SOURCE: “The Long Poem of Jorge Guillén,” in Books Abroad, Vol. 42, Winter, 1968, p. 47.

In the following essay, Luzi compares the poetry of Guillén to that of the French poet Paul Valéry.

Jorge Guillén's Cántico—I remember well the moment when I heard about it from Hispanist friends, and when I myself made its first, still cursory, acquaintance. These were the years when the prestige of Valéry was at its zenith; wherever a powerful poetic synthesis seemed to incorporate a certain intellectual rigor, his work was sure to be evoked. Guillén's poetry as well seemed to be following in the trace left by these footsteps. Yet it appeared as an event of a festive nature, which the severity of its model might have foretold, if at all, only in flashes like the “Cantique des colonnes.” Certainly Guillén himself would be the...