In the night of the tamarind trees: sad tropics and emigration in the elegiac poetry of Vicente Gerbasi

Abstract

This article analyzes the elegiac-toned texts of the Venezuelan poet of Italian descent, Vicente Gerbasi, focusing specifically on the poem Mi padre, el inmigrante (1945), and on the text which for various reasons serves as its antecedent, Poemas de la noche y de la tierra (1943). Almost a modern explorer of the American landscape, Gerbasi, among the founders of the so-called Grupo Viernes, combines in his poetry the canonical theme of loss and orphanhood with a representation of the landscape articulated through a perspective of inaugural vision, at times combining elements of the Venezuelan nature and the «golfo perdido» of southern Italy, from where his father had departed, to reflect the experience of emigration and nostalgia.