Poetry
Tabaré
Not translated into English
Juan Zorrilla de San Martín · 1888
Synopsis
At the arrival of the first conquistadors, a Spanish woman, Magdalena, remains in the hands of the Charrúas; the cacique Caracé makes her his wife, and she bears him a fair-skinned, blue-eyed son, Tabaré, before dying in solitude. The war between Spaniards and Charrúas gradually destroys his father's people. Taken prisoner, Tabaré meets Blanca, in whom he believes he finds his mother again, and loves her, torn between hatred of his own people and this attachment.
Context
Written over nearly ten years, the poem was published in Paris in 1888; the National Academy of Letters dates the first edition to 1886. It has 4,736 lines divided into ten cantos, mostly in quatrains of eleven and seven syllables, in the manner of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. A French translation by Jean-Jacques Réthoré appeared in Montevideo as early as 1890, and an edition in Madrid in 1892. The poem makes the love of Tabaré and Blanca the metaphor of the fate of the Charrúas, the first inhabitants of the Banda Oriental. Some critics see in it the crowning of the myth of their disappearance, presented as inevitable, whereas the state had exterminated them in 1831 and 1832, notably at Salsipuedes.
Who it is for
A long narrative poem of nearly five thousand lines, in Spanish; an old French translation exists.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success in Uruguay, it is regarded as the country's national epic; its author appears on banknotes.
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