As Arnord Bennett wrote about William Butler Yeats: "He is one of the great poets of our age because half a dozen readers know he is.". From that lineage is Marcela Duque, a woman to whom the gift of poetry has not been denied.
Unlike our most famous Spanish author, Cervantes, poetic creation is for this Colombian the grace given to her by heaven, as can be seen in the two collections of poems she has published to date: Beautiful is the risk y An enigma before your eyes, both of them book-based.
The first one, resolved as a tribute to Socrates, master of existence, whose last days are reflected in the Platonic dialogue PhaedoThe first one, where the poet is inspired to give the title to her book and to sing the joy and encouragement of knowing she is alive; the second, motivated by the Confessions of St. Augustine, a well-deserved tribute to the African writer and theologian, in whom he recreates himself to refer to specific autobiographical episodes.
Learning to love
In her brief poetic trajectory, Marcela Duque is very clear about what drives her to philosophy and poetry: "I am a poet.In both activities, by different paths, I wish nothing more than to sharpen my gaze and welcome the joy and beauty -which are not alien to the pain- of ordinary life and encounters with circumstances and people. Poetry is a way of being attentive, of knowing how to look and, to this extent, of learning to love: 'Ubi amor, ibi oculus', wrote a medieval philosopher and mystic centuries ago: 'Where there is love, there is vision'. It is not only the expression of a true fact, but a program for life: learning to see and learning to love, with poetry as a radiant companion on the way.".
As a result of this way of understanding literary creation, the reader notices that her lyrical work is dazzlingly moving, at times with cultural and classical roots, linked to philosophical readings and to some contemporary poets for whom she feels a certain preference, but, above all, of great intimist power, which gives her that fresh air, of clear, sweeping line, very prone to music. It is marked by a search for meaning, hence it is full of concerns, the desire for beauty, lyricism and, as she herself expresses, attention to reality, both external and internal.
Beautiful is the risk
The jury of the Adonáis in its 72nd edition unanimously awarded him the prize for his first collection of poems, Beautiful is the risk, "for the apparent ease of converting a solid classical philosophical training into exciting and fresh poetry, thanks to a constant instinct for language and an unerring poetic ear."This makes it very clear that his is a poetry where tradition and personal voice come together, giving rise, in the first of the three sections of the book, to various considerations on the amazement and enjoyment of nature, marked by the passage of time, and to relationships, full of gratitude, with the grandmother, parents or teachers; in the second, as a link between the other two sections, to God, giver of meaning to existence and creation; and in the third, to movements or longings of the soul, such as the discovery of love, poetry, or the joy of being able to remember the paradise of childhood. In this thematic intertwining, the poet is aware that her poetic activity is a "in the meantime"It is also a search, that is, a way of facing existence until the longed-for and crucial passage to their definitive homeland, whatever it may be, takes place.
His poem And also (poetic) poetry excellently expresses this reasoning, very much in the orbit of Plato's allegorical myth of the cave, where the interweaving between the sensible world, grasped through the senses, and that of ideas, experienced through knowledge, reality and the meaning of life, is perceived: "And I find myself in a strange land, again, / It's not home anywhere, it's always a search, / I don't know what home is, but it's not this, / But I know it's true because I miss it, / And that it's not here yet, because it still hurts, / I want to go home someday, / That's why - in the meantime - poetry."
An enigma before your eyes
As I pointed out above, his second collection of poems has the Confessions of St. Augustine as a backdrop. In fact, Marcela Duque has stated in an interview: "Augustine is something of a first love and a Master. Even my approach to Plato is very Augustinian, and my 'home' in the history of philosophy is the Augustinian tradition of the restless heart: Plato, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil.". That said, it is easy to discover quite often a lively dialogue between the poet and the saint. Augustinian paragraphs such as the well-known one: "Late I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you! And behold, you were within me, and I was outside, and outside I sought you, and on those beauties that you created, I threw myself deformed." (cfr. Confessions10, 27, 38) are easily seen in the Colombian author through these white hendecasyllables: "...".I was looking for you outside and I lost you, / I couldn't find you and I couldn't find me / Empty of beauty I threw myself / To all other beauty, only an echo / Of that ancient and always new beauty / That has conquered all my senses [...]. And I have loved you late! Come, let's run!" (cf. the poem My late joy).
However, to present An enigma before your eyes from this slight consideration it would be as much as to affirm, for example, that the Waste land by T. S. Eliot is a disjointed list of quotations from various authors.
In the case of our poet, the lyrical and tensional richness of her compositions, beyond a witty approach to the different episodes of life that reveal the Confessionsare a starting point for her to give free rein to deep reflections focused, first, on the knowledge of divine Love and, from that perspective, on herself and her environment. From there on, the volume is worth discovering as a scrutinizing, inquiring poem, very much in the line of those in which the literary resource of distancing is used and in which a specific poetic character is used as a starting point on which, this time, the poet, seduced by the discovery and encounter with God - taking into account, I insist, the life of St. Augustine as a source of inspiration - pours her own experience.
Attention, the gateway to amazement
As a young author who should not be lost sight of, Marcela Duque invites, then, with her poetry to give course to transcendence, to the ultimate meaning of the human being. To this end, she reminds us that to reach "to the intimate / of the soul". (cf. the poem The port of Ostiain An enigma before your eyes), "attention is the gateway to wonder". (cf. the poem Conversation with mystery, ibidem) and that this one, the attention, encloses: "A question / to which beauty answers." (cf. the poem Conversation with mystery, ibidem), thus making it progressively clear that his poetic work, still in the starting line from which much more is expected, constitutes a fascinating introspective adventure in the face of the exciting risk involved in the enigma of beauty.
Any reader who delves into his poetry will easily verify it, while appreciating his lyrical expertise, reflected in the look of amazement that unfolds in each of his compositions, so full of liveliness and literary successes.
