La poesía como Artes de la Memoriael ciclo de senectud en la obra de Antonio Gamoneda

  1. Pujante Corbalan, Ruben
Supervised by:
  1. Vicente Cervera Salinas Director
  2. Christine Rivalan Guégo Director

Defence university: Universidad de Murcia

Fecha de defensa: 13 November 2020

Committee:
  1. Claudio Rodríguez Fer Chair
  2. Luis Bagué Quílez Secretary
  3. Laurence Breysse-Chanet Committee member
Department:
  1. Spanish Literature, Literary Theory and Comparative Literature

Type: Thesis

Abstract

The subject matter of this research was to study the work of Antonio Gamoneda, a writer renowned as one of the most important figures in contemporary Spanish poetry. In spite of the fact that several successful doctoral theses have been written about Gamoneda, and the extensive bibliography that can be found on him, this work addresses aspects of his writing which, until now, have been less explored. Specifically, the final phase of his career, or senectute cycle, which includes the reference corpus is analysed. This is a period that, as can be seen here, encompasses a personal structural meaning that is clearly different to his other creative years or periods. The main aims of the research include confirming the poet's multidisciplinary, interartistic nature, which is a distinctive feature of Gamoneda that, until now, has not been specifically focussed on. On the basis of poetry conceived as "arts of memory" ? a variation on one of the writer's most iconic hallmarks ? the study of the senectute corpus, which began when he was around 60, with the publication of Libro del frío, he expresses himself based on three main aspects: Gamonedan thinking, the rhythm of his ideas ? particularly categorical analysis of sublime emotion and sensorial transpositions or synaesthesias ? and the relationships and analogies between poetry and painting, and even other arts. The first section points out the rejuvenation of social thinking in the context of the recent socio-economic crisis at the beginning of the century, and the outburst of humour and irony in the thanatological aspects of his poetry ? dominated, from the start, by the perspective of death. Visionary materialism increases with texts and sources of arcane medical science, amongst others, consistent with his senescent poetry, as a questioning of self-awareness, the enigma ruling creative genesis, or the cultural heritage of writing. The second block, which centres on two trademarks of Gamonedan rhythmical semantics, highlights the cementing of the sinister sublime within the various subliminal meanings, amongst which we can also mention the sublime of pathos, ecstasy and terror and anti-sublime as variations on sublimation which all have profuse poetical epitomes. When it comes to sensory transpositions, it can be affirmed that Gamoneda does not follow any of the three great panchronic tendencies studied by Ullmann and Doetsch. This fact reinforces the idea of a personal stylistic use of synaesthesia, as it can be seen that the sense of sight is the predominant source and destination for intersensorial transfer, or that, frequently, synaesthesia and the sublime overlap in a single expressive synthesis (sublime synaesthesia). The final section highlights the study of visual plasticity on the printed page, specifically the evolution of the verse punctuation system, and the important space taken by a gap, or void, in the poem, in as far as it is a visual correlation of silence and the spoken word. It is a pictorial syntax or plastic rhythm, whose tectonics also plot the sense of the poem's form, as can be seen in the sequential analysis of La prisión transparente. This work also contains an extensive bibliography, including a detailed inventory of works created in collaboration with visual artists. To close, there are several attachments which include two long interviews with the poet in 2013 and 2016.