A RHAPSODIC AGE?
Ill
expressed though it may be in uncertain accents, preferable to the
precise European perfection of the well made novels? And if an
inherited perfection were to be added to this primitive freshness, a
great American poetry would arise beside America's skyscrapers,
'European novels' and factories. The greater part of the Latin-Amer–
ican countries, for all their lack of skyscrapers and factories, are en–
joying the richness of a lyric age. Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay,
Chile-here, through the dark Unconscious, speaks a land with its
own forms; and through poetry speaks a powerful Unconscious, more
or less illumined by the lights of Europe. I should like to contribute,
even on my modest scale, to the awakening of your interest in the
agreeable subject of Spanish-speaking verse. For ourselves, constantly
exposed to the attraction of the great American cities, there is nothing
more reassuring than the prospect of finding parallel currents here.
It is true, of course, that South America has something which we
cannot obtain easily and which is absolutely necessary for all this–
!
mean leisure. For
if
the old Spaniards used to say that 'leisure is
the father of all the vices,' we must not forget that the first of those
vices
is
poetry, and that poetry- in the sphered relationship of all
things-is the mother of all the virtues.
(Translated from the Spanish by Dudley Fitts)
