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| Shapes of nostalgia: On the return-motif in "Madreselva" and "Caminito" |
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Essay and translations by Jake Spatz Madreselva (1930) by Luis Cesar Amadori Caminito (1926) by Gabino Coria Peñaloza |
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| "Caminito" is perhaps the more beloved song (though at this level, I'm not sure it matters), if only because it has a simpler melody. It also has a more straightforward structure, involving, like "Madreselva," the return to a humble but personal landmark. The opening verse enacts the same kind of nostalgic return that we saw in "Madreselva," but adds a dimension: | ||
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Caminito que el tiempo ha borrado que juntos un día nos viste pasar, he venido por última vez, he venido a contarte mi mal. Caminito que entonces estabas bordeado de trébol y juncos en flor, una sombra ya pronto serás, una sombra lo mismo que yo. |
Little road that the times have erased, that saw us pass here together one day— I've come back to you one last time, I've come back to recount you my woes. Little road that once was embroidered with clover and flowering reeds, you soon shall be naught but a shadow, a shadow, the same as me. |
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| Time here is not just something that reveals failure: time is an erosion. The footpath is literally disappearing, the same way the speaker is. (I can't help but recall here those magnificent lines by Rilke, in Stephen Mitchell's translation: "O quickly disappearing photograph / in my more slowly disappearing hand...") | ||
| After noting the departures all matter is subject to, the speaker hits the chorus—a set of lines so simple, and with so memorable a tune, that it's hard to get them out of your head, once they get in: | ||
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Desde que se fue, triste vivo yo; caminito amigo, yo también me voy. Desde que se fue nunca más volvió. Seguiré sus pasos, caminito, adiós. |
Since she went away, all I've done is cry; little road, my friend, now it's my time to go. Since she went away, she never came back, no... Now I follow her footsteps— fare you well, little road. |
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| We might observe here that the speaker has changed his purpose. Initially, he came to "recount" or "confide" (contarte: the same verb appears in "Madreselva"). Now we understand he has come to say farewell. | ||
| The song's second verse is a matter of two subtleties. First, the speaker enjoins the footpath to keep a secret after he's gone: "Don't tell her I cried here, if she ever comes back..." It's a profoundly tender moment, since he's just said he's leaving because he doesn't think she'll ever be back: he's counting on not finding her again. Perhaps in light of this gesture, the second moment of this verse reflects his disinclination to leave at all, his desire to have it all over at once, rather than facing yet another disappointment. It's a vacillation, resolved by an image of violence. Here is the verse in full: | ||
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Caminito que todas las tardes feliz recorría cantando mi amor, no le digas si vuelve a pasar que mi llanto tu suelo regó. Caminito cubierto de cardos, la mano del tiempo tu huella borró; yo a tu lado quisiera caer y que el tiempo nos mate a los dos. |
Little road that each afternoon I ran lightsomely, singing of love, never say, if she passes again, that your soil was wet with my tears. Little road all covered in thistle, time's hand has erased all your tracks; I want to fall down myself by your side, so we both could be slain by the years. |
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| When I post a song on TangoDC.com, I don't usually include the chorus a second time if it appears unchanged; but after this second verse, it's necessary to the art. The speaker returns to his fateful decision, justifying it, reinforced by his awareness of woe: | ||
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Desde que se fue, triste vivo yo; caminito amigo, yo también me voy. Desde que se fue nunca más volvió. Seguiré sus pasos, caminito, adiós. |
Since she went away, all I've done is cry; little road, my friend, now it's my time to go. Since she went away, she never came back, no... Now I follow her footsteps— fare you well, little road. |
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| The structure of "Caminito," as I said earlier, is more straightforward than the re-perspectivizing we find in "Madreselva." Our speaker here is simply saying goodbye, yet on multiple levels, the most significant and subtle of which is his bidding goodbye to the hesitation that has kept him in place. Everything is crumbling away. Hence the song's immense nostalgia, entirely due to the act of his own departure and his forecast of all things vanishing. | ||
| I like these two songs because they enact something structurally, because they telescope ordinary sentiments with plot. They're lyric poems with the time sense of whole novels, of lives. I admire their formal accomplishment. I read them with water in my eyes because of that formal accomplishment. | ||
| I also like them because of their suburban setting, their borderline existence on the fringes of the town and clearly in the country. Not the uninhabited, vast country of the Romantics—ordinarily called "Nature," which seldom touches me except as a cosmic spectacle. No, the human-scale country, the one with visible cubits, the one with bounding walls and known trees and footpaths. These two poems (and I think they are poems) remind me of the woods and creeks and sewers I lit firecrackers in as a boy, the ones I abandoned when I took an interest in girls, and the ones I returned to on bicycle (once) when things were impossible. Me?—I gazed, blank, depressed, with nothing to say. I dismounted and got mud on my shoes for old time's sake. What was in my heart and mind, these poems give shape to in their plots, in their strong structural acts of memory, cognition, and hope—be it ever so dim at the outskirts of society, where the individual stands alone. | ||
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POSTSCRIPT The kind of return-plot I've examined in "Madreselva" and "Caminito" belongs more to sentimental poetry than to tango lyrics as a genre. But I find its shadow cast on many tangos, notably in a few by Homero Manzi. His Romance de barrio—one of tango's few superior valses—uses the "recycled stanza" technique I identified in the chorus of "Madreselva," to great effect. The technique itself isn't uncommon to song, since the melody is already going to repeat; but the "surface changes" to the verse are again the profound differences revealed by the passing of time. |
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| Of course, the return as a thematic motif is central to tango songs, which have been nostalgic since before there was much to be nostalgic about. Discepolo parodies the theme gloriously in the first of his many ironic hits, Esta noche me emborracho (I'm gonna get me drunk tonight), and his treatment is evidence of how automatic the convention had become even by 1929, when Gardel recorded the song. | ||
| —05 Oct. 2006 | ||
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