IV. White, Steven F., 1955-
V. Title. VI. Series.
PQ7519.D3A228 2005
861’.5—dc22 2005045224
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
POEMS
TRANSLATORS’ NOTE
I. - And Those That Come from the Eighteenth Century
II. - Some Both Ancient and Modern
III. - Some Audacious, Cosmopolitan
IV. - And a Thirst for Illusive Hope That’s Endless
STORIES AND FABLES
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
On Poetry and the Poet
THE BOURGEOIS KING
THE DEAF SATYR
MY AUNT ROSA
TALE OF THE SEA
THE BALE
Fantasy, Horror, and the Grotesque
THE LARVA
THANATOPHOBIA
HUITZILOPOXTLI - A Mexican legend
THE CASE OF MADEMOISELLE AMÉLIE - A story for New Year’s
Myth and Legend
PALIMPSEST I
PALIMPSEST II
THE RUBY
THE BIRTH OF CABBAGE
QUEEN MAB’S VEIL
Fables
THE PALACE OF THE SUN
THE DEATH OF THE EMPRESS OF CHINA
JUAN BUENO’S LOSSES
FEBEA
FUGITIVE
GYRFALCONS OF ISRAEL
THE STRANGE DEATH OF FRAY PEDRO
THE NYMPH - A Parisian story
THE BLACK SOLOMON
THUS SPAKE AHASUERUS
THE STORY OF MARTIN GUERRE
Prose Poems
IN THE ENCHANTED LAND
THE HONEYMOON SONG
BLOODY
SIREN-CATCHERS
OCEAN IDYLL
THE SONG OF WINTER
THE IDEAL
BÖKLIN : “THE ISLE OF THE DEAD”
SIRENS AND TRITONS
THE CLEPSYDRA: THE EXTRACTION OF THE IDEA
WAR
ESSAYS, OPINIONS, TRAVEL WRITING, AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
MODERNISMO
THE STORY OF MY BOOKS
AZURE
FRONTISPIECE FOR “THE MISFITS”
THE MISFITS (LOS RAROS; EXCERPTS)
On Poetry and the Poet
AN EXCERPT FROM “FROM A BOOK OF INTIMATE PAGES”
AN EXCERPT FROM “THE LITERARY LIFE”
THE 1001 NIGHTS
MARINETTI AND FUTURISM
On Art
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE - The Influence of the Sense of Beauty
RANVIER - “The Infancy of Bacchus”
On Himself
THE COLORS OF MY STANDARD
PRO DOMO MEA
THE JOURNALIST AND HIS LITERARY MERITS
On “Modern Life” and Politics
MUSINGS ON CRIME
TO THE RIGHT REVEREND ABBOT SCHNEBELIN
GOLD’S CHOLER
IRON
THE TRIUMPH OF CALIBAN
THE HIPPOGRIFF
TO THE VENERABLE JOAN OF ORLEANS
Travel Pieces and Vignettes
VIEUX PARIS
[ON WOMAN]
THE POSTER IN SPAIN (EXCERPTS)
A DIPLOMATIC MISSION
¡TOROS! (EXCERPTS)
“BLACK SPAIN”
SEVILLE
CÓRDOBA
[TRAVELS IN ITALY]
HAMBURG, OR THE LAND OF SWANS
THE SECESSION
BUDAPEST
APPENDIX SELECTED LETTERS
GLOSSARY
Index of Titles and First Lines
Introduction
“In truth, I live on poetry. I am naught but a man of art.” Thus Rubén Darío, the Nicaraguan homme de lettres and indisputable leader of the Modernista movement that swept Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, characterized himself. “I am good for nothing else,” he went on. “I believe in God, and I am attracted to mystery. I am befuddled by daydreams and death; I have read many philosophers yet I know not a word of philosophy. I do espouse a certain Epicureanism, of my own sort: let the soul and body enjoy as much as possible on earth, and do everything possible to continue that enjoyment in the next life. Which is to say, je vois la vie en rose.”
At once visionary and agent provocateur, Darío witnessed the arrival of modernity in every aspect of life on this side of the Atlantic: from education to religion, from politics and the arts to science and technology. He wondered: What makes the Spanish language used in the Americas different from the language of the Iberian Peninsula? To what extent are these nascent nations—whose drive toward independence, in geographic terms, began in Mexico in 1810 and spread throughout the hemisphere—really autonomous, really independent of their “motherland”? From what cultural well ought artists and intellectuals in the Americas drink? What set of symbols and motifs might artists and poets call their own? Of course, the questioning was the result of Darío’s discomfort with his surroundings, and it was not free of irony. “I detest the life and times it is my fate to live in,” he declared. Darío was what we might today call “conflicted”; he was constantly pulled in contrary directions. While he felt himself a man of the Americas, at heart he was a cosmopolitan who looked to Europe as his prime source of inspiration, hoping to redeem himself and his people from the morose Spanish culture, which for Latin America had been the only connection to the outside world, but which had fallen into an embarrassing mediocrity. A man of deep Catholic faith, he understood poetry much in the way the Romantics did: as a bridge toward nature and the spiritual world. In searching for motifs to alleviate his sense of loss, he embraced the worldly and very “contemporary” French Symbolists—Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine in particular—but he also felt the allure of the pre-Columbian past. “If there is any poetry in our America,” Darío suggested, “it is in the old things; in Palenque and Utatlán, in the Indian of legend and the fine and sensual Inca, and in the great Moctezuma on his golden throne.”
When approached sub specie aeternitatis, the poetry of Latin America appears to be defined by a cyclical battle of opposites: on one side are the Europeanized voices of the so-called aesthetes, whose poetry is disconnected from the social conditions from which it springs; on the other are the practitioners of an engagé art, who believe that the word has the power to change the world. Of course this tension, in some shape or form, lives at the heart of every poet. In Darío’s case, it manifested itself more vividly than in anyone before him in the region, and the way he responded to it left a deep and lasting mark, to the point that one is able to declare, without fear of error, that the overall poetic tradition in the Spanish language on this side of the Atlantic is perfectly divisible into two halves: before and after Darío.
If the contribution of a single poet could be measured quantitatively, by the number of astonishing poems that have become an essential feature of a culture, then it is arguable that Darío stands as the most important poet ever to write in Latin America. From “Venus” to “Autumn Poem” and “Swans,” from “Poets! Towers of God!” to “To Columbus” and “To Roosevelt,” Darío achieves a pitch so faultless, a melodious style so controlled and authoritative, and a mannered tone, filled with Gallicisms, so influential not only to his successors but his contemporaries as well, as to make the reader believe that these pieces are integral to the universal order of Spanish-language letters. All artists dream of achieving perfection, but only a few might be said to succeed in their quest. Darío, in a handful of his compositions, makes the cut.
The first piece of criticism on Darío’s work appeared in 1884, when he was twenty-one years old.
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