Twilight Park is a private summer colony located in the hamlet of Haines Falls, in Greene County, New York. It was founded in 1888 by Charles Wingate, a New Yorker who envisioned a community of professionally eclectic, if like-minded, city-dwellers seeking summer respite from urban life. Wingate purchased 160 acres in a scenic mountaintop area at the head of Kaaterskill Clove. The privileged location afforded breathtaking views of the deep gorge, close proximity to stunning waterfalls like Kaaterskill Falls, and easy access to hiking trails. During the late 1880s and \u201990s, some 75 summer cottages were built, typically in a Craftsman or Adirondack style with roofed, open porches that allowed residents to enjoy the marvelous views and a relaxed indoor\u2013outdoor lifestyle. Over the years, Twilight Park acquired more than 500 additional acres, yet the number of cottages only grew to 91, all of which retain their historic architectural details. The community, designated in 2017 a national historic district, continues to reflect Wingate\u2019s founding ethos: \u201cTo cultivate good fellowship and enjoy rational recreation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cuban national hero Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed (1853\u20131895) visited Twilight Park while convalescing in the Catskills in August 1890. It was during this trip he would draft his last and arguably most important poetry collection, Versos sencillos<\/em> [\u201cSimple Verses\u201d]. Mart\u00ed was exhausted after a restless decade in exile in New York City, where he had founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, launched a newspaper and children\u2019s magazine, published several books, and authored syndicated journalism disseminated across the hemisphere. He was also physically depleted from his participation in the contentious Washington Pan-American Congress of 1889\u201390. Suffering from fatigue, chronic aches, and pulmonary difficulties caused by sarcoidosis, Mart\u00ed sought, on doctor\u2019s orders, rest, relaxation, and the lauded fresh-air \u201ccure\u201d in the Catskills region.<\/p>\n Mart\u00ed\u2019s time in Twilight Park and its environs proved reinvigorating. His glowing impressions of his visit are documented in an 1890 cr\u00f3nica<\/em> published in the Argentine newspaper La Naci\u00f3n<\/em>. Twilight Park, he wrote: \u201ces un sue\u00f1o de hermoso, con su p\u00f3rtico de ramas de abedul, sobre la boca de las cataratas mismas; su reba\u00f1o de casas rojas, agrupadas, aqu\u00ed y all\u00e1, alrededor de la casa del club, sus sendas de piedra natural, que culebrean por la ladera, sobre arroyos y c\u00e9spedes, de una casa a otra.\u201d Mart\u00ed was particularly taken with Twilight Park\u2019s distinctive blend of natural beauty and human fellowship. As he put it, \u201cFamilia de casas parece el parque, que es todo de amigos, donde las visitas entran y salen a gozar en libertad de la hermosura del parque.\u201d Mart\u00ed describes the residential resort\u2019s development and the myriad wholesome activities offered, from drawing, painting, hiking, picnicking, mule riding, gardening and botany excursions to napping in the great outdoors. He concludes the cr\u00f3nica<\/em> with a cheerful scene of a rainy-day luncheon at the clubhouse. The assorted diners include parents and their sprightly children, doting grandparents, a general, a doctor, a consul, a minister, a pipe-smoking artist, and even an amusing dandy. The group eats, trades stories, debates and laughs, filling Mart\u00ed with a sense of bright possibilities. As he puts it expressly in the cr\u00f3nica<\/em>\u2019s last line: \u201cY cuando acaba la risue\u00f1a comida, sobre las barandas r\u00fasticas brilla, limpio, el sol.\u201d<\/p>\n In his private notebooks and published writings, Mart\u00ed\u2019s writings shine with his sunny admiration for Twilight Park and the Catskills region. In his journal, for example, he records how the area\u2019s verdant landscape enlivened his spirit compared to the grimness of the city: \u201cEn la ciudad cuando cierro los ojos, todo lo veo negro. Y aqu\u00ed cuando cierro los ojos. Lo veo todo verde.\u201d He jotted down colorful descriptions of the mountains amidst a downpour and recorded his amusement playing games with other Twilight Park guests. Perhaps most vividly, in his 1890 cr\u00f3nica for La Naci\u00f3n<\/em>, Mart\u00ed describes the Catskills region as \u201cuna gloria, bien se vaya adonde el bullicio, all\u00e1 en los hoteles que dan, colosales balcones, sobre el valle del Hudson, bien busque casa juiciosa el veraneador en los pueblos amenos de las cuchillas, o en los caser\u00edos que blanquean la floresta tupida de las ca\u00f1adas.\u201d<\/p>\n Mart\u00ed\u2019s restorative trip to the Catskills was not only for health and pleasure; it also had political ramifications. Twilight Park was an offshoot of the Manhattan social club for intellectuals known as the Twilight Club, of which Mart\u00ed himself later became a member. During Mart\u00ed\u2019s time, Twilight Club members met for bimonthly formal dinners in which the pressing political issues of the day were debated in an open forum. The club boasted an impressive membership with mostly liberal and progressive leanings who exerted considerable influence in society. Writers like Walt Whitman, Charles Edwin Markham and Mark Twain, as well as the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, were all said to belong to the club, along with distinguished journalists, professors, artists, engineers, economists, doctors, and lawyers. Most of the early cottages in Twilight Park were owned by members of the Manhattan social club. Mart\u00ed\u2019s 1890 summer visit to Twilight Park thus allowed him to cultivate relations with some of New York\u2019s influential elites.<\/p>\n As the Cuban critic Rodolfo Sarracino has shown, Mart\u00ed used these connections to advance the cause of Cuban independence. In October 1890, after his return from the Catskills, Mart\u00ed was invited by Wingate himself to address the Twilight Club in New York City. According to press reports, Mart\u00ed began his speech by conveying his splendid impressions of his stay in Twilight Park, before proceeding to decry US interventionism in Latin America. His speech was received with a standing ovation, and two months later, in December, Mart\u00ed became an official member of the club. It was, as scholar Enrique L\u00f3pez Mesa put it, \u201cla \u00fanica asociaci\u00f3n netamente norteamericana a la cual Mart\u00ed perteneci\u00f3.\u201d<\/p>\n In April 1896, just months after Mart\u00ed\u2019s death, the Twilight Club issued an public statement of solidarity with Cuba\u2019s right to sovereignty, reprinted in the New York Cuban newspaper Mart\u00ed had founded, Patria<\/em>, which read: \u201cEl Twilight Club declara terminantemente que siente profunda simpat\u00eda por el heroico pueblo de Cuba que pelea por su libertad e independencia y pide al presidente Cleveland que lo reconozco como beligerante.\u201d Mart\u00ed\u2019s efforts to draw attention to the Cuban cause among Twilight Club\u2019s influential members, efforts which were galvanized by his time in Twilight Park, had yielded fruits.<\/p>\n While producing personal and political connections, the most important legacy of Mart\u00ed\u2019s visit to Twilight Park is literary in nature. Amid the Catskills\u2019s rugged backdrop, Mart\u00ed was inspired to write poetry again. As he put it: \u201cMe ech\u00f3 el m\u00e9dico al monte: corr\u00edan arroyos, y se cerraban las nubes: escrib\u00ed versos\u201d [\u201cThe doctor sent me off to the woods\/mountains\/hills; streams flowed and clouds gathered; I wrote poems.\u201d] What emerged was Versos sencillos<\/em>, a deeply autobiographical expression of personal and political longings with universal resonances that cemented his reputation as one of the great writers of the Americas.<\/p>\n The poems of Versos sencillos<\/em> bear the mark of the Catskill mountains in which they were composed. They attest to the poet\u2019s profound rediscovery of the natural world. As Mart\u00ed affirms from the outset, in the collection\u2019s very first poem: \u201cEn el monte, monte soy\u201d [\u201cIn the mountains, I am\/become a mountain\u201d]. This opening poem also establishes the collection\u2019s signature poetic stance, attuned to nature and distant from the bustle and din of city life: \u201cYo s\u00e9 bien que cuando el mundo \/ Cede, l\u00edvido, al descanso, \/ Sobre el silencio profundo, \/ Murmura el arroyo manso\u201d [\u201cI know that when the world \/ Surrenders, pallid, to repose, \/ The murmur of a tranquil stream \/ Through the deep silence flows\u201d]. Entranced by the gentle sounds of the stream, the poet is able to leave behind, in nature, forms of pomp and intellectual pretense that he now finds tiresome: \u201cCallo, y entiendo, y me quito \/ La pompa del rimador: \/ Cuelgo de un \u00e1rbol marchito \/ Mi muceta de doctor\u201d [\u201cI fall silent, and understand, \/ and drop my rhymester\u2019s show: \/ Upon a barren tree I hang \/ my fine scholar\u2019s robes.\u201d]. In place of these high-literary garments, a seemingly spontaneous, \u201csimple\u201d voice emerges, one whose lyrical vigor and organic harmony are stressed by the poems\u2019 octosyllabic lines and rhyming quatrains.<\/p>\n Throughout Versos sencillos<\/em>, the poet reaffirms his predilection for natural beauty over the past glories of human civilization:<\/p>\n Yo s\u00e9 de Egipto y Nigricia, Yo s\u00e9 de las historias viejas [I know of Egypt and Niger, I know the ancient histories The poet rejects the artifice and ostentation of human intrigues and hotel-life in favor of the unpretentious buzz of his natural surroundings: \u201cOdio la m\u00e1scara y vicio \/ Del corredor de mi hotel: \/ Me vuelvo al manso bullicio \/ De mi monte de laurel\u201d [\u201cI hate the masks and vices \/ of the hallways of my hotel; I turn to the gentle noises \/ of my woods of laurel.\u201d]. In this wooded mountainscape, he is clear and at ease: \u201cPrefiero estar en la sierra\u201d [\u201cI\u2019m happier in the mountains\u201d].<\/p>\n Nature is thus a restorative space in which the poet of Versos sencillos<\/em> finds anew his voice and self after political struggles waged below in committee meetings, gatherings, and the columns of newspapers. Indeed, the mountains are described as a space of soulful reflection, a veritable temple with the trees serving as pillars: \u201c\u00a1En mi templo, en la monta\u00f1a, \/ El \u00e1lamo es el pilar!\u201d [\u201cIn my temple, in the mountains, the poplar is pillar!\u201d]. This process of identification and self-examination elicited by the highland setting is further cemented when the poems themselves become the mountain from which they arise: \u201cMi verso es un monte [\u2026] \/ Mi verso es de un verde claro\u201d [\u201cMy poem\/verse is a mountain \u2026 \/ My poem\/verse is light green\u201d]. In the mountainous greenery, the poet rediscovers a spirited voice that matches the vibrant natural world around him. Bellflowers, jasmine, lilies, ferns, mosses, lakes, brooks, butterflies, bees, birds, birch and cottonwood trees all make an appearance in Versos sencillos<\/em>, imbuing these poems with the rich imagery, hues, noises, and scents of the flora and fauna of the tree-topped Catskills, a stark contrast to the stone-gray, dreary world of political infighting and calculation that the poet has temporarily left behind.<\/p>\n Versos sencillos<\/em> was published, in 1891, by Louis Weiss & Co. of New York. It would become Mart\u00ed\u2019s best-known and most acclaimed poetry collection. It has been hailed by critics as a \u201cpoetic testament\u201d (Fina Garc\u00eda Marruz), \u201cthe most daring of his collections and the one that contains his best mature poetry\u201d (Roberto Gonz\u00e1lez Echevarr\u00eda), \u201cthe most refined of Mart\u00ed\u2019s art [and] the culmination of his thought\u201d (Caridad Atencio), and a \u201cdazzling [...] symphony as perfectly modulated as the life it represents\u201d (Manuel Tellechea). It was the last book that Mart\u00ed would publish during his lifetime. Four years later, he would be killed by Spanish troops on a Cuban battlefield, fighting for his homeland\u2019s independence.<\/p>\nVersos Sencillos<\/h4>\n
Y de Persia y Xenophonte;
Y prefiero la caricia
Del aire fresco del monte.<\/p>\n
Del hombre y de sus rencillas;
Y prefiero las abejas
Volando en las campanillas.<\/p>\n
Of Persia and Xenophon, no less,
But more than these I prefer
The fresh mountain air\u2019s caress.<\/p>\n
Of man and his struggles for power,
But I prefer the buzzing bees
That hover round the bellflower.]<\/p>\n