Lisa Rabin

Marble Heroes and Mortal Poets: José Martí's Dream of Statuary

oem 45 of JosP Marti’s Versos senrillos (1 891), which begins “Suefio con heroes en claustros de mdrmol,” concerns a dream Marti has about waking up marble statues of heroes. “Suefio con hCroes” has long been noted as a special poem in a collection considered by many to be the capstone of Marti’s career.’ Citing the uniqueness of its supernatural theme and its blank verse among the other 45 rhymed c u p b in the collection, some literary critics have suggested that the poem has grearer affinity with Marti’s earlier collection, the I/ersos libres (1882, published 1913).* Conversely, other critics have proposed chat the visionary setting and the political subject of “Suefio con heroes” single out its connection with a collection of poems conceived in the fullness of Marti’s revolutionary ~ p i r i t . ~ In chis article I will argue that the poem may in fact be seen as the axis of the Wrsos senciflos, and for a reason that has not yet been noted: The poem’s central feature, or the art form of a public monument, serves as a crucial figure for Marri’s sense of the necessary relationship of aesthetics and politics in the career of a poet. By calling on word-and-image theory on poetry about statuary, and historical and literary studies that deal with the role of public monuments in nineteenth-century Spanish America, 1 will show that the artistic nature of the marble statues in “Suefio con heroes” is not only central to the poem’s outcome, it also illuminates the complex interaction of poetry and politics that subtends the Versos sencillos. Marti’s poetic address of marble statuary is part of a broad focus on visual art that appears throughout his work. Marti wrote prolific art criticism in Mexican and U.S. periodicals, made synesthetic experiments with light and color throughour his poetry, and included ecphrastic verse, or poems on specific and imagined works of arc, in his various collection^.^ Marti’s attention to visual art parallels that of orher mudernista writers such as Ruben Dario and Juliin del Casal, who