Rafael Cansinos-Asséns


Rafael Cansinos Asséns was a Spanish poet, novelist, essayist, literary critic and translator.

Biography

Cansinos was born in Seville on 24 November 1882. Through his father's paternal line, he is related to the Cansino Family and Rita Hayworth.
Cansinos was a polyglot; he translated The Arabian Nights into Spanish, as well as the works of Dostoyevsky, and the complete works of Goethe for the publisher Aguilar. He was among the contributors of the Madrid-based avant-garde magazine Prometeo.
In the lectures he gave in 1967 at Harvard, Jorge Luis Borges mentioned him as one of his masters, and expressed wonder at the fact that he has been forgotten.

Works

Essays

  • El candelabro de los siete brazos Psalmos, 1914
  • El divino fracaso, 1918
  • España y los judíos españoles, 1920
  • Salomé en la literatura, 1920
  • Ética y estética de los sexos, 1921
  • Los valores eróticos en las religiones: El amor en el Cantar de los Cantares, 1930
  • La Copla Andaluza, 1936
  • Los judíos en Sefarad, 1950
  • Mahoma y el Korán, 1954

Compilations

  • Antología de poetas persas,
  • Bellezas del Talmud, 1919

Novels

  • La encantadora, 1916
  • El eterno milagro, 1918
  • La madona del carrusel, 1920
  • En la tierra florida, 1920
  • La huelga de los poetas, 1921
  • Las luminarias de Hanukah, 1924