The Landscape of Castile

This is the first complete English translation of Campos de Castilla, the book central to Machado's work, which was written between 1907 and 1917. Machado made his living as a teacher, and in 1907 he accepted a post in the isolated town of Soria in Castile. He stayed for five years, marrying and then watching as his young wife slowly died of tuberculosis. Though he moved often during the rest of his life, Castile remained his spiritual center, and the poems, many the result of long walks in the countryside, reflect the landscape there: spare and luminous. Published in a bilingual edition, this classic of Spanish literature also contains poems that address Spain's post-colonial reality and tributes to the writers, thinkers, and poets of his country.