Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (73 page)

The
Cuentos
edited by José María Martínez (Madrid: Cátedra, 1997) gives this, “Thanatophobia,” as the title of a story known in other collections as “Thanatopia.” Martínez provides the following information, which has led me to adopt the title as it appears here: [This story] “appeared for the first time in
La Tribuna,
in Buenos Aires, in November of 1897, specifically on November 2, the day the Church calls All Souls Day, which in part explains the tone and content of this tale. We have preferred the title of that first publication to that proposed by Mejía Sánchez (“Thanatopia”). . . .” I, too, believe the title as given here more befits the story.

The “aerial form” or “astral image.”

The envelope or “containant” of the human soul.

Isis instructs Lucius, who has been turned into an ass, how to return to human form: In the procession to welcome the Spring, Lucius is to pretend to kiss the hand of the great priest, who will be holding a bunch of roses, but at the last minute he is to snatch away the roses. And having done this, Ceres/Isis/ Diana/Aphrodite tells Lucius: “Know thou this of certaine, that the residue of thy life untill the houre of death shall be bound and subject to me!” Darío believed that this was the most desirable state a man could live in: First, in a state of daring and bravery and then, subjection to the goddess that brings forth all poetry.

“Behold, a world pacified by your protective strength, / where sea-green [
caeruleus
: dark blue] Nereus circles the wide earth” (Ovid,
Heroides,
IX: 15-16).

A “town of Belgic Gaul, on the confluence of the rivers Sequana and Matrona, which received its name, as some suppose, from the quantity of clay,
lutum,
which is in its neighbourhood. J. Caesar fortified and embellished it, from which circumstance some authors call it
Julii Civitas.
Julian the Apostate resided there some time. It is now called
Paris,
the capital of France” (Lemprière’s
Classical Dictionary
).