“Nocturno” (Nocturne), from the collection Diario de un poeta recién casado (Diary of a Newlywed Poet), is an excellent example of Jiménez’s “naked poetry.”

Employing simple language and rhythmic free verse, “Nocturno” is a meditation on the traveler’s longing for his homeland. The musical title evokes at once the poem’s temporal setting, its nostalgic content, and the melodic quality of its structure. Substituting the harmonious flow of the ocean for the play of musicians, Jiménez’s nocturne transports a shipboard speaker back to his homeland.

The image of night trains crossing the countryside parallels the passenger’s voyage on the waves of a sea “sin ‘estaciones’ de parada” (with no station stops), uniting past with present, land with water. The elliptical phrase, “… Me acuerdo de la tierra” (I remember the land), repeated later in the poem to re-create the movement of the ocean, introduces the object of the speaker’s yearning: “Madre lejana, / tierra dormida” (remote mother, sleeping earth).

Literally and figuratively adrift on a dark sea, he pines for the “brazos firmes y constantes” (strong and faithful arms) and the “regazo quieto” (peaceful lap) of the “tierra madre” (mother earth) who awaits “el mirar triste / de los errantes ojos” (the sad gaze of the wanderer’s eyes).

The poem’s last stanza makes plain its underlying transcendentalism. Light triumphs over darkness in “la madrugada … / blanca, rosada, o amarilla” (the dawn … white, pink, or yellow). With the concluding verse again echoing the sea, the solitary traveler feels reunited with every human in history through this unconditional love of the earth: “los que, sin ser suyos ni sus dueños / la amaron y la amaron …” (those who, neither its slaves nor its masters, loved it and loved it). The mother earth conceit unifies the poem’s tenor.

Bibliography
Jiménez, Juan Ramón. “Nocturno.” In Canción. 1936. Barcelona: Seix-Barral, 1993.

Categories: Literature, Spanish Literature, World Literature

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