speaker’s refusal to look may be an admission of
regret in retrospect. Perhaps the speaker did
look and now cannot forget the horror. This is
often why people choose not to look at a
deceased friend or relative. They would prefer
to remember the person alive and happy than
forever have the image of their loved one’s
corpse as a final memory. The second section
also exhibits the author’s denial in the alternat-
ing use of the past and present tense when refer-
ring to Ignacio. Notably, denial, of all the five
stages of grief, is perhaps the most prominent in
the poem, rearing its head all the way through
section 3. Indeed, the sixth stanza of the penulti-
mate section finds the speaker claiming that the
announcement of Ignacio’s death cannot possi-
bly be correct.
Though anger, unlike denial, is the least
prominent of the emotions invoked by the
speaker, it does appear at points. In the ninth
stanza of the second section, the speaker indig-
nantly asks who tells him to look at the body,
and he follows up on this indignation with the
repeated assertion that he refuses to do so. This
same emotion, an offshoot of anger, appears
when the speaker asks who declares Ignacio
dead, and then the speaker goes on to call that
person a liar. Anger could also be said to be the
driving emotion behind the speaker’s demands
that the men who have lived beyond death stand
before Ignacio’s tomb (this occurs in stanzas
8 and 9 of section 3). The speaker’s hubris in
invoking their spirits, in demanding that they
show Ignacio how to transcend death, can easily
be said to be based upon anger. This latter
instance is also a form of bargaining. The
speaker will accept Ignacio’s death as long as
his legend lives on. Here, the speaker demon-
strates the conflicting emotions typical of the
bargaining process; he does not want Ignacio to
know that he is dead, but the speaker simulta-
neously wants the matador to be at peace. The
speaker does not want Ignacio to mourn his own
death or rage against it, but to fly away instead.
This compromise is suggested only a few stanzas
after the speaker declares that he wants nothing
more than to see Ignacio alive, unable to sleep
for all eternity.
Of all the sections in the poem, section 3
most clearly demonstrates depression, the fourth
stage of grief. The repeated statement that every-
thing is over is a direct assertion of despair. The
third section is also one of the most descriptive,
and its imagery is undoubtedly dark and
depressed. The speaker talks of rock and its
properties, portraying a stormy and bleak
world. The speaker evokes a world populated
by the wolves and the skeletons of birds, of
unyielding rocks and rain. The quiet that lurked
in the corners in section 1 now descends in sec-
tion 3. The snow referenced in section 1 now
sheds tears in section 3. Notably, the depression
that dominates section 3 actually begins to show
itself toward the end of section 2. Once the
speaker finishes his list of Ignacio’s charms in
that section, he next portrays the matador’s skull
decomposing, his blood stumbling in a mist
without a soul. An act of bargaining may also
be said to be taking place in section 3. When the
speaker finally looks at Ignacio’s body, a mytho-
logical act of transformation beyond death has
occurred. Ignacio bears the head of the mino-
taur, half man and half bull. He has become part
of that which vanquished him. In his death,
Ignacio has become legend, a myth. Strangely,
this is the very bargain the speaker attempts to
make later in the very same section.
Only section 4 demonstrates any real air of
acceptance, though traces of it appear briefly in
other sections. These glimmers of acceptance
occur often as one-line assertions that belie a
moment of clarity. For instance, the seventh
line of the first section indicates that after five
o’clock, there is nothing but death. In the penul-
timate stanza of section 2, the speaker declares
that Ignacio slumbers eternally. In section 3, the
repeated statements that everything is over, and
the description of Ignacio’s body laid out on the
rock, all exhibit the speaker’s growing accept-
ance of his friend’s death. In section 4, the
speaker repeats four times that Ignacio is gone
for all eternity. This is strongest indicator of
acceptance in the poem thus far. The section
also describes time moving on, of the world
and the creatures and people in it finally forget-
ting the matador. All these occurrences are the
natural consequences of acceptance. The recalci-
trant speaker, however, states that he alone will
remember. He alone will sing his friend’s praises.
Yet the calm tone of the section continues to
signal the speaker’s growing acceptance of Igna-
cio’s passing. Indeed, the sections calmest in tone
(sections 3 and 4) are also the most uniform in
structure. The form in section 1 is somewhat
erratic, and it is even more so in section 2
(where the denial is greatest). Yet, as sections 3
and 4 progress, the poem grows more and moreLament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as