Inéditos sobre Rubén Darío (en Inglés)

[YeahMan]

Librarian discovers new work by Nicaraguan poet in stacks


By Sarah E. Henrickson
Harvard Crimson
Harvard U.


(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- With three million volumes and 65 miles of
shelf space, it's not surprising that books occasionally get lost at
Harvard's Widener Library.

Still, librarian David R. Whitesell hardly expected to find undiscovered
poetry by a world-renowned writer handwritten inside a book among the
library's collections.

Visiting the stacks on a cataloguing question in December 1997, Whitesell
ended up in the Latin American literature section. By chance, he picked up
an attractive red book. What he found would change the next few years of his
life.

Whitesell, a rare-book cataloguer for Houghton Library, opened the book and
found an inscription from the author to Ruben Dario.

Dario, who wrote around the turn of the 20th century, is considered one of
the foremost Spanish-language poets of all time.

"Two questions immediately came to mind," Whitesell said, "Where did Harvard
get this book, since it most likely [originally] belonged to Dario? And did
Harvard get any other books that Dario once owned?"

Given that Whitesell previously worked with a rare-books dealer, he knew
that libraries tend to buy books in batches, making the single book even
"more intriguing."

Once he flipped over the small red-bound book, Whitesell realized that its
back was inscribed with Dario's name, the year 1901 and a title.

"The handwriting on the back was different from the presentation
inscription, which was very curious," Whitesell said.

When he opened the back cover he found pages of manuscript poetry in the
same handwriting--it appeared that Dario had written new poems on the blank
pages of the slim volume.

"I was very intrigued and a bit skeptical," Whitesell said. "It didn't seem
to be that I could just open a book and find manuscript poetry from Ruben
Dario."

And so Whitesell replaced the book on the shelf and went home, "doing
something I immediately regretted."

After the proverbial "sleepless night," Whitesell returned in the morning
and compared the handwriting in the book to known samples of Dario's writing
and found them to be identical.

"I looked at Dario's collected poems and found that two had been previously
published," he says. "Here were the earliest known drafts with textual
differences, but the final two I couldn't find anywhere. They were
presumably unknown and unpublished."

To confirm his hunch that the University's holdings contained book's from
Dario's personal library, Whitesell hunted through Harvard College Library's
acquisition records and found correspondence between a book seller in Madrid
and the University in 1916, the year of Dario's death.

"Using Hollis, I found all the books on the dealer's list of 180 that were
bought by Harvard," Whitesell said. "It was a lot of detective work."

Whitesell then examined each book for signs that it once belonged to Dario,
growing increasingly confident that at least 43 of the 180 had once been
part of Dario's personal library.

According to Whitesell, there is a long tradition of Dario scholarship at
Harvard. One of the first major studies on his work and the first
bibliography on his works in the 1930s were both published at Harvard.

However, Whitesell noted ironically that even with the local interest in
Dario, the books in his library were never studied.

"No one paid attention to them," he said.

Most of the books had never even circulated. However, one volume on
versification--a Dario specialty--had been checked out by dozens of
students. An inscription in the book reads "To Ruben" and a section in the
book describes his poetry.

"Dozens of Harvard students have been studying from this book without
realizing that 'Ruben' was Ruben Dario," Whitesell says.

According to Whitesell, Dario traveled widely and often left many belongings
behind in each move. For scholars, an author's library represents a goldmine
of information on his literary influences.

Houghton Library is exhibiting some of Whitesell's finds, including the
volume with Dario's new poetry, through tomorrow. Whitesell intends to
publish an account of the incident in the quarterly Harvard Library
Bulletin.

[Aldo]

Amazing! My god, how I wish that I could run into one of his original copies!

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~Capricornio~