Booklover — Poetry and Process

Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

Let the processing of wonderment begin after the artistic infusion from the 2023 Spoleto USA Festival. After three years, with no festival in 2020 and then two modified festivals, it was sheer delight to experience the magic of Nickel Creek in the misty, Spanish moss draped colorful light of the Cistern; the power of female Rwandan drummers punctuating “The Book of Life”; jazz in all of its forms; cabaret and opera collaborating on the same stage in “Only an Octave Apart”; ritualistic dance inspired by “The Rite of Spring”; and then absorbing the 80 musicians of the Spoleto orchestra delivering “The Rite of Spring.” Reading, reflecting, journaling and reviewing with participants will extend far into the summer season.

Now, a little Nobel poetry to continue the artistic infusion — an offering from the 1904 Nobel Literature Laureate, José Echegaray y Eizaguirre and one from the 1919 Nobel Literature Laureate Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler.

First Echegaray y Eizaguirre’s “Como Hago Dramas” (“How I Make Dramas” — courtesy of an Internet translation — the best I could find.); then one from “Butterfly Songs” that is included in selected poems translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne and James F. Muirhead.

How I Make Dramas

I choose a passion, I take an idea, a problem, a character ... and I infuse it, like dense dynamite, deep of a character that my mind creates.

The plot surrounds the character of a few dolls, that in the world or wallow in the filthy mire, Or they get hot in the febeous light.

I light the wick

The fire spreads the cartridge bursts without remedy, and the main star is the one who pays for it. Although sometimes also in this siege that I put to Art and that flatters instinct, I get the expression from medium to medium!

Butterfly Songs

Long was the time till May and morning dawned together, And crickets chirped, and larks sang high o’er corn and meadow; Then urgent, towards the light and in struggles fierce, convulsive, The caterpillar strove with tears of blood. And lo! ...

Can it be I? Me thinks I feel a soul, feel pinions!

I rise, I soar! Up, up! And higher still, to Heaven!

I’ll seek new dangers. Oh! the universe I’ll measure. Earth’s highest happiness is granted now to me: Bodily to behold the things my soul could see.

And what I’ve dumbly honoured, in myself to be.

Echegaray y Eizaguirre was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama.” He shared the prize that year with Frédéric Mistral, the subject of a previous Booklover column. On the other hand, Spittler’s 1919 Nobel award was for something quite specific — “in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring.”

The biographical information on both poets is limited. Echegaray y Eizaguirre was Spanish; Spitteler Swiss. Echegaray y Eizaguirre’s education focused on engineering, mathematics and economics after which he established himself as a professor. Spittler, on the other hand, studied the law and theology. However, teaching was something they both shared in common.

Later in Echegaray y Eizaguirre’s life he successfully transitioned into a career in government. His literary accomplishments followed these interesting career paths culminating in the Nobel accolade. This juxtaposition of science and poetry in a Laureate’s life is reminiscent of the first Nobel Literature Laureate, Sully Prudhomme.

Fun fact — One biography states that the Echegaray Street in Madrid, named for the author, is known for its Flamenco taverns. How enticing if that is true!