This study assesses Bergamín’s poetry in the light of two premises: first, that the notion of faith is the prime mover in Bergamín’s thought and poetry, and, second, that language, being material, militates against the transcendent potential of faith. From the tension between the known (the material) and the unknown (the transcendent) comes the dialectic of faith and doubt which Bergamín enacts in his poetry. Inspired by the work of Cixous and Kristeva, this analysis attempts to site Bergamín’s imagination as an exilic one, as one which is estranged from God. For Bergamín, language has created objectification from the material world, and thus he suggests that we perceive ourselves as separate from others and separate from God. His poetry is concerned with the radical instability of modern experience, and Bergamín seeks to use it as a form of reconciliation. He strives for a faith in the feminine, espousing doubt, fluidity and fusion as against certainty and the dictates of reason. For him, this faith, or reconciliation, is the opposite of exile.
This book, originally published in paperback in 1995 under the ISBN 978-0-901286-58-1, was made Open Access in 2025 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.
The aim of this book is to show how the notion of faith functions in the poetry of José Bergamín (1895-1983). I make two general claims about Bergamín's writing. In the first place, I suggest that the notion of faith is the prime mover in Bergamín's thought and poetry. This faith is a faith in a transcendent reality that is beyond our perceptions, which are material. From the tension between the known and the unknown comes the dialectic of faith and doubt. Only this dialectic provides Bergamín with the integrity of struggle in his faith. Thus, he continually re-presents himself as an existentialist Christian. In the second place, I am concerned to show the way in which Bergamín extends the terms 'masculinity' and 'femininity' in a metaphorical way to connote what he sees as a related opposition of materialism and transcendence.
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Chapter 1: Bergamín and the Twin Quest for Identity and Immortality Helen Wing doi:10.59860/td.c8c92a5
Immortality; Credence to creed; The dialectics of faith; Christian poetics; Personnalisme; Critical 'partidismo'; The frustration of the reader's expectations.
The poetic figuring of the quest for immortality; Poetic value as spiritual value; The Christian poetic realm; La estatua de Don Tancredo; The Priapic complex.
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Chapter 3: The Theme of Death in the Poetry of José Bergamín Helen Wing doi:10.59860/td.c15e44f
The subject's battle with symbolic breakdown Mortality and identity; Escaping the tyranny of selfhood; The devil's advocate; Fronteras infernales de la poesía.
The exilic world of poetry; Preternatural exile; Abjection and language The pilgrimage of the sublime; Solitude as the absence of God; Poetic voice and the realm of the gift.
Faith as a dialectical process of contact between the material world and the transcendent world informs Bergamín's religious work and his poetry. In addition, language, suffering as it does from the constraints of the material world, through its creation of objectification, militates against the ultimate purpose of that faith, which is to overcome the material and deathly nature of existence in order to merge with another transcendent world, the world of God.
This title was first published by W. S. Maney & Son Ltd for the Modern Humanities Research Association but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association.
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