The Biblical and Classical Tradition in the Poetry of Carvalho Calero (With Commentary on Five Poems)

Abstract

This study analyses the importance of Greco-Roman myths (and also biblical myths) in Carvalho Calero’s poetry. For Carvalho, myth is not merely an aesthetic ornament or a cultural display, but a means of reflection in order to achieve a philosophical and existentialist poetry with a strong Christian background. Some poems from Salterio de Fingoy [Fingoy’s Psalter] feature the figures of Orpheus, Dionysus, John the Baptist and Salome. The poem ‘Abisag’, published in 1931 is analysed as one of the first examples of Rilke’s poem of the same name in Iberian literatures. It also examines Carvalho’s poem about Catullus, ‘Onde eu escrevo Lésbia, lé ti Clódia’ [‘Where I write Lesbia, you should read Clodia’], with its metaliterary reflections on the lyrical voice and the figure (and reality) of the beloved: a very interesting example of the reception of classical tradition in modern poetry. The final poems analysed are the two works about the figures of Phoenix and Achilles, a subject which come from the Ninth Book of Homer’s Iliad. Achilles’ situation in that book has interesting similarities with Carvalho’s situation with regards to his former intellectual colleagues in the Galaxia Group. The study concluded by assessing Carvalho’s contribution as the most interesting and complex example of intertextual play with the classical tradition in modern Galician poetry.