[Julie Steiner]

Born in a small village near Málaga on southeastern Spain’s Mediterranean coast, the modernist poet, playwright, and novelist Salvador Rueda (1857–1933) received seven nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature between 1909 and 1915. It was this Andalusian former farmboy who introduced Rubén Darío to readers and critics in Spain, although Rueda later had a public falling out with the Nicaraguan modernist poet. Rueda eventually traveled throughout Latin America and to the Philippines.

The Opuntia cactus was introduced to Andalusia from the Americas in the early 1500s. The traditional Spanish way of harvesting its late-summer fruit is to stomp on one end of a long sugarcane (a crop introduced to the region by Arabs, around the year 900) and then force a small stone into it. This splays out the split sections into a cone-like shape, the ideal size and shape to grab and twist away each ripe fruit. A convenient handful of dry grass or a stiff-bristled broom is then used to roll the fruit around atop sand, grass, or water in a basin, to remove its very fine, loose needles, which are barbed. To remove the tough skin takes three cuts: after the fruit’s top and bottom are sliced off, and a slit is made between them; the skin is easily peeled off from the pulp.


Salvador Rueda: The Prickly Pear

It’s total goodness — pleasant sweetness — though
it’s wrapped in glittering spikes; this calls to mind
a woman of astounding charms behind
a veil, too shy to let her beauty show.

It’s stubborn, loath to let its syrups go,
each molecule divine; yet one will find
an opened sugarcane outwits its spined
defense, to wrench it from the pad below.

A scrub with swirling grass-stems brushes off
its prickly netting, forcing it to doff
that cunning lace in which it had been cloaked.

And at the right hand’s wounding triple strike,
its sugary heart is showing — yellow, like
a cotton ball that iodine has soaked!


L2 was: it’s wrapped in glittering spikes, which calls to mind
L9 was: A sweeping with swirling grass-stems brushes off
LL12—14 were:
     And with the right hand’s wounding triple strike,
     it shows its sugary heart — straw-colored, like
     a cotton ball that iodine has soaked!

El chumbo

Todo es bondad y plácida dulzura
aunque se envuelva en puntas diamantinas,
como mujer de gracias peregrinas
que de esquiveces viste su hermosura.

Pero aunque terco defender procura
sus mieles de moléculas divinas,
la abierta caña burla sus espinas
y lo arrebata de la penca dura.

Un barredor de ramas cimbradoras
límpialo de sus redes punzadoras
hasta dejar su velo escurridizo.

Y a tres heridas de la mano diestra,
¡el corazón azucarado muestra
igual que un rollo de salud pajizo !


~~~~~
LITERAL ENGLISH PROSE CRIB

The prickly pear

It is all goodness and agreeable sweetness
even though it is wrapped in glittering points,
like a woman of unusual charms
who from shyness covers her beauty.

But although it stubbornly prevents procurement of
its syrups from divine molecules,
the open cane outwits its spines
and wrenches it from the hard stem.

A sweeping of arching branches/sticks/grass stems/straws
cleans it of its prickly networks
until its veil is left slippery.

And at three wounds from the right hand,
the sugary heart looks
the same as a straw-colored roll of health!

[I take this last bit to mean an iodine-dipped cotton ball, then a common wound dressing, which would be the same shape and color (although not the same size) as the peeled fruit.]

[Max Goodman]

This playfully captures Rueda's original, matching his rhyme-scheme in rhyme-poorer English without showing the strain.

I can't say that I understand what Rueda is getting at with "straw-colored." Nothing at the end (or elsewhere) is straw colored, as far as I know. Cotton (before soaking) comes the closest.

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks, Max. I had to resort to more padding and omissions than usual with this one, so I'm relieved to hear it doesn't feel awkward to you.

I think you're right that it's okay to translate "pajizo" less literally than "straw-colored." I've searched through Rueda's complete works of poetry for both "pajizo" and "amarillo," and although he uses "pajizo slightly more often, the range of intensities of the yellow things being described suggest that he's using the two words interchangeably for "yellow," depending on meter and rhyme.

"Pajizo/a/os/as" comes up nine times in Rueda's complete works of poetry, to describe two kinds of yellow fish (yellowjack and pompano), two kinds of flowers (sunflowers and an unnamed one), a canary (bird), the skin of a cadaver awaiting dissection (also compared to parchment), the head of a kettledrum, and, in two different poems, the yellow pulp of the prickly pear.

He uses "amarillo/a/os/as" seven times, to describe light (twice), pollen, wax, tongues of flame, palm fronds, and the cheeks of a dead woman.

Thanks for the nudge to do a little more digging.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Julie—

Lovely job with this sonnet. Thanks for the explanatory notes. I never would have been able to figure out Rueda’s poem without them.

In S1 I was confused by “peregrinas.” I first thought that since the fruit came from a distant continent, it was being compared to a wealthy woman on a religious pilgrimage. (I couldn’t help but think of the Wife of Bath). I checked in my dictionary and discovered that “peregrina” as an adjective can also mean “rare” or “exotic,” which a pilgrim in a foreign land would certainly be. The addition of the veil was a clever way of suggesting a nun’s veil or a mantilla that might be worn by a modest, religious woman hiding her charms.

Nopales are frequently encountered in Mexican cuisine, but I haven’t heard of them being used in Spanish cooking. Are these a different sweet species that is eaten raw?

Very enjoyable and educational. Thanks!

Glenn

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Glenn! Thanks for your careful read, and I'm glad the poem engaged your curiosity.

The Collins dictionary entry for "peregrino" has quite a range of connotations, from very positive to very negative:

A
ADJ
1(=que viaja) wandering, travelling, traveling EEUU ; (Orn) migratory
2(=exótico) exotic; (=extraño) strange, odd; (=singular) rare, extraordinary
ideas peregrinas harebrained ideas
3[costumbre, planta] alien, newly-introduced

B
SM/F pilgrim

Your scenario of veiled women on pilgrimage had quite a bit of charm of its own. However, I thought going with the more straightforwardly positive "astounding" (to convey "rare, extraordinary") would be the best fit. First, considering how ubiquitous these plants have been in southern Spain and across the whole Mediterranean for centuries, I don't think Rueda would have considered prickly pears very exotic — just as oranges are not considered very exotic by Californians and Floridians, although they originated in Asia. Second, since the poem uses the word "peregrinas" to describe the charms of a metaphorical woman, "exotic" might suggest to some the kinds of ethnic stereotypes that my half-Chinese daughters loathe.

When I hear the adjective "peregrino" used here in San Diego, it's almost always strongly negative — stupid, ridiculous, bizarre, outlandish. Since Spain was part of the early tourist industry associated with pilgrimages to Compostela and Tours, I wonder if those negative connotations developed from resentments to "outlandish" outsiders, similar to the resentments of some of my neighbors in my touristy city.

I'm not sure, but I don't think nopales (the pads of the cactus) are used much in Spanish or other Mediterranean cooking. I only found references to jams and alcoholic distillations involving the prickly pear fruit, which is usually called "el chumbo" or "el higo chumbo" (chumbo fig) in Spain, but "la tuna" in the Americas. Nothing to do with the fish — it's an indigenous word for the prickly pear. France and Italy tend to call it "the fig from the Indies." (I think the fig reference is because prickly pears are full of edible seeds.)

Glad you enjoyed! I learned a lot, too — the main lesson being that if you wait for the prickly pears to turn red, as my family always did in my small Mojave Desert hometown, they are overripe. We found the mushy, rotten-tasting red pulp not worth the trouble of the spines, so we let our goats eradicate the plants from our hillside. Had we only known!