Imagine the Poet Before the Verses: On Antonio Machado's Advice

Abstract

In Juan de Mairena Machado recommends imagining the poet before writing the verses. This paper looks into the meaning of this advice and its consequences for lyrical poetry. The concept of apocryphal, and its links with folklore, serves to reject the usual notion of poetry as an expression of the feelings of self. All of this outlines a poetics that acknowedges the others as the starting point for poetry. This approach shows that the invention of an apocryphal author overshadows the self in favour of the otherness that constitutes the human being. At the same time the apocryphal allows to explore those metaphysical positions that, according to Machado, are implicit to the very nature of poetry.