The light of love will never be ash: An assessment of the poetic work of David Escobar Galindo

Abstract

This study of literary criticism was made with several objectives:
1. Doing a genera­tional reading of the poetry of David Esco­bar Galindo (Santa Ana, El Salvador, 1943), a classic of Salvadoran literature;
2. Pro­posing this reading, through an anthology, to a wide number of readers; and, out of this,
3. Giving an impulse to El Salvador’s cultural processes, specifically: contributing to cultural continuity and to the constant renovation of the national literary canon.
The methodology used consists of a fusion of literary criticism and editorial activity.
It was done a critical revision of the poetry of the author, searching for the texts of most aesthetic power (Harold Bloom (1995), The Western Canon) to collect with them a pan­oramic anthology (J. F. Ruiz Casanova (2007), Anthologies) and showing representative mo­ments of all the poetry of the author.
The results are expressed on a selection of texts with a high aesthetical and communicative potential; preceded by a prologue explain­ing the technical criteria of the compilation; previous notes to the selections of poems to contextualize them and to attain reading motivation; a bibliography of the author, which includes an up to date list of his large work of more of 80 books in all genres (See: Appendix 1 of the paper); and further read­ing: critical works on the author.
From the literary criticism, I propose four characteris­tics the reader can find in Escobar Galindo’s poetry:
1. A humanizing aesthetic and ethic proposal, which combines the testimony with the beauty and the giving of hope;
2. Transcendence as an axis and a constant theme throughout the poetry work;
3. The will of a constant communication with the readers; and
4. The openness to the creative impulse, whatever the particularities it im­plies.
All the preceding studies (See the list in Appendix 2) identify some of this characteristic, and describe Escobar Galindo’s work as an extraordinary event in Salvador­an literature.
This study agrees with them, and tries to take one more step, by taking those interpretations from gray literature to the hands of the public, the Salvadoran readers, through an anthology, so it can be a help, a tool, to create and renovate social and life meanings.
This is a role of poetry more and more visibilized, looked for and experienced in the current El Salvador and world.