Unpublished letter from Miguel Hernández to Ramón Sijé: “I’m sick, I cough”

In April 1932Just four months after Miguel Hernández (1910-1942) arrived in Madrid, things were not going the way he would have wanted. he lived first at the Morante pension; then she changed and even had to sleep in house of the philosopher Augusto Pescador or Alfredo Serna, who had studied pharmacy, also from Oriolan. The young poet could not get a job and the little money that his mother gave him before leaving and that his great friend Ramon Sije (1913-1935) was sending him was not enough. So far nothing new. These are data collected in the numerous investigations carried out around the poet from Oriolan and also in the letters he sent to Sijé.

a correspondence made up of 16 missives that just added one more, thanks to the discovery made by Jesus Christ Riquelme, who has located an unpublished letter addressed to the writer and lawyer, dated on April 3, 1932. The document is very damaged, after suffering the ravages of a floodwith parts that can no longer be integrated.

In it, the author of ‘Elegy’a work that he dedicated to his “brother”, complains about his situation (“I can’t stay here at all”) and asks for help to get the necessary money with which to buy a return train ticket to Orihuela. He claims to be sick and apologizes for complaining so much. He also says that he is reading Dostoevsky.Contact with the owner

The hernandian expert, author of the complete epistolary of the poethad contact with this letter through the Fundación Legado de Miguel Hernández de Jaén, which contacted him after receiving the query from Pepa Blasco Juan, who asked to authenticate the manuscript. “I contacted her and I went to Valencia to see the letter,” Riquelme points out. “As soon as I saw it I was able to locate the paper and the letter; there is no doubt that it is authentic“.

Riquelme recounts that Sijé (Jose Marín, actually) carefully kept Miguel’s letters and upon his death, became cguarded together with his legacy first by his parents; then by his brother Justino, who lor deposited at the Biblion bookstore, located next to the river. Later, her sister, Mari Lola Marín Gutiérrez, married to José Torres López, He transferred them to his home on Paseo de Calvo Sotelo. And that was where a flood destroyed part of the legacy. It was José Torres who delivered the letter to Federico Espuch, an admirer and connoisseur of the poet’s work, in return for a favor. And this is his friend Jose Blasco Verdu, father of the current owner, who was also a follower of the Oriolano”.

part of the legacy

In 1972, Francisco Martinez Marin collected this correspondence from the collection of Ramón Sijé, ‘I, Miguel’, but the card now discovered is not included. “The appearance of the paper and the damage is identical to other cards in that legacy: the size, the color and the texture of the paper.”

The text is written in charcoal or graphite pencil. “with unmistakable traces”, says the researcher. “However, there is a stroke that could lead one to think that the spelling is different from the usual one.” It is the M of the firm. “It is a rounded spelling and not the pointed letter or frequent angular in other autographs of Miguel Hernández, but we have reliable samples of other letters addressed to Sijé from Madrid with that rounded line in the M”.

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Decipher the date It was one of the biggest challenges, since it is practically erased and the piece of paper has disappeared. “Only the day and month numbers are read, separated by a hyphen. At first looked 31 and 5 but on May 14, take the train to return to Orihuela ». On the other hand, Riquelme realized that the apparent 1 is a fold of the paper, the same as the upper line of the 5which is ultimately a 4. “It’s irregular, like the 4 of he uses on other cards.”

In addition, in the correspondence sent by the poet from Oriolan to his friend and mentor there was a gap in April. “During the month of March, he had written to Sijé on the 6th, 17th and 22nd; in April we only had evidence of one letter, on the 15thso that gap is filled.”