Voice 1
Hello. I’m Rachel Hobson.
Voice 2
And I’m Ruby Jones. Welcome to Spotlight. This programme uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1
Whom do you respect? Whom do you admire? Some people love famous sports players. Other people like singers and actors. And some people admire royalty. But is there someone that your whole country loves? Does your country have a hero?
Voice 2
In the country of Nicaragua, poets are the heroes. In today’s Spotlight we tell the story of two Nicaraguan poets - Ruben Dario and Alfonso Cortes. We tell how their poems have influenced Spanish poetry. And we tell how their words continue to encourage the people of Nicaragua today.
Voice 1
Nicaragua is called the ‘pais-poeta’ - the country of poets. In Nicaragua people use poems to express their feelings about many different subjects. These poems are often about social wrongs. Or they may condemn political ideas. They are also about love, nature and different theories. Some of the poems are very funny. Everyone, from workers to top officials, has a deep love for poetry.
Voice 2
Many people write their own poems. Newspapers publish these poems from the public. And newspapers also publish poems by famous poets every week. People read the poems with great care. They study them, and think about them. They trust the poets. In fact, in Nicaragua the word ‘poet’ has come to mean ‘friend’ or ‘brother.’
Voice 1
In schools teachers develop this love of poetry in children. They often divide children into teams to read and learn poems. The first poems they study are usually by Ruben Dario. The children often learn the words from his poem ‘Sonatina’
: ‘The princess is sad. Her mouth has lost its laughter, lost its colour.’
Voice 2
Ruben Dario was born in 1867. As a child he lived with his grandfather in Leon. Leon is an important city in Nicaragua. It has produced many of Nicaragua’s great poets.
Voice 1
Dario was an extremely intelligent child. He started writing at an early age. Newspapers published his first poems when he was around thirteen [13] years old. So people called him ‘El Nino Poeta’ - the child poet.
Voice 2
When Dario was twenty-one [21], he put together a very important collection of his poems. He called this book of poems ‘Azul’ - ‘Blue’. At the time, his poems were very different from any other poems in the Spanish language. He moved away from the traditional writing methods of the past. He used new modern methods. His writing began the modernist movement in Spanish poetry. Dario’s work changed the way other poets wrote, especially in Latin America.
Voice 1
Dario became very famous. And he lived an exciting life. He travelled to many different countries in Latin America and Europe. He had interesting jobs. He wrote for newspapers. He worked as an ambassador for his country. And he wrote books. But, poetry remained his first love.
Voice 2
Dario encouraged poets to get involved in public service. He believed that community was very important. And he was extremely proud of his culture. Dario wrote several poems that talked about this. They talked about his pride in his Latino roots.
Voice 1
But not everything went well for Dario. After the death of his wife, he experienced depression. He drank too much alcohol. And he lived a troubled life. In the last year of his life, he returned to his hometown of Leon. Nicaragua celebrated his return. Everyone was happy to see him. But Dario was sick. And he knew that he was near death. During this time, he wrote the poem ‘Eheu’:
Voice 3
‘I stopped and cried out, As if in the middle of a desert, And I thought the sun was dead, And I burst into tears.’
Voice 1
Soon afterwards he died. The year was 1916.
Voice 2
Eleven years later, another poet was ready to follow Dario. He was also from Leon. And, he moved into the very same house that Ruben Dario grew up in. This man was Alfonso Cortes.
Voice 1
Cortes was greatly influenced by Spanish modernist poetry. He experimented with language as Dario had. He was particularly interested in the subjects of time and space. And he questioned the church, religion and the world around him. He wrote about self-knowledge and the nature of existence, God and reality. These are metaphysical ideas. And many people consider Cortes to be the only true metaphysical poet in the Spanish language.
In his poem ‘The Song of Space’ he says:
Voice 4
‘Time, where are we, you and I, since I live in you and you do not exist?’
Voice 2
But Cortes had a mental condition called schizophrenia. He suffered terrible periods of being very sick. There is even a story that tells how his mental sickness started. It says that he was in his bedroom - the same bedroom that Ruben Dario used years before. He could not sleep. He was troubled. And late at night he went insane.
Voice 1
Sometimes Cortes was calm and could think clearly. Other times he became violent and angry. During these times, he was chained to his bedroom window - he was attached there with metal chains. The chains kept Cortes from hurting himself. But they also kept him from moving around freely. He spent much of the year attached to the window. Finally Cortes went to a hospital for insane people.
Voice 2
In hospital Cortes was mostly sick. But sometimes he improved. And during those times he played songs on a guitar. He translated the poems of famous poets. And he wrote his own poems. Often he wrote his poems on the sides of newspapers. And his writing was so small that the words were difficult to read.
Voice 1
Cortes had two important friends. They were both famous poets. And they saved his poems, including the ones on the sides of newspapers. One of his friends, Ernesto Cardenal, published a book of Cortes’ poems. He described the poem ‘The Detail’ as the most beautiful poem in the Spanish language. One line says,
Voice 4
‘A mark of blue has more intensity than all the sky.’
Voice 2
Sadly, Cortes was in hospital for twenty-five [25] years. He died in 1969. He did not achieve the same level of fame as Ruben Dario. But his work is widely respected.
Voice 1
Dario and Cortes lived very different lives. One travelled the world and met many important people. The other was very sick for much of his life. But both men greatly changed Spanish poetry. Both men are heroes in their country. And they will be remembered by generations to come.
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