Angel, Muse and Duende: three poetic voices

 “All the arts, and even countries, have the capacity for duende, angel and muse, and just as Germany has – with exceptions – the muse, and Italy the perennial angel, Spain is at all times moved by the duen¬de, for it is a country of ancient music and dance where the duende squeezes the lemons of dawn – a country of death. A country open to death”.
This fragment forms part of one of the most beautiful lectures ever given by the poet Federico García Lorca (in Cuba, 1930). In this lecture, the author defines duende as “a force, not a labour, a struggle, not a thought”, and he contrasts it with the art that can sometimes be visited by the angel, or every so often feature the muse. In contrast, Lorca writes, Spain “is always moved by the duende”. Duende has to do with the spirit, with the unsayable, the inexpressible, with something almost divine that awakes “in the last rooms of blood”. We can even speak of the “duende-enchanted artist”, and even – given its enormous chthonic sensibilities, to the figure of the shaman.
This threefold spiritual concatenation of “angel, muse and duende” — elements that must, in some way, “visit” the office of every creative person and make themselves visible in his or her work — is what gave us the idea for today’s event: to bring together three excellent poets who will – each in their own particular way – evoke these three great elements of demiurgic vocation: namely, the act of creation.
And before we can discover which of them is the most faithful devotee of their craft, first we will have to hear them speak!

Valentí Gómez i Oliver
Poet and chair

Cycle: Angel, Muse and Duende: three poetic voices

Organized by: Residence for Researchers CSIC-Generalitat of Catalonia