«All my writing has been a letter to you»: la poesía dramática de Tennessee Williams o el retrato emocional de un dramaturgo

Resumen

En este ensayo se analiza la obra poética del dramaturgo norteamericano Tennessee Williams como trasunto y reflejo de su compleja vida privada. La poesía es una suerte de autobiografía emocional del escritor a través de la cual explora su fragilidad y vulnerabilidad como ser humano. Asimismo, se cuestiona la recepción de su obra poética y la separación que han puesto de manifiesto los críticos entre su poesía y su teatro. El gran poeta del teatro norteamericano utilizó la poesía como metatexto e intertexto de su obra dramática, así como testimonio de su intenso mundo emocional. La poesía fue para el dramaturgo una cuestión de supervivencia física desde su adolescencia. En su primer poemario, In the Winter of the Cities (1956), el poeta manifiesta sus deseos, su sexualidad, los temores e inquietudes sobre la muerte, la vejez, la fragilidad, el deseo homo erótico, la violencia social y la familiar, la inocencia, la locura, el amor y el desamor. El dramaturgo norteamericano tuvo que convivir con la realidad de una exitosa carrera como dramaturgo, así como con el relativo fracaso que tuvo como poeta, fruto de una injusta recepción crítica que le reprochó su total desvinculación de las corrientes formalistas de su época.

This essay analyzes Tennesse Williams’s poetry as a reflection of his complex private life. The American playwright published his poetical work as an emotional autobiography through which he explored his fragility and vulnerability as a human being. Likewise, the author of the essay questions the poet’s critical reception and how his poetry has been traditionally dissociated from his plays. The great poet of the American theater used poetry as metatex and intertextual reference of his plays, as well as a testimony of his complex emotional life. In this way, poetry writing was for Williams a question of physical survival from his early puberty. In his first poetry collection, In the Winter of the Cities (1956), Williams depicted his desires, sexuality, fears, and preoccupations about death, aging, fragility, homoerotic desire, social and family violence, innocence, madness, love and lack of affection. The dramatist had to coexist with the reality of a successful career as a playwright and his disappointment about the unfairly evaluation of his poetry by the critics that censured, among other things, his absolute distancing from the formalist currents of his time.