Fragments of a Future Book by José Ángel Valente: The Last Solipsistic Trip towards the Origin of Being and Life

Abstract

This article is an in depth analysis of the concepts of immanence, transcendence, mystical subject, time, and word in the posthumous work written by the Galician poet José Ángel Valente (1929-2000) entitled Fragments of a Future Book (2001). It is the poetization of an exploration in the center of the selfhood of the poetic self who wants transcendence after death. The influences of the poetry of silence, of María Zambrano and of the western and eastern esoteric traditions in the XXth century and in the past, such as Kabbalah, Sufism, and Christianism, are key to articulating this poetry. Moreover, it is a criticism of the excesses and injustices of the postmodern world. This book of poems is an attempt to renaturalize history with silence and irrationalism, a new epistemology beyond sound, matter, reality and reason.