line poem and if it suggests a sonnet, it's more akin to Petrarch's
eight and six; than to Shakespeare's
quatrain's & couplet.
It's the changing nature of the persona in the poem that I
find so interesting. As a Station
of the Cross, Jesus is speaking at the same time, as Boabdil,
the last Moorish King of
Granada and Pessoa himself. The reader moves through all of
these figures who are being
exposed to the same emotional torrents at
entirely different times. The opening stanza
suggests that Christ is "remembering"
the exile of Boabdil which actually took place
1,400 years later. If the reader chooses to locate the voice
in Pessoa than it's
chronological, but if they prefer, as I do, to locate
the voice in Christ it cuts a much more
interesting sensibility. I believe both readings are
intentionally juxtaposed as part of
Pessoa's struggle.
Since I first saw this poem in the 1980s, I often considered
Christ "remembering" all the
subsequent history that moved forward from his death.
He remembered from Golgotha,
the death camps of World War II, the slaughters of the
Crusades, the Black Plague and
the whole march of Western history. In the second stanza he
says,
Perhaps in former time
I was, not Boabdil,
But merely his last
look from the road
At the face of the
Granada he was leaving, history
A cold silhouette
beneath the unbroken blue...
Boabdil's exodus is one of the most operatic moments in
history and the heart break of
the Moor fires the legends of Granada; that most tragic and
beautiful of Spanish cities.
It's said that as Boabdil cried on the road from Granada, his
mother delivered the hammer
with, "Go on cry like a woman for what you couldn't defend
as a man." Ouch.
If you've been divorced; evicted
from your home and family, you may be able to channel
the feelings of Boabdil as he watched Isabella and Ferdinand
move into his quarters in
the Alhambra.
Pessoa, who was a man of many names and many personae, ends
his poem with those
great six last lines.
What I am now is that
imperial longing
For what I once saw of
myself in the distance...
I am myself the loss I
suffered...
And on this road which
leads to Otherness
Bloom in slender
wayside glory
The sunflowers of the
empire dead in me...
These tragic images flow through Christ, Boabdil and Pessoa
simultaneously; a fusion of
religion, history and poetry.
[Reprinted
from Unacknowledged Legislations, unacknowledgedlegislations.blogsopt.com, by
permission of the author. Originally published in NHS 2009,
http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs09/James_Ruggia.htm.]