A FEW NOTES ON RELIGIOUS DUALISM IN THE WORKS OF RAMÓN LÓPEZ VELARDE
A FEW NOTES ON RELIGIOUS DUALISM IN THE WORKS OF RAMÓN LÓPEZ VELARDE

Summary/Abstract: López Velarde (RLV) has long been regarded as Mexico’s ‘national poet’. Among other important themes, such as the idealization of the Mexican hinterland, his prose and verse are characterized by a very stark dualism: flesh and spirit, Catholic devotion and unabated lust. The first part of this article summarizes the most relevant biographical information. This places Ramón López Velarde in the Mexican context of the early XX Century. The second part of this article analyses the metaphoric representation of lust and desire as a religious experience, and vice versa. This accounts for his poetry to be symbolically represented as oscillation. This movement, however, seems to cease and —paradoxically— gain momentum, in his love and lust for women. Women thus become symbols of chastity and religious piety while remaining the object of unquenchable desire. Through his use of metaphor, López Velarde manages to marry flesh and spirit, sin and sainthood, in such an atrocious manner that an altar becomes a connubial bed and communion can be understood to stand for sexual intercourse. It is clear that his Catholicism is inextricably connected with his poetry, his views on aesthetics, and his general outlook on life. Several examples, both in prose and verse, are discussed in order to better appreciate the figurative language used by the poet and the contrast between opposites: sin and sanctity, love and religion, urban decay and provincial sacredness. The article also focuses on his unrelenting idolatry of the feminine, as a way to reconcile the many discordant voices that form his own poetic being.

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