TY - CHAP

T1 - ‘Ceibe na Saudade’: Ernesto Guerra da Cal’s Exile Poetry

AU - Miranda-Barreiro, David

PY - 2022/5/25

Y1 - 2022/5/25

N2 - Ernesto Guerra da Cal (Ferrol 1911 – Lisboa 1994) was a Galician scholar and poet close to the Generation of 27 (especially to Federico García Lorca) who fought with the Republican Milicias Gallegas during the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, he was in New York carrying out a mission for the intelligence agency SIM (Servicio de Información Militar). After the Francoist victory, he began an exile in this city which lasted until 1977, when he retired and settled down in Portugal. In New York, Guerra da Cal worked as university lecturer in different institutions and became key for the development of Portuguese Studies. During his exile in the United States, he also published two collections of poems in Galician (with Portuguese ortography): Lúa de alén–mar (1959) and Río de sonho e tempo (1963). In this chapter, I will examine the poetic representation of the feelings of solitude (often through the concept of ‘saudade’ developed by Ramón Piñeiro at the time) and isolation caused by the experience of exile in Guerra da Cal’s texts from this period. Galicia is here recurrently presented as an Arcadia, the location of the poet’s paradise lost of his childhood. The poetic style, which combines the influence of Galician–Portuguese medieval poetry with a light touch of surrealism and Rosalía de Castro’s romanticism, also echoes a prosperous time for Galician language and culture brought to a halt by fascist repression. I will argue that Guerra da Cal’s poems create a multilayered paralelism between a nostalgic longing for the poet’s childhood and his homeland, together with references to Galician’s period of literary splendour, which contrasts with the suffering experienced by the ageing poet in exile, unable to return to a place, a time, and a culture that have been hijacked by the fascist forces he had fought in his youth. Without clearly alluding to the war and the subsequent dictartorship, Guerra da Cal’s poetry expresses the pain experienced by Republican exiles due to the impossibility of returning.

AB - Ernesto Guerra da Cal (Ferrol 1911 – Lisboa 1994) was a Galician scholar and poet close to the Generation of 27 (especially to Federico García Lorca) who fought with the Republican Milicias Gallegas during the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, he was in New York carrying out a mission for the intelligence agency SIM (Servicio de Información Militar). After the Francoist victory, he began an exile in this city which lasted until 1977, when he retired and settled down in Portugal. In New York, Guerra da Cal worked as university lecturer in different institutions and became key for the development of Portuguese Studies. During his exile in the United States, he also published two collections of poems in Galician (with Portuguese ortography): Lúa de alén–mar (1959) and Río de sonho e tempo (1963). In this chapter, I will examine the poetic representation of the feelings of solitude (often through the concept of ‘saudade’ developed by Ramón Piñeiro at the time) and isolation caused by the experience of exile in Guerra da Cal’s texts from this period. Galicia is here recurrently presented as an Arcadia, the location of the poet’s paradise lost of his childhood. The poetic style, which combines the influence of Galician–Portuguese medieval poetry with a light touch of surrealism and Rosalía de Castro’s romanticism, also echoes a prosperous time for Galician language and culture brought to a halt by fascist repression. I will argue that Guerra da Cal’s poems create a multilayered paralelism between a nostalgic longing for the poet’s childhood and his homeland, together with references to Galician’s period of literary splendour, which contrasts with the suffering experienced by the ageing poet in exile, unable to return to a place, a time, and a culture that have been hijacked by the fascist forces he had fought in his youth. Without clearly alluding to the war and the subsequent dictartorship, Guerra da Cal’s poetry expresses the pain experienced by Republican exiles due to the impossibility of returning.

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781800796157

T3 - Iberian and Latin American Studies: The Arts, Literature and Identity

SP - 93

EP - 116

BT - Figures of Exile

A2 - Tasis Moratinos, Eduardo

A2 - Omlor, Daniela

PB - Peter Lang

ER -