Oh happy synchronicity! I opened my juicy new "Poesía moderna en Cuba" and right smack in Juana Borrero's short bio:
Debido a esta doble cualidad de pintora y escritora, y la pintura, y a la precocidad de su geniio, Julián del Casal la compara con la fascinadora María Bashkirseff, cuyas analogías se acentuan despueés con la muerte temprana de nuestra poetisa.
My sister just gave me a ratty old volume of Marie Bashkirseff's journals (translated) which I devoured whole... Of course, I love to make the connections of who knew of whom and of course it makes sense that Borrero and her sisters would have known about Bashkirseff. And Bashkirseff wrote about Madame de Stael and George Sand, and other women who were inspirations for her. There was a hilarious day when she made her bumptious country cousin from Russia, who was in love with her, read Corrine... as if to say "And if you can take that, you might begin to understand the tiniest part of my little fingernail..."
I haven't yet gotten my hands on the volume "Grupo de familia", which collected work by several of the Borrero sisters, edited by Aurelia Castillo. I translated a few of Juana B.'s poems, and some of Aurelia's, and I'm reading some of Dulce María Borrero's. Others by Mercedes Matamoros, Nieves Xenes, and another Xenes sister make it clear that their poetic circle was not always focused on Julian de Casal as its center. The women read each other and wrote poems to each other. They read work by women from other countries and times. It seems important to say this, because most of the critical writing, the short bios, and the prefaces of anthologies, speaks as if de Casal was The Influence on everyone of that circle.
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