Poetry
Ismaelillo
José Martí · 1882
Opening lines
Para un príncipe enano
Se hace esta fiesta.
Tiene guedejas rubias,
Blandas guedejas;
For a dwarf prince
This feast is held.
He has blond locks,
Soft locks;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from es.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Fifteen poems that José Martí addresses to his son José Francisco, born in 1878, from whom he lives apart. A prologue states his faith in man and in virtue; the poems speak of a father's tenderness, his wish to embrace the child, the memory of the days spent together and the little boy's dreams, whose presence prevails over absence. The title is the name Martí would have liked to give his son.
Context
The collection, written in Caracas according to Cubarte, was printed in New York in 1882 by Thompson and Moreau. Martí sold no copies and gave it to his friends. It is his first book of verse, which Tyler Fisher's English translation presents as a key work of Latin American modernism, and which the 2007 edition gives as the first complete English translation. A facsimile appeared in Havana in 1976, introduced by Ángel Augier.
Who it is for
Short poems, easy to approach, written for a child; an English translation exists, none in French for the collection on its own.
Prizes and reception
According to the 2007 English edition, it is one of the works that open modernism in Spanish-language poetry.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.