Rafael Alberti’s Comet or the Poetics of Energy and Light: From Electromagnetism to Thermodynamics

Alberti was twice a witness, in 1910 and 1984, to the appearance of Halley’s comet in the sky. To commemorate each occasion he wrote Elegia del cometa Halley (Elegy to Halley’s Comet), included in Marinero en tierra (Sailor on Land 167) and Retornos del cometa Halley (Returns of Halley’s Comet), published with the proceedings of the 1983 Symposium in his honor held at the University of Toulouse-Le-Mirail (Dr. Rafael Alberti).1 Both poems reveal a strong identification between poet and comet: two wanderers appearing near the beginning and the end of the century, orbiting erratically around the sun, searching for the light. Besides the coincidence of poet and comet in time, it is no surprise that Alberti would feel attracted to Halley’s comet (figure 5.1) considering the beauty of this astral body, as captured in photographs: a luminous white body propelling forward and emitting, or surrounded by, a halo of a yellow color turning into an intense, fiery red, against a blue and, further on, black background.