Vicente Medina

Al puntearse la Acadenúa Alfonso ~L el labia is
necesidad de que, en su Biblioteca Murciana de Bol-
sillo, figurara una obxa o selección de rectos perteW
neciente al poeta regional Vicente Medina (1$áb-
1937), se ha preferido ofrecer al lector actual una
edición completa de Aires Marcianos que, agotada
hace muchos años, se considera la obra más repre-
sentatïva del poeta de Archena y una de las princï-
pales de la bibliografïa regional . Frente a nuevas po-
sibles antologías, en las que figurase una selección
espitgada de aquí y de allá, Y, sobre todo, mejor que
volver a realizar una obra ambiciosa en cuanta a la
que se pretende presentar pero realmente corta er=
su alcance, se ha optado par la reedición de una obra
completa, que par otra parte, responde a una labor
constante y dilatada a lo larga de las años de is vida
del poeta, no ya sólo par los retoques a que sometió
sus creaciones, sino también porque asi recogemos las
sucesîvas ampliaciones que Medina introdujo en sus
Aires Marcianos . Parque la edición que pubücamas
no 'es otra que la preparada par el poeta e impresa
en Rosario de Santa Fe en l92ß, y que recoge poesías
de 2898 a Iß28, al tiempo que refunde numerosas
ediciones de series diversas que fueran componiendo,
a lo largo de ese per%do de años, sus Aires Murciantas.… (plus d'informations)

Vicente Medina is one of the most famous and accomplished poets to come out of Murcia, an arid and poor region of southeastern Spain which I happen to love very much. Certainly he is the greatest poet to write in the local dialect (on which more in a future review), and his work – especially this volume – has been taken up by many as a kind of reference-point for traditional culture and customs of the region. Which it is only in small part; his concern is not with any sentimental description of local folkishness, but rather with giving a voice to the destitute around him – the labourers, cave-dwellers, and poorest of the poor.

Born in 1866 in the little village of Archena, the son of a labourer, Medina eventually settled out on the coast in the city of Cartagena, where most of his earliest works were published. They were greeted with little more than polite attention until his play El Rento – written in dialect – drew rave reviews and suggested a way forward. Aires murcianos followed in 1898, to great acclaim – the influential writer Azorín said that if Medina wrote nothing else it would guarantee him entry to the national Parnassus, while critic Luis Bonafoux was moved to describe Medina as el poeta de los poetas españoles.

That seems hyperbolic now, and in their emotional tone the poems can be rather cloying for modern tastes; the first piece, ‘Naïca’, for instance, begins with a boy attempting to seduce a girl while she sits silently – sin icir naïca – and ends with him crying over her tomb, the girl again lying silent sin icir naïca. (The refrain economically illustrates two of the most prominent features of Murcian speech – loss of initial and intervocalic ds, and abundant use of diminutive forms in -ico, naïca thus being a reduced diminutive form of standard nada.) The parallel may seem heavy-handed, but even here the dialect gives Medina many interesting effects to play with, and when he turns to less schmaltzy subjects he can be a very moving and stimulating poet.

Perhaps my favourite is ‘Noche-Güena’, still occasionally anthologised, which combines dramatic descriptions of the Murcian sierras with a characteristic focus on a very poor family struggling to survive. Huddled together on Christmas Eve in their casón, a cave-like shelter dug into the slope of a hillside, without even the means to make a fire, Juan and his family are tortured by the smell of people walking past outside carrying fresh bread and tortas de Pascua (a local Christmas delicacy). The poet looks back to an imagined golden age, before the land had been parcelled up among rich landowners:

Nuestros eran enantes
los montes con sus leñas,
y libres pa los probes
aquellos artos de pinás espesas…
libres, con sus lentiscos y chaparras,
lo mesmo los colläos que las chentas…
y libres los barrancos con sus nebros…
¡libres, con sus romeros, las laëras!…

[Once they were our own,
the mountains with their firewood,
and free to any poorman
those dense pinewood heights…
free, with their mastics and oaks,
both the low hills and the summits…
and free the gullies with their juniper…
free, with their rosemary, the mountain slopes!]

Instead all that is left to the poor now is el consuelo e la sierra. The consolation of the mountains. (Which would have made a good alternative title.) My quick translation there is in standard English, which of course is wholly inappropriate since what's really required is a good local patois from somewhere suitably obscure and rural – Lincolnshire, perhaps. Actually, one of the things this book reminded me of was Tennyson's Lincolnshire dialect poems – if only he'd translated Medina! That would have been an odd meeting of literary minds to make me very happy.

If you're interested in the area, then, this is a must; if you're interested in European poetry of the period in general then it's well worth your time. This particular edition is a charmingly pointless facsimile reprint of a well-known 1900 tomito from the Biblioteca Mignon, with transcripts and mostly-useless bibliographical notes on facing pages. Contextual information, biographical comments, and explanations of the more obscure dialectalisms are all conspicuously absent, which is a shame, since even if your Spanish is a lot better than mine, you might struggle with some of the terms in here and supplementary materials may be wanted.… (plus d'informations)