Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (72 page)

Tannenberg, Boris de:
(1864-1913) Of Russian and German descent, Tannenberg was a French-speaking literary critic and student of Spanish literature, the author of such works as
L
’
Espagne litteraire
and
Poésie castillane contemporaire.

Tartarin:
A famous comic character created by ALPHONSE DAUDET (1840-1897); the hero of three novels, Tartarin, infected by his reading of Fenimore Cooper’s exciting novels, is an amusing braggart who loves telling fantastic tales of his own escapades, such as hunting lions in Africa.

Tempe:
Lemprière’s
dictionary tells us that this is “a valley in Thessaly, between Mount Olympus at the north and Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the Aegean. The poets have described it as the most delightful spot on the earth, with continually cool shades and verdant walks, which the warbling of birds rendered more pleasant and romantic, and which the gods often honoured with their presence. . . . All valleys that are pleasant, either for their situation or the mildness of their climate, are called
Tempe
by the poets.”

Teoyoamiqui:
The goddess Teoyoamiqui’s office was to gather in the souls of those killed in battle, which went to the mansion of the sun in heaven, where they were transformed after a time into hummingbirds.

Teresa, St.:
(Avila, Spain; 1515-1582) Catholic mystic and founder of the “discalced” (barefoot) Carmelite order, to return the Carmelites to their original purity. Author of numerous treatises, among the most famous the
Life, The Interior Castle,
and
The Way of Perfection.

Termini:
Lemprière comes to our aid with this explanation: Terminus was “a divinity of Rome who presided over bounds and limits, and to punish all unlawful usurpation of land. His worship was first introduced at Rome by NUMA. . . . His temple was on the Tarpeian rock, and he was represented with a human head but without feet or arms, to intimate that he never moved, wherever he was placed.” Thus, several of these armless busts of the deity Terminus were placed about the garden, and owls perched on them.

Thanatos:
The personification of nonviolent death and the twin brother of Hypnos (Sleep). He was depicted as a winged god.

Todi, Jacopone da:
(Todi, Umbria, Italy; 1230?-1306) Born Jacopo Benedetti to a noble family, Jacopone was at the end of his life a “fool for Christ” and one of the most important of the medieval Italian religious poets and composers. After studying law, probably at Bologna, Jacopo married Vanna di Guidone. After just a year of marriage, Vanna was killed when a balcony she was standing on collapsed at a celebration. When Jacopo discovered that his wife, in a constant act of penitence characteristic of the Middle Ages, was wearing a hair shirt, probably in penance for his, Jacopo’s, sins (among which was no doubt avarice in the pursuit of the law), he was beside himself with grief. He left the law, entered the Franciscan order as a tertiary brother (St. Francis was orginally from Umbria), and for the next ten years lived a life of self-imposed poverty and penitence. The children of the town called him “Jacopone”—stupid Jacopo—and the name stuck. After the decade of penitence, Jacopone entered the Franciscan order as a monk and began to write the Umbrian-dialect
laudi
and the Latin hymns such as the
Stabat Mater
for which he became increasingly famous. By the end of his life, some called him the “second David.”

Tolstoy, Count Lev Nikolayevich:
(1828-1910) Russian novelist, experimental farmer, and social theorist.

Triptolemus:
Mythological prince of Eleusis, who taught men to plant grain and is said to have invented the plow. He was one of a trinity with Demeter, goddess of the earth, and her daughter Persephone, who was abducted and raped by Hades, the god of the Underworld. Triptolemus was always represented in the winged chariot Demeter gave him, holding sheaves of wheat.

Tutecotzimí:
A legendary indigenous leader in the Nahuatl-speaking world.

Utrillo, Miguel:
(Barcelona; 1862-1934) Art critic,
modernista
painter, and writer, adoptive father of famed painter Maurice Utrillo (b. Maurice Valladon). Member of the Quatre Gats group of writers, artists, and assorted bohemians in Barcelona.

Valdés Leal, Juan de:
(1622-1690) Spanish baroque painter who, though like MURILLO a religious painter, had a penchant for the grotesque and macabre. His paintings are marked by a sort of feverishness, with dramatic lighting, excited movement, and brilliant color.

Valera [y Alcalá Galiano], Juan:
(Spain; 1824-1905) A much-read novelist and important critic in late-nineteenth-century Spain, Valera was enormously cultivated, and his criticism and reviews carried great weight. His novel
Pepita Jiménez
(1874) is perhaps the most-read book in Spain in the nineteenth century. He was one of the earliest critics to praise Dario’s groundbreaking
Azure
. . . , and in a way “made” Darío’s career, or at least caused Darío to be taken seriously from early on.

Van der Meulen, Adam Frans:
(Brussels/Paris; 1632-1690) A Flemish painter of the Baroque whose work was often used to design tapestries. Court artist for Louis XV, who hired him to produce Göbelins, he specialized in military subjects, although he also painted hunts, still lifes, landscapes, etc.

Velázquez, Diego:
(Spain; 1599-1660) A naturalist painter, Velázquez began by painting the common people but became court painter to Philip IV, for whom he painted his most celebrated masterwork,
Las meninas.
Velázquez is unquestionably one of the greatest Spanish painters of all time.

Verhaeren, Émile:
(Belgium; 1855-1916) A poet of energy and vitality, Verhaeren is dreamy MAETERLINCK’s opposite. He was influenced by the French Symbolists and became an important exponent of free verse. Before World War I he had faith in the possibility of universal brotherhood and human progress, which may have attracted Darío to his work.

Verlaine, Paul:
(1844-1894) French Symbolist poet and professional decadent who suffered from rheumatism, cirrhosis, gastritis, jaundice, diabetes, and cardiac hypertrophy. His life was dominated by the duality of absinthe, or the “green fairy” as he called it, and the Catholic Church. He abandoned his wife for Arthur Rimbaud, but Rimbaud left him after Verlaine fired a shot at him but missed. (Verlaine’s strength was metrics, not accuracy.) Darío met Verlaine in a Parisian café shortly before the older poet’s death in 1894, when Verlaine was almost penniless and living in relative obscurity, as his life had spiraled into debauchery and sordidness after his imprisonment for the attempt on Rimbaud’s life.

Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Comte Auguste de:
(France; 1838-1889) An aristocrat by birth, Villiers went to Paris to live the life of a bohemian. He produced plays in an unabashedly Romantic style; his stories are fantastic and macabre, and he is generally considered a precursor and then part of the French Symbolist, or DECADENT, movement.

Villon, François:
(France; 1431-?) The finest poet of the Late Middle Ages, Villon was a “vagabond king”-poet. He was in and out of prison for most of his life (without much cause in most cases, it is believed, except for his killing of a priest in a brawl when he was a student), but he produced poetry that was admired for its virtuosity, especially the
ballades
and
rondeaux,
which have been translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, Bertold Brecht, and others. When a death sentence was commuted to ten years’ banishment from France, Villon disappeared and nothing further was ever known of him. He has become quite the romantic (anti-) hero, with plays, operettas, and movies made of his rowdy, bohemian life.

Vincencio Belovacense:
Author of the
Espejo Historial
(
Mirror of
History
), which recounts the tale of the Bishop of Jaén meeting a devil on the road.

Watteau, Jean Antoine:
(1684-1721) French rococo artist whose paintings depict his interest in theater and ballet. His masterpiece, now at the Louvre, is titled
The Embarkation for Cythera,
and shows lovers in party dress leaving France to seek love on the island of Cythera, under the statue of its goddess, Venus. Another oil painting, exactly the same size as
Embarkation,
now in Berlin, is either called
Return from Cythera
or
Pilgrimage to Cythera,
and shows the same group of lovers in considerable disarray, accompanied by a cavorting column of cupids.

Worth, Charles Frederick:
(1825-1895) French/British fashion designer, founder of the House of Worth in Paris and London, which was the arbiter of women’s fashions for over a century. Worth himself first designed silks and then became court dressmaker to Empress Eugénie of France and Empress Elizabeth of Austria. He is credited with the invention of the tailored woman’s suit, for which Darío cannot forgive him.

Wyzewa, Theodor de:
(b. Russia to Polish parents, d. Paris; 1862-1917) An important figure in journalism and musicology in late-nineteenth-century Paris, founder of the
Wagner Review,
frequent contributor to the
Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Temps, Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, and the
Mercure de France,
Wyzewa was also famed for his translation of the medieval book of saints’ lives,
La légende dorée.

Zeboim:
(zi-bO’im) One of the cities destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah. Deuteronomy 29:23.

Zurbarán, Francisco de:
(Spain; 1598-1664) One of the great Spanish painters of religious and devotional art. The
Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists
notes that “the bleak austere piety of his early pictures of saints, painted for the more severe religious orders, made him the ideal painter of simple doctrinal altar-pieces, expressed in clear, sober colour, with figures of massive solidity and solemnity. . . . His ability to portray rather arid scenes from saintly lives, with a perfect union of the mystical and the realistic [gave way, after he moved to Madrid, to] a stronger feeling for Baroque magnificence. He still retained his hold on pure realism, but the splendour of his colour and the clarity and solidity of the masses . . . show how well he absorbed lessons learnt from Italian art.”

Index of Titles and First Lines

A great flock of crows is staining the sky

A través de las páginas fatales de la historia

A un poeta
(fragmento)

¿Abeja, qué sabes tú?

About Autumn

About Winter

¡Adiós primavera en flor!

Al cavar en el suelo de la ciudad antigua

Alma mía, perdura en tu idea divina

Ama tu ritmo y ritma tus acciones

Antonio Machado

Apareció mi alma como de la corola

Aquí, junto al mar latino

Auguries

Autumn Poem (fragment)

Autumn Song in Spring

Ay, triste del que un ía en su esfinge interior

Azure

Bale, The

Bien vengas, mágica Águila de alas enormes y fuertes

Birth of Cabbage, The

Black Dominga (fragment)

Black Solomon, The

“Black Spain,”

Blank Page, The

Blood flowing from Abel. Trumpet calls in battle

Bloody

Böklin: “The Isle of the Dead,”

Bourgeois King, The

Budapest

Buey que en mi niñez echando vaho un ía

Cálamo, deja aquícorrer tu negra fuente

Calamus, here, from your sharp tip, let your dark fountain flow

Canto a la Argentina
(fragmento)

Casas de cincuenta pisos

Case of Mademoiselle Amélie, The

Clepsydra, The: The Extraction of the Idea

Colloquy of the Centaurs (fragment)

Coloquio de los centauros
(fragmento)

Colors of My Standard, The

Commerce, the great cities’ forces

Como al fletar mi barca con destino a Citeres

¿Conocéis a la negra Dominga?

Consider the subtle sign that the wind’s fingers

Córdoba

Cuando iba yo a montar ese caballo rudo

Dawn. It was here in the great still villa that

Death of the Empress of China, The

Deaf Satyr, The

¡Desgraciado Almirante! Tu pobre América

Destined to Die

Dichoso el árbol que es apenas sensitivo

Digging in the topsoil of the ancient city

Diplomatic Mission, A

“
Divina Psiquis, dulce mariposa invisible
,”

¡Divina Psiquis, dulce mariposa invisible!

Divine Psyche, Sweet Invisible Butterfly!

Divine Psyche, sweet invisible butterfly!

Ear of Wheat, The

Earthquake

¡Eheu!

El cisne en la sombra parece de nieve

El corazón del cielo late

El hambre medioeval va por

El mar como un vasto cristal azogado