Songs of Life and Hope/Cantos de vida y esperanza

Renowned for its depth of feeling and musicality, the poetry of Rubn Daro (18671916) has been revered by writers including Federico Garca Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. A leading figure in the movement known as modernismo, Daro created the modern Spanish lyric and permanently altered the course of Spanish poetry. Yet while his output has inspired a great deal of critical analysis and a scattering of translations, there has been, until now, no complete English translation of any of his books of poetry. This bilingual edition of Daros 1905 masterpiece, Cantos de vida y esperanza, fills a crucial gap in Hispanic and world literature studies. Will Derusha and Alberto Acereda have provided not only an elegant English translation of Daros work but also an authoritative version of the original Spanish text. Written over the course of seven years and in many locales in Latin America and Europe, the poems in Cantos de vida y esperanza reflect both Daros anguished sense of modern life and his ecstatic visions of transcendence, freedom, and the transformative power of art. They reveal Daros familiarity with Spanish, French, and English literature and the wide range of his concernsexistential, religious, erotic, and socio-political. Derusha and Aceredas translation renders Daros themes with meticulous clarity and captures the structural and acoustic dimensions of the poets language in all its rhythmic sonority. Their introduction places this singular poetarguably the greatest to emerge from Latin America in modern literatureand his best and most widely known work in historical and literary context. An extensive glossary offers additional information, explaining terms related to modernismo, Hispanic history, mythological allusions, and artists and writers prominent at the turn of the last century.