SALINAS, Pedro.
El Contemplado. Tema con variaciones.
Mexico, Nueva Fioresta en la Editorial Stylo, 1946.
8vo, pp. 78 + colophon leaf; title printed in green and black; ownership note to half-title (‘Miguerre’?), some marginal annotations in ink and ball-point pen, including the comment ‘Libro estupendo!’ on last leaf of text; otherwise a good copy, uncut in the original printed wrappers, lightly worn and spotted.
Added to your basket:
El Contemplado. Tema con variaciones.
First edition: a set of 15 poems written in Puerto Rico between 1943 and 1945, in which the poet addresses the sea he is watching. ‘… The speaker-poet’s search for key meanings in nature leads to the very process of its writing. As this process develops, the sea in turn moves from passive subject to active collaborator with the poet; between the two, they construct a new way of seeing that may presage salvation: “Y de tanto mirarte, nos salvemos” (Salinas 1975, 649). [“And by looking at you so much, we may both be saved”.]
‘To my mind, El contemplado is the cornerstone of Salinas’s poetry. It marks the culmination of his constant, questioning search for what lies behind the appearance of things’ (Andrew P. Debicki, Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century. Modernity and Beyond, University Press of Kentucky, 1995, p. 90).
