by Philip Gambone

So wrote Carlos Pellicer, one of a group of young, modernist Mexican writers who, between 1928 and 1931, published an influential literary magazine, which they called Contemporáneos. The group was "aristocratic, Bohemian, learned, occasionally effete in their refinements," writes Stephen Tapscott, in his excellent bilingual anthology, Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry. Because their primary commitment was aesthetic, the Contemporáneos stood in resistance to "social protest writing, to noisy nationalist aesthetics, to Hispanic macho postures."

Pellicer was, according to Octavio Paz, "our first truly modern poet." Like the other Contemporáneos, Pellicer turned away from the the previous generation's mania for French symbolist poetry and, says Paz, "launched his first memorable images, with the joy of one returning to his homeland with birds he's never seen before... And with an air of miraculous simplicity."

Carlos Pellicer Cámara—to give him his full Mexican name—was born on January 16, 1897, in the state of Tabasco. When he was eleven, he and his family moved to Mexico City. Pellicer studied at the National Preparatory School, where he co-founded a literary and cultural magazine. After high school, he traveled to Bogotá, representing the Federation of Mexican Students, and later to Caracas, hoping to organize a similar federation there. Upon his return to Mexico in 1921, he published his first book of poems, Colors in the Sea. The book was oddly formatted: 77 loose pages housed in a cardboard case. The way it was displayed in bookstore windows—pages scattered on the floor next to a broom and a few coins equivalent to the book's price—revealed something of Pellicer's youthful non-conformity and humor.

That same year, Pellicer began working as secretary to José Vasconcelos, who had become Mexico's first Minister of Public Education. (See my "Mexico's 'cultural caudillo': José Vasconcelos" in Lokkal, 28 July 2024.) During his time in office, Vasconcelos organized a trip of writers to South America, and invited the young poet to go along. On that voyage, Pellicer met several of the continent's most distinguished poets, including Pablo Neruda. The trip reaffirmed Pellicer's pride in Latin America. It also launched his lifelong enthusiasm for travel.

During the twenties, Pellicer traveled widely. He wandered without much of a plan, exploring several countries in Europe and the Near East. In each city he visited, he wrote a poem, "a lyrical song of his sensations," writes one of his biographers, Álvaro Ruiz Abreu. These poems celebrated "the colors of the landscape and the human soul."

In one of these poems, or Etudes ("Estudios"), Pellicer wrote:

Italy became Pellicer's favorite country. In a trinity of cities—Venice, Florence, and Assisi—he found three stages of knowledge, Abreu says: the sensual, the intellectual, and the spiritual. "He considered the land, food, landscape, architecture, and painting as a riot of imagination that 20th-century man must understand and assimilate to sustain himself in a changing, oscillating world. Living in Italy was like returning to one's mother's womb in search of tenderness, wisdom, and absolute beauty."

From Rome, on June 11, 1928, Pellicer wrote: "Whatever I have gained artistically in Europe, I owe to Italy... Italy has given me a world that I no longer know what to do with, because it is too intense, and I am also too intense. Italy is like a dance. It is a dance. A marvelous dance whose rhythm is inexhaustible and infinitely varied. It is here that I have learned to dance a kind of eternal dance that I will never forget."

Back in Mexico, Pellicer was confronted with a political situation he could not tolerate. He found that he could not "serve a government born of treason and murder," as he wrote in a letter to his parents. He joined the liberal Vasconcelist movement, an association that landed him in prison in 1930. He was tortured and subjected to mock executions several times, but finally released. To the end of his days, he considered Vasconcelos el maestro definitivo. "He is an extraordinary man whose dramatic existence is, among all the souls of my time, the one who excites me the most."

Jose Vasconcelos, c.1920s
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Pellicer's entire body of work is "color, passionate movement," wrote his friend and fellow poet Jorge Cuesta in 1928. "It is useless to look for any tendency in his verse other than, exclusively, the complete enjoyment of the senses. He is, in a word, an impressionist poet." At the same time, Pellicer also found room in his poetry "for melancholy, for mourning dead friends, for praying beside one's mother, to follow the silent music of silencing a feeling, to despair at injustice, and to wander through the provinces, mortgaging sunsets to build a life," as Felipe Garrido, the complier of an anthology of Pellicer's poems, notes.

Pellicer's poem "Sunday" conveys some of his burning exuberance for life, his awareness of life's pain, and his religious sensibility. The English translation is by Mary and C.V. Wicker:

"It is difficult to define his political ideology," writes his nephew Carlos Pellicer López. "From his youth, he cultivated a single hatred: toward American imperialism. Working for the State, holding positions such as Director of the Department of Literature (1941-1943), Director of the Department of Extracurricular Education and Aesthetics (1943-1946), and finally Senator for his home state (1975-1976), his aim was always to serve those in need."

One of Pellicer's most beloved and widely anthologized poems is "Wishes" ("Deseos"), published in 1924, which he dedicated to fellow poet Salvador Novo. (See my "A Proust who Lived in Mexico: Salvador Novo" in Lokkal, 26 January 2025.) The English translation is by Donald Justice:

Pellicer was a fervent Christian. "I believe in Christ as God and the only important reality in the history of the planet. Everything else—art, science, etc.—is accessory, secondary, and anecdotal." But above all, writes his nephew, "he was a man who loved his senses and, by trusting them, knew how to find the joy of living." As Pellicer himself said, "If one day I could reach God, I would reach him through my senses."

Carlos Pellicer died on February 16, 1976. He was interred in Mexico City's Rotunda of Illustrious Men. His Poesía completa, in a handsome three-volume set published in 1996 by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, runs to some 1500 pages. It's a shame that more of his poems, so full of the sensuality and joy of being alive, have not been translated into English.

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Philip Gambone, a retired high school English teacher, also taught creative and expository writing at Harvard for twenty-eight years. He is the author of six books, including As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II, which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the Boston Globe. His new collection of short stories, Zigzag, has just been published by Rattling Good Yarns Press and is available on Amazon, at the Aurora Bookstore, and at the Biblioteca bookshop.

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