A concrete imagination

Abstract

Since the book was published in 1959 in Portugal, the poems in Tempo Espanhol by Murilo Mendes have attracted the attention of critics because of their focus on the concrete, both in form and content. The objective dimension of language as a means of expressing the experience of travelling are read as defining instances of Murilo Mendes' poetics practised during his European residence, in which the writing of poetry takes place concomitantly with the writing of memorial prose, both focused on the cultural-geographical universe. This article proposes to surround the notion of concrete attributed to Murilo Mendes' poems with references that point to a certain poetic tradition in Spain, dating back to the 17th century, as well as the modernist tradition, also conceived under the influence of the surrealist avant-garde. These different nuclei allow us to understand how the concrete experience of language in Spanish Time is realised inseparably from the author's imaginative process in the face of Hispanic cultural matter, which reveals the materialities of earth, fire, liquid and air. In this sense, it is appropriate to consider thinking and feeling as reconcilable dimensions in this direction of reading.