Eliseo Diego and Fairy Tales

Eliseo Diego (1920–1994), one of Cuba's and Latin America's most celebrated poets and short-story writers, had a lifelong interest in fairy tales—as a reader and, professionally, as a translator and the director of the Department of Children's Literature of the National Library of Cuba. His essays on the folktale stress their importance in education, their poetry, and their relation to time. Translations of two of his poems are included. The first, "The Girl in the Forest," retells "Little Red Riding Hood" from the point of view of the wolf. It becomes a story of impossible longing. The second, "Mother Goose," portrays her in a much different manner than we're used to—as an old peasant woman in a dark hovel who has the power to summon for her listeners the moment of creation.