Common spaces in the sonnets to the Virgin by Carlos Pellicer and José Lezama Lima

Abstract

Carlos Pellicer and José Lezama Lima wrote sonnets dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the 1940s, when their respective works were not yet known by each other. In spite of this, and taking into account that their aesthetic presuppositions and styles were very different, there are remarkable parallels and similarities between both series of sonnets, especially between the first and fourth of Lezama’s sonnets, and the first series and the fourth of three sonnets by Pellicer. His poetry can be studied under the theoretical umbrella that alludes to the similarities and differences between religious, ascetic and mystical poetry. Lezama is hermetic and baroque in his writing procedures, and Pellicer is simpler and richer in physical sensations ascertainable in chronotopic parameters. However, at the end of each of these sonnet homages, Lezama brings a certain simplicity and Pellicer is infected by the hermeticism and abstraction of mystical phenomena, which contributes to the configuration of common spaces between the works of the two poets.