José María de Heredia

José-Maria de Heredia Girard (La Fortuna, near Santiago de Cuba, November 22, 1842-Bourdonné castle, near Houdan, Yvelines, October 3, 1905) was a French poet and translator of Spanish origin from the province of Cuba, one of the main figures of Parnassianism.

Biography

Son of Domingo de Heredia Mieses Pimenetel Guridi, a native of Santo Domingo, and his second wife, the Frenchwoman Louise Girard, the poet was born on the family plantation, near Santiago de Cuba. He embarked for France at the age of nine, in 1851, where he attended high school until 1859. In France he discovered the work of Leconte de Lisle, which made a deep impression on him.

After his return to Cuba in 1859, he began to study the Spanish language with a view to graduating in Law. He did not achieve his goal, since the equivalence of the baccalaureate completed in France was not recognized. Therefore, in 1860 he returned to France with the intention of continuing his law studies there.

Between 1862 and 1865 he studied at the prestigious École des chartes in Paris, and began to write his first poems, greatly influenced by the Parnassian school. In 1863 he met Leconte de Lisle, and from 1866 he collaborated on the contemporary Parnassus. Specifically, he contributed 6 sonnets to the first anthology (1866) and 25 sonnets to the third (1876), while in the second (1869-71) he contributed the long epic poem, 'The Desperation of Atahualpa'. 34;, which closed the anthology. He befriended authors such as Sully Prudhomme and Catulle Mendès, and published his poems in magazines such as Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Temps and Le Journal des Débats. .

He contributed decisively to the dissemination in France of Spanish and Latin American history of the XVI century, not only with his poetry but with his translations of works from Spanish to French. He dedicated ten years—between 1877 and 1887—to translating Bernal Díaz del Castillo's True History of the Conquest of New Spain. He also translated the Historia de la monja alférez, memoirs of Catalina de Erauso, into French. He translated from Latin, French and English Horace, Lamartine, Ossian and Lord Byron.

He is one of the most prominent representatives of Parnassianism. In 1893 he collected all of his sonnets in a book, The Trophies (Les Trophées), edited by Alphonse Lemerre and dedicated to Leconte de Lisle, his main work. and one of the most important of Parnassian poetry. In 1894 he was elected member of the French Academy, with François Coppée delivering his reception address. On the occasion of the visit of the Russian tsars to Paris he composed his poem Salut à l'Empereur. This poem was read in a solemn ceremony on the day the first stone of the Alexander III Bridge was laid before the tsars. He was also appointed member of the French Dictionary Commission, as well as embassy secretary. In 1901, these honors were joined by taking office as curator of the Paris Arsenal library. Testimony of his great relevance in the period of the turn of the century, in 1902 he founded the Society of French Poets, together with his friend Sully Prudhomme (recently elected as the first Nobel Prize winner) and Léon Dierx (considered since 1898 as "prince of the poets", a position previously held by Verlaine and Mallarmé).

Married since 1867 to the Cuban-French Louise-Cécile Despaigne, he was the father of three daughters, one of whom, Marie-Louise Hérédia, would be the future wife of Henri de Régnier and the lover of Pierre Louÿs.

Heredia died on October 3, 1905 at Bourdonné Castle, near Houdan.

Spanish translations

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1895 (This translation is composed of 12 stories: Scan it in bohemia, The league of the redheads, A case of identity, The mystery of the valley boscombe, The five orange seeds, The man of the lip twisted, The blue carbuncle, The band of lunar, The thumb of the engineer, The