presented bilingually
by Alvaro Cardona-Hine
Spring Has Come
Spanish Lyrical Poetry
from the Songbooks
of the Renaissance
120 pages
6 x 8 inches
ISBN: 1-888809-20-5
$12.00
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One could not have
found a better title for this collection than Antonio Machados
poem
La primavera ha venido, Spring has come,
nadie sabe como ha side nobody knows how
it happened
because, as with the season itself, and until very recently, nobody
knew how Spanish lyrical poetry had come into being. For a long time,
criticism had assumed that Spanish poetry was preponderantly epic. The
little flowers in the Songbooks of the Renaissance were a puzzle as
to how in the 15th and 16th centuries they came about in such perfect
form. Poets such as Gil Vicente and Lope de Vega were much inspired
though the tradition behind the songs was not known.
The majority of the poems translated here appeared in cancioneros between
1511 and 1605. They are the written versions of troubadour and common
expression. They are what people were singing! Chants, lullabies, minstrel
choruses, and the oral tradition passed from mouth to mind. These songs
and others would later inspire the lyrical experiments of more contemporary
poets such as Antonio Machado, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Federico García
Lorca, and others. This bilingual edition includes poems that often
seem simple but resonate with depth and an intense feeling for existence,
love and death. Cardona-Hine has brought together a collection that
one can read over and over in either Spanish or English and have the
words brighten the tongue.
These short Spanish
lyrics from the Renaissance, and earlier, sparkle with vitality, mystery,
and charm. They are reminiscent of later Spanish folk songs and some
of Lorcas Canciones, to which they are obvious distant-ancestors.
Cardona-Hines introduction discusses their history astutely and
usefully. His translations are done with great respect for the originals,
but also with great imagination and flair.
Joseph
Somoza
Alvaro Cardona-Hine, writer, painter,
and composer, was born in Costa Rica in 1926 and came to the United
States when he was thirteen years old, His work has been published in
fourteen books of poetry, prose, and translation, and appeared in over
sixty literary and national journals and numerous anthologies. He has
been the recipient of a NEA grant, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and
a Minnesota Arts Board grant. He makes his living as a painter, selling
his work from his gallery/home in Truchas, New Mexico.
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