The arrow between the poets' verses (II): the Midday Generation

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In the twenties and thirties, the never well recognized or praised Generation Midday –some want to call it minor, in opposition to that of the 27th, which was created in Seville together with all these poets resigned to the internal exile of the city–. It includes writers who sang to the Holy Week in Seville and, of course, to the saeta, cante protagonist of our big week. So, to this day cante Antonio Núñez de Herrera, Joaquín Romero Murube, Rafael Laffón and Juan Sierra, to name just a few examples, dedicated their attention to the people.

We will be discussing these poets from the most beautiful city in the universe throughout this article. Now, we must refer to Rafael Porlán (1899-1945), who with his short novel The First of San Julián It makes very clear the taste of the neighborhood brotherhoods in those days of avant-garde movements and ultraist magazines. And the saeta is in that world of the neighborhood corral and the basin, of the tavern and the Nazarene of the neighborhood brotherhood.

And nothing is clear in the world of the saeta, just as nothing is defined in life when doubt is a faithful companion. Nothing, and the origin and history of this liturgical chant remain in a fog that prevents us from discerning truth from lies, truth from falsehood. That's why today we're going to dedicate ourselves to searching for the meaning of this cante which is prayer –of this prayer that is cante– in the soul of the Sevillian poets, where everything remains in a nebula that only allows us to guess, if our heart is predisposed to it.

Nothing seems certain to us and we ask ourselves everything in order to find the light that will illuminate us in understanding the saeta. The voice of one of the poets, religiosity and celebration, who best understood the soul of Holy Week, reaches this meeting, under his black rouged mask behind the cross of the Lord of Calvary: Juan Sierra (1901-1989) –exquisite, sharp…– and his verses in which he unravels the cante From “Manuel Torre in a saeta that he sang to Esperanza Macarena on Feria Street”:

 It is an April undone with yellow furrows, / your voice, Manuel, I remember in my clear Seville / of flagstones from Tarifa and some cloudy carnation: / there is cleaning glass in simple trousseaus; a Macarena Flower carries the cante on his face / and an ancient tear presses against my side.

The poets of the Mediodía Generation explain the saeta from feeling, from emotion. Thus, Joaquin Romero Murube (1904-1969) –that six of letters who looked after the gardens of the Alcázar and went out as a Nazarene next to his Virgin of Solitude, in the Plaza de San Lorenzo– draws us the Niño Gloria on the Cuesta del Bacalao with his sidereal saeta: “There was such dedication and sobbing, that it was clear how each verse broke the chords of his cry. He achieved that tone of scratched glass, which is the supreme duende of authentic singers. The crowd became a sea of ​​silence.”".

Y a Rafael Laffón (1895-1978), the poet of the Brotherhood of Passion who cast in silver, for the passage of the Lord that he carved Cayetano Gonzalez, the lyrics of his "speech on the brotherhoods of Seville." From a counter in the arcades of Plaza del Salvador, we asked him, and he replied:

“I sing to you… because I sing to you, / as there is night and as there is day [1]”, that the saeta is “the passionate voice of the anonymous man who faces God in the middle of the street, in front of the processional images.”

And between that of San Gil and "the one in San Lorenzo who is dressed in black^", who wrote Antonio Murciano, “between prayers and sighs^" The saeta is a wide-brimmed hat and a bullfighter's bag that Antonio Núñez de Herrera (1900-1935) –a native of Seville from the South, but born in Campanario and buried in Portuguese lands– dissects and opens up the very essence of the city, the festival and the cante that is prayed and the prayer that is sung, with the Nazarene's sandwich wrapped in the pages of Mundo Obrero. Núñez de Herrera, avant-garde, hyperbolic and provocative, but not provocative, refers to the saeta in this way, with his heterodox, avant-garde and surrealist seal, in the Parable of the Guard and the Arrow, included in Holy Week: theory and reality:

"On the guard's forehead a crown of bugles. And on his chest the seven pains, seven: that of feeling like a guard, that of wearing a uniform, that of being the night of Parasceve, that of having been born in Triana, that of having authority and that of knowing cante jondo…The guard took off his gloves, secured his helmet, and downed a half-cocked canta in one fell swoop. Then he placed his hand on the counter and began to sing his saeta.

The Midday Generation drank, in addition to other sources, from the elegance of Jose Maria Izquierdo (1886-1922). I would place it as the starting point for the theory and discussion about Seville that the young poets of the Mediodía would later take to unimaginable heights. Thus, we rescue a short text by Izquierdo:

«I remembered what another friend once told me: anyone who comes from the North to these lands of waves of resounding silence will be amazed that in a town where everyone sings and everyone loves music, great choral groups have not been formed nor has a brilliant musician been produced.

And I found the answer by seeing: that the guitar is the musical instrument with which this people sings their sorrows and accompanies their melancholic and nostalgic joys; that the song and the singing of the Andalusian people is what has been called cante jondo In a graphic and inimitable phrase. The guitar is something very personal, very intimate, and very plastic; more for a group of friends than for a theater audience. cante jondo That's precisely what it is; a song that comes from within, from the depths of one's guts, from the depths of one's soul. It is played and sung, like one dances, with one's whole body, or better yet, with one's whole soul.

Saetas, soleraes and seguidillas…»