With Carlos Pellicer and in his boat

Today we can say almost nothing. Remember the advice that warns to watch out for dogs and still waters, baste again every hour of previous shipwrecks, write in a tragic tone about the false utility of tragedy, or expand a heroic song for underwater lands. But better not. There is enough sadness for all that has been lost and memory still remembers for Carlos Pellicer.

Born in Villahermosa, when he was still called San Juan Bautista, on January 16, 1897, his name remains linked to the work of other famous Tabasqueños: the pages of Gorostiza, the songs of Esperanza Iris and the lyrics of Joaquín Casasús. Pellicer fell in love with the word and his images saying that he learned the first letters from his mother and that his country gave him all the inspiration. Travel, navigations that included studies in Mexico City, a long route of political life, literary “evangelism” for those far from the alphabet, and a notable participation in the major cultural groups of the second half of the 20th century century, made him ascend to the exact ports, but in the end, whether literally or metaphorically, they always took him back to his beloved tropics. Because all his loves – he said, they said of him – had the same address.

A key figure in the history of Mexican literature, Carlos Pellicer, like many writers, has dedicated himself to the civil service, academia, and the publishing world. He was director of the Department of Fine Arts, in 1953 he enrolled at the Mexican Academy of Language, in 1964 he won the National Prize for Literature and in 1976 he was elected senator of the Republic for his native state. Without stopping writing, he also indulged in another passion: Museology. His is the credit for the existence of the Parque Museo de La Venta, center of the Olmec culture located in Villahermosa, which he inaugurated in 1958; He is also responsible for the Frida Kahlo House Museum in Coyoacán, which he inaugurated in 1964, and the Anahuacalli Museum, a building and collection donated to the Mexican people by Diego Rivera and also consecrated by the Tabasco poet . “When I make a museum – he once said, recapitulating – and I always made it alone; all mistakes are mine, and if there are successes, they are mine too. I am closer to logic and order through touch, moving or moving objects, than dealing with words. To me, a man confused with the earth, words are too erratic: they slip out of my hands. It is in the organization of museums that I find the least obstacles, with the greatest opportunity to practice, to establish order. “

He is regarded by Mexican literature books as an outstanding member of the group “Los Contemporáneos”, and was also, among the poets of his generation, the broadest in themes and registers and one of the most constant in his creative work.

“Do you know, Carlos, that the bad thing about you is that you are not one poet, but two? José Gorostiza wrote to Pellicer one day. The one I like, – he told her, – is the poet of the senses. I wish you were always that poet. In building our poetry you are the window; the large window overlooking the countryside, hungry, every night, to have a new panorama for breakfast every day. We, – you know, – are the pieces inside. Xavier (Villaurrutia) the runner. The other, the bedrooms. Even the last one, the one behind, who is Jaime Torres Bodet, is shrouded in shadows, with a tall window overlooking the garden, and inside, in a corner, the lamp in which the oil of all confidence is burned. Salvador New? The roof. The rags in the sun. And that restless González Rojo, who will never sleep in his bed! ”

To talk about poets just another poet. And although Gorostiza specifically referred to his group of good friends, in that letter he reached one of the hottest and most precise definitions of Carlos Pellicer. His words surpass the thousand names that tried to define him: the poet of the tropics, the one with the heart in his eyes, the poet in an airplane, the one with the song of creatures.

He does not say that he was sometimes accused of extravagance or that civil, epic, loving, descriptive poems co-exist in his work, those born of contradiction and certainty, those accused of blackness or unbearable happiness. Nor that the mere act of reading Carlos Pellicer is to be caught up in his words, blinded by his images, hot with yellow suns, drowned in his nocturnal sea, united with his green laughter and wanting to travel to all his landscapes.

On January 16, 2022, it will be 125 years since his birth and his boat is still sailing in the deep sea. His last stanzas may be the first and Pellicer is not just two poets. It is still one and the same and here it will remain.