The mention of Rafael Azcona leads in the first and almost only instance to the cinema, where he forged his legend thanks to the screenplays shot by Marco Ferreri (The small apartment), Charles Saura (The first Angélica, peppermint success), Fernando Trueba (The Year of the Enlightenment, Belle Époque)… Milestones to which must be added those of his glorious conjunction with Luis García Berlanga: Plácido, The Executioner, The National Rifle, The Heifer… In short, big words from our filmography. The enormous popularity of his work in this field has overshadowed, however, other literary aspects in which she also worked, such as the short story and the novel. And the poem.
This last aspect kept her on a very secondary level. When asked about his youthful verses, he would roll the balls. He went so far as to say that the original lyrical drive was driven by star-crossed love, and that when he tried his luck again when he was older, the result had always been the same: the garbage can. But despite Azconia’s scant self-promotion, it’s interesting to look at the bunch of poems he left behind written in his melancholic provincial youth.
This is why the drama that Bernardo Sánchez has staged with some of them is so attractive. They are the basis of Los domingos, a show that can be seen at the Festival Actual de Logroño (Sala de Cámara Rioja Fórum) this Saturday 7. With Pepe Viyuela in the role of a protagonist who is a transcript of Azcona himself, a young man turned against the conservatives and self-righteous conventions of his homeland. As a poet and also from Logroño, the popular actor starts from an advantageous position to embody it.
[Los europeos, memorias de la España franquista]
The central themes that emerge in this monologue are listed for El Cultural Sánchez: “Loneliness, a Machadian loneliness [el autor de Campos de Castilla fue el referente primordial de Azcona]a repeated search for love, its illusion and its words, the limited assistance of those words, the very nature of language, provincial space and routine, the self-definition of the individual in his environment, the social showcase, the imposture…”.
Sánchez, who also directs the piece, plays with ambiguity with the character, who he generically refers to as ‘a man’. The action begins with him leaving the house one Sunday, heading for the bar. That’s what it looks like but, Sánchez points out, “most likely everything is happening under his hat.” That is, inside the head of this being between Machadian and Beckettian. What moves him is the desire for love. And Sunday is the day when, according to local custom, the staff take to the streets and squares – well dressed on Sundays, of course – to implement the protocols of the procession. The day that closes the week therefore represents for him the hope of transcending environmental mediocrity through a love story.
“The man threads the poems as if it were a story,” clarifies Sánchez, who integrated the poems with the prose of the author of Los ilusos. I am a text about life in cafes and another that conjures up a football broadcast steeped in quail humor. A humor that contrasts the prevailing tone of mental decline in the face of a bland reality. Let’s read to get an idea: “In order not to be able to hate you, I despise you, / municipal holiday, regulated; / I despise your lazy morning / satisfied after a week; / I despise your food with tablecloths / and sweets, unusual circumstances; / I despise your coffees, drinks and cigars / in the monotonous and gregarious afternoon”. Azcona, poet stuck in Logroño.
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