Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (64 page)

Bloy, Léon:
(France; 1846-1917) Novelist and essayist/critic. Early in his life, under the influence of BARBEY D’ AUREVILLY, he turned from his materialistic ways and became a mystic:
Plus on approche de Dieu, plus on est seul. C’est l’infini de la solitude.
Bloy was known above all as a polemicist, a judgment that may to a degree have obscured the fine “poetic” prose of his work, which was influenced by both Romanticism and Symbolism. He was widely quoted (his
bon mots
and well-turned phrases made him often memorable:
“Un
homme couvert de crimes est toujours intéressant. C’est une cible pour la Miséricorde”
) and his opinions were widely respected, if sometimes feared as well. The
Brelan d’excommuniés
is an essay on the three authors mentioned in “Los Raros: Verlaine”: VERLAINE, Barbey d’Aurevilly, and Ernest HELLO.

Böcklin:
“THE ISLE OF THE DEAD”: Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) was a Swiss-German artist in the German Romantic tradition (heavily atmospheric landscapes, lowering thunderstorms, lonely mountains); late in life he took up the tenets of Symbolism, though in among the landscapes and still lifes he still painted mythological subjects. The painting of the title (at least four versions of which are extant today) depicts a craggy island, with a boatman ferrying a shrouded figure to the afterlife; Dario’s prose poem recreates the scene.

Bonafoux (y Quintero), Luis:
(Spain, b. in France; 1855-1918) Known popularly as “Aramis,” Bonafoux was a journalist and polemicist-critic whose ironic and sometimes bitter humor won him the favor of readers.

Bonhomet, Tribulat:
“Erudite and materialistic” hero of at least one novel (eponymous) and more than one short story by VILLIERS DE L’ISLE DE ADAM.

Borel, Petrus:
(France; 1809-1859) Pseudonym of Joseph-Pierre Borel D’Hauterive, French novelist, poet, and translator who was trained as an architect but became a writer. He was the most extreme of the
bousingos,
a group of extravagant young Romantic artists and writers; he loathed the bourgeoisie and believed in the hatred of men for one another. Due to his radical ideas and behavior, he was unable (or unwilling) to earn a living as a writer (or anything else), and so Théophile GAUTIER found him a job in the civil service. Borel’s works were intended to shock and horrify; today they seem merely melodramatic.

Boulanger (General), Georges:
(France; 1837-1891) An opponent of the Third Republic, Boulanger’s personal ambition led him, after his election to Parliament, to conspire (with royalists and his own followers) to overthrow the Republic. An order for his arrest on charges of treason was issued, however, and he fled the country, dying a suicide some years afterward.

Braganza, Pedro de:
(Dom Pedro II of Brazil; Portuguese; 1825-1891). (Last) Emperor of Brazil, 1831-89. The son of Pedro I, Pedro II succeeded to the throne at the age of five, on his father’s abdication, although he was subject to a regency until he reached his majority in 1840. Pedro had a lifelong interest in science and was a patron of the arts. He opposed slavery, which he gradually phased out of Brazilian life—outlawing the slave trade in 1850, initiating a process of emancipation in 1871, and finally abolishing slavery altogether in 1888. Under his rule Brazil fought a costly but successful war with Paraguay (1864-70), gaining some territory as a result. Although impartial toward Brazil’s rival political groups, Pedro’s use of the wide powers given to him by the imperial constitution caused resentment, which, along with dissatisfaction among slave owners, led to his overthrow and the establishment of a republic in 1889. It is interesting that six months before becoming Emperor of Brazil, Pedro sat for one of the first daguerreotypes taken in the New World; his fascination with the process no doubt led to his lifelong interest in science and the applied sciences.

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc de (Comte):
(1707-1788) French naturalist best known for his
Histoire naturelle
in thirty-six volumes (1749-88) and his
Théorie de la terre
(1749). His works deal with the earth, minerals, animals, and humans, and he laid the foundations for nineteenth-century “natural science”; he was perhaps the first to write about a series of geologic stages in the evolution of the earth. He is also known as a remarkable stylist, and in his address to the French Academy in 1753, he proclaimed, “Style is the man.”

Burton, Sir Richard Francis:
(1821-1890) An English explorer and travel writer with an extraordinary facility for languages, Burton threw himself into the life and culture of the Middle East and Africa, and he is famous for passing himself off as a wandering dervish in a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina (if found out, he faced certain death for the imposture). During his explorations of Africa, Burton discovered Lake Tanganyika; in Arabia, he was so captivated by the storytellers of the
souks
that he undertook to translate the
1001 Nights,
and his translation has become an English-language classic.

Cafre:
Part of a racist system of categorization used to identify slaves from the eastern part of South Africa. It also described slaves considered by the ruling class to be especially primitive or violent.

Calamus:
Latin word for reed, from Greek
kalamos.
The hollow stem-like main shaft of a feather, often used for writing with ink.

Calderón [de la Barca], Pedro:
(1600-1681) Spanish soldier and dramatist who specialized in revenge dramas. The best known of the two hundred plays that he wrote is
Life Is a Dream.

Campo, Estanislau del:
(Buenos Aires; 1834-1880) A journalist, soldier, and
gauchesco
poet (disciple of ASCASUBI) whose most famous work is
Fausto,
which is based on a performance of Gounot’s opera
Faust
given in Buenos Aires: a gaucho who goes to the opera believes he has seen an actual act of magic in the theater. This tradition of comic portrayal of the gaucho culminates in José Hernández’
Martín Fierro,
one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Argentine literature.

Campoamor, Ramón de:
(Asturias, Spain; 1817-1901) A Spanish post-Romantic who had some influence on Darío’s poetics. While having a vocation for religious studies, Campoamor finally devoted his life to politics and literature. Even while acting as governor of three Spanish provinces, he produced a considerable body of poetry and literary theory; his
Poetics
argued for a poetry of clarity and ideas, with vivid images and an avoidance of empty “poetizing,” in reaction to the effusions of Romanticism.

Carmañola:
“La Carmañola Americana” is an antimonarchy, revolutionary song that was widely sung in the early nineteenth century when Hispanic America was seeking its independence from Spain.

Casal, Julián del:
(Cuba; 1863-1893) Modernist poet influenced by GAUTIER, Baudelaire, Zorrilla, and Bécquer. When del Casal’s family lost their sugar plantation, the young man became a clerk. He began writing newspaper articles attacking the Spanish government in Cuba. As a poet, he preferred “beauty” to “nature,” as he noted in his “Song to Morphine”: “. . . artificial joy / which is true life.” He can be considered both a Symbolist and a Parnassian, and is sometimes compared to Darío himself with respect to his formal and metrical innovations. He died of tuberculosis at thirty.

Casas, Ramón:
(Barcelona; 1886-1932) Catalonian painter who early went to Paris to study art, where he apprenticed with the famed Carolus Duran. On his return to Spain, he became fascinated with bullfighting. He, UTRILLO, and RUSIÑOL, with the property’s owner Per Romeu, opened the famous bar Els Quatre Gats (four cats, an expression indicating “just a few people”), which became the center for the Barcelona avant-garde. A tireless poster-maker and collaborator in periodicals such as
Pel y Plom
and
Quatre Gats,
he also did many portraits. Picasso was a frequent visitor to Els Quatre Gats, as were other younger artists and important musicians such as Albéniz and Granados.

Castalia:
Also “Castaly”; a fountain of Parnassus sacred to the Muses; its waters inspired those who drank them with the fire of poetry.

Cetina, Gutierre de:
(Seville; before 1520-1557?) A poet greatly influenced by the Italians, he translated Petrarch and Ariosto.

Chamberlain, Joseph:
(British; 1836-1914) British statesman who held many important positions within the British government. In 1895, Chamberlain became colonial secretary; by 1899, Britain was at war in the Transvaal, and Chamberlain’s aggressive imperialism proved lethal. The British pursued a scorched-earth policy in South Africa, interning thousands of people in camps. When the war ended, Chamberlain sought a “conciliatory” peace, and indeed the Union of South Africa was formed, although even today, despite often the best intentions of many of its inhabitants, the region continues to be plagued by problems of race and politics. Thus, for South Africa, Chamberlain’s legacy is not altogether a happy one.

Chapelain, Jean:
(France; 1595-1647) French poet and man of letters. Chapelain’s father intended him for the law, but his mother determined that he would be a poet (she had known Ronsard), so at an early age he studied Greek and Latin under a tutor while teaching himself Italian and Spanish. He became the tutor to the children of the grand provost of France, and he worked in this position for seventeen years, even coming to manage the provost’s vast fortune. His first published work came late, a translation of Mateo Alemán’s novel
Guzmán de Alfarache,
and four mediocre original odes, one dedicated to Richelieu. In 1656 he published the first twelve cantos of his remarkably unfortunate epic
La Pucelle ou la France Delivrée
(
The Maiden
[i.e., Joan of Arc],
or France Delivered
), which was roundly satirized by Boileau and others. His reputation as a critic was undamaged, however, and his erudite and general kindliness endeared him to many readers and younger poets. Chapelain is credited with introducing the unities of time, place, and action into French drama.

Chevreul, Michel-Eugène:
(France; 1786-1889) Very important French chemist who, though renowned for the breadth of his work, is especially known for two lines of research: in chemistry, the constitution of fats, and in physics, the harmony of colors. The former led to practical corollaries such as the establishment of the great industry of stearin candle manufacture, the introduction of glycerine into commerce on a large scale, and, later, the creation of margarine. His position as director of the Gobelins, to which he had been appointed by Louis XVIII, led to important discoveries in both the chemistry of dyeing, previously little understood, and the physics of color and color effect. His great work, “The Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Colours,” was published in 1839, setting forth the laws governing changes in intensity of tone and shade or modification of color, and particularly the influence of one color on another in juxtaposition. A practical application of this knowledge, together with practical results from the study of dye-stuffs and the blending of colors in dyeing, served to bring this art to a perfection which, increased again by the variety of dyes obtainable from benzol, has been of the utmost use industrially. Chevreul also participated in many of the philosophical debates of his century. He strongly combated scepticism and materialism, and constantly asserted that the harmony of the universe and nature, and of man’s life and place in them, demonstrated a wisdom which he believed must be called Divine.

Chibcha:
Wealthy, highly developed indigenous people of the Andes who lived in what is now Colombia. Their religious ceremonies included human sacrifice, and the source of the legend of El Dorado is attributed to them.

Chiron:
Born a centaur because Kronos begot him in the shape of a horse. Known for wisdom, justice, and his interest in medicinal herbs. Mentor of Achilles and Jason.

Chorotegan or Nagrandano:
Chorotegan: Aboriginal people and language group of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Little is known of the Chorotega, who were contemporaneous with the Maya to the northwest and inhabited principally the Ulúa River valley and the Mosquito Coast. With other tribes to the south and the Chibcha of Colombia, they formed a cultural link between the peoples of the Andean area and those of Mexico. The Chorotega culture became extinct in the Spanish colonial period. The Nagrandando were a related people.

Clarín:
See
ALAS Y UREÑA, LEOPOLDO ENRIQUE GARCÍA.

Cleopatra:
(69-30 B.C.) The last Pharaoh of Egypt, mistress of Caesar, with whom she had a son, and later the ill-fated Marc Antony (Marcus Antonius). Committed suicide with an asp after Antony’s death.

Clepsydra:
An ancient device that measured time by marking the regulated flow of water through a small opening.

Clorinda:
Heroine of a poem by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595),
Jerusalem Liberated,
a romanticized account of the First Crusade (1095-1099), during which parts of the “Holy Land” were seized from their Arab Muslim rulers by western Roman Catholic armies. In the scenes used by Monteverde for his opera, the
Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda,
the Western knight Tancredi is in pursuit of Clorinda, a woman disguised as a Muslim warrior (with whom he has already fallen in love). The battle that ensues made Clorinda a proto-feminist hero; the motif was used not just in operas but in paintings, sculptures, and other art works throughout the eighteenth and especially nineteenth centuries.

Coppée, François:
(France; 1842-1908) French novelist and playwright, archivist of the Comédie-Française for a time. Known for his devout Catholicism. His one-act play
Le passant
won great success, and was the first play in which the great Sarah Berhhardt appeared. In poetry, he is associated with the PARNASSIANS.