Roethke Had Duende

This is a shortened version of a slideshow I made for my class, "From Angst to Art" this semester. I had given the class a copy of Federico Garcia Lorca's essay, "Theory and Play of the Duende." (Lorca's essay exists online.) In this version of the duende slideshow, I seek to compare Vaslav Nijinsky's dance to Theodore Roethke's poetry. Both Nijinsky and Roethke experienced a kind of "mysticism" which fueled their art. I highly recommend the film Nijinsky by Paul Cox. The narration is taken directly from Nijinsky's diaries. (It is also very erotic, emphasizing, I think, the relationship of eros and death.) I think at the heart of duende is love, but it is a love that comes out of blackness, out of having experienced sadness to a great degree. Blues music has duende. Frida Kahlo's paintings have duende. Lorca's poetry has duende. Lorca was fascinated by death, even obsessed by it. Tragically, he was executed during the Spanish Civil War. Artistic expression that stands at the rim of a wound has duende. This is the kind of art that I love the best. It is a form of melancholy that cleanses me. Roethke understood this. My favorite of his poems is "In a Dark Time." In the poem he describes his descent into the abyss. He describes the descent as being like the "tearing wind." This descent enfuses his work with duende. Duende is darkness and it is sadness, but it has the power to save. Standing on the rim of a wound, or even touching the wound, as Thomas does in Caravaggio's painting, bestows a special kind of knowledge. Duende is not a technique, it is the soul of the artist finding its way into the work.