The great lyricist Enrique Cadícamo seemingly had every style at his fingertips, and by the 1940s his songbook was already becoming a resource for more material. In his famous 1943 tango “Garúa,” he delves into the descriptive, atmospheric type of tango, which he had earlier mastered for the misty dock scenery of “Niebla del Riachuelo” in 1937. Here, the harbor fog sharpens into the hard drizzle of the port city’s winter—garúa as it is called—a relentless presence throughout the song.
This tango also returns to a trope made familiar in another of Cadícamo’s hit songs from the 1930s, “Nostalgias”—the more the speaker wants to get over his lost love, the more she dominates his thinking. The predicament in “Garúa,” however, seems to have left behind the vintage of the earlier tangos, and to be firmly in the mode of romantic torment which characterizes the new tangos of the 40s. That strain, so often associated with the lyrics of José María Contursi, reaches one of its pinnacles here, at the tip of Cadícamo’s ready pen. And perhaps because of how it combines this loverly anguish with an indelible picture of Buenos Aires, it soon became one of the all-time classics of the genre.
The Drizzle
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Alberto Podestà (orq. Pedro Laurenz)
How cold and endlessly weary the night is!
The wind goes by with a foreign lamenting…
It seems a hole full of darkness, the night does,
And in the darkness my walk is unending…
All the while the drizzle slanting
Sends its glancing
Prickles dancing
On my lonely heart…
On this night that’s so cold, so my own…
Forever thinking the same thing I’m sinking…
And the more I try to shed her,
Disembed her,
And forget her…
She’s the more in mind…
The drizzle!…
Down the road beneath your slanting
Goes this heart alone and shaken
Like a building in abandon…
Enduring… your freezing…
For she left me with a gaping
Open hollow by her stranding…
Forsaken!…
Like a goblin who implores you
In the darkness… searching for you…
The drizzle… the sorrow…
Even the dark skies above have to cry…
How cold and endlessly weary the night is!
Out at the corner here, no one is crossing…
Above the dark street, a long row of lightbulbs
Shines on the asphalt a dim light of frosting…
And I go repudiated,
Ever single,
Isolated,
With my thoughts of you…
The droplets fall in my soul’s little puddle…
Until my bones are all soaked through and frozen…
And huddling tortured as I’m going,
Ever on, the wind is blowing,
Shoving me along…
Garúa (1943)
Music: Aníbal Troilo
Lyrics: Enrique Cadícamo
¡Qué noche llena de hastío y de frío!
El viento trae un extraño lamento.
¡Parece un pozo de sombras la noche,
y yo en la sombra camino muy lento!
Mientras tanto la garúa
se acentúa
con sus púas
en mi corazón…
En esta noche tan fría y tan mía…
pensando siempre en lo mismo me abismo…
y aunque quiera arrancarla,
desecharla
y olvidarla…
la recuerdo más…
¡Garúa!…
Solo y triste por la acera
va este corazón transido
con tristeza de tapera…
Sintiendo… tu hielo…
porque aquella con su olvido
hoy le ha abierto una gotera…
¡Perdido!…
Como un duende que en la sombra,
más la busca… y más la nombra…
Garúa… tristeza…
Hasta el cielo se ha puesto a llorar…
¡Qué noche llena de hastío y de frío!
No se ve a nadie cruzar por la esquina…
Sobre la calle, la hilera de focos
lustra el asfalto con luz mortecina…
Y yo voy, como un descarte,
siempre solo,
siempre aparte,
recordándote…
Las gotas caen en el charco de mi alma…
Hasta los huesos calados y helado…
y humillando este tormento
todavía pasa el viento
empujándome…