Selected Writings

Born in Nicaragua, Rubén Darío is known as the consummate leader of the Modernista movement, an esthetic trend that swept the Americas from Mexico to Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century. Seeking a language and a style that would distinguish the newly emergent nations from the old imperial power of Spain, Darío's writing offered a refreshingly new vision of the world-an artistic sensibility at once cosmopolitan and connected to the rhythms of nature. The first part of this collection presents Darío's most significant poems in a bilingual format and organized thematically in the way Darío himself envisioned them. The second part is devoted to Darío's prose, including short stories, fables, profiles, travel writing, reportage, opinion pieces, and letters. A sweeping biographical introduction by distinguished critic Ilan Stavans places Darío in historical and artistic context, not only in Latin America but in world literature. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Darío was born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento in 1867, near San Pedro de Metapa, about 90 kms from Managua, but moved as a child to the city of León, where he came early to writing, both poetry and journalism, before relocating at 14 to Managua, and then El Salvador, where he was to find sponsors and helpful influences. By 1886, he had moved on again, this time to Chile - at that point something of a magnet for intellectuals from the rest of Latin America because of its political stability - where he worked as a journalist, but suffered from class-based prejudice from the upper echelons of Chilean society. Nonetheless his first books were published there, including Azul (1888), which had an enormous impact, kickstarting modernismo, and making the poet's name. Thereafter he would continue to relocate frequently: Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, before the Nicaraguan government included him in a delegation to Spain, marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Subsequent journeys took him to France, where he served as Nicaraguan consul, to Brazil, and then back to Madrid where he served as Ambassador. Uncertainties about money and a chaotic love life bedevilled him throughout his life, and he died at 49 of cirrhosis of the liver.