Los enlaces del ser: La poesia de Ruben Bonifaz Nuno

Abstract

This study attempts to fill a need in the critical literature regarding a significant Mexican poet, Ruben Bonifaz Nuno (Mexico, Veracruz; born in 1923).

Keeping in mind the complexities of Bonifaz Nuno's poetry, I have attempted to offer the reader a manageable approach to the poetry. The corpus is conceived on an ontological model. The title, "Los enlaces del ser" ('The Bonds of Being'), perceives individual texts or groups of texts (which constitute the chapters) as the means by which the poet struggles with the problem of being. Through this struggle, the production and discovery of being emerge as the motivating forces of the poet's creative impulse.

I have benefited from the earlier work of Andrew Debicki, Frank Dauster, John Michael Bennett, and Maria Andueza and am grateful for their enduring insights. By refining and modifying some of those insights, I have attempted to add new dimensions to the earlier poetry. Commentary on the latter poetry hopes to break ground on material, most of which has not received previous critical attention.

Upon the broader model of the 'bonds of being,' the poetry is divided into two general periods. The first period, 1953-1971, examined in the first three chapters, is viewed as a spiritual ascent and corresponds to the three classical stages of the spiritual life according to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross. The focus of these initial chapters highlights the manifestation of the vias purgativa, iluminativa, and unitiva in the poet's own lyrical ascent.

Chapters four through six examine the second general period, the poetry of maturity, 1981-1992. Having entered the via unitiva of the "perfectos" in chapter three, the poet becomes more self-reflective while he explores other ontological aspects of human personality and the creative impulse. The ontological models of these chapters focus on the function of myth and memory and the plastic arts; in the last chapter, the Kabbalah serves as an ideal model which links the tension of the erotic and the spiritual in human nature, a tension which is inherent in the Kabbalah itself.