Antonio Machado

Me with a statue of Antonio Machado

When I was getting my Ph.D. in English at McGill University, I had to satisfy a language requirement.  To satisfy the requirement, students had two options.  Option A was to have basic knowledge of two languages.  This knowledge could be demonstrated by a certain number of college level credits in a language or passing a reading test.  Option B was to do one language at a more intense level.  I demonstrated basic knowledge of Spanish by my six hours of undergraduate Spanish at Tulane.  But I didn't have college credits in another language, and I "disgracefully" failed  the French reading exam.  ("Disgraceful" was the word the Director of Graduate Studies had used while  "encouraging" me, in no uncertain terms, to give it a try.)  So I had to do Spanish at the more intense level.  This  involved finding someone in the Spanish Department who would work with me on some kind  of research on a Spanish writer. 

I should say that Spanish had absolutely nothing to do with my dissertation research.  Since  I was writing about British modernism, French would have been  usesful (if I'd had it to use) because of the symbolistes, etc.  However, I was stuck with Spanish and with what I, and, I truly believe, the Spanish professor thought was nothing more than a hoop I had to get through. 

I chose to write on the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875-1939) who was a member of the "generation of 98."  I remembered liking  Machado in Spanish class, and his poems were short and  lyric.  Specifically I wrote about parallels between the poetry of William Wordsworth and that of Antonio Machado.  I chose this topic because I was genuinely reminded of Wordsworth when I read Machado, and  this meant half of the paper I was  going to write would be about a poet who wrote in English.  I was not claiming any direct influence; there is (I think still) no evidence Machado read Wordsworth.  And he was a century older, so I couldn't even say they were part of some  larger contemporary movement.  I wrote the paper in English. That the Spanish professor (whose name I have completely forgotten went along with this project is further  evidence that he thought this was a meaningless (for my Ph.D.) requirement.

When Tony and I were planning our trip to Spain, I read somewhere that there was an Antonio Machado museum in Segovia.  He wasn't born there, but had lived for several years.  The museum  was  his house,and we thought we'd go see it.  We were stunned  to find  out that it was  full of visitors,  and we should have bought a ticket in advance. 

Thinking about Macado, I wondered if anyone else had put him aside Wordsworth and I looked on google scholar.  To my delighted surprise, there were SEVERAL published articles on topics such as "echoes of Wordsworth in the poetry of Machado."  Wow, I had anticipated a cogent scholarly topic!  Most  of  the articles were in Spanish, and my Spanish has almost  completely disappeared, so I couldn't read them.  But I was truly delighted.

Here are three lines  of Machado:

Sólo recuerdo la emoción de las cosas, 
y se me olvida todo lo demás; 
muchas son las lagunas de mi memoria 

And here is my painstaking translation:

I only remember the emotion of things,
and all the rest is forgotten;
many are the empty spaces in my memory.



Doesn't that just remind you of Wordsworth?

"emotion recollected in tranquility"
 "we see into the life of things"
 "gleams of half-extinguished thought"

#AntonioMachado
#WilliamWordswoth
#Segovia