An Unknown Article by Rubén Darío: «Mallarmé. Notes for a Future Essay»

Abstract

Specialists in Rubén Darío and in the reception of Mallarmé in Spanish are familiar with his 1894 translation of «Les Fleurs», considered the earliest translation into Spanish of a poem by Mallarmé, and above all with the essay «Stéphane Mallarmé» which Darío published, following the French writer’s death, in the magazine El Mercurio de América (Buenos Aires, October 1898). There is, however, another article by Darío on Mallarmé which has until now remained completely forgotten. Its title is «Mallarmé. Notes for a Future Essay», it is also of a necrological nature, and it was published in another magazine of Buenos Aires, El Sol del Domingo, shortly before the article in El Mercurio. More than a century later, Alfonso García Morales reproduces the text, accompanying it with a presentation and a series of clarifying notes which show how Darío understood, admired and even used the literature of the Master of symbolism earlier and to a greater extent than has been hitherto acknowledged.