The Waste Land in Spanish a Hundred Years Later: the Case of Claudio Rodríguez

Abstract

This article explores Claudio Rodríguez’s approach to Eliot’s poetry through his unpublished translation of The Waste Land. It also considers Rodríguez’s translation work within the wider context of Eliot’s influence on Spanish poets during the twentieth century, an influence deriving largely from the repeated translations of The Waste Land. Unlike other renowned Spanish poets from the 1950s, my study tackles the significance of Rodríguez’s contribution to the translations of Eliot into Spanish by focusing on his initial reluctance to undertake the task and on the conceptual divergence he felt vis a vis the Anglo-American poet’s poetic principles.