ruben Dario:Little Nicaragua's Giant Poet

I the YEAR 1886 a young man whosefeatures revealed a sturdy mixture of

Indian and white, vaguely tinged withNegro, arrived in Chile in search of a jobas a reporter on La Epoca, Santiago's mostaristocratic and up-to-date newspaper ofthe time . This was 19-year-old rubenDario, hailing from Central America,where he had won fame as "the ChildPoet," and was already the author of somehalf a dozen volumes of verse and prose .La Epoca's sumptuous halls, built ofmarble in Greek style, decorated withpaintings by Watteau and Chardin, witha Venus of Milo, a Beauvais tapestry, andall the refinements afforded by wealth andgood taste, had become Santiago's favoriteintellectual center . Th'nkers, writers, andartists gathered there daily to discuss thelatest literary and artistic productions ofthe great European capitals . Conversationcentered around the Wagnerian opera, im-pressionism in art, the Russian novel, and,above all, the literary trends set forth bythe French poets of the Parnasse Contem-porain .

All of this had a tremendous effect onthe youthful poet, who in a short time de-voured a large number of books and pe-riodicals coming from France, and it wasnot long before the columns of La Epocabegan to carry his own novel creations inlatest Parisian style . A year later, 1888,these compositions were published in bookform under the symbolic title of Azul(Azure) .To appreciate the stylistic revolution

which this small volume was destined tobring about in Spanish literature, both inSpain and in Spanish America, we mustrecall that poetic creativeness and expres-sion in the Spanish-speaking world at thattime were characterized by exhaustion andlack of originality . romanticism had runits course, and yet the egocentric outburstand the lyrical shout continued to be heardin the form of worn-out cliches, like falseechoes of poets long since buried .

Against this background, Azul appearedupon the scene with a fresh literary out-look, injecting new vigor into poetic fan-tasy and literary expression, thanks in part

to the author's own creative genius and inpart to the novelty and the possibilities forfurther exploitation of the elements adaptedto Spanish from other languages and lit-eratures, particularly French and post-Ro-tnantic literary trends in France . Of thesetrends, undoubtedly the most influentialupon Azul was the Parnassian concept ofliterary art . It will be recalled that the Par-nassians, reacting against the excesses ofsubjectivism and sentimentality of the Ro-manticists, upheld the concept of art forart's sake, objectivity, and impassiveness .They emphasized the perfection of form,too often neglected by the late romanticists .To the Parnassians, poetic creation was es-sentially the same as that of painting andthe plastic arts . The poet, therefore, mustseek new sources of inspiration, outside ofhimself, in harmony with this concept ofpoetry which drowns the ego and bringsforth the artist .

In Azul, Dario's objective, like that ofthe Parnassians, was to express in prose andverse that which the painter expresses oncanvas and the sculptor in stone . Unlikethe Parnassians, however, he aimed notonly at the transposition of the arts but ata complete orchestration of them . As hepainted and chiseled his creations, thewords from his pen formed a magic blendof sound, color, and form until then un-known in the Spanish language . The bril-liancy of form went hand in hand withthe novelty of the subject matter . Althoughlife's biting reality creeps into these crea-tions through the back door, the dominantelement is poetic fantasy colored with aworship of Beauty for Beauty's sake, andwith love of nature, of ancient Greece andits mythology, of exoticism, and of theorient with its legends and pomp.Of the compositions in Azul, the Shake-

speare-inspired "Queen Mab's veil is oneof the most successful expressions of Da-rio's artistic ideal . The story itself blendsfantasy with realism woven around a bril-liant dialogue which depicts the dreams,the ambitions, and, alas, the inevitable dis-appointment of four gaunt, bearded out-casts : a painter, a musician, a sculptor, anda poet . This is a creation in prose which is

By ANTONIO M. DE LA TORRE

at once music, poetry, color, and form . It isart in terms of art itself . It reflects nothingbut the poet's ideal, his artistic sensibility,his consuming urge for the expression ofBeauty, and the clash of all of this withthe prosaic reality of life . Despite the bitterpessimism which pervades this story, a pes-simism which no doubt was inspired byDario's hardships and poverty in Chile, thepoet retrains true to the Parnassian idealof impersonality in a work of art .

EEXCEPT FOR a literary quarrel betweenthe staunch conservatives and the ad-

herents of modern aesthetic principles asexpressed in Azul, this book remained al-most totally unnoticed outside of the mostadvanced literary circles in Chile until oneof Spain's foremost critics of the time, JuanValera, devoted to it two consecutive ar-ticles in his literary column of F,1 Im-parcial of Madrid, in October of the sameyear, 1888 . Valera praised Azul so highlythat it soon became the most sought-afterof Spanish-American publications . Writingin the form of an open letter to Dario, thedistinguished Spanish critic stated, amongother things :

I must confess that . . . at first I looked at yourbook with indifference . . . The title was re-sponsible for this . . . I suspected that you werea little Victor Hugo . . . As soon as I read it Iformed a very different opinion of you . You areyourself, with a great wealth of originality, andof the rarest kind . The book is so impregnatedwith a cosmopolitan spirit that, were it not thatit is written in excellent Spanish, its author couldjust as well be French, Italian, Turk, or Greek. . . You have no national characteristics butyou do have individual character . . . Hugo,Lamartine, Mussel, Leconte de Lisle, Gautier,Bourget, Proudhon . Daudet, Zola, Barbey<1'Aurevilly, Catulle Mendcs . . . awl all the rest,poets and novelists, have been studied and wellunderstood by you . And yet you do not imitateany of them . . . You have combined them allinto a substance which has been brewed in thestill of your brain, and then you have extractedfrom it a quintessence . The result is that youare a Nicaraguan author so up to date in Parisianstyle, with so much chic and distinction, that youeven get ahead of the present trend to the extentthat you could modify it and impose it . . . IfI were asked what your book teaches, or withwhat it deals, I should answer without hesita-tion : it teaches, and deals with, nothing andeverything. It is the work of an artist . . .

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The stylistic revolution initiated in Azuldid not reach its full impetus until thepublication of Prosas Profanas, 1896, inwhich Dario launched a far-reaching pro-gram of renovation in the field of versifica-tion by revitalizing old, forgotten meters,by forging new ones of his own, and, aboveall, by creating with the words of theSpanish language such a wealth of be-witching harmonies is his illustrious prede-cessors had never suspected .

Eight years had passed since the appear-ance of Azul . In the meanwhile Dario hadread, written, dreamed, and lived much.He had been mellowed by life and grief .During a short trip to Spain as Nicaraguandelegate to the Columbus Centennial hehad been in intimate communion withgreat celebrities of the Spanish literaryworld . Prosas Profanas, therefore, is notonly the fruit of a more skillful artistrythan is found in Azul, but it is also imbuedwith a richer and deeper soul .As to Dario's artistic equipment at this

time, in addition to a more thorough ac-quaintance with mythology, world litera-ture, foreign languages, particularly French,and a mastery of his own such as fewhave ever attained, he now had at his com-mand new avenues of poetic expression re-vealed to him by the French Symbolistpoets .

Parnassian impersonality and emphasison the objective world, after the degen-eration of Romanticism, was indeed a mostlogical step in the evolution of poetic art ;it was a disciplinary treasure which wasmore sorely needed in Spanish Americathan elsewhere . But in Spanish America,as in France, it was only that ; a reactionagainst an existing evil, a step towardsomething else, itself being entirely toorigid and too narrow a formula to pro-vide for the full expression of the humansoul in poetic form . We shall recall that, nosooner had the French Parnassians laiddown the law than there issued from theirmidst a rebellious note, later identifiedwith Symbolism, bringing about a com-promise between the frigid impassivenessof the Parnassians and the strident, un-sophisticated subjectivism of the ego-centricRomanticists . This took the form of amuted, subtle, and vague, but penetratinglyrical note throbbing with sensitivity inthe depths of its mysterious connotations .To the Symbolist poets, as Mallarme him-self put it, "Poetry is a mystery in whichthe reader must search for the clue."

Dario's genius for assitrilating a greatmany influences, and then turning theminto a substance of his own, had been point-ed out by Juan Valera in connection withAzul, and it is even more in evidence inProsas Profanas. Indeed Dario had not be-

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come a Symbolist ; he had merely incorpo-rated some elements of Symbolism into hisart for the sake of a richer means of ex-pression, particularly in what pertains tothe veiled and subtle manifestations of thehuman spirit by means of a mere sugges-tion, in which the element of associationof ideas and the suggestive power of musi-cal effects play a vital role .There is hardly a composition in Prosas

Profanas which does not contain Parnassianas well as Symbolist elements . Side by sidewe find subtle images emerging from meresuggestion, and those which are chiseledout with Parnassian thoroughness . Themusical element, a characteristic of Dario'ssince his childhood poems, now acquires aspecific function and is blended, with su-perb virtuosity, into the leit motif, be it ofan objective or subjective nature . He coversa wide range of musical effects, from thetenderest to the most vigorous . Most char-acteristic of him, however, are his mellow,silken tones, suggesting violins, cellos, andHutes, with an occasional bolder note, intro-duced by way of contrast, at the opportunemoment . His resources for musical effectsare too varied to be discussed in the pres-ent article, but we shall make occasionalreference to some of them in connectionwith specific poems.

t 11 :

c:oNIPOSITION

entitled

"Blason"(Coat of Arms), is one of the most

representative of the collection, and indeedit embodies more fully than any other thepoetic personality of Dario at that time .The central figure throughout the compo-sition, as fright be expected in a poemwhich constitutes Ruben Dario's coat ofarms, is the swan. In the opening stan-za the poet-sculptor has sculptured outwith Parnassian nicety the figure of thiswinged aristocrat as it polishes its beakagainst its wing, open to the sun in themanner of a fan . In the second stanza the

neck of the swan is compared to the armof a lyre and the handle of a Grecian vase,this allusion to ancient Greece being onlya prelude to a series of mythological refer-ences in the following two stanzas . Thetechnique in the next stanza is out and outSymbolistic, thanks to which the poet isable to incite a large number of images inour minds : the romance of Cygnus andCastalia, the Danube with its swans, andLeonardo da Vinci's painting of Leda andJupiter . The last line summarizes allthe associations suggested in the stanza,with emphasis on music, and particularlyWagner's, by mentioning his opera Loh-engrin . The poet has condensed all of thisinto four swift, clear cut strokes of his pen,as we can see in a word for word transla-tion : "White king of the Castalian foun-tain, his victory glistens over the Danube ;Vinci was his Italian Lord ; Lohengrin ishis Nordic prince." The following twostanzas constitute a panegyric to the swanfor its whiteness, its rhythm, its regal bear-ing . And in their turn come the fleur-de-lis and Madame Pompadour, recallingeighteenth-century France and expressingthe poet's own love of royalty and regalpomp.

All of the above Dario sings to the lightand graceful rhythm of a minuet, withmost of the major accents falling on thelight Spanish vowels i and u (pronouncedee and oo, respectively) except for an oc-casional contrast with the heavier vowelsounds d, e, 6 . Toward the end of the poem,however, the mood changes abruptly as theelement of death is introduced by referringto Ludwig II of Bavaria in connectionwith his suicide in the Starnbergersee short-ly after the performance of the opera Loh-engrin on that lake . At this point in thepoem the musical effect acquires a sombertone beautifully expressed by the insistentrecurrence of thr vowed o throughout theStanza :

;about T Tl1F At authorProfessor Antonio Nf . de la Torre, born in Huan-

cayo, Peru, graduated from the University of Okla-homa in 1926 after having studied at Indiana, Purdue,and Iowa State; he received his Af . .A . in 1929. In 1926he began teaching as an Assistant in Romance Lan-guages; he was made professor in 1950 . His publica-tions include various articles on Spanish and SpanishAmerican literature, "Intimidades de Ruben Dario enProsas Profanas," Revista de Revistas, Mexico City,1934, being the first of a series devoted to the work andpersonality of the Nicaraguan poet, who has been themain object of his research for many years . This ap-preciative study will be published in two issues of TheQuarterly .

Boga y boga en cl ]ago sonoroDonde el suefio a los tristes espera,Donde aguarda una gondola de oroA la novia tie Luis de Bavicra.

Eighteenth century France, with the bril-liance, grace, and pomp which are associ-ated with the courts of Louis XI V and

Louis XV, had great appeal to Dario, whowas a lover of elegance and splendor . Inthe preface to Prosas Profanal he stated"In nay verses you will find princesses,kings, things imperial, visions of distantand fantastic lands . . . I detest the lifeand the time in which it was my lot to beborn ; and I can not greet a president of arepublic in the same language as I wouldoffer my song to thee, oh Halagabal ! whosecourt-gold, silk and ivory-I recall in mydreams . . ." He then goes on to say : "Mywhite bearded Spanish grandfather pointsto a gallery of illustrious portraits. 'This,'he tells me, 'is the great Miguel de Cer-vantes Saavedra . . . ; that one, Lope deVega; the other, Garcilaso . . .' I inquireabout the noble Graci5n, about Theresethe Saint, the gallant Gongora . . . Then Iexclaim : Shakespeare! Dantel Hugo! (Andto myself, Verlaine! . . .) As I take leaveI say : Grandfather, I have a confession tomake; my wife I have taken from myhomeland, but my mistress I have foundin Paris."T ttt: WORLD Of which Dario liked to

dream is portrayed in several of themost beautiful compositions in Prosas Pro-fanas. One of these is the opening poem,"Era Un Aire Suave," of which Dariohimself wrote years later : "In this compo-sition I followed Verlaine's precept of po-etic art : 'De la musique avant toute chose.'The setting, the characters, the tone, aredrawn from the environment of eighteenth-century France. 1 wrote as though listen-ing to the violins of the king's court." Andindeed the very first stanza transports usto the voluptuous ballroom where "FairyHarmony is riming her flights" in a gentlemelody of lingering cadences while fleetingwords and amorous sighs flow amongst thesobs of the violoncellos . The scene thenchanges to the garden terrace, where thequietness of the night is suddenly piercedby the gaiety of Marchionesse Eulalia'sgolden laughter . "With the soul of cham-pagne sparkling in her mischievous blueeyes," she is bestowing her flirtations si-multaneously upon her two rival suitors :the dashing viscount, famous for his duels,and the youthful bard whose madrigalssing of her beauty .Although Dario avoids description as

such, the splendor of the garden is re-vealed by glimpses of the statue of beardedTerminus laughing within his mask, of aDiana showing "the white nakedness of

her marmoreal beauty," of a Flying Mer-cury by Giovanni da Bologna, all of whichsurround the fountain where regal swans"impress their wakes like gondolas adrift ."The scene in the garden is so interwovenwith action in the ballroom as to producethe sensation of simultaneity . Within, wehear a fleeting gavotte ; in the garden thetantalizing marchionesse continues her al-luring laughter .The sculptor's chisel and the painter's

brush have not been laid aside in this poem .Such scenes as that which portrays thestately demoiselle in the ballroom, "hernymph-like fingers" holding out her skirt,and her dainty, nimble feet tripping to therhythm of a magic minuet, are carved inivory stanzas with classical purity of line .It is, however, through the polychromaticsensation of its musical effects that thispoem impresses itself upon our minds, ring-ing with such lines as are written with thenotes of the marchionesse Is exquisite,though cruel and eternal laughter .This poem suggests so much more than

it actually says, that the first critic whoattempted to analyze it, the distinguishedUruguayan Jose Enrique Rodo, soon foundhimself writing not about the actual textof the poem but about what it suggestedto him. He wrote in his concluding re-marks :

The flavor of this composition is entirely new toour language . . . its grace is that of Watteau, theprovocative and subtle, incisive and manneristicgrace of the eighteenth-century France whichthe Goncourt brothers . . . called 'the smile of theline, the soul of form, the spirited incarnationof style .' The originality of the versification har-monizes admirably with its delightful fantasy .The rhythm of the doxlecasyllable . . . never be-fore fell upon our ears in this unique manner .The poet has retempered it in his shop, mak-ing it flexible, melodious, and graceful . By free-ing it from the rigidity of the three fixed antiimmutable accents which held it in place likebuckles on its armour of steel, he has endowedit with an air of voluptuousness and tenderness .It is as though the buckle had turned into silkenbows, and the steel into ivory. Meters have theirdestiny!, we might exclaim . . . parodying theanonymous poet of antiquity. Indeed the ancientrhythm of the libro de las Querellas and of theDance of Death has bent its petrified warriorknees upon a cushion of roses of ele-gance.

The atmosphere of minuettish fantasywhich characterizes the poem and severalothers in this collection is, unfortunately,the phase of Dario's poetic art with whichhe is most commonly associated . Sobercriticism, however, has not been blindedby the brilliance of such compositions. In-deed the poems which have inspired thehighest praises are those poems which areimbued with spiritual vigor and depth.Rodo brought out in masterful fashion thepoetico-philosophical aspects of many ofthese poems, and left little unsaid aboutthe artistic phases of this collection . That

he failed to see the intimate revelations ofDario the man which are to be found inseveral of these poems, however, is wit-nessed by such statements as the following:"Dario's mind is pregnant with images, butall of them are taken from a world whichis zealously guarded by gods, where realityis not allowed to enter unless it has beenbathed in twenty purifying waters." Inview of the fact that nothing had beenpublished about the poet's life at the timeRod(') wrote his famous essay, the limita-tions of his interpretation are only to beexpected . Now the facts of Dario's life arewell known ; in addition to his autobiogra-phy, there are a number of books andarticles, written by close associates of his,revealing the man in his various moodsand at various periods of his life . Dario'sprose works, moreover, contain numerousreferences to individual poems, indicatingthe mood which inspired theta. Literarycriticism, however, though reaching im-pressive proportions in what pertains toDario the literary artist, has thus far shownlittle interest in the connection betweenthe man and the poet . The American criticIsaac Goldberg has complained about thisattitude in effective terms though from aslightly different point of view : "I believethat many Spaniards, on both sides of theAtlantic, have stressed Dario's technicalperfection and innovating significance atthe expense of his essential humanity . . .Without taking sides with Art for Art'ssake or Art for Heart's sake, it is easy tounderstand that beauty shorn of its humanaspect is only half as beautiful ."

A

t far As Prosas Profanas is concerned,the connection between the man and

the poet constitutes a virgin field the explo-rations into which I have found both fasci-nating and richly rewarding. The book isnot exclusively a temple of Venus . The"twenty purifying waters" of which Rodospeaks did not quite succeed in dissolvingthe essence of the realities of this world ;nor were the "zealous gods" guarding theenchanted palace enough to keep out theanxieties of life and death diffused withinthe soul of the poet . All of this is usuallyso subdued by the poetic creation as suchthat its reality is to be found only beneaththe crust. In a few compositions, however,the personal element becomes at once evi-dent . For instance, to understand the bio-graphical significance of "El Poeta Preguntapor Stella," a poem which throbs with ten-derness and love, all we need to know isthat Stella was the pen-name of Dario'sfirst wife, to whom he was married only ashort time, for she died when the poetwas on his way back from Spain in 1892 .There are several references to her in Da-

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rio's works, including one in his essay onPoe, where her memory comes to him as hementions Poe's Legeia . The poem appear-ing in Prosas Profanas ends by making thesame association, which seems to have beenfixed in his mind : "Have you seen per-chance the flight of my Stella's soul? Ohsister of Legeia, my Stella, for whom mysong can be so sad!"The element of love, purely ornamental

in the light and festive composition of Pro-sas Profanas, again acquires autobiographi-cal significance in a sonnet entitled "Bou-quet ." The entire composition is a sym-phony in white, in terms of wax candles,roses and lilies, stars, daisies, sea foam, anda swan. With all of these the poet formsa bouquet for his beloved, Blanca, a namewhich harmonizes with the whiteness of theother elements, and which may also be tak-en as the symbol of purity . Several lines inthis sonnet, though expressed in metaphor-ical language, leave little doubt that theBlanca of this poem is none other thanStella, and that the poem itself commemo-rates the anniversary of her death, then stillfresh in the mind of the poet . As the poet of-fers the bouquet to his beloved, he exclaims :"now that you are celebrating your snow-wedding anniversary, (your wedding as avirgin is now no more) . . ." In the laststanza the poet gives us additional clues,including an image alluding to his bleedingheart : "In sending you my verses I pluckfrom my very life the flower which I offeryou : Behold the stain left on your whitebosom by the reddest rose of my garden ."The note of tenderness which vibrates in

all of Dario's allusions to his Stella forms asharp contrast with the mood which in-spired a poem entitled "Marina," in whichthe poet purges himself of the venom withwhich another woman poisoned the rest ofhis life . This composition, extremely vagueat first, acquires significance in the lightof some specific details . When Dario wasstopping in Nicaragua in 1892, on his wayback from Spain to El Salvador to join hisfamily, the news reached him of his wife'sdeath . In order to drown his grief, thepoet resorted to alcohol, which by that timealready held a grip on him . His state ofunconsciousness lasted several days . So longdid it last in fact, that his childhood sweet-heart had enough time to arrange a nomeager surprise for the ungrateful poet .One night Dario was forced to come to, asbest he could ; there stood blue-eyed Rosarioaccompanied by a priest and her two broth-ers, pistol in hand . When the poet later re-gained full consciousness it was only tolearn that his childhood dreams had cometrue in spite of himself . Dario managed torid himself of Rosario in Panama, on hisway to Paris, shortly after this incident,but her dogged determination to establish

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a home with him constituted an ever-haunt-ing shadow on the path of the timid poetfor the rest of his life .To return to the poem "Marina," if we

bear in mind this experience, together witha remark which Dario makes in one of hisbooks : "'Marina' is a true and bitter pageof my life," we find that the intrinsic vague-ness of this typically Symbolistic poem fadesaway, its meaning becoming all the clearerif we reduce it to its bare outline : Thepoet is about to sail for the Island of Ci-teres in search of refuge from the sorrowsof this world; on the legendary island awaitthe temple of Venus and a realm of rosydreams . As he is bidding farewell to theland and the rocks which have been so un-friendly to him, he is startled by a cryfrom the shore ; then he sees that it is a longforgotten romance . The poet goes out tosea, but there remains on the beach thatdesolate vision "howling as a dog howlsat death ."

o MUCH FOR the love affairs of Dariolatent in the poems of Prosas Profanus .

Now let us look for the manifestations ofsome of his dominant psychological traits .Born and reared in an atmosphere heavywith superstition, and with the vivid imagi-nation of a precocious child stimulated bygruesome bed-time stories which he laterincorporated in his autobiography as beingan integral part of his childhood, the poetgrew up to be a victim of terrifying halluci-nations, which were no doubt aggravatedby his excessive use of alcohol . His dreadof the dark, even during maturity, wassuch that he required lighted candles byhis bedside while he slept . Even so, sleepoffered no escape to him; TranquilinoChacon, who lived with Dario in El Salva-dor, tells the story of his having to spendthe wee hours of the morning out in thepark taking care of the terrified poet, who,assailed by a nightmare, had rushed out ofbed in the middle of the night .Though Dario went through life haunted

by visions of the dead, it was death itselfthat he feared most . It is not unusual tofind in his writings such passages as "Ihardly ever go to funerals . I am possessedby the obsession of death ; since childhoodI have been imbued with the Catholic ter-ror."His preoccupation with the Great Be-

yond, as expressed in Prosas Profanas, pre-sents a problem of special interest . By vir-tue of the artistic recasting of his morbidthoughts, Death appears disguised in thegarb of Beauty . Thus in the poem "TheColloquy of the Centaurs" the mention ofdeath brings forth two flashes of horrorwhich are promptly followed by the ration-alization, and eventually even by the actualidealization, of what the poet calls "Life's

Black Sister ." As the centaurs are seated onthe shores of the Golden Island, philoso-phizing about the fair sex, Hipea exclaims :"The human female is the sister of Griefand Death-" This remark leads to the con-templation of death in the following dia-logue :

L'cidas : The secret terror of its fatalmystery is hidden in the depths of Death'sown empire .Arneo : Death is Life's own, inseparablesister .Quiron : Death is the victory of the hu-man race!Medon : Death! I have seen her. She isnot gaunt and wilted . Neither does shehold a sythe by her side, nor is her ex-pression one of anguish . She resemblesDiana, and like her, she is chaste andvirgin . Her face has the glow of a bridein waiting, and on her forehead shewears a garland of stars . In her left handshe holds fresh palms of triumph ; andin her right, a vase with water fromthe fountain of oblivion . At her feet lies,like a dog, a sleeping romance .One of the most interesting aspects of

Dario's attitude toward death is the paradoxwhich arises from the fact that his dreadof the great unknown was coupled with anirresistible attraction toward its appallingmystery . His explorations into the occultsciences began early in life . Several yearsbefore he wrote Prosas Profanas the occulthad already become to him a fascinatingtorture . Several of his friends have told ofamazing experiences with the poet, to whichhe himself makes brief references through-out his writings . It was not an uncommonsight, on coming to visit Dario, to find himlying under a table, surrounded by burningcandles, absorbed in his evocation of thespirits . On a certain occasion, Dario andJorge Castro made a pact that the spirit ofhim who should die first would come toreveal the secret of death to the other .Shortly after this, Castro left for Panamaas Consul of Costa Rica . One evening, whileDario was entertaining in his home, theimage of Jorge Castro suddenly appearedto him cast upon the wall . None of thepeople whom Dario mentions as witnessesof this strange incident admit having seenthe image, but those who have commentedon it agree that Dario claimed to have seenit and that it is a fact that the followingmorning a telegram from Panama an-nounced Castro's death . They also add thatDario suffered a nervous breakdown whichlasted several months, carrying him to theborders of insanity .

Despite such violent effects upon his ner-vous system, the poet was not able to res stthe attraction which the world of the spirit .i n the hereafter, held for him . This anxiety

Continurd page 29

lisher filled an abandoned canal with dis-carded books then covered them by the useof bulldozers . One great danger to anycheap-book movement has been avoided sofar, the ruining of the market by "dump-ing." Along with this liquidation, severalfirms cleared up their covers, reduced royal-ty payments, adopted a stricter editorial pol-icy, and in other ways tried to get theirhouses in order . The margin of profit tothe publisher of a paper-back is so smallthat the return of just one unsold book canwipe out the profit from the sale of a dozenothers . Incidentally, the author gets his lcroyalty on the basis of the number of copiesprinted rather than the number of copiessold .Another problem confronting the paper-

back publisher today is a shortage of titlessuitable for mass distribution . The backlogof titles has been almost exhausted, andenough new titles of the right kind for re-printing are not being published currently .Some 11,000 new books are published eachyear in the United States, but most of themare not suitable for mass sales . Wholeclasses of books such as technical works andtextbooks are not suitable, and many othersare too limited in appeal for general distri-bution. One solution to this problem hasbeen attempted by two paper-back firms,Gold Medal Books and Dell's Original Edi-tions . These companies have gone into thenew-book field and have published originalworks in paper covers at 25c . They appearto be reasonably successful in attractingmanuscripts and selling the books . Per-haps others will have to follow their ex-ample, or else public taste will change sothat more of the 11,000 titles published inhard covers will become suitable for masssales . An increase in price for some seriesalso has proved successful, especially fornon-fiction works and for other works notavailable except at high royalties . Theproblem of how to find enough good titlesis a knotty one that will not he easy to solve .What has been the effect of these drug-

store, newsstand, and other such sales ofpaper-bounds on the publication of regulareditions? The publishers have found thatthe 25c reprints have little if any effect onthe publication of regular editions . Theconclusion has been reached that thedrugstore reaches an entirely different cli-entele, which does not or would not buybooks elsewhere, and which prior to pocketbooks may have read only slightly . Thepaper-bound reaches even the reader of onlythe telephone directory, and probably hascreated vast new groups of readers .At this stage, I should point out that as

fantastic as the figure of 250,000,000 booksa year may seem, books are after all only a

small part of the mass media of informa-tion . About 90 to 95',' of the adult popula-tion sees-listens to TV or radio every day .About 85 to 900' of the adult populationreads one or more newspapers regularly .Some 45 to 500 /' used to see a motion pic-ture every two weeks or oftener, thoughthis percentage probably has changed late-ly. Finally only 25-300/ of the adult popula-tion reads one or more books a month . Thisincludes both books bought and books bor-rowed from libraries . Book sales have notkept pace with the increase in educationallevel that has taken place during the lastfifty years . In time the potential marketmay become much greater, but if so, cheapbooks readily available are essential .The establishment of Pocket Books back

in 1939 was welcomed with great joy bythe public and by leaders-ministers, edu-cators, librarians, and critics . Good booksat low prices were being brought to a wideaudience and it was wonderful . It still iswonderful, but the praise often is now over-shouted by the criticism . Some of this crit-icism undoubtedly arises from what someallege is the increasingly dangerous ten-dency in our country to compel conformityto a common pattern and to stifle freedomof thought and inquiry. But this criticismalso arises from an honest indignation, per-haps misguided and illogical, perhapsaroused more by the excesses of that shriek-ing salesman, the lurid bookcover, than bythe actual average pocket book itself .American democracy needs paper-bound

books . Books meet certain cultural andeducational needs of society not readilyserved by any other medium of communi-cation . Complex ideas and groups of factscan be dealt with extensively and thought-fully, at a pace suited to the reader . Booksprovide a voice for the different, with thethousands of titles which appear each yearproviding the means for expressing everypoint of view . Actually, some of the greatvirtues of books have risen from the factthat they have not been mass media . Thisvery fact has given rise to problems whichmay become even more pressing in the fu-ture . But in a democracy growing as com-plex as ours, we must have better knowl-edge than can be secured from brief newsreports and newspaper items . Books affordthis means of educating for better citizen-ship.

Paper-bounds have become an importanteducational and cultural medium, provid-ing relaxation and information for millionswho otherwise would never have read atall . While it is true that paper-bounds dohave their Mickey Spillane, they also havefound over 4,000,000 readers for diction-aries, 4,000,000 for copies of a book on baby

and child care, and over 1,000,000 copies ofperhaps 200 other titles . All of these saleswere to new readers .We must remember that the titles avail-

able in the paper-bound books are a reflec-tion of the state of public interest and taste .Pocket books do not debase or retard thecultural level of the people ; they only re-flect it . The publisher issues what will sell ;if he does not, he will not stay in businessvery long, for the mass-book business is akind of quick-profit and also quick-lossproposition . Of course, the publishers issuea lot of detectives and westerns, and also alot of fiction . But what harm is done bydetectives and westerns, and besides mostof the fiction is first-rate anyway? Weshould not criticize the other person forhis poor taste and prevent him from read-ing detectives and westerns, if he gets pleas-ure from them, any more than we shouldprevent all persons from playing golf whoare not skillful at it and do not beat parregularly . The level of reading ability andof taste varies widely in our country, butthe reader should not for this reason bedeprived of material suited to his interestand taste . If the public wants more non-fiction, it will buy more of it, and it will beonly a few months until more is on thedrugstore bookstand .

Rttbt'n Dat'toContinued from page 24

to snatch the great secret is clearly mani-fested in Prosas Profanas in the form of apersistent search for the answer to the mys-tery of the universe . There are times when,forgetting his Catholicism, he becomes en-raptured in the contemplation of naturewith a pantheistic mysticism . At such times,nature itself seems to hold the clue to ulti-mate truth . In his poem "La Espiga" heattempts to interpret the language of theuniverse through a sensual perception ofits beauty : "Behold the subtle signs madeby the wind . . . They trace upon the blueheavens the immortal mystery of divineearth and the soul of things, which offersits sacrament in an eternal matinal fresh-ness."

In the poem "Ama to ritmo" (Love ThyRhythm), the poet is eager to capture thevarious signs and sounds of nature in orderto arrange them as the symbols of a hiero-glyphic and then read the truth thereincontained : "Listen to the divine rhetoricof the eolian song, watch the geometricbrilliance of the nocturnal heavens, thenstring the pearls together, bead by bead,for there Truth pours forth its treasure."

In "The Colloquy of the Centaurs" he isovercome by the enigma of a double mys-

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tery ; he searches for the truth in the soulof things, but it fades away cloaked in theparadox of simultaneous unity and plural-ity . Thus speak the centaurs :

.9bantes : Glory be to sacred Nature, tothe entrails of the earth, and to the germwhich, within the rocks, within the woodof the trees, and within human fleshconstitutes a single secret and a singlenorm, potent and subtle ; a universal syn-thesis of supreme power and of the viri-tue of Intelligence .Quiron : Glory be! Things possess a vitalbeing ; things have rare and mysteriousaspects ; each thing is a gesture, a unit,an enigma of its own ; each atom con-tains an unknown stigma ; each leaf ofeach tree sings its own song ; and thereis a soul in each drop of the sea .The "Catholic terror," however, brings

him back to the realization that death aloneholds the clue to the eternal mystery . Thusspeaking to his own soul in "Alma mia,"the poet admonishes it "Do persist in thydivine ideal ; all things are governed by asupreme destiny ; pursue thy path-, followon to the final horizon upon the trail lead-ing to the Sphinx."

A\OTHER POEM in which Dario's pre-occupation with death enters the

realms of Prosas Profanas is "La PaginaBlanca," in which the poet brings out evenmore emphatically the idea that deathalone holds the answer to the great mysteryof life . The poem first introduces us to awhite panorama expanding over a desert ofsnow . Against this is silhouetted a caravanof visions and shadows later taking theform of living marble statues which, over-whelmed by ancient sorrows, are slowly es-corting across the desert of life the coffinwherein lies the corpse of Lady Hope . Atthe last there comes, riding on a drome-dary in triumphant mood, the InvincibleOne, Death, clad in her tunic of night ."And man, who is haunted by startlingvisions, and who sees in the stars of theheavens frightening portents and bewilder-ing signs, looks on the dromedary of thecaravan as the messenger bearing TheLight across the shadowy desert of life ."The somberness and majesty of the sub-

ject matter are most expressively broughtout in "La Pagina Blanca" by the heaviervowel sounds d, o, e, the open vowel d be-ing by far the dominant note throughoutthe poem . The treatment of the lighterSpanish vowels i (ee) and u (oo) is alsopeculiarly interesting . Though in the mi-nority, they bear from time to time someof the major rhythmic accents of the stanzaalong with the heavier vowels, all of themso arranged according to their relative de-gree of openness as to produce crescendo

and diminuendo effects which are ofunique beauty .

Dario was a devout Catholic, a greatdreamer, and alas! a great sinner, his trag-edy being that he did not find it possibleto give the flesh to the devil and the soulto the Lord . In later collections he sangpoems inspired by undisguised rapturesof remorse . In Prosas Profanas itself, how-ever, we can already find subtle but unmis-takable traces of the dilemma which hisreligion and his weakness for the flesh con-stituted for hire . In his poem "El ReinoInterior" (The Inner Kingdom), at the endof an allegory of the seven virtues and theseven vices, the poet asks his soul to whichit feels more attracted . His soul refuses tocommit itself, but soon it falls asleep andwhispers : "Oh sweet delights of the heav-ens! Oh rosy earth which my eyes havecaressed! Virgin Princesses, shroud mewith your veil! Crimson princes, clasp mein your arms!" Other times passion roars,free from fear, as in the "Colloquy of theCentaurs" : "Oh aroma of her sex! Flowersand alabaster!"now it seems in order to ask : Can there

be any connection between the poems inProsas Pro/anas whose very essence ismade up of the poet's sorrows and anxieties,and those minuettish fantasies, apparentlyfree from all worry, as though written inan ivory tower, which characterize most ofthe compositions in this collection? Per-haps we shall find a direct answer to ourquestion in Dario's own words : "Howoften have I sought refuge in an artificialparadise, possessed by the prophetic hor-ror of death!"

Chaucer . .Continued from page 20

must, however, reckon always with the factthat the opus was far from any finishedstate. Any solutions we supply must beconjectural, at best .

Nevertheless, even as a fragment, it isChaucer's most mature artistic utterance,and in Lowes' words, a "greater achieve-ment than any single tale," for over andabove a certain adherence to literary con-ventions, the depiction of the pilgrims hasthe ring of solid truth and the clarity of themost dispassionate observation . And yetthere is implicit the most profound sym-pathy for the plight of man caught betweenthe self-imposed penances and the profanepleasures that this life affords ; caught, inshort between the demands of his higherand lower natures . The Prologue to theCanterbury Tales surely is Chaucer's bestknown piece, surviving in more than eightymanuscripts . Its springtime setting, the de-

scription of the pilgrims, the plan the Hostsuggests to them for recounting stories onthe journey are familiar to every literateperson . Part of the air of reality is lent tothe Prologue from Chaucer's real presenceamong them ; if we may indulge our imagi-nation, he is like an artist-guide in a picturegallery who wishes to show us his portraits .They shock and provoke us with theirvividness ; we feel that they are living hu-rnan beings . They twitch and mutter ; weexamine their clothes, their distinguishingmarks ; we speculate with the artist abouttheir motives and professions . And whenhe has finished his little tour, and the liv-ing portraits wait patiently for their creatorto finish, he suddenly releases them into alarger framework, and himself with them,from which they cannot escape withoutpaying their dues in the form of a story .If we are not careful, we will conclude thatthey are, for certain, drawn from livingmodels, and only their stories are fiction ;this deceptively lifelike quality is no doubtwhat makes their creation the highest kindof poetic art . And since he includes him-self among their number, we are confusedmomentarily into welding together the realand the unreal into a new synthesis, intothinking they are all real people because hehas given one of them his own name.

Just how far we may go in defining thephilosophical unity of the Canterbury pil-grimage is difficult to decide, since the workis unfinished, and is indeed only a frag-ment . Yet the idea dies hard that Chaucerwas not a sufficiently careful craftsman tomake plans for working out the larger pat-terns of his finally assembled tales . I shouldlike, myself, to believe that Chaucer knewwith greater and greater clarity of purposethe end towards which the work was tend-ing, and that he did, steadily and with pur-pose, exert upon his heterogeneous materi-als, a unifying principle that goes beyondthe dramatic interplay of personalities . Byand large, the broader outline of the Can-terbury Tales is available to us, and we doknow certain obvious matters about its or-ganization : we know how Chaucer meantto begin, and we know how he meant toend . Although we may never fully fathomthe meaning of the great middle of hisTales, we can scrutinize the beginning andthe end and elicit a few clues as to the kindof order that Chaucer was in the process ofimposing upon the pilgrimage .We note, for example, that Chaucer

chose to put the Knight's Tale first . Thestory seems to my mind to perform a realfunction for the entire pilgrimage, on apurely fictional plane . That is to say, it isthe most patently philosophical tale of themall . It is relatively untouched by Christian

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