A Scholiast’s Quill

Book excerpt: Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959) was the embodiment of the Latin American poet, essayist, and literary theorist during the first half of the twentieth century. With an astonishing intellectual curiosity and capacity for work, he thought and wrote about every important topic and major intellectual current that defined his beleaguered times. This collection recovers Reyes’ legacy from the standpoint of the twenty-first century, with essays written exclusively for this book by scholars from Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, France, Mexico, and the United States. They analyze Reyes’ poetry and essays from contrasting theoretical approaches and innovative readings of his major poetic works; his philosophical correspondence with leading European and Mexican writers; modernism in the Anglo-American and Latin American essay tradition; and, among other topics of interest, the idea of America and cosmopolitanism in his essays. The volume includes a full-length introduction, an interview with Latin American poet and essayist Octavio Armand, and English translations of Armand’s poems. The study is of significant value to scholars, teachers, students, and the general reader interested in a seminal writer who shaped the writing of poetry and the essay in Latin American letters during the first half of the twentieth century.