Rafael Cadenas, Queen Sofia Prize for Poetry, a professor for four dollars in Caracas

The award is endowed with eur 42,000

Strings: "I Am against all nationalism, they are as religious beliefs"

"A teacher with his salary can not live, has to work out. I was a professor in second place and charging four dollars. What full with the [withdrawal] of the old age, the national award... Bringing all of us not enough for what we need."

What he said yesterday, Rafael Cadenas, one of the poets indisputable of the Spanish language. He referred to his life in Caracas (Venezuela). And after his words, silence in the hall of the Royal Palace, where he presented an anthology of his poems (published by the University of Salamanca and National Heritage) so, today receives the XXVII Queen Sofia of Poetry, endowed with eur 42,000.

"The totalitarianism has become, has survived, must not be overlooked. Defending democracy," she said with a voice subdued, between silences, but with a message very clear. "It is very important to the friendship between Spain and Venezuela. Have gone many newspapers, there is almost no space for the opposition...". Rafael Cadenas threw a SOS after another to the small auditorium. "The University of Venezuela, has nearly 300 years and is on the ground for the situation in which we live", she explains.

in Addition to live (or malvivir) in Caracas, and responding on this, to Strings, pursued by a poem from which he wrote when he was 32 years (and now has 88). He spent a time of depression and arose to Defeat. It is not that rejected of plane but no longer recognizes him. Gives equal. Where will you ask for him. In Latin America it is a hymn:

"I've never had a job/ that, before any competitor I've felt weak/ I lost the best titles for the life/ that I just get to a site because I want to leave (believing that moving is a solution)...".

"it's Not that I feel triumphant but I differ, in addition to mentioning the guerrillas favorably, and it is a great mistake to resort to this means. And also I wrote it as a poem, but by uniting phrases that were going in the same direction." In the anthology do not appear in the poem, but, yes, Failure, that Strings considered to be the counterpoint to Defeat, and which includes this verse: "thou hast made Me the humble, quiet and" rebellious".

And do you feel that? "If there is someone who says that it is humble, it is not; it is like giving yourself a title. How quiet? Yes, a little. Do you rebel? More rebellious I try to be conscious".

The first two books in Chains, notebooks of exile (1960) and An island (1958), both reflected and not only his stay in prison (three months) and his exile (four years) on the island of Trinidad. "They were verses in a both lush. Then the poetry changed, it came to the prose, and speech. And that has continued up until now." That is, of books as a Memorial (1977), Loving (1983), and Gestiones (1992) that "now" that is about Basho and other matters (2016). Basho and his haikus, especially the one for Strings is the model: "An old pond:/ jumps a frog,/ a noise of water". As the poetry of Strings, such as the haiku, try to capture the present, what exists, but without forgetting the past. "It's what I try to write, present and past. What about the future? We don't know, is a fantasy."

Not far from the haikus are other weaknesses of Strings, such as meister Eckhart, st. John of the Cross ("who wrote a little book") and the current classical Indian ("but only as a reader, not as a practitioner"). He also read to the Generation of 98 and 27, thanks to the Colección Austral but not to the later, has not come to Venezuela. And remember that when I was a journalist for a sports daily, a cyclist confessed that he knew by heart The voice to you due of Pedro Salinas. And what he says as an example of a country that loves poetry and music. And then shut up.

Rafael Cadenas has a sense of humor that pulls out to burst, from time to time, as to soften the silence is tense in the room when he speaks of the political situation in his country. "I am very deaf. Devices unfortunately were damaged yesterday, I bañé with them, it was an accident, it is not that you don't want to hear". Chains to help her daughter Paula that makes the times of translator. And goes on to speak of the poetry: "Today, it's all in it, especially since the revolution of Walt Whitman, who expanded the language, broke with the poetry a bit romantic. The revolutionizing in form and content. And scandalized. Today Walt Whitman is a symbol of democracy".

And there joins politics and poetry, his concerns: "In Venezuela there was a democratic practice for 40 years, although there was corruption. But there were no democratic education. Democracy transcends the political, is very internal. A democrat is not only the votes but the one who is everywhere, in the home, in the street, at work. It is beyond politics."

And he continued: "I Am a cosmopolitan. I am against all nationalism, they are as religious beliefs".

- And what do you write about?

- a few months Ago, I don't write. But I review ancient poems, of other times. I have like three books.

- And how was the change of a poetry more narrative to a more spiritual?

- The poetry changed, it came very close to the prose, the language was closer to speech-says in the third person-. Came the poetry more brief. But not because I decided but that it just happened.

- do you Subscribe to these words of Czeslaw Mislosz, quoted by Octavio Paz, who appear on the threshold of his book An island: "Unhappy under the tyranny,/ unhappy under the republic,/ in a suspirábamos for freedom,/ in the other for the end of corruption"?

- There, it seems that the tyranny there is not corruption, and also the there.

Rafael Chains, in his Ars poetica, he says clearly: "let every word carry what it says (...) we are here to tell the truth".

And it seems that it has moved from the first text that appears in this anthology: "I Am makeshift, walk slowly, and I balance along by the shoulders (...) survive in indecision". And in 2017, the last year, he wrote this poem, which he called Poetry, and which also appears in this anthology which he himself has prepared together with John Paul Gomez Cova:

"Always at hand/ for you/ available./ I'm just/ a mandadero/ enjoy/ the trip/ day / following day/ up to you/ you want to/ friend/ and the words/ they arrive".

According to the criteria of