“These beautiful translations of Villaurrutia’s poems convey perfectly the mixture of fear, hope, guilt, sensuality and elegance that are so typical of Villaurrutia.” Manuel Duran Professor Emeritus, Yale University

“These poems may be counted among the greatest poems of our language and his era.” Octavio Paz

“He was a studious observer of the interior geography of man and, following Rilke’s prophecies, knew the rivers of solitude, the nerve structure of the muscular woods, the agony of the captive ocean, the hurricanes of desperation and the constant cellular collapse that, perishing and regenerating, slowly proceed to deplete life and fabricate its death.” Elias Nandino, Villaurrutia’s last editor and closest friend

Xavier Villaurrutia (1903—1950) was the most distinguished member of Mexico’s most celebrated literary group, the Contemporáneos.

He was not only a great poet, but a great playwright as well and the cofounder of two of the most significant theatrical companies of post-revolutionary Mexico—Ulises and Orientación.

Yet he has remained obscure. Perhaps it was his choice. He was not a man who clearly aligned himself with any great political movement, ideology or mania. Even love in his poems is severely repressed, vividly secretive and lugubriously depressed. A closet queen who escaped his closet, instead of bursting forth with the energy of a Whitman, he flits about the corridors of his dreams like a sinister black moth. In many of his poems, Villaurrutia seems in fact to have ruthlessly determined to eliminate all the wildly clamoring voices and colors of Mexico’s turbulent mid-century, to replace them instead with a palette of echoes and monochromes, reflections, shadows and dreams. His settings are stately houses with elegant period furniture, but everything is done up in slipcovers or draped with sheets. The owners are away, and the streets are empty. Everyone’s gone to the moon.

D.M. Stroud, the translator, is the author of three books of poetry, translations from Spanish and Japanese and numerous articles and essays. His translation of the Argentine poet Darío Canton’s Poamorio (1984) won a publication grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation. He has taught Spanish at the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University, British and American literature at Wen Hua University in Taipei, and was associate professor of English, Spanish and Latin American Studies at Temple University’s branch campus in Tokyo.

ElÍas Nandino (1900—1993), the author of the preface, was Villaurrutia’s closest friend and frequent editor. A doctor, he divided his time between his clinic and the literary magazines he edited. In later years, he was the director of the Taller Nandino in Guadalajara, from which many of Mexico’s most talented writers, such as Carlos Monsiváis and Jorge Esquinca, emerged.

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