/lit/ - Literature

>>19230385
>>19230435
I can try and explain with another poem on why he is so good and so difficult to understand even for natives.
The difficulty comes from different places, he uses a great deal of references towards classical poetry, mythology and classical culture, those are difficult for everyone, Spanish-speaking or not, and some of his poems are notoriously obscure in his references and metaphores.
He also uses archaisms and changes the meaning of the words to reflect on their ethymological origin some times, I can provide a great example later (when he says Licio in the other poem he means Luis, he is talking to himself, Licio is the archaic form).
And there are many aliterations and anastrophes that lose their meaning in translations. They are also difficult for natives because of how convoluted some of his verses can become.

I will post an example on the difficulty because of his classical references now:
This is the start of the Soledades, I will only post the English translation and try and explain.

>It was the flowery season of the year
Easy to get, he is talking about spring.
>In which Europa’s perjured robber strays
A reference to the metamorphosis of Zeus into a white bull to kidnap Europa, the less experienced readers will get lost on the second line.
>-Whose brow the arms of the half-moon adorn,
The half moon are the bull's horns, also easy to get.
>The sun the shining armour of his hide-
This is a more complicated reference. He settled the time reference in spring and talked about a bull. We see in later lines that the bull is celestial, he is in the sky, so it's the constellation of Taurus. Taurus is the zodiac symbol that goes from the 19th of April to the 20th of May, and when the zodiac sign is dominant that is because the sun is passing through it (paradoxically it isn't visible in the night sky at that time of the year), so he is saying that the sun rays pass through the constellation appearing as the hide of the bull. He further settles the time of the poem, we are not only in spring, but we are exactly from the 19th of April to the 20th of May.
He has not said anything yet, just some beautifully crafted classical and astrological references and yet many readers are presumably already lost.
>Through sapphire fields to feast on stellar corn,
Settles the reference to the bull in the sky, Taurus.
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