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A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems
Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. This bilingual volume collects the finest poetry spanning Aleixandre’s entire career—from early surrealist work to his complex “dialogues.�
Introduction and descriptive bibliography by Lewis Hyde.
Introduction and descriptive bibliography by Lewis Hyde.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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494 people want to read
About the author
Vicente Aleixandre
117Ìýbooks71ÌýfollowersSpanish poet Vicente Aleixandre won the Nobel Prize of 1977 for literature.
Vicente PÃo Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo received it at 79 years of age. At the time, people barely knew him with just two available small editions in English translation. Two years later, in 1979, Harper and Row brought out bilingual edition of Lewis Hyde of selected poems of Aleixandre, A Longing for the Light . When people left the book to go out print, Copper Canyon published a paperback edition in 1985. Express Books noted in an article on Aleixandre, â€�A Longing for the Light remains the only readable collection of Aleixandre’s poetry available.â€�
Vicente PÃo Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo received it at 79 years of age. At the time, people barely knew him with just two available small editions in English translation. Two years later, in 1979, Harper and Row brought out bilingual edition of Lewis Hyde of selected poems of Aleixandre, A Longing for the Light . When people left the book to go out print, Copper Canyon published a paperback edition in 1985. Express Books noted in an article on Aleixandre, â€�A Longing for the Light remains the only readable collection of Aleixandre’s poetry available.â€�
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 10, 2022
Joyous flesh that flows between my hands,
lover's face where I can look upon the world,
where delicate birds copy themselves and disappear,
flying off to where nothing is forgotten.
The surface of your body, diamond or hard ruby,
sunlight that shines from between my hands,
volcano's mouth that gathers me in with its intimate music,
and your teeth calling a call no one understands.
I throw myself in and die, because I want to die,
because I want to live in fire, because this air outside
is not mine, it's the hot breath from below
that turns my lips gold and fiery when I come close.
Let me, let me, let me look—stained with love,
my face flushed red by your purple life �
let me watch the low cries in your belly
where I'm dying and throwing off this life, forever.
I want love or death, I want to be totally dead,
I want to turn into you, your blood, that roaring, confined lava
that sends our fingertips flying out, like water,
so it can feel the beautiful edges of life.
This kiss on your lips like a sleepy thorn,
like an ocean that flew up, made into a mirror,
like the shine on a wing,
this kiss is still a pair of hands, a review of your rustling hair,
a crackling noise from the grudge-bearing light,
light or fatal sword that threatens my neck,
though it could never break up the wholeness of this world.
May 22, 2021
"Ven, ven, ven como el carbón extinto oscuro que encierra una muerte..."
"Dime por qué tu corazón como una selva diminuta espera bajo tierra los impossibles pájaros..."
"Vida que toda entera como una tarde há durado. Por que lo que allà está acabando, quizá, sÃ, sea la vida..."
"Algunos han amado, otros hablaron mucho. Y se explican. Inútil, Nadie escucha a los vivos. Pero los muertos callan con más justos silencios."
--
As poesias fazem jus ao tÃtulo. A vida é uma constante espera pela luz; uma luz que nunca chega. Nos longos corredores escuros dos dias, o poeta sonhou tudo isto.
Muito bom.
"Dime por qué tu corazón como una selva diminuta espera bajo tierra los impossibles pájaros..."
"Vida que toda entera como una tarde há durado. Por que lo que allà está acabando, quizá, sÃ, sea la vida..."
"Algunos han amado, otros hablaron mucho. Y se explican. Inútil, Nadie escucha a los vivos. Pero los muertos callan con más justos silencios."
--
As poesias fazem jus ao tÃtulo. A vida é uma constante espera pela luz; uma luz que nunca chega. Nos longos corredores escuros dos dias, o poeta sonhou tudo isto.
Muito bom.
August 9, 2020
A most remarkable set of poetry and prose.
I was so touched by the story of the poor young man who contacted the poet to ask if he wrote day and night.
I was so touched by the story of the poor young man who contacted the poet to ask if he wrote day and night.
March 15, 2019
I give five stars to the translators and editors of this admirable anthology which provides an excellent overview of Vicente Aleixandre's humdrum three-star career. Lewis Hyde, Stephen Bly and twelve other translators all manage with roughly equal skill to translate Aleixandre's limp, funeral Spanish into equally joyless English. The editor and publisher are to be commended for the way that they carefully align the Spanish and English texts on a line-by-line basis, thus allowing someone like myself who took two Spanish courses forty years ago at university to easily consult the original version.
Most readers will likely take the greatest pleasure from the 28 pieces in the section "Poems with Red Light" which are in the classical surrealist mode and provide a bleak, pessimistic vision of the human condition.
My favorite poem however was "A mi perro"/"To my Dog" which can be found in the second last section "Poems with With Light". After despairing of humanity, Aleixandre finds comfort in his pet. He is neither of course the first nor will he be the last to come to this conclusion.
Most readers will likely take the greatest pleasure from the 28 pieces in the section "Poems with Red Light" which are in the classical surrealist mode and provide a bleak, pessimistic vision of the human condition.
My favorite poem however was "A mi perro"/"To my Dog" which can be found in the second last section "Poems with With Light". After despairing of humanity, Aleixandre finds comfort in his pet. He is neither of course the first nor will he be the last to come to this conclusion.
April 5, 2015
I'm all alone. The waves; shoreline, listen to me.
In front of me, the dolphins or the sword.
The usual certainty, things without limits.
This tender head that's not yellow,
this sobbing stone made of flesh.
Sand, sand, your cry's the same as mine.
You don't live in my shadow like a breast,
you don't pretend that the sails, that the moving air,
that a wind from the north, an enraged wind
is going to shove your smile out to sea
and steal the great ships from the blood.
Love, love, restrain your sullied foot.
In front of me, the dolphins or the sword.
The usual certainty, things without limits.
This tender head that's not yellow,
this sobbing stone made of flesh.
Sand, sand, your cry's the same as mine.
You don't live in my shadow like a breast,
you don't pretend that the sails, that the moving air,
that a wind from the north, an enraged wind
is going to shove your smile out to sea
and steal the great ships from the blood.
Love, love, restrain your sullied foot.
July 7, 2024
4.5 stars. Stark poems of loneliness, darkness, and death, but not as depressing or pessimistic as that description suggests, for always in the exploration of our lives is the possibility of life and light in the darkness � what Aleixandre calls “a longing for the light,� which lends this collections its name. Aleixandre describes this so hauntingly in the title of my favorite poem in the collection: “Between Two Nighttimes, Lightning.� After a brief flirtation with surrealism, his work returns to the kind of concrete images that he says leaves behind the irrational images of his earlier surrealist stage as “unnecessary.�
This is a collection to read in the evening, preferably in the quiet or with the sound of crickets to keep you company.
This is a collection to read in the evening, preferably in the quiet or with the sound of crickets to keep you company.
April 1, 2014
spanning nearly a half-century, a longing for the light collects poems from throughout vicente aleixandre's career. the spanish poet, nobel laureate (1977), and member of the generation of '27 (along with garcÃa lorca, cernuda, alberti, and guillén, amongst others) wrote in many different styles - beginning with the surrealism that so defined his early work. while most of his poems tend towards to doleful and elegiac, they are also frequently beautiful and concerned with the nature of man, time, and love. a longing for the light is both a stirring and stunning collection.
*edited and introduced by lewis hyde, with translations by lewis hyde, stephen kessler, robert bly, david pritchard, david unger, and ten others.
who i write for
i
historians and newsmen and people who are just curious ask me, who am i writing for?
i'm not writing for the gentleman in the stuffy coat, or for his offended moustache, not even for the warning finger he raises in the sad ripples of music.
not for the lady hidden in her carriage (her lorgnette sending its cold light through the windowpanes).
perhaps i write for people who don't read my poems. that woman who dashes down the street as if she had to open the doors for the sunrise.
or that old fellow nodding on a bench in the little park while the setting sun takes him with love, wraps him up and dissolves him, gently, in its light.
for everyone who doesn't read my writing, all the people who don't care about me (though they care for me, without knowing).
the little girl who glances my way as she passes, my companion on this adventure, living in the world.
and the old woman who sat in her doorway and watched life and bore many lives and many weary hands.
i write for the man who's in love. for the man who walks by with his pain in his eyes. the man who listened to him. the man who looked away as he walked by. the man who finally collapsed when he asked his question and no one listened.
i write for all of them. i write, mostly, for the people who don't read me. each one and the whole crowd. for the breasts and the mouths and the ears, the ears that don't listen, but keep my words alive.
ii
but i also write for the murderer. for the man who shut his eyes and threw himself at somebody's heart and ate death instead of food and got up crazy.
for the man who puffed himself up into a tower of rage and then collapsed on the world.
for the dead woman and the dead children and dying men.
for the person who quietly turned on the gas and destroyed the whole city and the sun rose on a pile of bodies.
for the innocent girl with her smile, her heart, her sweet medallion (and a plundering army went through there).
and for the plundering army that charged into the sea and sank.
and for the waters, for the infinite sea.
no, not infinite. for the finite sea that has boundaries almost like our own, like a breathing lung.
(at this point a little boy comes in, jumps in the water, and the sea, the heart of the sea, is in his pulse!)
and for the last look, the hopelessly limited last look, in whose arms someone falls asleep.
everyone's asleep. the murderer and the innocent victim, the boss and the baby, the damp and the dead, the dried-up old fig and the wild, bristling hair.
for the bully and the bullied, the good and the sad,
the voice with no substance
and all the substance of the world.
for you, the man with nothing that will turn into a god, who reads these words without desire.
for you and everything alive inside of you,
i write, and write.
*edited and introduced by lewis hyde, with translations by lewis hyde, stephen kessler, robert bly, david pritchard, david unger, and ten others.
December 7, 2007
Poet John Bradley gave me an earlier edition of this wonderful book in 1983, I believe, and Aleixandre's poetry changed my life forever. Though I'd read other of his work before then, I discovered that this edition, gathered together by Lewis Hyde (who wrote The Gift), contains the best selection and group of poems (sometimes translated by others) available. Aleixandre too often gets overlooked when we talk about the Spanish Generation of '27. This book will not disappoint.
May 24, 2016
My Voice
I was born one summer night
between two pauses . Speak to me: I'm listening.
I was born. If you could only see what suffering
the moon displays without trying.
I was born . Your name was happiness.
A hope under the radiant light, a bird .
Arriving, arriving. The sea was a pulse,
the hollow of a hand, a warm medallion .
So now they're all possible: the lights, the caresses, the skin, the horizon,
talking with words that mean nothing,
that roll around like ears or seashells,
like an open lobe that dawns
(listen , listen ) in the trampled light.
I was born one summer night
between two pauses . Speak to me: I'm listening.
I was born. If you could only see what suffering
the moon displays without trying.
I was born . Your name was happiness.
A hope under the radiant light, a bird .
Arriving, arriving. The sea was a pulse,
the hollow of a hand, a warm medallion .
So now they're all possible: the lights, the caresses, the skin, the horizon,
talking with words that mean nothing,
that roll around like ears or seashells,
like an open lobe that dawns
(listen , listen ) in the trampled light.
October 9, 2021
My Spanish is pretty rudimentary, but good enough for me to find most of these translations totally lackluster. One translator in particular throws in extra words to make phrases where the poet himself is elliptical, which was driving me nuts. Changes too that madke no sense "llevados por nobles alazanes o bayos" flipped to "pulled by distinguished bays or chestnuts," destroying a rhythm that was easy to duplicate just by keeping to the original! The early poems have a lot of angst, frequently built around ocean metaphors, but the range is broader in the later selections; I liked the joyous bike-ride "al colegio" through the sun-bathed city, accompanied by butterflies and several of the more philosophical reflections on our unimaginably brief span of life. Robert Bly translated only 4, all of which are excellent (particularly "The Body and the Soul") - maybe someday he will give us a slim selection of Aleixandre translations worthy of the poet.
December 20, 2024
Vicente Aleixandre is a fantastic poet. After years of reading poetry, the best thing you can come across is a truly peerless and unique and presents not only a new reading experience, but probably whole new emotions. Aleixandre writes poems about the universe itself, and his poems have this sense of calm sorrow of a man coming to terms with his own smallness when facing the vastness and inevitability of the universe. If we have the genre of cosmic horror when it comes to fiction, I'd say you can call his poems a manifestation of cosmic melancholy. He is also equally powerful when he deals in his later poems with subjects like memory and love and aging. I can say without exaggeration that I feel I've been changed as a person after reading this selection and I will definitely read everything he's written as he's now one of my absolute favorite poets of all time.
February 25, 2022
Meren, valon ja suudelmien runoilija.
Vuoden 1977 Nobel-voittaja, espanjalaisrunoilija Vicente Aleixandre kirjottaa tavallaan aika stereotyyppisia runoja: luontokuvausta ja rakastavaisten kohtaamisia. Mutta hän tekee sen hyvin viehättävällä surumielisyydellä. Jotenkin Aleixandre saa eloa varjojen, tuulen, suudelmien ja tulen kuvauksiin.
Tämä valikoitujen runojen kokoelma on niitä harvoja tapoja, joilla espanjantaidoton voi Aleixandreen tutustua. Tämä on aidosti sääli sillä näytteet erityisesti Aleixandren 1950-luvun runoista olivat aidosti tosi kiinnostavia. Aleixandre myös ilmeisesti kirjotti vahvasti temaattisia kokoelmia, mikä tässä menetetään.
"Sinulle ja kaikelle mikä on elossa sisälläsi
minä kirjotan ja kirjoitan "
Vuoden 1977 Nobel-voittaja, espanjalaisrunoilija Vicente Aleixandre kirjottaa tavallaan aika stereotyyppisia runoja: luontokuvausta ja rakastavaisten kohtaamisia. Mutta hän tekee sen hyvin viehättävällä surumielisyydellä. Jotenkin Aleixandre saa eloa varjojen, tuulen, suudelmien ja tulen kuvauksiin.
Tämä valikoitujen runojen kokoelma on niitä harvoja tapoja, joilla espanjantaidoton voi Aleixandreen tutustua. Tämä on aidosti sääli sillä näytteet erityisesti Aleixandren 1950-luvun runoista olivat aidosti tosi kiinnostavia. Aleixandre myös ilmeisesti kirjotti vahvasti temaattisia kokoelmia, mikä tässä menetetään.
"Sinulle ja kaikelle mikä on elossa sisälläsi
minä kirjotan ja kirjoitan "
December 17, 2021
I think it’s really hard to read poetry properly in translation and I fear I didn’t catch the full glory of these in English.
April 15, 2009
Imagine tripping on acid under the stars while a skinny, withered-looking old man tells you all his deepest secrets. These are poems that breathe, rather than sit coldly on the page waiting to be analyzed. Although I'd love to think of myself as a passionate devourer of poetry, the unfortunate fact is that my mind is too fickle and impatient to tolerate most of it. This is strange because I love "poetic" prose and "poetic" movies, but there you have it.
Given my confessed know-nothing stance, I'm wholly unqualified to explain how or why this poetry works; I can only assure you that it does. Vicente Aleixandre's poems have intellectual depth yet can be felt, if not understood, instantaneously. Reading Aleixandre is similar to the experience I have reading a particularly obtuse but lush passage by Virginia Woolf. That is to say that an intangible mood washes over me, and then I reread the words many times trying to figure out where that intense feeling came from.
(I do have to caution that, were I rating the English, I would give this book two stars. These translations are awkward, clumbering things. One of those unfortunate cases of "read it in the original or don't read it at all," I'm afraid.)
Given my confessed know-nothing stance, I'm wholly unqualified to explain how or why this poetry works; I can only assure you that it does. Vicente Aleixandre's poems have intellectual depth yet can be felt, if not understood, instantaneously. Reading Aleixandre is similar to the experience I have reading a particularly obtuse but lush passage by Virginia Woolf. That is to say that an intangible mood washes over me, and then I reread the words many times trying to figure out where that intense feeling came from.
(I do have to caution that, were I rating the English, I would give this book two stars. These translations are awkward, clumbering things. One of those unfortunate cases of "read it in the original or don't read it at all," I'm afraid.)
September 12, 2020
I own the Copper Canyon reprint from 1985.
Hyde's introduction helps me pinpoint my reactions to this collection, to this poet. Those first books, the first half of this collection, are genuinely and deeply sad. Many/most of them are built around surrealist techniques of disassociation. The kinds of breaks where the reader can feel temporarily abandoned. But then the poems do come together on some plain other than rational, some emotional whole, and that emotion is usually quite existentially sad. This poet couldn't quite bring himself to believe anything (not even love) could overcome the inevitable, perhaps boring, end of life.
(As an aside, I wonder if anyone has talked about the influence of Neruda's love poems here. We know Aleixandre would have known the work. Hmm)
In the last half of the book, we get the reclusive but famous poet (if that's not an oxymoron) on his way to the Nobel, and speaking as the wise man who has understood the world. This work doesn't have nearly the surprises of the earlier poems and certainly doesn't make the same demands on the reader. It is much more accessible and felt, occasionally, as if it were straining toward profundity. Still, most of the poems are deeply engaged with their subject and draw me back to them for rereadng.
Hyde's introduction helps me pinpoint my reactions to this collection, to this poet. Those first books, the first half of this collection, are genuinely and deeply sad. Many/most of them are built around surrealist techniques of disassociation. The kinds of breaks where the reader can feel temporarily abandoned. But then the poems do come together on some plain other than rational, some emotional whole, and that emotion is usually quite existentially sad. This poet couldn't quite bring himself to believe anything (not even love) could overcome the inevitable, perhaps boring, end of life.
(As an aside, I wonder if anyone has talked about the influence of Neruda's love poems here. We know Aleixandre would have known the work. Hmm)
In the last half of the book, we get the reclusive but famous poet (if that's not an oxymoron) on his way to the Nobel, and speaking as the wise man who has understood the world. This work doesn't have nearly the surprises of the earlier poems and certainly doesn't make the same demands on the reader. It is much more accessible and felt, occasionally, as if it were straining toward profundity. Still, most of the poems are deeply engaged with their subject and draw me back to them for rereadng.
March 23, 2008
This has currently been republished by Copper Canyon. An amazing selection of poems, of surrealistic wit but an underlying sadness. He is part of the generation that came out of Spain in the 20's that burst across the land like a celestial roman candle. See poems on pages, 15, 45, 155,
Here is and excerpt from Death in the Waiting Room (prose poem)
" ...He hugged her like music. It made his ears whistle. The echoes, the tunes from a dream, were held there, hesitating in their throats like very sad water, "Your eyes are so clear that your brains shine right through." A teardrop. White flies wander around without enthusiam..."
Here is and excerpt from Death in the Waiting Room (prose poem)
" ...He hugged her like music. It made his ears whistle. The echoes, the tunes from a dream, were held there, hesitating in their throats like very sad water, "Your eyes are so clear that your brains shine right through." A teardrop. White flies wander around without enthusiam..."
March 24, 2023
Nobel Prize in Literature 1977.
Read six years ago already, but ever reviewed. On re-reading, this is an excellent collection, with added bonus that it’s bilingual, so the flow of the original can be contrasted with the translation. The latter usually has quite a different flow. Translation is treason.
Read six years ago already, but ever reviewed. On re-reading, this is an excellent collection, with added bonus that it’s bilingual, so the flow of the original can be contrasted with the translation. The latter usually has quite a different flow. Translation is treason.
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