Ruben Dario – författare

Till Maragarita är en dikt som skrevs till en ung flicka för över 100 år resan. Det är nationalskalden Ruben Dario (1867-1916) som en gång skrev den. Denna dikt är tidlös i sitt budskap. Att Margarita är en prinsessa precis som du och att himlens alla stjärnor också tillhör dig.

Born in Nicaragua, Ruben Dario is known as the consummate leader of the Modernista movement, an esthetic trend that swept the Americas from Mexico to Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century. Seeking a language and a style that would distinguish the newly emergent nations from the old imperial power of Spain, Dario's writing offered a refreshingly new vision of the world - an artistic sensibility at once cosmopolitan and connected to the rhythms of nature. The first part of this collection presents Dario's most significant poems in a bilingual format and organized thematically in the way Dario himself envisioned them. The second part is devoted to Dario's prose, including short stories, fables, profiles, travel writing, reportage, opinion pieces, and letters. A sweeping biographical introduction by distinguished critic Ilan Stavans places Dario in historical and artistic context, not only in Latin America but in world literature.

Toward the close of the last century, the poetry of the Spanish-speaking world was pallid, feeble, almost a corpse. It needed new life and a new direction. The exotic, erratic, revolutionary poet who changed the course of Spanish poetry and brought it into the mainstream of twentieth-century Modernism was FÉlix RubÉn GarcÍa Sarmiento (1867-1916) of Nicaragua, who called himself RubÉn DarÍo. Since its original publication in 1965, this edition of DarÍo's poetry has made English-speaking readers better acquainted with the poet who, as Enrique Anderson Imbert said, "divides literary history into 'before' and 'after.'" The selection of poems is intended to represent the whole range of DarÍo's verse, from the stinging little poems of Thistles to the dark, brooding lines of Songs of the Argentine and Other Poems. Also included, in the Epilogue, is a transcript of a radio dialogue between two other major poets, Federico GarcÍa Lorca of Spain and Pablo Neruda of Chile, who celebrate the rich legacy of RubÉn DarÍo.

Renowned for its depth of feeling and musicality, the poetry of RubÉn DarÍo (1867–1916) has been revered by writers including Federico GarcÍa Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. A leading figure in the movement known as modernismo, DarÍo created the modern Spanish lyric and permanently altered the course of Spanish poetry. Yet while his output has inspired a great deal of critical analysis and a scattering of translations, there has been, until now, no complete English translation of any of his books of poetry. This bilingual edition of DarÍo’s 1905 masterpiece, Cantos de vida y esperanza, fills a crucial gap in Hispanic and world literature studies. Will Derusha and Alberto Acereda have provided not only an elegant English translation of DarÍo’s work but also an authoritative version of the original Spanish text. Written over the course of seven years and in many locales in Latin America and Europe, the poems in Cantos de vida y esperanza reflect both DarÍo’s anguished sense of modern life and his ecstatic visions of transcendence, freedom, and the transformative power of art. They reveal DarÍo’s familiarity with Spanish, French, and English literature and the wide range of his concerns-existential, religious, erotic, and socio-political. Derusha and Acereda’s translation renders DarÍo’s themes with meticulous clarity and captures the structural and acoustic dimensions of the poet’s language in all its rhythmic sonority. Their introduction places this singular poet-arguably the greatest to emerge from Latin America in modern literature-and his best and most widely known work in historical and literary context. An extensive glossary offers additional information, explaining terms related to modernismo, Hispanic history, mythological allusions, and artists and writers prominent at the turn of the last century.

Ruben Dario (1867-1916), the Nicaraguan poet and founder of the literary movement known as Modernismo - somewhat akin to French Symbolisme - died more than a century ago, but his influence on Spanish-language poetry remains immense. Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz, Cesar Vallejo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges, among many others, acknowledged their debt. Borges declared: 'Dario was an innovator in everything: subject matter, vocabulary, metre, the peculiar magic of certain words ... We can truly call him the Liberator.'Dario's influence on Hispanic poetry is enormous: he is the conduit into Spanish for the most forward-looking kind of French poetry of his time, his own major influences including Hugo and Verlaine, and his relentless exploration of new metrical possibilities opened up new options for what was an ossified tradition at the time he erupted onto the scene.