Gethsemani, ky, de Ernesto Cardenal: recuperación del espacio ausente mediante la memoria y la resignificación del espacio presente.

This article analyzes Ernesto Cardenal's Gethsemani, ky (1960), applying theories of nostalgia and textual space, in order to connect Cardenal's poetics and its relation to social and spatial concerns. The article studies aspects of the writing process of the book, as revealed in the Merton-Cardenal letters. We suggest that the poems create a twofold tension: past and present, here and there. These dialectics between distant spaces and times will eventually lead the Cardenal's social and political engagement, only apparent in this collection, but openly evident in his later work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]