Paul Berman Reads Ruben Darío on the Jews

Apart from being the 400th anniversary of the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes, 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Rubén Darío, who was never a supreme god on the level of those other two, but was, even so, a god, fit to be mentioned in divine company—a god of modern literature, especially in the Hispanic world. In Nicaragua, where he was born, there has always been a custom of celebrating him by composing mini-essays on tiny themes, which decorate the newspapers—essays on Darío’s mastery of classical meter in a dozen forms, or his innovative 13-syllable alexandrines, or his handiness at dactylic feet, or his debt to the Spanish poets of the Centuries of Gold. In this spirit, I hope the readers will permit me to engage in a homage, suitable for Tablet magazine and New York, where the great poet stayed for short stretches, by dilating on a still tinier theme, which is the Jews.

The theme is not entirely a happy one. In New York during his last months, in declining health, Darío composed a poem called “El Gran Cosmpolis,” which begins:

Continue reading "Paul Berman Reads Ruben Darío on the Jews" at...