La fuerza del romanticismo, conquista...
En 1807, William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), poeta inglés, uno de los máximos exponentes del romanticismo poético de su país, publica un poemario en dos tomos, al que llamó «Poems in two volumes (Poemas en dos volúmenes)», dentro del cual, se encuentra el poema titulado «Oda a los himnos de la inmortalidad».
A lo largo de su carrera como escritor, utiliza vocablos sencillos y temas cotidianos para ilustrar sus composiciones, a veces a modo de enseñanza y otras recreando las escenas que le rodean. Aunque esta obra obtuvo grandes elogios, quedó un tanto eclipsada por sus anteriores trabajos «Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (Baladas líricas, 1798)» y «Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (Baladas líricas, 1800)».
A su muerte, su viuda publicó «The Prelude (El preludio, 1850)», basado en el «Poema a Coleridge», dedicado a su amigo Samuel Taylor Coleridge, trabajo que está considerado como su mejor y más excepcional obra. Tenido por un poeta menor, quizá por su tratamiento de las imágenes más cotidianas a su entorno, Lake District (la región de los lagos), en el norte de Cumberland, escribiendo textos sencillos, naturales y cercanos al entendimiento.
Durante el siglo XX se ha retomado su figura y obra, reconociéndosele los méritos que sin duda le corresponden.
En el año 1961, el escritor y director de cine norteamericano, Elia Kazan (1909 - 2003), realiza la película «Splendor in the Grass (Esplendor en la hierba)», un drama romántico, muy popular en su época, aunque el tiempo transcurrido (más de 60 años), es mucho en lo que se refiere a los avances sociales.
No obstante, como es de comprender, los valores más humanistas, pueden cambiar de color, pero no de validez y, esto, puede comprobarse a lo largo del film.
Puesto que como queda dicho se trata de un drama, la escena en que se menciona el poema «Oda a los himnos de la inmortalidad», ofrece momentos de palpable tensión.
Este poema, hay que leerlo detenidamente, porque puede prestarse a una interpretación equivocada, aunque la protagonista, en esa escena, nos da las pistas necesarias.
En efecto, Deanie Loomis (una magnífica Natalie Wood), ha sido desplazada por Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty, en su debut cinematográfico), como su novia, un amor entre lo pasional, lo sexual y lo puro, en donde Bud encaja en los dos primeros tipos de amor citados y Deanie, en el último. Escenas inmediatamente anteriores así lo corroboran, de ahí, el profundo desencanto y amargura mostrados por Deanie. No es de extrañar, que a su vuelta a clase, sirva de vehículo para la mofa de sus compañeras especialmente, a la que parece unirse la profesora Metcalf (Martine Bartlett) que la obliga delante de todos a recitar los versos de Wordsworth, en los que están contenidas las palabras que dan título a esta película.
La emoción contenida en los versos, unida a la subyacente en el espíritu de Deanie, serán el detonante de una crisis emocional, que llevará a la protagonista a ser recluida en un centro sanitario por espacio de dos años.
En resumen, gran película con excelentes actores y una dirección perfecta, al estilo dramático de mitad del siglo pasado, que tantos buenos realizadores llevaron a la pantalla, para el engrandecimiento de Hollywood.
ODA A LOS HIMNOS DE LA INMORTALIDAD
(Fragmento en español)
William Wordsworth
Aunque el resplandor que
en otro tiempo fue tan brillante
hoy esté por siempre oculto a mis miradas.
Aunque mis ojos ya no
puedan ver ese puro destello
que en mi juventud me deslumbraba.
Aunque nada pueda hacer
volver la hora del esplendor en la hierba,
de la gloria en las flores,
no debemos afligirnos,
porque la belleza subsiste siempre en el recuerdo.
En aquella primera
simpatía que habiendo
sido una vez,
habrá de ser por siempre;
en los consoladores pensamientos
que brotaron del humano sufrimiento,
y en la fe que mira a través de la muerte.
Gracias al corazón humano
por el cual vivimos;
gracias a sus ternuras, a sus
alegrías y a sus temores, la flor más humilde al florecer
puede inspirarme ideas que, a menudo,
se muestran demasiado profundas
para las lágrimas.
ODA A LOS HIMNOS DE LA INMORTALIDAD
(Poema completo en Inglés)
«Intimations of Immortality»
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell’d in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday;— Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:— I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! —But there’s a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have look’d upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother’s mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years’ darling of a pigmy size! See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses, With light upon him from his father’s eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’ With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul’s immensity; Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a master o’er a slave, A presence which is not to be put by; To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight Of day or the warm light, A place of thought where we in waiting lie; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never: Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquish’d one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
