Luis Cernuda y la música clásica: de Ocnos a una Toccata de Galuppi

The present essay deals with the passion for music, above all classical (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven), which Luis Cernuda felt and expressed in his lyrical and narrative works, especially during his exile in the United Kingdom, the USA and Mexico. In particular, some poems in prose from the collection Ocnos (written between 1940 and 1956), but also poems from Como quien espera el alba, Con las horas contadas and Desolación de la Quimera, and the tales En la costa de Santiniebla (1937) and El sarao (1942) are analyzed: in all of them hearing the notes of a piano or a guitar is compared both to poetical process and erotic experience. In the second and last part of the essay Cernuda’s devotion to music is studied as regards his important translator’s activity towards English-language literature. Through his effective version of Robert Browning’s «A Toccata of Galuppi’s» (1855), carried out in 1955 and revised in 1960, the Spanish poet demonstrates his adherence to the English writer’s love of music and «sensuous thought».