Grandville

In a book of posthumous prose, entitled meaningly El mundo de los sueños (The world of dreams), there is an intriguing essay by the great Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867-1916) dedicated to the fantastic, dreamlike and disturbing universe of the French cartoonist and illustrator J. J. Grandville (1803-1847), whose simple title is Grandville. The result is not only the analysis of the work of a creative and daring illustrator, but the intricate cartography of a dream territory that, at the beginning of the 21st century, is still awaiting other pioneers. The brief prose-poetic treatise by Darío (translated directly from the Spanish source) is followed by three stories, unpublished creations: Ramon Lasalle’s “The Collection”, Alcebiades Diniz Miguel’s “In the Chapel of Bones” and Thomas Strømsholt’s “Reading in the Absence of the Text: Notes on the Spiritual Meaning of the Massacres”.