Memory in My Hands

The Currents in Comparative Romantic Languages and Literatures series was founded in 1987, and actively solicits book-length manuscripts which treat aspects of romance languages and literatures. Originally established for works dealing with two or more romance literatures, the series has broadened its horizons and now includes studies on themes within a single literature or between different literatures, civilizations, art, music, film and social movements, as well as comparative linguistics.

Pedro Salinas (1892-1951), one of the greatest modern poets of any country, is unquestionably the preeminent love poet of twentieth-century Spain. Memory in My Hands includes an ample selection of his three books of love poetry The Voice I Owe to You [La voz a ti debida], A Reason for Love [Razón de amor], and Long Lament [Largo lamento] in English translation alongside the Spanish original. This trilogy of love poems, the last (posthumous) of which has never been translated before, are of a nature to win a large and devoted audience: they are at once passionate, eloquent, and whimsical. The introduction to Memory in My Hands sets the poems in context, providing the story of the love affair that inspired the poems. It also raises the question of the nature of autobiographical poetry and considers this collection in the tradition of poetic sequences such as Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella.

Autorentext

The Translator: Ruth Katz Crispin earned her doctorate in comparative literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and currently teaches in the Humanities Department of the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. She is author of Song of the Self: The Poetry of Pedro Salinas and of numerous scholarly essays.