Anthology of Julián del Casal

This Anthology of Julián del Casal (1863-1893) contains a careful selection of his articles. Casal was one of the initiators of modernism along with José Martí, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, José Asunción Silva and Rubén Darío. He made known his poetic work from 1886 to 1893 through the Havana magazines El Fígaro and La Habana Elegante , of wide circulation in America, poems that he later collected in books:

• Leaves in the Wind (1890),
• Snow (1892),
• and Bustos y rimas (1893).

Through his poetry he created a whole imaginary world of exquisite and passionate sensuality, powerfully influencing later poets.
In the words of José Martí:

“Throughout our America Julian del Casal was well known and loved, and the praise and sadness will be heard. And it is that in America it is already in bloom of the new people, who ask for weight to the prose and condition to the verse and want work and reality in politics and literature. The bloated tired, and the hollow and rudimentary politics, and that false freshness of the letters that recalls the winnowed dogs of the madman of Cervantes. It is like a family in America this literary generation, which began by the imitated rummaging, and is already in the loose and concise elegance, and in the artistic and sincere expression, brief and carved, of personal feeling and Creole and direct judgment. The verse, for these workers, has to go ringing and flying. The verse, the child of emotion, must be fine and deep, like a harp note. He is not to say the strange, but the rare moment of noble and graceful emotion. And that verse, with applause and affection from the Americans, is the one that Julian del Casal worked on.”

This Anthology of Julián del Casal includes a prologue by Ángel Augier and contains chronicles, articles and short essays by the modernist author.