Nazi Literature in the Americas (New Directions Paperbook) Read Online Free PDF

military
career was meteoric, rich in acts of bravery and medals, though not without a
number of lulls. He was promoted from second lieutenant to lieutenant, and then,
almost immediately, to captain. He is thought to have participated in the
closing of the Mérida pocket, the northern campaign, and the Battle of Teruel.
Nevertheless, the end of the war found him in Seville, carrying out more or less
administrative duties. The Colombian government unofficially nominated him as
cultural attaché in Rome, a post he declined. He took part in the somewhat
diminished but still delightful Fiestas del Rocío in 1938 and 1939, riding a
spirited white colt. The outbreak of the Second World War caught him by surprise
in Mauritania, where he was traveling with Fernández-Gómez. During that voyage
the Bogotá press received only two articles from the pen of Zubieta, and neither
referred to the specific political and social events that he had the opportunity
to witness at close range. In the first article, he described the life of
certain Saharan insects. In the second, he discussed Arab horses and compared
them to the purebloods bred in Colombia. Not a word about the Spanish Civil War,
not a word about the calamity looming over Europe, not a word about literature
or himself, although his Colombian friends went on waiting for the great work
that Zubieta seemed destined to write.
    In 1941, at the request of Dionisio Ridruejo, who was a close friend,
Zubieta was one of the first to join the Division of Spanish Volunteers,
commonly known as the Blue Division. During his training period in Germany,
which he found unspeakably dull, he busied himself with translations of
Schiller’s verse, aided by the ever-faithful Fernández-Gómez. Their versions
were published jointly by the magazines
Living Poetry
in Cartagena and
The Poetic and Literary Beacon
in Seville.
    In Russia, he took part in various engagements along the Volchov, as
well as the battles of Possad and Krassnij-Bor, where his acts of heroism earned
him the Iron Cross. In the summer of 1943 he was back in Paris, alone,
Fernández-Gómez having remained in Riga, recovering from his wounds in a
military hospital.
    In Paris, Zubieta resumed his social life. He traveled to Spain with
Lemercier. Some say he saw the Duchess of Bahamontes again. A publisher in
Madrid brought out a book of his Schiller translations. He was feted, invited to
all the parties, and doted on by high society, but he had changed: unrelieved
gravity veiled his expression, as if he could sense the imminence of death.
    In October, when the Blue Division was repatriated, Fernández-Gómez
returned to Spain and the two friends were reunited in Cadiz. With Lemercier
they travelled to Seville, to Madrid, where they gave a reading of Schiller’s
poems to a large and appreciative audience in a university lecture hall, and
then to Paris, where they finally settled.
    A few months before D-Day, Zubieta made contact with officers from the
Brigade Charlemagne, a French unit of the SS, although his name does not appear
in the archives. Enlisted as a captain, he returned to the Russian Front,
accompanied by the steadfast Fernández-Gómez. In October 1944, Lemercier
received a parcel postmarked in Warsaw, containing papers which were to
constitute a part of Ignacio Zubieta’s literary legacy.
    During the last days of the Third Reich, Zubieta was in Berlin,
holding out against the siege with a battalion of diehard French SS. According
to Fernández-Gómez’s diary, he was killed in street fighting on April 20, 1945.
On the 25th of the same month, Fernández-Gómez entrusted his friend’s remaining
papers to the diplomats of the Swedish legation along with a case of his own
manuscripts, which the Swedes passed on to the Colombian ambassador in Germany
in 1948. Zubieta’s papers finally reached his relatives, and in 1950 they
published an exquisite little book in Bogotá: fifteen poems, with illustrations
by Lemercier, who had