during a lecture tour of the United States. He returned to León, Nicaragua, early in 1916, where he underwent various surgical operations. He died on February 6, 1916, and was buried near the statue of Saint Paul, in the Cathedral of León.
His “contradictory identities,” as they’ve been described, had by then placed Nicaragua, a minuscule Central American nation of approximately 120,254 square kilometers—roughly the size of Vermont—and a population today of a little over five million people, on the cultural map, even though, as David Whisnant put it in Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua, Darío’s supporters and opponents in the country have seldom been able “either to tolerate or to process the complex nuances and contradictions of his thought and work.” Still, to this day his contribution is seen, internally, not only as a literary hiatus but as a veritable geopolitical transformation. Pablo Antonio Cuadra emphasized this when he wrote: “A country must compare the benefit of its great poets to that of its great ports.” Cuadra compared Darío to New York. “The number of connections, the amount of knowledge, and the ethical and aesthetic values that came to Nicaragua through Rubén are incommensurable.”
Efforts at translating Darío into other languages date back to the last third of his career. French culture, obviously, was fitted for his vision. His poems and nonfiction were appearing in magazines in Paris by the first years of the twentieth century. He was also translated into Portuguese, German, and Italian, among other European languages. In English, his career has not always been a happy one. His rhythmic stanzas establish a sort of symmetry between form and content that is quite difficult to recapture in Shakespeare’s tongue. Still, there have been efforts made, especially since the sixties, to render the Nicaraguan in a convincing way.
This anthology represents the most ambitious attempt ever to make the Nicaraguan poet comfortable in English. A selection of the most representative prose, stories and fables, and journalism, and a dozen letters to relatives and friends, are featured together with the poetry for the first time. Intriguingly, this volume also brings together different translation strategies. The compilation is divided into two parts, each briefly prefaced by its respective translators. The first section is devoted to poetry and it appears in bilingual format. The English renditions are by Greg Simon and Steven F. White. The organization is thematic rather than chronological. Instead of representing the arc of Darío’s poetry from his debut to his posthumous stanzas, the material is showcased in the way Darío himself arranged it when he released the three volumes published in Madrid by Biblioteca Corona between 1914 and 1916. Three sections are titled after lines he had used early in Cantos de vida y esperanza and they represent modalities of his temperament, so to speak: a connection with the past, his urbane worldview, his transition as a modern voice, and his philosophical and religious pursuits. A fourth section is an intelligent approximation to yet another section Darío might have intended to publish but was unable to do so before he died. Darío’s development as a poet is of primary importance in the Spanish-speaking world. When did he first come across motifs like the swan and the princess? In what kinds of rhythmic experimentation did he engage at various stages of his career? In order to give even a vague semblance of his aesthetic transformation, there are dates of composition in brackets after each of the Spanish originals. When the date is preceded by a “p,” it means the information is lacking and the date included is that of publication in book form. Some of the dates are a range of years; this is a reference to Darío’s uncollected poetry, known to scholars as “ poesía dispersa .”
The second part of this
His “contradictory identities,” as they’ve been described, had by then placed Nicaragua, a minuscule Central American nation of approximately 120,254 square kilometers—roughly the size of Vermont—and a population today of a little over five million people, on the cultural map, even though, as David Whisnant put it in Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua, Darío’s supporters and opponents in the country have seldom been able “either to tolerate or to process the complex nuances and contradictions of his thought and work.” Still, to this day his contribution is seen, internally, not only as a literary hiatus but as a veritable geopolitical transformation. Pablo Antonio Cuadra emphasized this when he wrote: “A country must compare the benefit of its great poets to that of its great ports.” Cuadra compared Darío to New York. “The number of connections, the amount of knowledge, and the ethical and aesthetic values that came to Nicaragua through Rubén are incommensurable.”
Efforts at translating Darío into other languages date back to the last third of his career. French culture, obviously, was fitted for his vision. His poems and nonfiction were appearing in magazines in Paris by the first years of the twentieth century. He was also translated into Portuguese, German, and Italian, among other European languages. In English, his career has not always been a happy one. His rhythmic stanzas establish a sort of symmetry between form and content that is quite difficult to recapture in Shakespeare’s tongue. Still, there have been efforts made, especially since the sixties, to render the Nicaraguan in a convincing way.
This anthology represents the most ambitious attempt ever to make the Nicaraguan poet comfortable in English. A selection of the most representative prose, stories and fables, and journalism, and a dozen letters to relatives and friends, are featured together with the poetry for the first time. Intriguingly, this volume also brings together different translation strategies. The compilation is divided into two parts, each briefly prefaced by its respective translators. The first section is devoted to poetry and it appears in bilingual format. The English renditions are by Greg Simon and Steven F. White. The organization is thematic rather than chronological. Instead of representing the arc of Darío’s poetry from his debut to his posthumous stanzas, the material is showcased in the way Darío himself arranged it when he released the three volumes published in Madrid by Biblioteca Corona between 1914 and 1916. Three sections are titled after lines he had used early in Cantos de vida y esperanza and they represent modalities of his temperament, so to speak: a connection with the past, his urbane worldview, his transition as a modern voice, and his philosophical and religious pursuits. A fourth section is an intelligent approximation to yet another section Darío might have intended to publish but was unable to do so before he died. Darío’s development as a poet is of primary importance in the Spanish-speaking world. When did he first come across motifs like the swan and the princess? In what kinds of rhythmic experimentation did he engage at various stages of his career? In order to give even a vague semblance of his aesthetic transformation, there are dates of composition in brackets after each of the Spanish originals. When the date is preceded by a “p,” it means the information is lacking and the date included is that of publication in book form. Some of the dates are a range of years; this is a reference to Darío’s uncollected poetry, known to scholars as “ poesía dispersa .”
The second part of this
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