Soul-Giver/el Donador De Almas

Translated by Michael F. Capobianco and Gloria Schaffer Meléndez
Amado Nervo (1870-1919) was a Mexican poet in the modernist tradition. He also wrote a considerable amount of prose which, despite the fact that it is beautifully poetic, is virtually unknown and untranslated. The Soul-Giver is a prose poem, a tale of deep love exploring male-female relationships in an atmosphere of mysticism, science fiction, and a hint of magical realism, anticipating some modern ideas in psychology. In his prose, Nervo was the forerunner of Latin American science fiction and one of the forerunners of magical realism. This is a facing-page translation of one of the earliest examples of that genre in Latin American literature.