While he was in Mexico City, Nicaraguan President José Madriz was deposed, and Darío abruptly left for Cuba. In 1911-12, he was contracted to edit and promote Mundial Magazine. His memoir Historia de mis libros [The Story of My Books] was serialized in La Nación in 1913. His health deteriorated and his cirrhosis of the liver became public knowledge. His last volume of poetry, Canto a la Argentina y otros poemas [Song to Argentina and Other Poems], was released in 1914, along with the first of three volumes of selected poems chosen by the poet and published in Madrid by Biblioteca Corona: Muy siglo XVIII [And Those that Come from the Eighteenth Century] (1914); Muy antiguo y muy moderno [Some Both Ancient and Modern] (1915); and Y una sed de ilusiones infinita [And a Thirst for Illusive Hope That’s Endless] (1916). His autobiography, La vida de Rubén Darío escrita por él mismo [The Life of Rubén Darío, Written by Himself], appeared in 1915. He became gravely ill during a lecture tour of the United States, and returned to León, Nicaragua, early in 1916. Rubén Darío died on February 6, 1916. He was buried near the statue of Saint Paul, in the Cathedral of León.

 

A translator of some three dozen book-length works of literature, criticism, history, and memoir, ANDREW HURLEY is best known for his translation of Jorge Luis Borges’s Collected Fictions (1998), as well as Reinaldo Arenas’s “Pentagony” novels (1986-2000). He lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

GREG SIMON has published translations of poetry from the work of Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian writers, and is the co-translator, with Steven F. White and Christopher Maurer, of Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York (1988).

STEVEN F. WHITE has edited and translated anthologies of contemporary poetry from Nicaragua, Chile, and Brazil. He is the author of Modern Nicaraguan Poetry: Dialogues with France and the United States (1993) and El mundo más que humano en la poesía de Pablo Antonio Cuadra: Un estudio ecocrítico (2002). He is a corresponding member of the Nicaraguan Academy of the Language and teaches Spanish at St. Lawrence University.

ILAN STAVANS is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and the Five-College 40th Anniversary Distinguished Professor at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition (1995), The Riddle of Cantinflas (1998), On Borrowed Words (2001), Spanglish (2003), and Dictionary Days (2005). He edited The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays (1997), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), and the four-volume Encyclopedia Latina (2005).

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Copyright © Ilan Stavans, 2005

Copyright © Greg Simon and Steven F. White, 2005
Copyright © Andrew Hurley, 2005
Copyright © Steven F. White, 2005
All rights reserved


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Darío, Rubén, 1867-1916.
[Selections. English & Spanish. 2005]
Selected writings / Ruben Dario ; edited with an introduction by Ilan Stavans ; translated by
Andrew Hurley, Greg Simon and Steven F. White.
p. cm.—(Penguin Classics)
Includes index.

eISBN : 978-0-143-03936-5

I. Stavans, Ilan. II. Hurley, Andrew. III. Simon, Greg.