SOURCE: “May I Have This Dance? Unveiling Vicente Aleixandre's ‘El Vals’”, in Romanic Review, Vol. 85, No. 2, March, 1994, pp. 313-26.

In the following essay, Graf argues that Aleixandre's “El vals” suggests a linguistic and thematic sophistication in the poet's works that most critics fail to recognize.

Un pájaro de papel en el pecho dice que el tiempo de los besos no ha llegado vivir vivir el sol cruje invisible besos o pájaros tarde o pronto o nunca 

—Vicente Aleixandre (“Vida”)

Due to the supposed obscurity of his text, critical approaches to Vicente Aleixandre have remained tentative, at times even fearful. Rarely do we encounter analyses that rise above generalized thematic explorations or sporadic stylistic commentaries. For over fifty years critics have suggested a hidden coherence to Aleixandre while evading in-depth, concrete explications of individual poems.¹ For example, both Paul Ilie and Kessel Schwartz agree that “each poem...