A SECRET SPANISH WORD THAT YOU “MUST LEARN”-- DUENDE.
© Ric Polansky
No place on this earth better excels at “merry-making” than those blessed and born under the Iberian sun. Their inherent quality for having fun seems genetic. What makes their enjoyments different from most places is that it is never controlled nor contrived.
As a foreigner you might need a Spaniard as a guide to enter their realm of the spontaneous. Most of our parties are planned weeks in advance—with a date branded to the calendar and established—a party will happen that day and be enjoyed. Upon arrival if the room should be full of different nationalities all the action becomes stilted and contrived. Too often we drag with us our silent burden of national characteristics which is to shield us from anything too unique, ostentatiously exhilarating or life renewing. Truly exciting holiday parties are about as rare as hen´s teeth, chicken´s with lips or sexy mother-in-laws. But when they do eventuate- life has taken you by the hand and shown you the true convivial spirit of man in perfect union with nature, events, time, space, history and friends.
The Spanish inherited their sense of “fiesta.” Fun moments happen when they occur. And when it does the muses glorify the moment for it’s naturalness. It is not just plenty of drink: sherries, whites, reds or brandies but is the totality therein taking place: atmosphere, spontaneity and authenticity garner the spectacle and make it special. An old guitar is dragged down from its heraldic place on the wall, familiar songs are rasped and slowly the mood swings. A general conviviality descends on the group and everyone experiences a warmness and unified spirit.
My few years of habituating amongst them has taught me that it is the Spanish understanding of death that perpetuates and permeates the basis for the eternal “fiesta”. Life in Spain in reality is sol or sombra; good or bad. The casual tourist is fooled by the lingering heat of the day and constant drone of the flies. Underneath their languid deportment hides a constitution that is suffering; religiously, morally and physically. A virtual volcano of contradictions resides in the everyday Spaniard. Life is changing too quickly and the residue of their perplexity boils over to a state of constant confusion. Fiestas are a good way to forget.
On a personal basis each Spaniard consumes four times more medical drugs than their counterparts in the European community. Health obviously a constant nagging problem. Meanwhile death lingers in the background. For the Spanish extended family there is always someone on death’s doorstep to be mourned. If there isn’t immediately— then accidents do happen too.
It was the great Granadian Poet Fredrico Garcia Lorca that wrote the famous essay on “Duende.” The word is Spanish and you need to know it to understand this race of carefree death obsessed folk. Much of what Lorca said about duende came from what he referred to as the dark side. Somewhat like the scene in which Hamlet talks eye ball to socket to the skull. “Thus the duende is a power and not a behaviour, it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old guitar master say: ‘the duende is not in the throat; the duende surges up from the soles of the feet’....it is in fact the spirit of the earth.”
In short, the singer can sing, but it is only music and words if it hasn´t duende. The actor can make the motions—but without duende he is not saying or being anything.
“In idea, in sound, or in gesture, the duende likes a straight fight with the creator on the edge of the well. While angel and muse are content with violin or measured rhythm, the duende wounds, and in the healing of this wound which never closes is the prodigious, the original in the work of man....Because with duende it is easier to love and to understand, and also one is certain to be loved and understood; and this struggle for expression and for the communication of expression reaches at times, the character of a fight to the death....The appearance of the duende always presupposes a radical change of all forms based on old structures. It gives a sensation of freshness wholly unknown, having the quality of a newly created rose, of miracle, and produces in the end an almost religious enthusiasm.” (Damn Lorca could write) !
In short, Lorca hints that there is no magic in life without the veiled visit of death.
“Our friend death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day” noted Emerson in his journal.
Drink deep the drafts of friendship’s sharing cup and behold long and lingering your family. Replenish often your fondest thoughts and avoid the vexatious. There will be other times not as enjoyable.
Ric Polansky
www.ric-polansky.com
