Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (74 page)

“The uncomprehending.”

“And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (I John 5:8).

Andalucía.

The
seguidilla
is a dance characteristic of southern Spain.

These are the names of types of poems in older Spanish literature.

A type of Spanish song.

Now Cycnus is a swan, / and yet he fears to trust the skies and Jove, / for he remembers fires, unjustly sent, / and therefore shuns the heat that he abhors, / and haunts the spacious lakes and pools and streams / that quench the fires. (Ovid,
Metamorphoses,
II: 379-380, trans. Brookes More, 1922).

Into a swan.

Into an owl.

Salvador DÍAZ MIRÓN (
q.v.
).

i.e., Domingo Bolívar.

“Upwards!” or “Onwards!”

Never published with that volume; published in 1895 in the
Revue Illustrée du Río de la Plata.

In “The Raven” (1845).

Darío is referring to the 1848 “To Helen,” not the more famous poem of the same title written in 1831.

Job 15:16.

“As the eyes of bats are to the light of the sun, so is the intelligence of our soul to the things most manifest by nature” (Aquinas,
Summa contra gentiles,
bk. 1, chap. 3, quoting Aristotle,
Metaphysics,
bk. 2, part 1).

Here, in the Spanish, Darío uses the word “spirit” instead of “mind,” perhaps because of a faulty translation by “Sr. Mayer.” Poe’s words in “Mesmeric Revelation” are as quoted above.

In “The Power of Words,” 1850.

In “The Colloquy of Monos and Una,” 1850.

In “The Conversation of . . . ,” 1850.

ST. BENEDICT LABRE (
q.v.
).

“Come along, then!”

Animula, vagula, blandula
is the correct sequence of this famous three-word phrase; Darío seems to have had a
lapsus menti.
It is the first line of a poem attributed to Hadrian (A.D. 76-138) on his deathbed:
Animula, vagula, blandula / Hospes, comesque, corporis, / Quae nunc abibis in loca, / Pallidula, rigid, nudula?,
translated as “Sorry-lived, blithe little, fluttering sprite, / Comrade and guest in this body of clay, / Whither, ah! Whither, departing in flight, / Rigid, half-naked, pale minion, away?” Thus, Darío understands these words to refer, wryly, to the soul.

Failed monarch, formidable poet.

Oh! Do you remember, delicious woods / that pretty girl who gracefully
passed by / smiling innocently at the sky, at the future, / wandering with me
through these green allées? / Well, among the flowers of your shady valleys, /
you will never see her come again.

A series of “literary exhumations” performed by Théophile Gautier; his subjects included François Villon, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Jean CHAPELAIN (
q.v.
). In a sense, this work is comparable to Darío’s own
Los Raros,
though Darío’s portraits of these “misfits,” “rare birds,” decadents, the misunderstood and despised, are of his contemporaries.

You will have to take the trouble to come another time, then, monsieur le comte, the duke said, getting up; his majesty is occupied and has asked me to receive you (Heussey).

On couches filled with odors faint and failing, / Divans profound as tombs, we shall recline (“La Mort des Amantes” / “The Death of Lovers,” trans. Clark Ashton Smith [
www.eldritchdark.com/wri/poetry/death_of_lovers.html
, as of June 12, 2004]).

Her real name was Marguerite Eymery (1860-1953).

A novel (1817) by French political theorist and writer Benjamin Constant (1767-1830);
Adolphe
is considered to be the first psychological novel.

A novel (1835) by Théophile GAUTIER (
q.v.
); the title character “dresses as a man and calls herself Théodore in order to move freely in male social spheres, combines delicate features with a masculine attire and seduces both the male narrator, Albert, and his mistress, Rosette. Albert confesses his love for the consummately androgynous, and therefore irresistible, Théodore: ‘What I feel for this young man is truly incredible; never has a woman troubled me in this way.’ At the same time, Rosette manages to lure Theodore into her bed, and the discovery she makes there does nothing to cool her passions” (
Blithe House Quarterly:
www.glbtq.com/literature/french_lit2_19c.html
).

A novel (1886) by Paul Bourget (1852-1935), French literary critic (
Essais de psychologie contemporaine
[1883], in which the time’s most important authors, including Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Stendhal are discussed) and “master of the psychological novel.”

A scandalous novel by the Marquis DE SADE (
q.v.
).

A novel of cynicism and sexual passion; its English title is
Child of Pleasure.

i.e., that humans were once “one,” or unitary, and that they were divided by Zeus as punishment; ever after, they have sought their missing half; we were once, then “androgynes,” men-women.

Drives or herders of wolves; i.e., those who drive wolf packs.

Actually, it was Isidore Lucien Ducasse. He was French, but born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1846.

Job 10:1-3.

Runoja
is the Finnish word for “poems” (sing,
runo
); Darío is simply noting that Leconte de Lisle has become interested in Finnish poetry.

The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen,
vol. 2,
The Vikings at Helgeland,
trans. Wm. Archer, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906, Act. 4, pp. 108-109.

Poet.

Ibid.
The Pretenders,
Act 4, pp. 258-261.

A name sometimes given to Homer.

The parliament.

When I die, without homeland / but without master, I want there to be / upon my grave a spray of flowers / and upon my gravestone, a flag!

“The foolish mania of his name.”

A woman who improvises verses and dances for a living.

Darío has omitted an item in the Futurist Manifesto: “factories hung on clouds by the ribbons of their smoke.”

One big second-hand store.

Write like PÉLADAN (
q.v.
); that is, hermetically, mystically, platonically.

Cuddling.

Whom can I imitate in order to be original?

Swindler.

“Good folk, most illustrious bibbers, most precious tasters . . .”

These words are actually from Psalm 46.

Paste gem, rhinestone.

Upstart, social climber.

Legend has it that the twins Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were suckled by a she-wolf. Thus, Darío is referring to the “Latin” race, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxons, and by extension, citizens of the United States.

Grand guignol
: a dramatic entertainment (a
“guignol”
is a puppet-show; the Grand Guignol was a theater in Paris) in which short horrific or sensational pieces are presented for the entertainment of a sometimes jaded audience.
Enfants sauvages
: wild children, children raised in a state of nature, prior to or removed from civilization.

Cuba is called the “Pearl of the Caribbean.”

Referring to the Italian novelist and playwright Alessandro Manzoni (
q.v.
).

The surname of Jupiter in Rome.

“Trumpet blast,” or clarion call.

Street vendors.

I’ve had it up to
here
with automobile!

A pun: has dined.

Bovarisme
is yearning after the impossible; the state of being impossibly romantic and unrealistic, of being constantly unsatisfied with one’s lot (after
Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert).

“Oh, how quotidian life is!”

Joan of Arc was not sainted until 1920; thus, Darío is addressing her on the day of her official canonization.

May 30.

“Vieux Paris” was, as historian Arthur Chandler puts it (
charon.sfsu.edu
/ publications / PARISEXPOSITIONS / 1900EXPO.html), a sort of “medieval village theme park erected by the city of Paris” for the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Historical records and descriptions portray it substantially as Darío does here.

Passersby, strollers.

A Spanish type of mandolin.

A black-haired, black-eyed Spanish woman, often something of a coquette, of the type painted famously by Francisco de GOYA.

“Full-figured,” as the phrase is today.

Salt; a spark of piquant wit, mixed with physical grace.

Quip, witticism.

“And you will surely know that in warm countries, young people arrive at the age of puberty earlier than in our cold European climates; the South American republics have for their motto ‘Puberty, Equality, Fraternity!’ ”

Stone-throwing mortars.

Merchants who prepare and sell food to the soldiers.

Posters.

Strident.

The symbol of Mono is a charming, sometimes mischevous monkey.

This is the first line of a poem by Théophile Gautier, “Inès de las Sierras,” about a flamenco-dancing ghost in a haunted castle, the “apparition of the Spain of times past.” This poem is, in turn, based on a fantastical novel by Charles Nodier.

Gautier.

The lances, with ribbons tied to their ends, that are stuck into the bull’s neck.

Traveling salesman.

Retreat.

Characters in operas set in Seville.

A “Rusiñol” is the Spanish word for “nightingale.”

That is, small columns on the side of the road, marking a distance of one thousand paces by the Roman army, the Roman “mile” (one can see the etymology of the word in
mille,
one thousand); the equivalent of mile-markers on modern highways.

See the essay “The 1001 Nights,” in this volume, for a full appreciation by Darío of J. C. MARDRUS.

A shepherd in Virgil’s Eclogues.

St. Paul’s “outside the walls,” a basilica built over the supposed burial place of the apostle Paul, was constructed over the centuries by popes and cardinals, but its greatest flowering occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The church was added to down through the years, and its decorations increased. Then, on the night of July 15, 1823, the basilica was struck by a fire which burned it almost to the ground. Thus, Darío is going to visit the “new” basilica, as he will note later, which was not fully completed until 1931, but parts of which were completed by 1900, when he visited it.

Ruling family of Italy; the king at this time was Umberto II de Savoie, Umberto I having died in July of 1900.

“Thou art Peter [
Petrus
], and upon this rock [
petram
] I shall build my church.”

Nereids.

“When winds had stilled the sea”; from Virgil’s Second Eclogue, “Alexis.” The lines in this part of the poem speak of the glassy, mirrorlike surface of the sea giving back the image of a lover.

Virgil, whose tomb is believed to be here.

A translucent quartz spangled throughout with scales of mica or other mineral.

Joking, or irony/sarcasm.

“Épater les bourgeois”
(“shock the bourgeoisie”) was a motto of the “art for art’s sake” or Decadent movement. These artists, however, are “newcomers,” in the sense of those who have not “paid their dues” and are riding the wave of the success of those who have truly innovated.

Human or legendary figures holding up a part of an architectural or artistic element (e.g., an Atlas or a turtle or dragon); “bearers.”