Short stories
Horas lejanas
Not translated into English
Darío Herrera · 1903
Synopsis
Short tales in ornate prose, which dwell on settings and souls more than on action. In “La Zamacueca”, in Valparaíso, a stranger ousts a dancer's partner during the Chilean dance; “Un beso” brings together two unhappy lovers aboard a ship, off the coast of Peru; in “La nueva Leda”, a consumptive adolescent watches two swans at dusk, one white, the other black; “Meditación” follows an artist who cannot bend his beloved to his way of feeling; other pages evoke a crossing of the Guayas, in Ecuador.
Context
The volume appeared in Buenos Aires in the first months of 1903, under the full title Horas lejanas y otros cuentos, when its author was writing for La Nación. The stories bear the mark of Rubén Darío and the Parnassians: concern for the rare word and for form, a taste for European or distant settings. The Panamanian academic Gloria Luz Mosquera de Martínez sees in them “cuentos de tempo lento”. His poems, which he was preparing under the title Lejanías, did not appear until 1971, in Lima, through the efforts of his son.
Who it is for
Slow stories, in Spanish, more attentive to settings and states of mind than to action; a selection of them appeared in Panama in 2007.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first story collection published by a Panamanian; the Academia Panameña de la Lengua presented it in 2024 together with his collected writings.
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