A tiny, tiny biography of Rubén Darío by Felipe Pereira Debayle
Félix Rubén Garcia Sarmiento, known as Rubén Darío was born in Metapa, Nicaragua and grew up in the city of Leon. As a consequence of his childhood years spent in Leon, Ruben considered himself a proud Leones and as a tribute to him, the district was renamed as Ciudad Darío . Metapa, his natal town, is a tiny district of the city of Matagalpa. Dario is considered one of the best Latin American poets of all time. His lasting influence over the Spanish Language so undeniable that he is known as the Prince of the Castilian Letters.
Although he grew up in Nicaragua, most of his adult life was spent abroad. Nevertheless, his love for his country remained unshakable throughout his entire life. This is clearly seen in one of his most popular quotes “Si la patria es pequeña, uno grande la sueña” roughly translated as “If the homeland is small, one dreams it large”. He also managed to retain many friends in Nicaragua despite the fact that he spent most of his adult life abroad. Amongst his most important friendships was his lifelong relationship with Dr. Louis H. Debayle. As a sweet token to their friendship, Dario dedicated the poem “A Margarita” to Debayle’s young daughter.
Most of his time abroad was spent in Europe and Latin America, where he was beloved by both the European intellectual community and the Latin American intellectual community. Specifically, he spends most of his years abroad in Spain, France, Chile, and Argentina. His love for those countries is evident in many of his writings. For example in his poem “A Roosevelt” he writes “Apenas brilla, alzándose, el argentino sol y la estrella chilena se levanta” using Argentina and Chile to represent Latin America’s beauty. After many years of living in Europe, he would return to his country fleeing the outburst of the First World War. However, before returning to his country he spent the winter of 1914 in New York. In that winter, he reads for the first time to an audience of American intellectuals and students at Columbia University his famous poem ”Latex”. In 1916, he died in the care of his lifelong friend Dr. Louis H Debayle.
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Dario in Translation.
Unfortunately, Dario’s popularity among the Spanish Speakers has not been adopted by the English world. In the Spanish-speaking world it is rare to find an intellectual who does not admire or love Dario’s work. However in the English speaking world, it is easy to find an intellectual who has never heard of him. According to many scholars, this is widely due to Dario’s work being difficult to translate. Many of his works simply have eluded good translations despite the efforts of many translators over the last century. Also, some of his work was initially criticized on political grounds by the U.S intellectual class. When you put these two facts together the result is that Dario’s work is nearly absent in the mind of the English-speaking world.
Felipe Pereira Debayle transfers to Amherst College from Valencia Community College in the fall semester of 2014. As a member of the Class of 2017 he is completing a Math major, and will be writing a thesis in mathematics under the supervision Professor David Cox. He aspires to become a mathematician and a writer. He discovered his passion for writing under the guidance of Professor Ilian Stavans and wrote his first work of fiction in Stavans’s course “100 Years of Solitude”. He emigrated from Managua, Nicaragua in 2012 and he was born in the city of Leon, and like Dario considers himself a proud Leones, who dreams his country large.