Castilian landscape in verse for B2

Fields of Castile Campos de Castilla

Name: Fields of Castile
Author: Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado, 1917

Antonio Machado’s book of poems in the enlarged 1917 text (the book first appeared in 1912), a complete original, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 18,300 words and 17 words per sentence on average. 56 poems about Soria, the Duero and the Castilian plateau, from the self-portrait Retrato to the long story in verse La tierra de Alvargonzález; the hard part is imagery and verse, not vocabulary.

B2
18 251 words
3-5 hours

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Will this text hold?

B1

Earlier

At B1 the long sentences that wander across several stanzas will be slow going, and words like estepa, aliño, jacobina or labriegos need a tap.

B2

This text

You can manage it at B2: the words are mostly everyday (tierra, camino, olmo, campo), so the work is in the images and the inverted word order; tap rare words and read each poem twice, once for the picture and once for the thought.

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C1

With room to spare

At C1 the poems read freely; what is left is what the text never explains: the places (Soria, the Moncayo, Baeza), the Generation of ’98 debate about Spain, and the irony of the Proverbios y cantares.

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The average sentence has 17 words and about one word in seventeen has 9 letters or more (6.0%), but in verse these numbers mislead: a sentence here is often a whole group of stanzas between full stops, cut into short lines, and Machado’s words are mostly plain. For comparison, the catalog’s Mist has 13 words per sentence, Gypsy Ballads 12 and the narrative poem Martín Fierro 25. To reach C1 the long words would have to come one in ten or more often. What makes the book B2 is imagery and verse: an elm split by lightning, the Moncayo mountain “blanca y rosa”, an Old Castile that the poems never explain, and sentences that run across several stanzas (En estos campos de la tierra mía has about 38 words per sentence). The catalog does not place a complete original below B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.

18 251: words
17: words in an average sentence
3-5: hours of reading
1917: Residencia de Estudiantes

Residencia de Estudiantes, 1917. Project Gutenberg

What it is about, without the ending

Fifty-six poems from the years Machado lived in Soria and later in Baeza. The book opens with a self-portrait, Retrato, then follows the Duero across the plateau of Old Castile: bare hills, black poplars, elms and holm oaks, poor villages with their shepherds and beggars. The longest piece, La tierra de Alvargonzález, is a story in verse about a farmer’s hard-won land and the greed it stirs in his sons. Around it come short poems of grief and hope, a letter in verse to a friend asking whether spring has reached Soria, a night journey by train, the Proverbios y cantares and the odes to Giner de los Ríos, Rubén Darío and Unamuno. How La tierra de Alvargonzález ends is not revealed here.

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Campos de Castilla

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Project Gutenberg

A self-portrait told in negatives

Machado paints himself by saying what he is not. Ni un seductor Mañara, ni un Bradomín he sido puts the verb last: “I have been neither a seducer like Mañara nor a Bradomín”, two famous lovers of Spanish literature (Miguel de Mañara, the Don Juan of Seville, and the Marqués de Bradomín of Valle-Inclán’s novels). Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla means that his whole childhood is only memories of a courtyard in Seville. Torpe aliño indumentario is his own joke about his careless way of dressing.

The future of guessing

The whole poem is a letter made of questions to a friend far away, so the verbs often guess instead of report. In Aun las acacias estarán desnudas, the future estarán does not look ahead: it means “the acacias are probably still bare”. Read ¿está la primavera vistiendo ya las ramas de los chopos...? as “is spring already dressing the branches of the poplars?”, with the verb before its subject, as often happens in verse. Primavera with a capital letter makes spring a person who is late.

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In A un olmo seco the sentence “Antes que te derribe, olmo del Duero, con su hacha el leñador” (“Before the woodcutter fells you with his axe, elm of the Duero”) puts the subject after the verb, and it runs on for 13 lines before the poet’s own wish arrives: translating the whole sentence in Reader shows who does what and how the “before” clauses build up to it.

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Before you read

Is this the original or a learner adaptation?

It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Antonio Machado’s Campos de Castilla, 56 poems, taken from Project Gutenberg. The reader follows the enlarged text in his Poesías completas (Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, 1917); the book first appeared in 1912 (Renacimiento, Madrid), and its title page is the cover here. The 1917 text adds the poems Machado wrote after 1912.

Is there an audiobook?

Campos de Castilla has no audio on MovaReader: the book is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for rare words such as estepa, labriegos or aliño.

Can I translate a whole sentence?

Yes, with the Reader plan. In verse it helps most where the word order is inverted, as in Dejar quisiera mi verso, como deja el capitán su espada, where translating the whole sentence shows who leaves what: “I would like to leave my verse as the captain leaves his sword”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

How many hours does it take?

The whole book takes about 3 to 5 hours at the catalog’s reading pace, which assumes translating new words; poetry is better read slowly and more than once, so plan on more. The 56 poems are short, from about 30 to about 3,400 words: most are under 600 words and many under 100, so several make a sitting. Proverbios y cantares has about 1,700 words and La tierra de Alvargonzález about 3,400.

Where does the text get easier?

It is fairly even: the difficulty lies in the verse and the images, not in one stretch of the book. Sentences stretch longest in poems such as En estos campos de la tierra mía (about 38 words per sentence) and Recuerdos (about 30). The easiest ways in are Retrato (about 300 words, one long word in 24) and La tierra de Alvargonzález, whose short stanzas tell a story.

Will my place in the book be saved?

Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back to the book where you left off. Any of the 56 poems also opens from the contents on this page.

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