Poetry
Castalia bárbara
Not translated into English
Ricardo Jaimes Freyre · 1899
Opening lines
Peregrina paloma imaginaria
Que enardeces los últimos amores;
Alma de luz, de música y de flores,
Peregrina paloma imaginaria.
Imaginary wandering dove
that kindles the last loves;
soul of light, of music and of flowers,
imaginary wandering dove.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Fourteen pieces, opened by a prefatory poem in italics, carry the forests and gods of the North into Spanish: Odin and his two ravens keeping watch over the hero's death, Lok the red-haired warrior and his battle hymn, Thor raising his hammer, the spirits of the woods, Valhalla. In one of them, the daughter of Nhor spurs her black horse, and under an old ash tree stands a silent god with open arms, whose coming frightens the old gods. Only one piece, devoted to the dawn, leaves this landscape.
Context
The collection appeared in Buenos Aires in 1899, from the printer Juan Schürer-Stoll, with a preface by Leopoldo Lugones, five years after the review its author had edited in the same city with Darío. After the Nordic cycle that gives it its title, the volume brings together two other groups, País de sueño and País de sombra. Scandinavian mythology was then new in Spanish-language poetry; Enrique Anderson Imbert saw in the book a laboratory of rhythms, and it is credited with having helped free verse enter the language. The poem of the silent god reads as the decline of paganism before Christianity.
Who it is for
One hundred and twenty-four pages in Spanish, with no French or English translation. Scandinavian deities named without being introduced, and a free verse that disconcerts anyone expecting rhyme.
Prizes and reception
The book that placed its author in the front rank of modernismo; Borges was still citing its opening poem in 1981 as an example of purely verbal poetry.
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