Hispanic Anthology / hispanic society
ONE OF SEVERAL POSTS FOR HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH, SEPTEMBER 15-OCTOBER 15, 2020, ADDRESSING LATINX CULTURE IN 1920 NY
One hundred years ago today … The Hispanic Society of America, in association with publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons , advertised new books for sale, among them Hispanic Anthology.
New York Times, 26 September 1920, p. 58. Chronicling America.
The Hispanic Society of America was (still is) located at its 1908 site on Audubon Terrace, 155 Street west of Broadway in Manhattan. It was founded in 1904 by Archer Huntington, railroad heir, scholar and arts philanthropist, as a resource and library for the study of Spanish-speaking cultures of the world, though mostly focused on Spain.
The Hispanic Society of America, 1920. New York Public Library digital collections.
The Society, possessing a sizeable archive and art collection of art, in 1920 was partly known for its murals by Joaquin Sorolla, created between 1911-1919 (“Hispanic Society’s New Murals by Sorolla,” The New York Times, 27 June 1920, p. 71). The murals are still maintained in the institution’s “Sorolla Room” (below, as it appears today).
Wikipedia. Creative Commons.
According to the Society’s own history, 1920 was the year that Huntington started assembling “a professional staff to conserve and research his collections … a group of young women in their twenties to work in the Library Department, all freshly graduated with degrees in library science from colleges such as Simmons in Boston or Gallaudet in Washington, D.C.” These women were: Elizabeth du Gué Trapier, Beatrice Gilman Proske, Alice Wilson Frothingham, Florence Lewis May, Eleanor Sherman Font, and Clara Louisa Penney.
In 1920, the Society put out numerous texts related to its mission, including List of Works for the Study of Hispanic-American History, below:
University of Texas Library. Google Books.
Hispanic Anthology was edited by Thomas Walsh, whose “Forward” describes the 779-page volume as “A summary, in chronological order, of the translations, by northern Hispanophones, of Spanish poems into English verse… a tribute of affectionate admiration to the contemporaneous Spanish poet–both Peninsular and American–from his English speaking brethren of the north” (iv-v).
Belying Walsh’s biases, the volume prominently lists the contributing translators (ix-x). As for the poets, their names are found in the index in the final pages.
The book starts with the Poema del Cid (The Lay of the Cid) (anonymous, dating to roughly 1150), in a translation by Leonard Bacon and Alice Stone Blackwell–notwithstanding the fact that Huntington himself had previously translated the work. It ends with “Symphony in White” by Luis Muñoz Marín, a 22-year-old Boricua writer who would, not quite three decades later, become the first democratically-elected governor of Puerto Rico. Munõz’s father, Luis Muñoz Rivera, is also in the volume.
Luis Muñoz Marín will be the focus of tomorrow’s post.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
TAGS: Latinx, Spanish, Hispanic, Latino, poetry, museums, archive, collection, library, art, murals, Spain, Puerto Rico