Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (68 page)

Leda:
In Greek mythology, a Spartan queen who was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan; the mother of Clytemnestra, Helen of Troy, Castor, and Pollux. Clytemnestra, in turn, gave birth to Electra, who plotted with her brother Orestes to kill their mother in revenge for the murder of their father, Agamemnon.

León:
A major Nicaraguan city that Darío considered home. His tomb in the Cathedral of León is a great sculpted lion.

Lesbos:
Lemprière: “A large island in the Aegean Sea, now known by the name of
Metelin.
. . . The Lesbians were celebrated among the ancients for their skill in music, and their women for their beauty, although the general character of the people was so debauched and dissipated that the epithet of
Lesbian
was often used to signify debauchery and extravagance.”

Loti, Pierre:
(
nom de plume
of Louis Marie Julien Viaud; French; 1850-1923) Loti’s career in the French navy took him to many exotic places, which he later used for his novels, written in a sensuous and impressionistic style. It was no doubt his travel romances, rather than the later, more naturalistic works, that attracted Darío’s attention; these romances are set in Constantinople, Tahiti, and Japan.

Louÿs, Pierre:
(
nom de plume
of Pierre Louis; French; 1870-1925) Poet and novelist; Louÿs was a disciple of the PARNASSIAN school. His fiction was intended to shock the bourgeois morality; he was a devotee of form in literature, and wrote one collection of Hellenistic poetry as well as his other, more “decadent” works.

Lugones, Leopoldo:
(Argentina; 1874-1938) Arguably the
other
most important
modernista
poet, along with Darío. Self-educated, Lugones absorbed many of the literary currents of his time.
The Mountains of Gold
was a Whitmanesque volume that Darío praised very highly. The range of Lugones’ poetry is very wide, from baroque sonnets to scientific terminology to Realism to
gauchesco
verse; he was constantly seeking new modes and manners of expression, and his followers, the younger poets of South America, had some difficulty in adapting to the many styles he adopted over his career. His journalism and criticism concentrate on the history and traditions of Argentina, especially the gauchos and their literature. Late in life, he became a Fascist, defining his position in
La hora de España
(
Spain’s Hour
).

Lull, Raymond (Raimundo Llull/Lully/Lullio):
(Mallorca; dates uncertain, given as between 1225 and 1235-ca. 1315-16) Mystic, poet, philosopher, missionary, and recently beatified (by Pius IX in 1847). Late-medieval legends have muddied the biography of Lull (or Llull or Lully), but it is known for a fair certainty that he was born on the island of Mallorca, off Spain, to a wealthy family who had moved to the island from Barcelona (Lull is always thought of as Catalonian, as his patronymic also attests) with James I after James’s conquest of the island from the Moors in 1229. Educated as a knight, Lull became seneschal to James II of Mallorca upon James’s receiving the island from James I in 1253. At court, Lull was a profligate and a poet, but in 1257 his marriage to Blanca Piany is recorded, and the couple had two children. At about the age of thirty, Lull underwent a true religious conversion, after seeing the Christ crucified several times in a vision, and he conceived the three goals that would dominate the rest of his life: the founding of schools to teach missionaries the Eastern languages; the writing of a book to prove Christian doctrine; and the teaching of the Christian faith among the infidels. While educating himself in the doctrines of the Church (Augustine, Anselm, etc.), Lull learned Arabic from a Muslim slave in Mallorca and also studied at least some popular versions of Islamic theology and philosophy. Lull persuaded the pope, Honorius IV, to establish schools of Eastern languages for missionaries, and then taught at some of them, including Montpellier. He also traveled as a missionary to North Africa and Asia. Over the years, Lull debated and often refuted the Averroists, and wrote treatises on religious topics, such as the attributes of the godhead in his famous
Ars Magna
(whose name has been confused with, or given to, alchemical treatises never written by Lull). In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Lull was traveling extensively on missionary and proselytizing expeditions all over the Middle and Near East, and then in about 1302 he set up in Genoa and Montpellier, where he wrote a number of additional works. In his last years, he unsuccessfully lobbied a series of popes and high Church officials for support for a crusade, or at least large missionary expeditions. His last journey was to Tunis, where according to one probably apocryphal tradition he earned martyrdom by being stoned to death, but from whence he probably returned, to die at home in Mallorca early in 1316, where he is said to be buried in the convent of the Franciscans. In the Renaissance, Lull was thought to be the author of many alchemical treatises, the first of which appeared, incongruously, sixteen years after his death. There is a widely circulated and believed legend which says that Lull went to England to make gold for Edward III (1312-1377), who would use it to fund a crusade. Supposedly Lull kept his end of the bargain, while Edward reneged on his. Lull never revealed the process. Thus, Lull’s name is inevitably linked to medieval alchemy, and he is believed to be one of the great masters, like Albertus Magnus and Hermes Trismegistus, although his alchemical writings are almost certainly forgeries or misattributions.

Lully, Jean-Baptiste:
(1632-1687) Italian composer, practicing in France.

Mab, Queen Mab:
The “fairies’ midwife,” notes Brewer’s
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,
“
i.e.,
employed by the fairies as midwife to deliver man’s brain of dreams.” (This authority also reminds the reader that “When Mab is called ‘queen’ it does not mean sovereign, for Titania as wife of King Oberon was Queen of Faery, but simply ‘female’ [O.E.
quén
or
cwén,
modern
quean
].”) In English literature Mab is mentioned perhaps most notably by Shakespeare, but she is also described by Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Drayton.

Machado, Antonio:
(1875-1939) Spanish lyrical poet. “Am I classic or romantic?” Machado wrote. “I don’t know. / I would leave my verse as a warrior his blade: / known for the manly hand that made it glow . . .” (trans. by Willis Barnstone). Machado had a doctorate in philosophy; his favorite philosopher was Pythagoras.

Madero, Francisco I.:
(Mexico; 1873-1913) Revolutionary who served as President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913. Madero, from one of the richest families in Mexico, of Portuguese descent, was educated in Baltimore, Versailles, and at the University of California, Berkeley. He opposed the dictator PORFIRIO DÍAZ, running for president against him in 1910 as candidate for the Anti-Reelectionist movement. He was arrested in June and then released conditionally in July. Díaz was declared president, with an improbably massive majority, in October 1910. Madero refused to recognize the result of this clearly fraudulent election, and he assumed the provisional presidency, designating November 20 to be the day on which what was later called the Mexican Revolution would begin. The coup was discovered and Madero fled to San Antonio, Texas, but the Revolution had spread in the north, where Francisco “Pancho” Villa occupied Chihuahua and Ciudad Juárez. The overthrow of Díaz came on May 25, 1911, when Díaz resigned and Madero assumed the presidency. He died in a coup d’etat two years later.

Maeterlinck, Maurice:
(Belgium; 1862-1949) Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911. Maeterlinck’s writing (poetry, drama, and essays) is distinguished by a preoccupation with the mystery of existence, expressed through symbolic and somewhat dreamy images and language.

Maistre, de:
Either Joseph (1754-1821) or his younger brother Xavier (1763-1852), though probably Xavier, who, though not as well known, wrote works that one might, stretching, call journalism:
Voyage autour de ma chambre
(
Voyage around my Room
; sufficiently famous to be alluded to by Borges in “The Aleph”);
Le Prisonniers du Caucase
;
Le Jeune Sibrienne.
Both brothers were anti-Revolutionaries and staunch, even fierce, Catholics; Joseph wrote political theory and was adamantly papist and counter-Enlightenment.

Malachi:
An Israelite prophet of the fifth century B.C.; one of the “minor” prophets, the last prophet before the coming of John the Baptist four hundred years later; author of the book of Malachi in the Old Testament. Nothing is known of his life.

Mallarmé, Stéphane:
(France; 1842-1898) Leader of the Symbolists and formulator of the Symbolist theories, though he, in turn, was influenced by Baudelaire, Poe, VERLAINE, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Mallarmé’s poetry is characterized by a density and compactness of expression, with unorthodox syntax; it is unfailingly evocative and stirring.

mandinga:
A descendant of an African slave originally from the Western part of Sudan.

Manzoni, Alessandro:
(1785-1873) Italian novelist, poet, and playwright, a central figure in Italian Romanticism. Known especially for his historical novel
I promessi sposi.
A religious man, a Catholic, Manzoni was concerned to show the workings of providence in the everyday lives of people. His language was subtle and refined, and it became the model for modern Italian prose. Verdi honored him with the
Manzoni Requiem
(1874).

Maragall, Joan:
(Catalonia, Spain; 1860-1911) Catalonian
modernista
poet, essayist, and translator, some of whose poems have been set to music to become songs and anthems very well known in Catalonia and Spain. He was very active in the founding and development of the
modernista
movement in Catalonia, where he and RUSIÑOL were often allies, especially against the attacks of the
Noucentistes.

Marat, Jean-Paul:
(1743-1793) French revolutionary who was banished to England for his incendiary writing and later stabbed to death in his bath in Paris by a promonarchist assassin.

Marcel, Etienne:
(France; 1315-1358) A wealthy, influential French merchant, Marcel was an antiroyalist, and in 1358 he led an uprising against the crown.

Mardrus, J. C.:
(1868-1949) French Arabist, translator of many works, including (in addition to the
Thousand and One Nights
) “The Queen of Sheba,” “The Muslim Paradise,” “
Toute
-
puissance de l’adepte; transcription des hautes texts initiatiques de l’Égypte; le livre de la verité de parole,”
etc. His translation was used by Powys Mathers for Mathers’ English translation of the Nights.

Marinetti, Filippo:
(1876-1944) Marinetti was an Italian poet and publicist associated, as Darío indicates, with the Futurist movement. Unfortunately, “his career reached its apogee in friendship with Mussolini,” as the
Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists
tells us.

Marquis de Sade:
(
See
SADE.)

Mars:
Roman god of spring, growth, and fertility, but also of death and war. Reputed to be the father of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.

Martí, José:
(Cuba; 1853-1895) Martí is known as the “apostle of Cuban independence”; he vehemently opposed Spanish rule over the island, and indeed was killed in an insurrection he helped mount. As a poet, Martí is ardent, romantic, sometimes almost mystical, and is concerned with love, freedom, and death; he is seen as a precursor of
Modernismo
in Latin America. His prose essays are inspiring tributes to his faith in the greatness of Spanish America; he was also a keen critic of U.S. culture and politics.

Martínez Campos, Arsenio:
(Spanish; 1831-1900) Spanish colonial ruler of Cuba before the Spanish-American War, but resigned before that war took place. He fought not against the Americans, but instead against the Cuban rebels seeking independence from Spain. He resigned in 1896, in acknowledgment of his inability to win against the rebels, and was succeeded by the more heavy-handed Valeriano Weyler. Thus, Martínez Campos was military ruler of Cuba when José Marti’s remains were displayed for viewing.

Maximilian:
(1832-1867) Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke of Austria, became Emperor of Mexico when Napoleon III sought to extend French imperial power. Assured a French army, and believing that his appointment had a popular base, the idealistic young aristocrat and his wife, Carlota, were crowned in Mexico City on June 10, 1864. Almost immediately, Maximilian’s policies antagonized his backers, as he upheld Benito Juárez’s land reforms, educated the Indians and the poor, and encouraged U.S. Confederates to immigrate to Mexico. Too late, he acknowledged that his government was bankrupt. By the spring of 1865, the venture had failed. But when the French finally left Mexico in March of 1867, Maximilian remained behind, refusing to desert “his people” when Juárez and his army returned. Two months later, Maximilian was court-martialed, condemned to death, and executed.

Mendès, Catulle:
(France; 1841-1909) French poet, critic, and novelist of the PARNASSIAN school. Though born in Bordeaux, he moved early to Paris, where he became notorious after the publication of his
Roman d’une nuit
(1861), which earned him a month’s imprisonment and a fine of five hundred francs. His critics claim that his elegant verse is marked more by skillful imitation of other poets than by originality, but he was also well known for his critical writings and his fiction. Some of his work was made into operas, as for example
Ariane,
by Massenet. He married JUDITH GAUTIER, but the marriage did not last. In February of 1909 he was found dead in a railway tunnel in Saint-Germain.

Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino:
(Spain; 1856-1912) Recognized by many as the finest critic and historian of literature in nineteenth-century Spain. He produced anthologies in which he introduced and commented on lyrical and classical poetry, as well as countless volumes of erudite literary studies on an immense variety of subjects. One of the most respected academics and men of letters in all of the Spanish-speaking world.