THE OLIVE AND MIGUEL HERNANDEZ (My contribution the act)
say olive is to build bridges between East and West: Assyria, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Rome, Algeria, Morocco, Portugal, Spain ... are some of the countries have been and are holding this tree agriculture. But the olive tree has also been the subject of legends in the ancient Greek and Roman world. Recall that the winning athletes at the Olympics were crowned with branches of olive braided, custom remains today. Jesus entered Jerusalem and was welcomed with palms and olive branches. Such was the universal symbol of peace and plenty that the olive tree represented in all the Mediterranean cultures.
Mediterranean cultures are woven to this venerable tree has been grown and expanded from the same times in which they originate their own cultures: an olive tree grew on the tomb of Adam; carried a small branch in the beak of a dove said to Noah that the earth was again habitable dry after the flood. Jesus of Nazareth, suffered the agony in an olive grove at the approach of death to be consummated in a cross of olive.
muse for many writers and poets from around the Mediterranean, who have sung the olive in its universally extended meanings: a symbol of peace, everlasting tree of life and glory is also associated with the strength and fertility.
This ancient tree, "the twisted trunks " watered with the sweat of men and women of many generations, had an austere, exploited, and generous in fruit, will be sung by many poets throughout history.
One of these poets is Miguel Hernández.
On the eve of the English Civil War going to find a poet who gives us a revolutionary protest and olive.
Smiling with the happy sadness of olive
Wait, do not get tired of waiting for joy.
we smile, light doremos daily
In this joyful and sad vanity of being alive.
Alexandrian
With these words begins a beautiful poem by Miguel Hernández in which the olive was mean to him "immutable spirit against adverse fortune, which accompanied him, unfortunately, until his untimely death.
The poet was sent to war commissariat Jaén, during the English Civil War. There he founded and directs a magazine "Southern Front" where he published articles and poems, among which is "harvesters", written in quatrains beautiful and heartbreaking. It is an ode to social issues in which the poet will be the wake of the consciences of men from the countryside and then the nascent awareness of Andalusia.
all know this poem, whose verses, long censored, those who knew and loved listening to the records of Paco Ibanez, before and during the democratic transition. Later, the group Jarcha coplillas popularized it in a beautiful album called "Andalusia Lives. "
examine some verses given the length of the poem.
Andaluces de Jaén, harvesters
haughty,
tell me in the soul: who,
who raised olives?
not lifted them out of nothing,
neither the money nor the man, but the land
quiet,
work and sweat. United
pure water and the planets together, the three gave
beauty of the twisted trunks.
In these verses, of extraordinary visual beauty, find the integrated vision of the earth and man in harmony with the universe, and, above all, the
dialectic exploiter and exploited.
Arise, olive gray,
said at the foot of wind. And the olive
raised a hand
powerful foundation.
This verse was possibly censored, because it is not in the discography of the authors mentioned above. The strength of his poetry lies in the hands of those claiming cry justice.
Your blood, your life, not the operator
that was enriched in the wound
generous sweat.
not the landowner who buried you in poverty, that I stomped
forehead
you lowered your head.
Miguel Hernández used the verse " lowered your head " drive them as a metaphor for ignorance. At the same time is a critique of the apathy of Jaén laborers who are resigned to their fate: "Jaén lay indifferent to everything, slept in a total indifference ..." (M. Harris).
many centuries of olive
the prisoners hands and feet,
sun to sun and moon to moon,
weigh on your bones!
ends with this stanza " Jaén, get brava", encouraging men to Jaén struggle to defend what is theirs, because people and land are the same.
Jaén, get on your brave
moonstones,
're not going to be a slave
with all your olive grove.
