IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO acknowledge the many people who made this book possible. Helpers and colleagues in Middlebury College, Vassar College, New York, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic offered their books, knowledge, comments, insights, memories. To all of you, mis gracias and heartfelt thanks. Never has it been truer that without your help, I could not have written this book.
But every book has godparents, and these I will mention by name:
Gracias to the padrinos: José Israel Cuello, who one day invited me over to his house for una sorpresa and handed me the original diary that Pedro Henríquez Ureña kept after his mother’s death with the full history of the family, and told me, with that incomparable Dominican generosity, that I could borrow this treasure until I needed it no longer. And gracias, too, to Arístides Incháustegui, opera singer turned historian, who gave generously of his time, his research, his insights into the figures of the past. And to Ricardo Repilado, now in his nineties, living in Santiago de Cuba, who brought the young tutor, Miss Camila, to my imagination, including her slightly “nasal” voice that always quavered with strain, and who before my departure gave me another treasure, the 1920 edition of Salomé’s poems, because, he said, “I am an old man, soltero, sin hijos, and when I die, no one will end up with this book that will get as much pleasure from it as you.” Finally to Roberto Véguez, colleague at Middlebury College, whose help ranged from details of Spanish punctuation to the names of streets in his hometown of Santiago de Cuba. Mil gracias.
And to the madrinas: Chiqui Vicioso, who five years ago, just after I finished In the Time of the Butterflies (the ink was not yet dry!), sat me down in her apartamento in Santo Domingo and loaned me her copy of the just-published Epistolario of the Henríquez Ureña family, and a copy of the poems of Salomé, and like some bossy musa said, “Your next book, Julia!” (Chiqui went on to write her own prize-winning play about Salomé, Cartas a una ausencia.) And to the other madrina, Shannon Ravenel, who encouraged me every step of the way. Gracias for the faith and the excellent “invisible” help throughout.
As always, my thanks to my agent, Susan Bergholz, indefatigable luchadora and guardian angel at the writing door who protects the space and time to do the work.
Finally, my deepest gracias are reserved for my compañero Bill, who has accompanied me over the years through a thousand and one and more pages that I could not have written without his help, his photographs, his sense of adventure, his faith, and his wonderful home-cooked meals.
In writing my book, I read and reread Salomé Ureña’s poems, gathered together in several editions: beginning with that first publication of her youthful poems, Poesías de Salomé Ureña (Santo Domingo: Amigos del País, 1880); followed by Poesías, compiled by her son Pedro (Madrid: 1920); then the first complete, centennial edition, Poesías completas (Ciudad Trujillo: Impresora Dominicana, 1950); a later edition, Poesías completas, collected with an introduction and excellent notes by Diógenes Céspedes (Santo Domingo: Editora Corripio, 1989); and most recently, Chiqui Vicioso’s own edition, Poesías completas (Santo Domingo: Comisión Permanente de la Feria Nacional del Libro, 1997). In addition to these editions, the two-volume Epistolario, containing much of correspondence of the Henríquez Ureña family, provided enormous insight into Salomé’s relationship with Pancho and the dynamics of this talented, complicated family (Santo Domingo: Editora Corripio, 1996). My translations of Salomé’s poetry are approximations/improvisations in English of her own words in Spanish.
Every one of these texts and each one of these helpers, as well as many left unnamed, enabled me to recover the history and poetry and presences of the past. But in thanking them, I would stress that all inventions, opinions, portrayals, errors in this book are my sole responsibility. This is not biography or historical portraiture or even a record of all I learned, but a work of the imagination.
The Salomé and Camila you will find in these pages are fictional characters based on historical figures, but they are re-created in the light of questions that we can only answer, as they did, with our own lives: Who are we as a people? What is a patria? How do we serve? Is love stronger than anything else in the world? Given the continuing struggles in Our America to understand and create ourselves as countries and as individuals, this book is an effort to understand the great silence from which these two women emerged and into which they have disappeared, leaving us to dream up their stories and take up the burden of their songs.
Virgencita de la Altagracia, gracias por acompañarme, paso por paso, palabra por palabra.