Customer Reviews

Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)

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The poems, prose, and letters in this new edition of Rubén Darío's selected writings are indispensable for readers of poetry with an interest in world culture. Darío is no mere literary figure--though he is certainly major in that category--; Darío is a font and fountain of literature and sensibility that bespeaks the New World, and with the bilingual presentation in this book, his poetry speaks our language as well--better than well, beautifully. For the key element in such a volume is, of course, the translation, and here you find three distinguished, widely recognized translators muscially gifting you with their and Darío's voices in ranges you can sing along with by scanning the lefthand-page Spanish. Old favorites--"The Swans," for example--renew themselves here and new discoveries abound.
If you read poetry, perhaps even more if you write poetry, "Rubén Darío: Selected Writings" demands your attention--now!

Ruben Dario was the first great Spanish symbolist poet and perhaps the greatest of all Latin American poets. It's good to see a substantial selection of his poetry in Spanish in accessible form. The English translations, however, are inept almost beyond belief. What the reader with some Spanish needs is a careful and competent trot, as in the wonderful "Penguin Book of Spanish Verse," where the translator gets every nuance.

What the reader gets is verse translations in which every consideration of meaning is subordinated to the need for rhyme. Moreover, the translators, in the interest of a spurious readability, make no attempt to suggest the orotund classicizing side of Dario's diction. I have the impression that many such poems, among Dario's best, have been suppressed as too difficult and/or unfashionable. Finally, the translators apparently wouldn't recognize a literary allusion or quotation in the original if it fell on them.

The Stavans introduction is just contemptible, as both biography and literary criticism. Stavans' prose style, as always, is just awful. Mr. Stavans, there is no such English word as "illusive"!

I've never written an Amazon review before, but then I've rarely approached a book with such high hopes and been so disappointed.

Along with Becquer, Ruben Dario is the wellspring of modern Spanish poetry. Poets who followed him-- from Juan Ramon Jimenez to Federico Garcia Lorca or Pablo Neruda-- recognized their debt to this Nicaraguan poet who (Lorca said) "taught maestros and children with a sense of universality and generosity lacking among today's poets. He taught Valle-Inclan and Juan Ramon and the Machado brothers, and his voice was water and saltpeter in the furrow of an ancient language.... Spanish had never known such a feast of words, such a clash of consanants, lights and forms [...] He captured the murmur of the jungle in a single adjective and like fray Luis de Leon, a master of language, he made stellar signals with the lemon and the hoof of a deer and with mollusks full of infinity and terror. He placed the sea - with frigates and shadows-- in the pupils of our eyes, and laid an enormous promenade of gin over the grayest afternoon the sky has ever known. He called the dark north wind by its first name-- all heart, like a Romantic poet--and laid his hand on the Corinthian capital with eternal sadness and ironic doubt." Dario's poetry is translated here by two American poets: Steven F. White, a leading authority on Nicaraguan literature, and Greg Simon, co-author of a memorable translation of "Poet in New York." Readers should be grateful for this selected Dario, which makes an ample selection of poetry and prose accessible to a new generation of English readers.

I ordered 2 copies of this book. Delivery was prompt but one of the copies is defective, missing like 10 pages of the introduction. I was of course disappointed.