ABSTRACT
In the context of the Americas, the myth of the centaur was doubly imported first, because of its connection with the ancient world and secondly because of its association with the horse, introduced into America by the Spanish conquistadors. The centaur is described near myrtles, under laurel tres, in La Isla de Oro, written with Dario's characteristic inner richness. For their part, the Indians could not believe their eyes when they saw, on earth, the embodiment of a mythical figure dreamed up by other men whose existence they did not even suspect: the Greeks had invented the centaur, the American Indians encountered it. When the centaur invaded the New World for the second time, it was in literary terms, as the vehicle for the American dream of the Modernists. It would be unfair to curtail the image of the centaur by ignoring the Hollywood descendant of the American man-on-horseback.
