Antonio Sellén

Antonio Sellén published a single book of verses in 1864, when he was twenty-six years old, and titled it Poesías. Although his output was not abundant, none of his compositions are remembered today.

Son of a Spanish military man, his family moved him as a child to Spain. There he completed his primary studies, which upon his return to Cuba he continued at the Santo Ángel school in 1849. He taught languages in his homeland and abroad, and collaborated in La Prensa, El Tiempo, Floresta de Cuba, La Aurora, Revista Habanera, El Kaleidoscopio, CubaLiteraria, and El Correo Habanero.

In 1867 he founded with his brother the Heraldo Cubano, a bilingual newspaper. He emigrated with the outbreak of the independence struggle in 1869, heading to Mexico, and later moved to the United States, where he reunited with Francisco. In New York, he founded and directed the magazine El amigo de los niños in 1872, and only returned after the Pact of Zanjón in 1878.

In Cuba, his contributions appeared in Diario de La Marina, El País, and El Fígaro, indicating that the main publications opened their pages to him. Along with Francisco, he is included in the volume of Arpas amigas.

As for Antonio, his work as a translator stands out. In 1867 he published Four Poems by Lord Byron and in 1879 Jewels of Northern Europe, in whose prologue he notes:

"Ever since I first read in a French prose translation the poems Axel and The First Communion by Swedish poet Isaiah Tégner, a vivid desire took hold of me to render them into our language. I believed that in this way I would render a service to our nascent literature, presenting examples of a genre of poetry unknown or little cultivated by poets who write in Spanish."

In 1883 he prepared Echoes of the Seine, a selection of Romantic French poets; some other translations from French and English were included in magazines.

I would like to know where I could
cast my gaze without finding your love,
your image pursues me night and day
Even in my hours of pain it does not leave me!

In the sweetest moaning of the wind,
as the stormy sea laments,
my heart finds you, and in vain I try
to banish your image from my breast.
("Your Image")

Let us also note that Antonio Sellén knew José Martí in New York and enjoyed the Apostle's esteem.

His death in Havana on the twenty-first of February 1889, when he barely exceeded fifty years of age, interrupted a work that could have contributed much more to knowledge of other literatures among Cuban readers at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1911 the Poesías of Antonio Sellén were published in a special posthumous edition.

Many of his poems and translated books can be found at books.google.com

Source: CubaLiteraria