What twenty years is nothing! It varies. In the case of Miguel Hernández, the passions, prison and death of a poet written by José Luis Ferris (Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2022) are one thing, and I dare say they have been many since its initial globalization in 2002. Work on the poet from Orihuela. Last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to present this book at the UA University Venue in Elda, and for over two hours we deciphered José Luis Ferris’s teaching and participated in different vital moments in his life. oriolan poet
Through what might be termed the “fictionalized biography,” Ferris captures the entire vital reality of the poet from the moment of his birth to his death and relates everything to his poetic production. This contextualization contributes to a better understanding of his poetry and even new spins or nuances of many of his lines.
I have described this biography as novelized because it presents not an optimally organized and presented set of data, but rather a desire for literary transcendence in its prose. Just start reading it to enjoy an analytical and decisive as well as explanatory text on how Orihuela was on the day the poet was born: «We are already in autumn. Today is October 30, 1910. It was not yet dawn when we left the squares and streets of the city. […]» (p. 29). Then, to identify each business and every person on a complete urban route until you reach the street where Miguel Hernández was born.
The fictionalized biography is divided into seven broad sections over 600 pages arranged chronologically from his birth to his death. In them, Ferris reconstructs Hernández’s entire life trajectory with a clear will to overlap between him and his poetic production. Through his reading, we insert the data and explanations we have obtained, while others are clarified either because they have been neglected or, worse, because they have been falsified due to ideological problems or ignorance. In this section, the shepherd/poet related to the subject is self-taught; relationship with friends José Marín / Ramón Sijé; their stay in Madrid and their connections with the literary world of the period; his wife Josefina Manresa’s relationships with women beyond the love of her people; with Maruja Mallo and María Cegarra; and above all those concerning the judgment process at the end of his life and therefore his death.
All of this is perfectly documented by the work of all the researchers working on Miguel Hernández, as in the case of professors Carmen Alemany and Juan Antonio Ríos Carratalá from the University of Alicante. Now, a detail that will increase its readability and take into account the heterodox public to which the work is directed is to carry the whole apparatus of copious notes, without interruption of reading, to the end of the book. reader who decides to question.
José Luis Ferris will publish his poetry readings of the twenties and thirties of the last century in Planeta’s Austral collection, Mujeres del 27, later this month, bringing us closer to the 17th century here. female poets, hidden or little known, precisely because of their female status. Perhaps these works also serve to reflect on authorial appropriation or concealment by political systems from an ideological point of view.
And why should you read this book? In principle, it can be read like a novel that expands the boundaries of this genre, if possible, due to its literary style, the way the facts are presented, and the combination of objectivity and subjectivity. Because it is an indispensable witness that will bring us closer to the poet’s verses, with information that will undoubtedly help us understand the poet’s commentary and his status as a classic far from any ideological appropriation.
Source: Informacion
