One of the most stirring visions of the Buenos Aires landscape to emerge during the tango’s Golden Age appears in Homero Expósito’s 1942 song “Tristezas de la calle Corrientes.” The lyrics show him at the height of his poetic powers, as he depicts the city’s most vibrant thoroughfare—calle Corrientes, which for years had been one of the tango world’s iconic streets. In image after image, Expósito strips away its modern, material allure to show pictures of hard life, of disillusion, of compromise and endless waiting. Show business itself darkens around the edges in his searing impressionism: “Sadness, sung in gladness, so that love can sell a song!…” By 1942 the breadlines of the Great Depression may have been gone, but the experience seared itself into the memory of the skyscraper world.
Corrientes for many decades had been a narrow but bustling street, increasingly crowded in central Buenos Aires. Its widening, first approved in the 1910s but not carried out until the 1930s, was a major city project, and displaced many longtime tenants and businesses—an event perhaps echoed in many tangos written around this time that lament the loss of old places and memories. Here, with their pallor the city lights seem to mourn the demolished buildings that once lined the northern side of the street. The Corrientes construction work also included the raising of the city’s famous obelisk, an image new to tangos which Expósito portrays rather cynically at the end of the second verse.
(Photo by Horacio Coppola in 1936 taken from the COMEGA building, showing Corrientes just after its widening.)
The Sorrows of Corrientes Street
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Libertad Lamarque
Francisco Fiorentino (orq. Troilo)
Alley, like a valley, ever begging coins for bread…
River, straight forever, where the city’s troubles spread!…
How pallid shine your lanterns for your losses!
All your billboards dream of crosses,
All your posters cackle cardboard fairytales!…
Laughter, rising after drinking makes our courage strong…
Sadness, sung in gladness, so that love can sell a song!
Emporium of misery’s successes,
Second-hand shop of caresses
Where they’re hanging dreams for sale…
Sad, indeed!… by our making!…
Sad, indeed!… dreamer waking!…
Your own cheer is sorrow to you
And the soreness of awaiting
Courses through you…
And with lights dim in loss,
You live lamenting
For your sorrows!…
Sad, indeed!… by our making!…
Sad, indeed!… every cross!…
Loafers, picking over your bohemian finesse…
Paupers, with no coppers but their wishing for success,
Easing the long journey of their waiting
With their blood all hot and racing
From the coffee at the table in some bar!
Alley, like a valley, ever begging coins for bread…
River, straight forever, where the city’s troubles spread!…
The men have sold you Christlike in the ghetto
And the obelisk’s stiletto
Keeps you bleeding where you are…
Tristezas de la calle Corrientes (1942)
Music: Domingo Federico
Lyrics: Homero Expósito
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Calle como valle de monedas para el pan!…
Río sin desvío donde sufre la ciudad!…
¡Qué triste palidez tienen tus luces!
¡Tus letreros sueñan cruces,
Tus afiches, carcajadas de cartón!…
Risa que precisa la confianza del alcohol!…
Llantos hecho cantos pa’ vendernos un amor!…
Mercado de las tristes alegrías
¡Cambalache de caricias
donde cuelgan la ilusión!…
Triste… sí!… por ser nuestra!…
Triste… sí!… porque sueñas!…
Tu alegría es tristeza
y el dolor de la espera
te atraviesa…
Y con pálida luz
vivís llorando
tus tristezas!…
Triste… sí!… por ser nuestra!
Triste… sí!… por tu cruz!…
Vagos con halagos de bohemia mundanal.
Pobres, sin más cobres que el anhelo de triunfar,
ablandan el camino de la espera
con la sangre toda llena de cortados*
en la mesa de algún bar!…
Calle como valle de monedas para el pan!…
Río sin desvío donde sufre la Ciudad!…
Los hombres te vendieron como a Cristo…
y el puñal del obelisco
te desangra sin cesar…
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* Canta Lamarque: “con la mente siempre llena de ilusiones”