Viaje y traducción en el fin de siglo latinoamericano: Rubén Darío y su rara navegación de biblioteca

Abstract

This research approaches the link between travel and translation with the purpose of describing the operations of reading and appropriation that Rubén Darío establishes in Los raros (1896) and that are later projected to other sections of his travel writing. The hypothesis that will be analyzed holds that Darío’s library navigation disrupts the paradigm of the “gentleman writer”, one of the hegemonic models for travel and translation at the fin de siècle. By placing emphasis on the correlative figures of the “importer” and the “lettered translator” –representations implied on discussions about national identities- recent criticism has minimized the visibility of an emerging translator at the fin de siècle, who is disputing his own legitimacy within that normative horizon. Through the analysis of the prologue that General Mitre wrote to his translation of the Divine Comedy (“Teoría del traductor”, 1899), Darío’s reception of that version in “Una nueva traducción del Dante” (1895) and the sketches in Los raros, alternatives are presented to overcome that resistance.