Duende 101
Federico Garcia Lorca’s essay, “The Duende: Theory and Divertissment,” is required reading for all art students.
“Now that has real duende!” is a commonly heard phrase in
It is easier to understand duende by noticing its absence: “You have a voice, you know all the styles, but you’ll never bring it off because you have no duende.” On American Idol, we call it star quality or magic. We say, simply, “she’s got it.” We all know there is a quality in art (music, dance, painting, love) that can’t be taught or bought. Some people just have this thing. The juice. The thrum. It’s called duende.
You are born with it. It can’t be taught, but it can be heightened, steered towards and that is one of the ways a writing class can be helpful: the teacher can show students where the duende lurks, how to be with it for longer, how conjure it.
“Whatever has black sounds has duende.” Lorca quotes the words of the Andalusian artist, Manuel Torres, in order to explain the difference between Brahms and Bach (you can hear the difference).
“These black sounds are the mystery, the roots that probe through the mire that we all know of, and do not understand, but which furnishes us with whatever is sustaining in art. Black sounds….” And then Lorca, in his wonderful essay, quotes Goethe speaking of Paganini “A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain.”
When we read something great in fiction workshop—by a student or by Hemingway or Munro—and we all just sit there, not wanting to speak, because it’s just so damn good and speaking will ruin the effect, we’re struck dumb by the presence of the duende.
“The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old guitarist, a true virtuoso, remark, ‘The duende is not in the throat, the duende comes from inside, up from the very soles of the feet.’ That is to say, it is not a question of aptitude, but of a true and viable style—of blood, in other words; of what is oldest in culture: of creation made act.”
“All arts are capable of duende, but it naturally achieves its widest play in the fields of music, dance and the spoken poem, since those require a living presence to interpret them, because they are forms which grow and decline perpetually and raise their contours on the precise present.”
“The duende loves ledges and wounds.”
“The duende never repeats himself any more than the forms of the sea repeat themselves in a storm.”
As I am preparing my plans for my courses for spring 2009, I’m looking for ways to keep us moving towards the duende. The theme for the spring semester: Duende Invitational. Get ready to dance.
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