Rediscovering Rubén Darío through Translation

Carlos F. Grisby discovers a new way of reading Rubén Darío. Darío’s poetry emerges at the crossroads of multiple languages and transnational cultural traditions, and Grigsby argues that Darío’s poetry itself is a translation, that is, a work on languages, on the articulation of languages, and an experimentation with differences. Darío’s writing has been extensively studied with a focus on the cultural archives with which he was in dialogue. This book proposes that his poetry is a way of using other literatures to forge one’s own, not only as cultural archive but also as a linguistic one. By this way of reading, the author presents a Darío in conversation with the languages of his contemporaries and with the classics, a Darío who still lives in those dialogues and whose work regains relevance in the framework of translations. * Graciela Montaldo, Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, USA * Grigsby’s superb book offers a master class on poetic analysis and translation. He rigorously unveils Darío’s radical ingenuity and creative engagement with multiple languages, often obscured in its critical reception by misconceived ideas of imitation, and shows how mistranslations of Darío’s poetry into English have contributed to rendering him almost invisible in Anglo-American literary circles. A trailblazing contribution to Darío, modernism, and translation studies. * Alejandro Mejías-López, Associate Professor of Spanish, Indiana University, USA *