Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (63 page)

 

Achilles:
The petulance of Achilles, ancient Greece’s greatest warrior, came close to costing the Greek invaders a victory in their war against Troy. But when his friend and lover Patroclus was killed by Hector, the resultant blood lust of Achilles was sufficient to ensure the downfall of Troy. Of more interest to readers of Darío, perhaps, is the fact that Achilles’ sea-goddess mother, Thetis, was a shape-shifter. Her mortal husband Peleus conquered her, according to legend, by holding on to her while she was taking on different forms—everything from animals to fire.

Actaeon:
In Greek mythology, a hunter who came one day upon Diana, the virgin goddess, as she was bathing in a pool. To punish Actaeon for seeing her naked, Diana changed him into a stag, and he was torn to pieces by his own dogs.

Aeschylus:
“First and greatest of the three Athenian writers of tragedy, was born at Eleusis 525 B.C. ... Of the ninety tragedies which he is said to have produced, only seven have come down to us . . . ; in probable order of composition they are
Suppliant Women, Seven against Thebes, Persians, Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon,
Libation Bearers, Furies
” (
Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary
). Legend has it that Aeschylus was killed when an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a turtle on it to break the turtle’s shell.

Aesculapius:
God of medicine and healing (from the Greek
Asklepios
), Aesculapius entered Rome as a snake during a pestilence; hence, the snake twining around a staff became his (and Medicine’s) symbol. He was physician to the Argonauts, we are told by Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary.

Alas [y Ureña], Leopoldo [Enrique García] “Clarín”:
(Zamora, Spain; 1852-1901) Novelist and literary critic, probably the best-known and most influential critic in Spanish letters of the late nineteenth century. He adopted the
nom de plume
Clarín for his reviews and other, often barbed, commentaries in newspapers and literary magazines. Clarín was relentlessly logical, incisive, and antimystical, and was a kind of astringent to the sometimes syrupy writing and literary appreciations of his time.

Albertus Magnus:
Albert the Great (c. 1206-1280) of Cologne, a famous Dominican scholastic philosopher, called
doctor universalis
; popular tradition paints Albertus as a great alchemist. He was said to have control over the weather: He threw a garden party for a visiting prince in the middle of the winter. Albertus is also reputed to have constructed a curious automaton, which he invested with the powers of speech and thought. The Android, as it was called, was composed of metals and unknown substances chosen according to the stars and endowed with spiritual qualities by magical formulae and invocations; the labor on it consumed over thirty years. Thomas Aquinas was one of Albertus’ Paris students, and he reportedly received all of Albertus’ alchemical secrets (including the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone, which supposedly changed base metals into gold), but he killed Albertus’ Android after the master’s death, saying that it was a creature of the devil.

Alexander:
(356-323 B.C.) Warrior-king of Macedonia who conquered much of the ancient world and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt that eventually produced the last Pharaoh, Cleopatra.

Alomar [y Vilalonga], Gabriel:
(Palma de Mallorca; 1873-1940) Alomar was a Futurist poet who wrote in Catalán; he was also a politician, political theorist, and diplomat. He wrote several books of poetry, including
El futurisme
(1904).

Alphonse:
(1221-1284) Alphonse X, “the Wise,” a medieval Spanish king who wrote poetry and music, fostered Christian, Muslim, and Jewish coexistence, and founded the School of Translators in Toledo.

Althotas:
This mysterious figure was the mentor and guide to a notorious eighteenth-century “alchemist”/sorcerer and con-man named Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (probably born in Palermo, Italy, as Giuseppe Balsamo). Cagliostro, who claimed not to know who his parents were or how they had died (etc.), told that he had spent his childhood in Arabia, where he was raised under the name Acherat or Acharat; he was attended by four persons, one of whom was the mysterious Althotas. This Althotas led the young “count” on long journeys, initiating him in the occult sciences, and bringing him at last to Europe, where he could practice his arts. In associating Chevreul the chemist with Althotas, Darío is probably alluding to Chevreul’s advanced age and the “fact” that in 1774 Althotas claimed to be a hundred years old.

Amathusia:
Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary
gives the following information on this fabled place: “Amathus, now
Limisso,
a city on the southern side of the island of Cyprus, particularly dedicated to Venus. The island is sometimes called AMATHUSIA, a name not infrequently applied to the goddess of the place.” Thus, it is a place from which beautiful women, even goddesses, come.

Anacreon:
A Greek lyrical poet (born c. 570 B.C.), whose name is used for certain types of odes, either because of their meter or their subject matter, which was generally love and wine. Lemprière gives the following customarily charming information: “He was of a lascivious and intemperate disposition, much given to drinking, and deeply enamoured of a youth called BATHYLLUS. His odes are still extant, and the uncommon sweetness and elegance of his poetry have been the admiration of every age and country. He lived to his 85th year, and, after every excess of pleasure and debauchery, choked himself with a grape stone and expired.”

Andrade, Olegario:
(Brazil; 1839-1882) Poet, journalist, and diplomat, Andrade was born in Brazil but lived almost all his life in Argentina, early in Entre Ríos province and later in Buenos Aires. He began writing as a boy, and he had a distinguished career as a journalist. He had several fallings-out with the governments of Argentina, but was “rehabilitated” under the Autonomist Party and served as a diplomat in Paraguay and Brazil. His
Atlántida: A Hymn to the Future of the Latin Race in the Americas
earned him great recognition at the end of his life, although his poetry had been acclaimed since the mid-1870s.

Andri, Ferdinand:
(Austria; 1871-1956) Painter, graphic artist, and sculptor who studied at the Vienna Academy and was a member (president from 1905 to 1906) of the “VIENNA SECESSION.” He revived fresco painting.

Antony:
(83-30 B.C.) In 37 B.C. Marcus Antonius, Roman Imperator and soldier, settled in Alexandria as Cleopatra’s lover. He gave himself up to pleasure, and after his fleet met defeat at the hands of an invading Roman navy off Actium, committed suicide, under the false impression that Cleopatra was already dead.

Apollo:
Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis. He was the god of music, prophecy, religious healing, poetry, and light. A legend exists that he was Hector’s father, and that he guided the arrow that killed Achilles. He was the destroyer of rats and locusts, and held sacred the wolf, dolphin, and swan.

Apuleius:
A Numidian (Africa) Latin poet (125-?), he is most famed for his picaresque novel
The Golden Ass,
in which the hero, turned into an ass, is returned to human shape by Isis. The novel contains an interpolated story of Cupid and Psyche, which is also quite famous and often quoted.

Aranjuez:
Castilian town, at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama Rivers. In its Garden of the Island, built for Spanish royalty, are fountains dedicated to Bacchus, Apollo, Neptune, and Cybele.

Arenal, Concepción:
(Spain; 1820-1893) One of the most outstanding public women of the nineteenth century in Spain, a pioneer of feminism, organizer of the Red Cross in Spain, and a prolific writer for newspapers and other periodicals, as well as a minor novelist, poet, and playwright.

Aristophanes:
(ca. 450-ca. 385 B.C.) A great Greek comic playwright, famed for his satires of public officials and leaders. Eleven of his plays, the only remnants of the so-called Old Comedy, have come down to modern times; they are marked by ribald (“though never prurient,” says one authority) language and situations. Lemprière says the following: “Aristophanes is the greatest comic dramatist in world literature; by his side Molière seems dull and Shakespeare clownish”; not all critics would agree with this assessment.

Ascasubi, Hilario:
(Argentina; 1807-1875) A journalist and
Gauchesco
poet, known for semi-documentary narrations of gaucho life and long narrative poems such as
Santos Vega,
which tells the story of two twins, one good and one criminal, in the Argentine pampas.

Atahualpa:
(1502-1533) Last king of the Incas.

Atlántida:
(
See
ANDRADE, OLEGARIO.)

Bacchus:
Son of Zeus and Semele. After being struck with madness by the jealous goddess Hera, he wandered the earth until Rhea cured him, and was thereafter dedicated to the cultivation of grape vines. He is the subject of a famous painting by VELÁSQUEZ.

Banville, Théodore:
(France; 1823-1891) A French poet associated with the PARNASSIANS, Banville was a staunch opponent of the “new realism” in poetry and the novel, and also of the tearful side of Romanticism, although he himself was a late-Romantic. His taste for Greece preceded LÉCONTE DE LISLE, and his work had considerable influence on such poets as MALLARMÉ, VERLAINE, Catulle MENDÈS, François COPPÉE, and Alphonse DAUDET. He espoused the aesthetic of
l’art pour l’art,
art for art’s sake.

Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules Amédée:
(France; 1808-1889) Writer and critic. Barbey was an aristocrat and monarchist who supported himself by journalism. He admired Balzac and Baudelaire and was a harsh critic of naturalism. His best-remembered book is
Les Diaboliques
(1874), consisting of hallucinatory tales with a satanic motif, and thus Barbey could be considered one of the “decadent” writers of the time.

Barrabas:
According to the New Testament, the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate was sure that if the Jews of Galilee were given the choice between the release of the infamous thief and murderer Barrabas or of the religious heretic Jesus, they would choose Jesus.

Barrès, Maurice:
(France; 1862-1923) Nationalist politician and exponent of a theory of radical individualism or “egoïsme,” Barrès was perhaps most famous for the trilogy
Le culte de moi
(
The Cult of Myself
), in which he divided the world into the
moi
and the Barbarians. He harbored a deep hatred for Germany, which led him to adopt a xenophobic French nationalism and to become a follower of the notorious General BOULANGER, although his volume of travels in Spain,
Du sang, de la volupté, de la mort,
is remarkable for its perceptiveness and affection for Spain. His style is convoluted and often obscure.

Bartolomé Esteban:
(
See
MURILLO.)

Bathyllus:
Lemprière tells us that Bathyllus was “a beautiful youth of Samos, greatly beloved by Polycrates the tyrant, and by ANACREON.”

Batres Montúfar, José:
(San Salvador; 1809-1844) A Guatemalan poet in the classical vein.

Behety, Matías:
Argentine literary historian and scholar, author of
Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana.

Bellerophon:
A prince and accomplished archer who managed to tame the winged horse Pegasus. After he had accidentally killed a man, he had to redeem himself by performing heroic tasks, such as killing the lion-goat-snake monster Chimaera. When he decided to ride Pegasus to Mount Olympus, he was thrown from the horse and crippled, and spent the rest of his life wandering the earth.

Bello, Andrés:
(Venezuela; 1781-1865) Venezuelan philosopher, grammarian, and poet. Bello spent two different periods in Europe, where he became imbued with the liberating waves of humanism in the early nineteenth century. From 1829 to 1865 he was in charge of reforming the educational system of Chile, and he founded the University of Santiago there. He introduced the ideas of Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Berkeley to Latin America, but perhaps his greatest contribution was philological: the
Grammar of the Castilian
Language
(1847), which, with some additions, is still used today. In a debate with Sarmiento, Bello defended neoclassicism against Romanticism, although he himself translated Byron and Hugo. The long poem
Silvas a la agricultura de la zona tórrida
(1826) celebrated nature in a Virgilian manner.

Benedict Labre, St.:
(1748-1783) A mendicant priest. The
Penguin Dictionary of Saints
indicates that “between 1766 and 1770 [Benedict] made several attempts to join one or other religious order, but was rejected as too young, too delicate, or of insufficiently stable disposition. He then went on pilgrimage to Rome, on foot and begging his way.” He wandered about Europe for several years, but beginning in 1774 he remained in Rome, sleeping outdoors and wearing rags until he was forced by ill health to seek a shelter for the poor. He is more like the Eastern wandering holy man than the usual Western saint, but the people of Rome had no doubt of his saintliness, and he was finally canonized in 1881.

Berthelot, Pierre Eugène Marcelin:
(France; 1827-1907) Berthelot was a distinguished French chemist, one of the founders of modern organic chemistry. He was one of the first to produce organic compounds synthetically (including the carbon compounds methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol, benzene, and acetylene), thereby playing a major role in dispelling the old theory of a vital force inherent in organic compounds. He also did valuable work in thermochemistry and in explosives. He wrote a text on the history of alchemy.

Blavatsky, Madame (Helena Petrovna):
(1831-1891) A Russian-born spiritualist medium, magician, and occultist who founded the Theosophical Society; famed for her book
Isis Unveiled,
which was influential around the world, with such writers as W. B. Yeats devoted followers.