Claudio Rodríguez

A MI ROPA TENDIDA

Language: spanish

Translations: german (MEINER AUFGEHÄNGTEN WÄSCHE)

A MI ROPA TENDIDA
(El alma)

Me la están refregando, alguien la aclara.
¡Yo que desde aquel día
la eché a lo sucio para siempre, para
ya no lavarla más, y me servía!
¡Si hasta me está más justa¡ No la he puesto
pero ahí la veis todos, ahí, tendida,
ropa tendida al sol. ¿Quién es? ¿Qué es esto?
¿Qué lejía inmortal, y qué perdida
jabonadura vuelve, qué blancura?
Como al atardecer el cerro es nuestra ropa
desde la infancia, más y más oscura
y ved la mía ahora. ¡Ved mi ropa,
mi aposento de par en par! ¡Adentro
con todo el aire y todo el cielo encima!
¡Vista la tierra tierra! ¡Más adentro!
¡No tenedla en el patio: ahí, en la cima,
ropa pisada por el sol y el gallo,
por el rey siempre!

He dicho así a media alba
porque de nuevo la hallo,
de nuevo al aire libre sana y salva.
Fue en el río, seguro, en aquel río
donde se lava todo, bajo el puente.
Huele a la misma agua, a cuerpo mío.
¡Y ya sin mancha! ¡Si hay algún valiente,
que se la ponga! Sé que le ahogaría.
Bien sé que al pie del corazón no es blanca
pero no importa: un día...
¡Qué un día, hoy, mañana que es la fiesta!
Mañana todo el pueblo por las calles
y la conocerán, y dirán: «Esta
es su camisa, aquella, la que era
sólo un remiendo y ya no le servía.
¿Qué es este amor? ¿Quién es su lavandera?»

De Conjuros (1958)

Claudio Rodríguez

photo © J. Arcenillas

* 30.01.1934, Zamora, Spain
† 22.07.1999, Madrid, Spain

Born in Zamora on January 30, 1934, Claudio Rodríguez is one of the most attractive and original Spanish poets of the mid-twentieth-century generation. His first book, Gift of Inebriation, written in 1953, (“poetry – adolescence – as a gift; and inebriation as a state of enthusiasm, in the platonic sense; a state of inspiration, rapture, ecstasy or, in Christian terminology, fervour”), charted the course that his own poems and those of his generation were later to pursue.

In 1951, Rodríguez moved to Madrid where he majored in Philosophy and Letters, graduating in Romanic Philology with the monography entitled The Magic Element in Children’s Castilian Nursery Songs. In fact, his biographers point out that as a young man, the poet had two very distinct traits: he was very fond of observing and reinventing children’s nursery rhymes and games and, on the other hand, he was a roamer and loved being outdoors: his wanderings through the streets of Zamora, on the shores of the Duero River, and in other Spanish towns and cities – his endless moving around – constituted, to a certain extent, the pulse of his writing.

In the capital of Spain he became closely acquainted with Vicente Aleixandre, celebrated poet of the 1927 Generation and winner of the Nobel Prize, at whose door countless young poets of his time knocked, their poetry manuscripts under their arms to be shown to this master of poets.

In spite of its extraordinary brevity, Claudio Rodríguez’ work, completed with another four poetry books of rare beauty: Spells, Alliance and Sentence, The Flight of Celebration and Almost a Legend – is one of the best and most rounded samples of poetry conceived and crafted as an exploration of knowledge.

The poet’s great observation skills, his natural rhythm, concrete and at the same time transcendental, merge into a most beautiful lyrical body of work imbued with three essential values: solidarity, simplicity and happiness.

Rodríguez was very active as a teacher and lecturer. Between 1958 and 1964, he was Spanish reader at Great Britain’s Nottingham and Cambridge Universities. He was also Professor of Spanish Literature at several North American Universities having local branches in Spain. The poet was reknowned for his translations, into Spanish, of the works of T.S. Eliot.

Claudio Rodríguez won some of the most important prizes in Spanish Literature, such as the Adonáis Poetry Prize (1953), the Critics’ Award (1965) and the National Poetry Award (1983). In 1993, he won the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, and, five days later, the Queen Sofía Prize for Iberoamerican Poetry, sponsored by the National Heritage Institute and the University of Salamanca. He was made a member of the Royal Spanish Language Academy in 1987. He died in Madrid on July 22nd, 1999.

____________

from: CLAUDIO RODRÍGUEZ, CINCO POEMAS. poesía Hiperión

Madrid: Ediciones Hiperión, 2007

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Translations:

MEINER AUFGEHÄNGTEN WÄSCHE(Die Seele)

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MEINER AUFGEHÄNGTEN WÄSCHE
(Die Seele)