José Cueli: Where oblivion dwells

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Luis Cernuda implicitly downplays the value of neo-popularism, measuring it against the universality of poetry. In Estudios sobre poesía contemporánea (Studies on Contemporary Poetry) (Madrid, 1957), he speaks of Antonio Machado's folkloric obsession, ignores the latter's brother, Manuel, and highlights the flaws of Federico García Lorca, from Cádiz, among them what he calls "outdated costumbrismo."

Cernuda states: "(García) Lorca's dramatic tendency has ample opportunity to exercise itself in this book, and it is here that one of the main defects of the Romancero gitano emerges: its theatricality, as well as its outdated local color. There is no doubt that García Lorca knew the land, the people, he felt it, even sensed it; it's a shame that this knowledge was not accompanied by some distrust of certain tastes and preferences of the national character.

"It is true that García Lorca's defects are the same as those of his homeland; perhaps it was doubly difficult for him to guard against them. In saying this, I know I am going against the general opinion that calls García Lorca's virtue what is called a defect: experience has taught us how this general opinion is formed, what it consists of, and there is no respect for it."

Here the universality of Luis Cernuda confronts the popular poetry of García Lorca.

Luis Cernuda, a universal poet, is at the same time the poet of marginality; it is perhaps there, on the margins, from these very margins, that true poetry can emerge. Marginality not only because of his homosexuality or his subsequent exile, but because of the poetic essence itself, which we sense in his poetry: it deepens the cry, the original helplessness that dwells within us all.

That is why in his poem “Like the Skin” he writes: “... that deep down there is no bottom / there is nothing, but a scream, a scream, another desire.”

In his brilliant essay , The Change of the Poet, Juan García Ponce, Luis Cernuda points out that, in the initial stages, in Profile of the Air, the stylistic influence of Mallarmé, Valéry, and Garcilaso, and later of surrealism, is clearly evident. The book Where Oblivion Dwells marks a radical shift in Cernuda's work.

In this regard, García Ponce asserts: “From this book on, Cernuda will try to find the form of poetry in a sort of very internal verbal rhythm, close to spoken language, which obeys a syntax that determines the verse, at the same time breaking it, making it largely dependent on the possibilities of enjambment by abandoning the form in which Donde habite el olvido is written; it can be said that all of Cernuda's poetic work is qualified by that voluntary prosaism that, superficially, sometimes seems to bring poetry closer to prose, it can make one think that his verse is truly nothing more than chopped up prose. However, this is the style that Cernuda imposes on himself to create what we cannot fail to recognize as a very high manifestation of poetry.”

In his search for a new verbal rhythm, Cernuda not only finds his own style, but also an approach to internal writing, the possibility of breaking with "repetition" (in the psychoanalytic sense). In this "break," he comes into contact with emptiness, with emptiness, with lack. This resonance in the reader perhaps explains why Cernuda's poetry envelops, fascinates, and captures the most universal and intimate part of being.