{"id":23,"featured":0,"modified":"2024-11-22 02:48:28","latitude":42.07167170023056002037264988757669925689697265625,"longitude":-74.187755584716796875,"title":"Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada Bungalow","address":"Lake Hill, NY 12448","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/74ddd26afec8f8e5ff976b0d16f78f9a.jpg","creator":["Cristina P\u00e9rez Jim\u00e9nez"],"description":"

The renowned Mexican writer Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada (1871\u20131945) spent a significant portion of his life in New York State, where he developed a wide-ranging literary career in New York City, publishing journalism, cr\u00f3nicas<\/em>, short stories, novels, poems, essays, theatrical works, and literary and art criticism. He honed his craft and cultivated his aesthetic vision in the Catskills region, where he regularly spent time at the vacation home that he built in Lake Hill, a hamlet in Ulster County northwest of Kingston. The Nobel Prize-winning Mexican writer Octavio Paz considered Tablada one of the most overlooked and underrated poets of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Tablada first arrived in New York as a result of the political upheavals leading to and following the Mexican Revolution. A controversial supporter of the dictatorship of Mexican President Porfirio D\u00edaz, Tablada was forced into exile after the end of the Porfiriato regime. He arrived in New York City in 1914, where he remained until 1918. As attested by his cr\u00f3nica<\/em> \u201cTres artistas mexicanos en Nueva York,\u201d those years were marked by his immersion in the city\u2019s rich artistic environment in the company of other exiled Mexican artists, colleagues, and friends.<\/p>\n

The Catskills became an important site for Tablada during his second residency in New York. Having reconciled politically with the Mexican government, Tablada returned to New York from Mexico in 1920, where he lived with his wife, Nina Cabrera, until 1935. In 1920, he opened a short-lived bookstore, La Librer\u00eda de los Latinos, at 118 East 28th Street, which sold Spanish, Latin American and French literature. When the bookstore closed, Nina Cabrera recalls that one of his debtors, unable to fulfill his obligations, offered instead to transfer the ownership of some land in the bucolic hamlet of Lake Hill. Tablada accepted the deal and immediately began to build a home on the newly acquired property. As Nina describes the plot:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEl terreno estaba situado en medio de los bosques. Primero tuvimos que limpiar el lugar, donde hab\u00eda toda clase de \u00e1rboles: arces, ocotes, pinos, oyameles, etc. Despu\u00e9s fue necesario reunir piedras para los cimientos, hacerlos, levantar los muros, techar la caba\u00f1a. Jos\u00e9 Juan dirig\u00eda la construcci\u00f3n, a la vez que trabajaba en ella junto con dos carpinteros mexicanos.\u201d

Quickly adapting to country life, Tablada and his wife created a home to which they would constantly return in the years to come. The special fondness Tablada had for his Catskills retreat is revealed in a diary entry from July 1923. Explaining that he had escaped the sweltering city, he writes: \u201cVolvi a ver mi bungalow con delicia<\/em>.\u201d His wife expressed similar sentiments: \u201cEntre los recuerdos que conservo grabados tanto en el coraz\u00f3n como en la mente, figuran los grat\u00edsimos de nuestros viajes veraniegos a las monta\u00f1as de Catskill.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The still-standing house that Tablada built in the Catskills was a projection of his aesthetics as well as his nostalgia for his Mexican homeland. Built by Mexican carpenters in a Japanese-influenced style, the house had haikus carved on both its front and back doors. Tablada\u2019s separate studio was connected to the main house \u201cpor un puente r\u00fastico, de estilo japon\u00e9s, por debajo del cual corr\u00eda el agua hasta el arroyo.\u201d Painted blue on the outside and whitewashed on the inside, the Tabladas fondly nicknamed their bungalow \u201chongo azul\u201d <\/span>and had a large blue mushroom painted on one of the doors, an image also featured in one Jos\u00e9 Juan's haikus: \u201cParece la sombrilla \/ este hongo policromo \/ de un sapo japonista.\u201d The image was quite apropos, for\u00a0 while staying in Lake Hill, Tablada hunted for wild mushrooms in the mountains and painted them in rich detail. This hobby became a source for his book Hongos mexicanos comestibles (Micolog\u00eda ec\u00f3nomica)<\/em>, the first book ever on the subject. He also cultivated corn and aromatic herbs employed in traditional Mexican cuisine, and foraged for wild berries, <\/span>making his bungalow a veritable source of delicia<\/em>, or delightful delicacies. Tablada\u2019s poetry reveals a sustained fascination with the natural world, from his youthful interest in insects to his more mature symbolic play with mushrooms, moons, frogs and orchids in his haikus. In the Catskills, outside the metropolis, he could reconnect to this natural world, as well as to scenes and scents of his Mexican motherland, all kindling for his daringly inventive poetic imagination.<\/p>\n

The Catskills region offered Tablada a conducive site for work during a prolific period of his career. In July 1923, Tablada wrote to a friend from Lake Hill, explaining \u201ctuve que venirme a las monta\u00f1as, a 2 horas de Nueva York, para poder trabajar, pues el calor me amenazaba con una crisis del ri\u00f1\u00f3n y tengo tan buenas oportunidades para trabajar para M\u00e9xico, que tuve que aprovecharlas a toda costa.\u201d The Catskills provided him with a break from the heat and the endless distractions of the city, allowing him to throw himself into his writing. During these years, Tablada wrote journalism, cultural criticism and cr\u00f3nicas<\/em> for a wide array of English and Spanish-language publications across the country and the hemisphere. He published his second book of haikus in 1922. He also worked on a collection of his numerous New York cr\u00f3nicas<\/em> under the title La Babilonia de Hierro<\/em> and a poetry collection titled Intersecciones<\/em>. In 1928 he published in New York the ingenious poetry collection La Feria<\/em> with illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias, Mat\u00edas Santoyo y George Pop Hart. La Feria<\/em>, like his home in the Catskills, was an irreverent blend of Mexican folklore and Japanese-inflected surrealism. Tablada\u2019s letter and diaries from these years reveal his constant trips to and from the city to the Catskills, especially during the summer and fall months, as he juggled multiple projects and continued to write prolifically.<\/p>\n

Beyond a source of inspiration and focus for his work, the Catskills were for Tablada and his wife an important site of relaxation and socialization. In August 1923, Tablada wrote to a friend noting how the Catskills had granted him, as he put it, \u201cel primer descanso en 5 a\u00f1os.\u201d Photographs from the 1920s and early 1930s show a relaxed Tablada hiking and picnicking with Nina and others. The bungalow\u2019s windows, in Nina's recollection, \u201cse abr\u00edan a la inmensidad del bosque, que nos tra\u00eda, aun en los d\u00edas m\u00e1s calurosos, una deliciosa frescura. All\u00ed goz\u00e1bamos de aire puro y de paz, bajo el cielo azul.\u201d <\/span>Upstate, moreover, they developed a community with other Latin American writers and artists who also vacationed in the region. Friends and colleagues from the city would come up to visit them, including figures like Mexican artist and illustrator Miguel Covarrubia and the urban modernist photographer Sherril Schell. In the Catskills and New York City, Tablada served as an unofficial cultural ambassador for Mexican modernist art and culture and was at the center of a circle of Latin American writers and artists.<\/p>","sponsor":"","subtitle":"Literature & the Arts","accessinfo":"Private Property","lede":"The Mexican writer Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada's house in the Catskills was an expression of his aesthetic vision as well as of his nostalgia for his Mexican homeland. It was here that Tabalada wrote many of his most famous works and indulged his passion for the natural world.","website":"","related_resources":["Cabrera de Tablada, Nina. Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada en la intimidad<\/em>. Mexico City, Imprenta Universitaria, 1954.","Mata Sandoval, Rodolfo and Gabriel Enriquez Hern\u00e1ndez. Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada: Vida, letra e imagen<\/em>. Universidad Nacional Aut\u00f3noma de M\u00e9xico, Instituto de Investigaciones Fil\u00f3logicas, 2021, www.iifl.unam.mx\/tablada\/.","Tablada, Jos\u00e9 Juan. \u201cArtistas mexicanos en Nueva York. Marius de Zayas, Pal-Omar, Juan Olagu\u00edbel\u201d (1919). Obras completas<\/em>, vol. 6 (Arte y artistas). Ed. Adriana Sandoval, Universidad Nacional Aut\u00f3noma de M\u00e9xico (Mexico City), 2000.","Tablada, Jos\u00e9 Juan. Cartas a Genaro Estrada, 1921-1931<\/em>. Universidad Nacional Auto\u0301noma de Me\u0301xico, 2001.","Tablada, Jos\u00e9 Juan. Diario (1900-1944)<\/em>. Universidad Nacional Auto\u0301noma de Me\u0301xico, 1992.","Tablada, Jos\u00e9 Juan. Hongos mexicanos comestibles: Micologi\u0301a econo\u0301mica<\/em>. Fondo de Cultura Econo\u0301mica (Mexico City), 1983.","Toro Montalvo, Cesar. \u201cJose Juan Tablada Introductor del Haiku y el Caligrama Hispanoamericano,\u201d Cronopio: Revista Literatura y Arte del Per\u00fa<\/em> 1.1. (April 1988): 5-17."],"factoids":[],"files":{"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/74ddd26afec8f8e5ff976b0d16f78f9a.jpg":{"id":1,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Bryarcliffe, Summer of 1923","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/74ddd26afec8f8e5ff976b0d16f78f9a.jpg","description":""My study in the bungalow. Nena brings me flowers and the dog Jackie follows her. On the left my bedroom, on the divan my Saltillo sarape.""},"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/17dfb80bf22529f028450e00848f62f1.jpg":{"id":2,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"The Tablada Bungalow","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/17dfb80bf22529f028450e00848f62f1.jpg","description":"A photograph of the Tablada bungalow as it looks today, shown in a recent AirBnB listing."},"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/879d615b83373722d55db62fc5d0c3fc.jpg":{"id":3,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Detail from the Interior of the Tablada Bungalow","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/879d615b83373722d55db62fc5d0c3fc.jpg","description":"As shown in a recent AirBnB listing. Compare Tablada's pen and ink sketch of his study, picturing this stone fireplace, in "Bryarcliffe, Summer of 1923.""},"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/a289b751068d60713edc42dadbc77e44.jpg":{"id":4,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Hongos mexicanos comestibles (Micolog\u00eda economica)","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/a289b751068d60713edc42dadbc77e44.jpg","description":"The cover of his treatise Hongos mexicanos comestibles (Micolog\u00eda econ\u00f3mica)<\/em> inspired in part by his mushroom-gathering jaunts in the Catskills."},"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/fe6f3bba04fbab010347f5237a72c2d3.jpg":{"id":5,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada y Nina Cabrera de Tablada","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/fe6f3bba04fbab010347f5237a72c2d3.jpg","description":"Black & white photograph. On the back, there is written the following note in pencil: \u201cMy husband \/and I up\/ in our place\/ in Catskill.\u201d
\r\n"},"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/fullsize\/626af93a04f5f1e5ee0c65ad790d8c26.jpg":{"id":6,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada y Nina Cabrera de Tablada at home in the Catskills","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discover.latinocatskills.com\/files\/square_thumbnails\/626af93a04f5f1e5ee0c65ad790d8c26.jpg","description":"Black & white photograph. In English, the caption reads \"Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada and his wife on the stairs of their home in the Catskill Mountains.\""}}}