Selected Writings of Andres Bello (Library of Latin America)

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for Latin American studies
Review: Andres Bello strode like a giant across 19th century Latin America. A poet, educator, linguist, political leader, and skilled prose writer, he possessed a truly vast intellect. In these "Selected Writings," editor Ivan Jaksic and translator Frances M. Lopez-Morillas have made a small sample of his legacy--his collected works in Spanish fill 26 volumes--available to English-speaking readers.

Bello's prose and poetry in this anthology focus mainly on the topics of language, literature, education, history, and political science. Some of his more technical writings are a bit dry, and will, I imagine, appeal more to specialists in some of these fields than to the general reader. But to the discriminating general reader, this volume offers a wealth of intellectual delights and insights.

Among the book's many fine highlights are Bello's long poem "Allocution to Poetry," which captures a sweeping vison of Latin America, and an address delivered at the University of Chile in which he prophetically envisions the great Chilean authors who would follow him. His call for universal literacy in "On the Aims of Education" is evidence of a mind truly ahead of its time.

Although this is an excellent edition--it includes superb introductory materials, among them a fascinating chronology--there is room for improvement. Some of Bello's more reference-laden writings would, I believe, be more meaningful to a broader audience if they had been accompanied by more extensive annotations. Nevertheless, this is an outstanding book, and an excellent tribute to a man of truly towering intellect.

Rating:
Summary: Jaksic edition of Bello's works is superb.
Review: Dr. Ivan Jaksic's scholarly edition of Andres Bello's works constitutes an excellent anthology of the great humanist who was Bello. Translator Lopez-Morillas' rendering into English of Bello's nineteenth century Spanish denies validity to the old italian axiom "traduttore, tradittore" (translator equals traitor). It is impossible to summarize Andres Bello's numerous volumes on themes as varied as constitutional law, Spanish grammar, and the creation of the University in Chile: Jaksic's Selected Writings of Andres Bello gives the reader the most practical alternative. Gonzalo Palacios, Ph.D