Rafael Cansinos-Asséns

Rafael Cansinos Assens (November 24, 1882 – July 6, 1964), born in Seville, was a Spanish poet, essayist, literary critic and translator.

Cansinos was a polyglot; he translated The Arabian Nights into Spanish, as well as the works of Dostoyevsky, and the complete works of Goethe and Shakespeare for the publisher Aguilar.

In the lectures he gave in 1967 at Harvard, Jorge Luis Borges mentioned him as one of his masters, and expressed wonder to the fact that he has been forgotten.

Works

Essays

• El candelabro de los siete brazos (Psalmos) ("The Seven Arm Candelabra: Psalms"), 1914
• El divino fracaso, 1918
• España y los judíos españoles, 1920
• Salomé en la literatura, 1920
• Ética y estética de los sexos, 1921
• Los valores eróticos en las religiones: El amor en el Cantar de los Cantares, 1930
• La Copla Andaluza, 1936
• Mahoma y el Korán

Compilations

• Antología de poetas persas
• Bellezas del Talmud, 1919

Novels

• La encantadora, 1916
• El eterno milagro, 1918
• La madona del carrusel, 1920
• En la tierra florida, 1920
• La huelga de los poetas, 1921
• Las luminarias de Hanukah, 1924