docto oficio / Machado's humble brag

...  dejar quisiera

mi verso, como deja el capitán su espada,

famosa por la mano viril que la blandiera,

no por el docto oficio del forjador preciada.  

We know that the poet is explicitly saying that he wants to leave his verse behind, famous like the sword of the virile captain, for the captain himself, not prized for the learned crafstmanship of the forger.  

But these lines, in which this message is expressed, are themselves an example of the "docto oficio."  Look at how the poet makes the lines fit into the metrical pattern by altering the word order.  In normal syntax, he would have said "quisiera dejar mi verso como el capitán deja su espada, famosa por la mano viril que lo había blandido, no preciada por el docto oficio del forjador." The tone and vocabulary is very culto, not popular at all.  Most readers will see through the language to the meaning, instead of seeing that language itself. In so doing they kind of miss the point. Machado is saying, look, I can do this virtuosic verse thing too, even though I'd really like to be admired for other things. I'm not an aesthete, but that's by choice. He can shift tones and registers at will, like "el lecho donde yago" instead of "la cama en que duermo." Performances of humility are always rhetorically interesting, because they have to have some aspect of the "humble brag."  

The phrase "docto oficio" is itself a rhetorical figure called "epithet," in which the adjective comes before the noun instead of after to connote an inherent quality of the noun.  

Metrically, the lines divide up into two groups of seven syllables:  

mi verso, como deja /  el capitán su espada,

famosa por la mano / viril que la blandiera,

no por el docto oficio / del forjador preciada.  

There is another figure of diction, I'm not sure if it has a name, but notice how the two parallel clauses have opposite word orders? He begins with "famosa" but then makes you wait to the end to get to the word "preciada."  

Dream of novel

 This dream had the texture of a 19th century novel. The female protagonist was getting married to a self-important prig. Before the ceremony, he said:  "I have one question to ask you before we wed.  What do you want me to call you?" She said: "Anna."  "No, he said. Many couples have numerous pet names for each other. For example, you can call me Henry, Harry, Hank, Hen, Hon..."  He rattled off a list of possible nicknames,  suggesting they change names every month. Clearly, she did not like that. 

They seemed to be married now, but she was spending most of her time with another male friend (me?). It was clear this was her true love, but divorce was not legal back then, and he [I?} didn't seem to want to make a move. It wasn't clear to me whether I was in the dream myself or the novelist / observer of the action.   

2

 2. The titles of Jane Austen’s novels, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, follow a prosodic preference called the “law of lengthening limbs,” in which longer words come after shorter ones in certain set expressions. Anyone, even lacking a poetic ear, can hear that these titles sound better than Prejudice and Pride or Sensibility and Sense. For several weeks I am obsessed with this “law” and try to find as many examples (and counter-examples) as I can. Aid and abet. Trials and tribulations…      

3

 3. Reading a Spanish poet, Olvido García Valdés, I begin to notice her pronounced interest in the prosody of overheard speech. I begin to collect my own examples. In an ordinary situation that does not seem to require it, a person is being too emphatic in their speech prosody. They are theatricalizing an experience that is seemingly banal (or perhaps there is a hidden agenda?). There is a disparity in the situation and the style of speech being used. Or a person is stating opinions very confidently about things that essentially unknowable, or desperately wants your agreement about something that is ultimately of no consequence to either of you. I can listen with interest to these events without even caring about what is being said.  

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 4. In the poetry of one generation of Spanish poets coming up in the late 1960s, the so-called novísimos, there is a great deal of reference to the culture and literature of the English-speaking world. In the original editions of these books. I notice an abundance of typographical errors in the transcription of English proper names and the title of works. It is rare to have a name spelled correctly. One or two typos would simply be simply mistakes, but dozens of them lend a festive, almost hallucinatory quality to these poets’ vision of my own literary and cultural traditions. In subsequent editions of these poets’ works some of these errors disappear, but some persist for decades. 

5

 5. Thesis. This is what MFA students and their professors call the collections of poetry or novels that the students are working on for their degrees. Technically, this is correct: the rules of the academic institution require a “thesis” for a Master’s Degree. Yet by letting the institution name the very genre of their creative work the students are symbolically relinquishing any claim to be working in their own genres, whether lyric poetry or fiction. The thesis, however “creative,” must be named according to rules governing the granting of other academic credentials. 

 

I am very proud of my insightfulness, when I react to this use of word thesis so violently. I am undergraduate student, looking down on students older and more experienced than I am. But now, I think, why not call a group of oil paintings, or some choreography, or a book of poems, a thesis or a dissertation? Doesn’t that add an oddly poetic penumbra to these quintessentially anti-poetic words?

 

I imagine trying to explain both of these ideas to an MFA student and getting a puzzled reaction. He doesn’t understand either my initial reaction or my second, more subtle insight.     

6

 6. Walking to kindergarten, I am puzzled as to why the cars on the street, coming from opposite directions, do not crash into each other. I may have been developing the concepts of right and left as they pertained to my own hands (I don’t remember now, fifty years later), but as a five year old I didn’t apply right and left to patterns of traffic. I sensed that there is something very obvious that I had not yet learnt.