Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben)

RUBÉN DARÍO : SELECTED WRITINGS

RUBÉN DARÍO (Félix García Sarmiento) was born in Metapa (renamed Ciudad Darío), a small town in Nicaragua, on January 18th, 1867. His parents soon separated. His mother took him to Honduras, but eventually returned to Nicaragua and Darío was raised in León. He was writing epitaphs in verse on commission by age eleven, and his first verses were published when he was thirteen years old in the newspaper
El Termómetro
. In 1884, Darío worked as a presidential staff member under the regime of Adán Cárdenas, as well as in the National Library. He made his first trip to Chile in 1886, and debuted as a poet in book form with
Abrojos
in 1887, but it was the combination of poetry and prose in
Azul
. . . (1888) that made him famous and transformed him into the lightning rod of the
Modernista
movement in the Spanish-speaking Americas. Soon after, Darío began contributing to the Argentine daily
La Nación,
a professional relationship that would last until his death. In Nicaragua, he married Rafaela Contreras Cañas, the first of three wives with whom he would have four children, two of whom died in infancy. A coup d’etat in Nicaragua in 1890 forced him to move to Guatemala and El Salvador. Darío was named secretary of the Nicaraguan delegation in charge of the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1892 and also made his first, revelatory trip to Spain. Rafaela Contreras Cañas died soon after. Months later, Darío married Rosario Murillo. In 1893 Darío met Paul Verlaine in Paris, and, in New York, José Martí, with whom he forged a friendship. In 1896 his books
Los Raros
[The Misfits] and
Prosas profanas y otros poemas
[Profane Prose and Other Poems] were published. He also started to serialize a novel called
El hombre de oro
[Man of Gold], which was influenced by Flaubert’s
Salambó
. In 1898 the Spanish-American War took place and shook Darío to the core. He denounced the United States in a series of poems and articles written for various periodicals. A year later, he traveled to Barcelona, then to Madrid. His experiences in Spain would be described in the chronicles and literary portraits of
España contemporánea
[Contemporary Spain] (1901). In 1899 he met Ramón María Valle-Inclán, Juan Ramón Jiménez, as well as Francisca Sánchez, an illiterate peasant from Navalsáuz, whom Darío taught to read. The couple relocated in Paris, where he worked as a correspondent for
La Nación,
focusing on the
Exposition Universelle de Paris
. In 1903 he became consul of Nicaragua in Paris, where he had already met Antonio and Manuel Machado. From there he visited Barcelona and a year later traveled to Gibraltar, Morocco, and various locations in Spain. His book
Cantos de vida y esperanza: Los cisnes y otros poemas
[Songs of Life and Hope/Swans and Other Poems] appeared in 1905, followed a couple of years later by
El canto errante
[Wandering Song]. Darío was named to a diplomatic post in Spain by the Nicaraguan government in 1907 while he was in the country trying unsuccessfully to annul his marriage to Rosario Murillo. In 1909 he published
Alfonso XIII
and
El viaje a Nicaragua e Intermezzo tropical
[Voyage to Nicaragua and Tropical Intermezzo].
Poema del otoño y otros poemas
[Autumn Poems and Other Poems] appeared in 1910, which is also when he visited Mexico to participate in the centenary commemoration of
El Grito de Dolores
[The Cry of Dolores] just as that country was about to be swept by a peasant revolution. 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. IV. White, Steven F., 1955-
V. Title. VI. Series.
PQ7519.D3A228 2005
861’.5—dc22 2005045224

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