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17_06_14_SpanishAmericanModernism_5-5x7-75.indd 1 2017-06-14 3:49 PM

Robert Jay Glickman

SPANISH AMERICAN MODERNISM

The Beginnings

Canadian Academy of the Arts

Copyright © 2017 Robert Jay Glickman All rights reserved

A CAA Liberty Book

Canadian Academy of the Arts 571 Bedford Park Avenue Toronto, Ontario M5M 1K4Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Glickman, Robert Jay, 1928-, author Spanish American modernism : the beginnings / Robert Jay

Glickman.

ISBN 978-0-921907-03-9 (softcover)

1. Spanish American literature--19th century--History andcriticism. 2. Spanish American literature--History and criticism. 3. Modernism (Literature)--Latin America. I. Title.

PQ7081.G535 2017 860.9'9809034 C2017-902105-2

On the cover (left to right): Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío, José Asunción Silva, José Martí, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera

Printed and bound in Canada

To Ruth, Heart of an Angel

CONTENTS

Lecture Series 1 Part 1: Introduction 1 Part 2: Progress toward perfection 9 Part 3: I have, therefore I am 17

Part 4: Purify! Purify! Purify! 25 Part 5: Keeping up with the -isms 38

Part 6; How to recognize a modernista 49Part 7: A new generation of explorers 60

Questions 70

Answers to Consider 75 Part 1 75 Part 2 78 Part 3 84 Part 4 89 Part 5 91 Part 6 92

Readings 97“El rey burgués: Cuento alegre” 98 “Una noche” 106 “A la Belleza” 109

Index 112

Prologue

Racing to the murky waters of oblivion, Time carries off the discovery, exhilaration, joy, and sadness of every present moment. Among its heartless confiscations, Time has borne away that wondrous era known as Modernismo. All those people of the past—their hopes and fears, stunning innovations, hurtful failures, thrill-ing triumphs—gone. But here they’re not forgotten. The archives open and the beginnings of that rousing epoch come to light again.

RJG

Part 1 Introduction

Spanish American Modernism—what an amazing phenomenon! Let’s take a look at what it was and how it was a reflection of its time. Although the archives are filled with opinions about Modernism in the Hispanic world, let’s start our own investigation with the fol-lowing: In his prologue to the poems of José Asunción Silva, Miguel de Unamuno, the foremost Spanish thinker of the time, said: “No sé bien qué es eso de los modernistas y el modernismo, pues llaman así a cosas tan diversas y hasta opuestas entre sí, que no hay modo de reducirlas a una común categoría.” (1) In contrast to Unamuno’s inability to find unity in Modernism, Isaac Goldberg stressed that “In its broader implications [Modernism] is not a phenomenon re-stricted to Castilian and Ibero-American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but rather an aspect of a spirit that inundated the world of western thought during that era.” (2) Federico de Onís later described Modernism in an even more detailed way. For him, it was “la forma hispánica de la crisis universal de las letras y del espíritu que inicia hacia 1885 la disolución del siglo XIX y que

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se había de manifestar en el arte, la ciencia, la religión, la política y gradualmente en los demás aspectos de la vida entera, con todos los caracteres de un hondo cam-bio histórico.” (3) Some of the causes of the dissolution of the 19th century are specified by Ricardo Gullón:

La industrialización, el positivismo filosófico, la politización creciente de la vida, el anarquismo ideológico y práctico, el marxismo incipiente, el militarismo, la lucha de clases, la ciencia expe-rimental, el auge del capitalismo y la burguesía, neo-idealismos y utopías, todo mezclado—mas, fun-dido—provoca en las gentes, y desde luego en los artistas, una reacción compleja y a veces devas-tadora. (4)

As we read the plethora of opinions that exist on the subject, we find it very easy to get bogged down in a forest of details that prevent us from forming a clear image of Modernism. In order to lessen the complica-tions, let’s leave the concept of Spanish Peninsular Modernism aside and limit ourselves to Modernism in Spanish America. A simple way to start our entry into that world is by tracing the steps of Rubén Darío, the name most often associated with it.

* * * Darío was born on the 18th of January, 1867 in Metapa, Nicaragua, a town which even today has a population of only 20,000 people.

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He was the child of a marriage that dissolved upon his birth and left him to be raised by a great aunt in León, a university city ten times bigger than Metapa. (5) As a child, he did the things that all kids do. He let himself be scared by tales of ghosts and goblins, he went to school to learn the fundamentals, he got into trouble by playing foolish pranks, and he filled his head with boyish fantasies and futile teenage passions. But Darío wasn’t like other kids in the neighbor-hood. Darío was a poet. And a Romantic one at that. He dressed like one, he wore his hair like one, he walked the streets like one. Everybody stood in awe of this phenom with the gift of putting thoughts in the form of verse. And it was not an art that he had learned. It was an inborn, native talent. (6) Darío’s ability as a poet manifested itself even before he reached teenage. Some of his youthful com-positions found their way into local papers. The first, “Desengaño” (Disappointment), appeared under a pseu-donym in June 1880. It was the reflection of a poet’s love rejected by the damsel of his desire. “Desengaño” really bombed. No one but Darío seemed to like it. (7) That disappointment might have cowed other bud-ding poets, but not Darío. Intent on proving his genius to the world, on June 26, 1880 he published “Una lágrima” under his own name in the newspaper El Termómetro. He knew that if you get into print, you’ll be noticed.

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And the more he published, the more he was no-ticed. The people who held him in high regard occupied a respected place in society and, impressed by his talent, invited him to their get-togethers and soirées. In 1882, they even suggested that he be given a grant to further his education in Spain. But Darío was different from his fellows in another way. As young as 13, he showed the world that, in spite of studying with Jesuit teachers, he was an anticlerical rebel who attacked the rich and powerful, denounced the Jesuits as purveyors of sin and obscurantism, called the Pope a Tyrant, and denied the divinity of Jesus. In contrast, he sang the praises of Freedom, Democracy, and Progress; he extolled Reason as a goddess; and he lauded the civilizing power of Science. Maybe the application of all these principles would lead to a union of Central American republics, a concept which he espoused. Some left-wing radicals in society may have been pleased to hear Darío express these ideas, but this kind of talk led government voices to quash the plan to send Rubén to Spain to further his education. In Spain, they feared, Darío might learn even worse things than the ones he spoke and wrote about already. (8) Instead, Darío was sent to Managua and given a post in the National Library, which had just been opened in 1880. Here, he set out to read as much as he could: works by French authors such as Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier,

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Catulle Mendès, and the Goncourt Brothers, (9) as well as many of the Spanish compositions in the 71 volumes of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles. (10) Now a lot happened in Darío’s life during these teenage years. But this is not a biography of Darío. The specifics can be found in the many books, articles, and Internet postings that are easily available to us. Our focus here is Modernism in Spanish America, so let’s have Darío take us into that realm now. It starts with a truth that Darío was soon to learn. Namely, “Very often, where you go depends on who you know.” And the pe who influence him in this regard Antonio Zambrana, a visiting politician from Cuba, who met Darío and praised the virtues of Chile—an exciting country where, as a special envoy of Cuba, published his novel El negro Francisco. (11) So how did Darío make the trip to Chile? Well, Darío’s only choice was to go by boat. Among the firms that provided service along the western coast of South America was the German Company “Kosmos.” This was the one that Darío chose for his trip. He started his 3,200 nautical mile voyage from Corinto, Nicaragua to Valparaíso, Chile on the 5th of June 1886 and arrived 19 days later. The vessel on which he traveled was the Uarda, a 1500 ton German cargo steamer that had been built in 1880. (12) Aside from Darío, it carried only one other passenger.

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As the ship left port, Darío’s mind was filled with the hope that life would be different in the new land. But beneath the surface there was always doubt—doubt such as the kind he expressed in his 1882 composition, “Ingratitud”:

Busca su planta otro suelo: aquella atmósfera quiere, donde el talento no muere sin espaciarse en su cielo. Pero en vano; que, fatal, el mundo al talento humilla, ya sea en una bohardilla, ya sea en un hospital. Melancólico y sombrío, allá va. ¿Sabéis quién es? Oíd, si lo ignoráis, pues: El vate Rubén Darío.

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Notes to Part 1

1. In Silva, José Asunción, Poesías completas, se-guidas de Prosas selectas, Noticia biográfica porCamilo de Brigard Silva. Madrid: Aguilar, 3rd ed.,1963, p. 19.

2. Goldberg, Isaac, Studies in Spanish-American Lit-erature. New York: Brentano’s, 1920, p. 1.

3. Onís, Federico de, Antología de la poesía españolae hispanoamericana. New York: Las Américas,1961, p. xv.

4. Gullón, Ricardo, “Indigenismo y modernismo,”Revista de la Universidad de México, Nov 1962, p.18.

5. The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua-León was established in 1812 and is the oldest in thecountry.

6. Darío insisted that writing poetry “fue en mí or-gánico, natural, nacido.” Silva Castro, Raúl, RubénDarío a los veinte años. Madrid: Gredos, 1956, p.11.

7. Darío’s pain at this failure is reported in detail byDiego Manuel Sequeira in his Rubén Darío criolloo raíz y médula de su creación poética. BuenosAires: Kraft, 1945, pp. 20-22.

8. One opponent was President Pedro Joaquín Cha-morro who told Darío: “Hijo mío, si así escribesahora contra la religión de tus padres y de tu patria,¿qué será si te vas a Europa a aprender cosas peo-res?” In Torres-Ríoseco, Arturo, Vida y poesía deRubén Darío. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1944, p. 21.

9. Sequeira, p. 173, n. 40.10. La Biblioteca de Autores Españoles desde la

formación del lenguaje hasta nuestros días was a

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collection of 71 volumes of Spanish classics from the nation’s literary beginnings until the mid 19th century. It was published in Madrid between 1846 and 1880.

11. El negro Francisco was a costumbrista novel por-traying the plight of African slaves in Cuba in theearly 19th century. It is reported that some 400,000slaves entered the island with the backing of theSpanish authorities, and even when Spain signedtreaties with England to stop the slave trade, traf-ficking continued secretly. See:<http://cuentoshistoriasdelmundo.blogspot.ca/2015/03/el-negro-francisco-antonio-zambrana.html>.

12.<http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/pacific.shtml>.

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Part 2 Progress toward perfection

Rubén Darío reached the thriving port of Valparaíso on the 23rd of June 1886. Although the day was colder and more overcast than he might have hoped, (1) the snow-capped peaks of the Andes in the distance cap-tured his imagination. Despite the fact that Chile was geographically far from North America, Europe, and the exotic lands of Asia, it was clear that the country was quickly moving along the path to progress. Thanks to its fine university, (2) its developing communication system, and its well-trained army and navy, plus its support from British business interests, in 1883 Chile won its 4-year War of the Pacific with Peru and Bolivia. (3) This was clearly a land with a keen desire to move ahead. Imagine: in 1884, the governor of Valparaíso even planned to build an elevated rail line that would resemble the two-track 7th Avenue El in New York City! (4) We all know that if you want to get ahead in a new town, a glowing letter of introduction or two can really help. Well, Darío had such letters. One was addressed to Eduardo Poirier, who lived in Valparaíso and man-aged the Telégrafo Nacional, a major source of infor-mation for the Press in Chile. Poirier put Darío up in his

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home and introduced him to the administration of El Mercurio, a daily paper to which Darío made contribu-tions between the 16th and 26th of July. To be in Valparaíso, however, was not as stimulat-ing as to be in the nation’s capital. So in August 1886, Darío took a train for Santiago where he was met by a distinguished gentleman “todo envuelto en pieles” (all wrapped up in furs). (5) The reason for wearing furs was plain: August in Chile is a winter month. (6) If Darío was startled by the appearance of the gentleman who met him, the latter was stunned by the image of Darío: a dark-skinned, taciturn youth with long black hair and dark rings under his eyes, dressed in store-bought slim-cut clothes, and wearing a dreadful pair of shoes. (7) Rather than housing Darío in a hotel, as he had planned, his host put him up in a room at the newspaper La Época. The chamber he was given was so small it didn’t even have a chair to sit on. (8) At work, Darío was assigned the unpleasant job of writing news reports. Nevertheless, he did have opportunities to publish some of his poetry and short stories there. Soon, the living expenses given him by his Nicaraguan benefactors ran out and he had to live off his earnings at the press. Just enough to pay for a room at a boarding house and stave off hunger by eating herrings and drinking beer. Since this is not a biography of Darío, let’s leave Rubén to his tasks at La Época and try to answer our original question: what was Modernism and how was it

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a reflection of its time. In the process, perhaps we can answer Unamuno’s question about whether the diversity shown in the writers and literary styles of the period can be reduced to “una común categoría.” One thing that was common to all the major modern-ist writers was their exposure to the globalization of information. Martí, Nájera, Casal, and Darío were all journalists, and Martí, Silva, and Darío even lived in places outside their native lands. News about people, things, and events the world over was communicated by travelers such as they who used the railway and shipping networks then so increasingly available. Information was also transmitted by means of the telegraph, telephone, and undersea cable, as well as by the exchange of newspapers and periodicals. The latter phenomenon should not go unheeded, for it was a sig-nificant contributor to the dissemination of knowledge at the time. One example that reveals the extent of this practice is the canje (exchange) engaged in by Lima’s Revista Social in 1887—a year when it carried on exchange with 215 periodicals published in 25 countries in Spanish America, the United States, Europe, and Africa. (9) The sweeping circulation of information included reports about ideas; inventions; manufactured goods; designs in furniture; styles in clothing; and fashions in music, the plastic arts, and literature that were influenc-ing life in the Western World after the middle of the

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19th century. This was a flourishing period of free trade. (10) And it had a tremendous impact on the writers of the time. Indeed, everything was reported in the press, from a train accident in Münchenstein, Switzerland to the death of Victor Hugo to the number of Jews living in the world. (11) This kept the journalists abreast of what was happening on every continent and is one rea-son why their compositions had such a cosmopolitan flavor. (12) One of the consequences of the open door trading policy was the effect that the Romantic Movement had upon the early modernists. Although Romanticism con-tinued to influence them to a greater or lesser degree throughout their careers, (13) the weight of novelty that touched their lives during their formative and mature years lessened the influence of that Movement on their literary works. Major trends such as Realism and Natu-ralism in prose, Impressionism in painting and music, and Parnassianism and Symbolism in poetry all attract-ed their attention. As information of all kinds poured in, change seem-ed to be unstoppable. Progress seemed so, too. During the Modernist period, however, progress was not seen the way it had been at the beginning of the century. Back then, progress was perceived as an advance from here to there.

Here > - - - - - - - - - > There

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The starting point, the route taken, and the terminus of this advance were all on the same level—a straight line, a horizontal path—just like the one described by the movement of trains on land and ships at sea. In the later decades of the century, though, the Hege-lian dialectic and Darwin’s theory of evolution sug-gested that progress did not follow a horizontal tra-jectory, but a diagonal one—a movement from left to right, yes, but also from down to up, that is, from the lower and imperfect toward the higher and perfect.

(+)

(--)

This put history in a different light. The new image implied that what came before was inferior and what was modern was superior. So, to be “with it” was to be on the ascent to perfection. Some of the consequences of this view of progress were expressed by Eduardo de la Barra’s poem “Darwin y el mono,” which was published in Santiago’s Revista del Progreso in 1889. First was the growing impact that evolutionism was having on religious belief in Spanish America. The new concept was that it was better for mankind to have simian origins and be on an upward

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path, as Darwin implied, than to be the progeny of an Adam who fell from perfection into sin, as the Bible said. De la Barra’s pitting of evolution against the tra-ditionally accepted Bible stories was a growing trend of the times—a period of reform in various Western reli-gions. Another result of this new image of progress was also visible in De la Barra’s poem. He was part of this period of ascent and, as an individual, he was proud to be living in it and moving toward a perfection that would benefit his progeny:

¡Qué me importa venir del hondo valle, si resuelto ya escalo la montaña, y voy seguro a la dorada cumbre donde está el despertar de la mañana!

Si voy subiendo, perfección aguardo para mi propia raza . . . . (14)

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Notes to Part 2

1. <http://www.valparaiso.climatemps.com/june.php>.The average June temperature in Managua is about80° F with 30 in. of rain during the month. The aver-age June temperature in Valparaíso is about 52° Fwith 5.5 in. of rain.

2. The University was founded by Andrés Bello in1842, 13 years after his arrival in Chile. Bello wasalso the principal drafter of the Código Civil Chi-leno between 1840 and 1855. This is recognized asone of the finest pieces of civil legislation in SpanishAmerica.

3. For information on this period in Chile’s history, seeGlickman, Robert Jay, “Militarism in SpanishAmerica, 1870-1910: Lessons in Globalization forToday in <acadarts.org> Articles and Essays.

4. See J. V., Los ferrocarriles aéreos, in Glickman,Robert Jay, Fin del siglo: retrato de Hispanoamé-rica en la época modernista. Toronto: CanadianAcademy of the Arts, 1999, p. 90, #080 with picturein #081. Online at:<https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/69394>.

5. Silva Castro, Raúl. Rubén Darío a los veinte años.Madrid: Gredos, 1956, p. 31.

6. As Darío explained: “Santiago es fría, y esto haceque en el inviernio los hombres delicados se cubrande finas pieles.”

7. Silva Castro, pp. 32-33.8. Silva Castro, p. 37.9. Glickman, Fin del siglo, pp. 121-122, #129.10. Free trade became a central principle in Britain by

the 1840s. The first European free trade agreement

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was the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty. It was put in place between the United Kingdom and France in 1860 and paved the way for similar agreements between other countries in Europe. See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade>.

11. Glickman, Fin del siglo, p. 156 #203, p. 110 #110,and p. 165 #233.

12. So important was the press that even José Fernándezin Silva’s De sobremesa indicated that, in order toprepare the way for his projected dictatorship, itwould be essential to “aprovechar la libertad deimprenta ilimitada que otorga la Constitución actual. . . .” Obras completas de José Asunción Silva.Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1965, p. 171.

13. According to Justo Sierra, “toda nuestra literatura poética, desde 1830 es romántica.” See his “Pró-logo” to Poesías de Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera. Paris/Mexico: Bouret, 1897. Vol. 1, p. 16. And in “La canción de los pinos,” Rubén Darío proclaimed: “Románticos somos . . . ¿Quién que Es, no es ro-mántico?” See El canto errante, 1907.

14. Revista del Progreso, Santiago de Chile, 1889, pp.233-37.

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Part 3 “I have, therefore I am”

Looking upward grew to be commonplace in the 19th century. The images of ascent created by writers like Martí, Nájera, and Valencia coexisted with Hege-lian and Darwinian theories of movement toward per-fection, as well as with efforts in science and technology to make a reality of mankind’s long-aspired desire to break its earthly bonds and fly. In 1782, those efforts began to produce practical results with the invention of a hot air balloon by the Montgolfier Brothers. In 1861, during the U.S. Civil War, a Balloon Corps was formed by the Union Army and non-maneuverable balloons—with telegraph key and wire attached—were used for military reconnaissance as part of the Army’s combat strategy. In the following years, important strides were made to make balloons maneuverable. Thanks to the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, beginning in 1898, dirigibles (i.e., maneuverable lighter-than-air machines) came into fairly frequent use. Conquest of manned flight in heavier-than-air machines was finally achieved by the Wright Brothers in 1903. In an atmosphere like this, it’s not surprising to find images of ascent in the works of the Modernist writers. Even as a teenager, Darío himself envisioned the possibility of flight. Proof of this is found

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in the 11 June 1885 issue of El Porvenir de Nicaragua, where he wrote:

A juzgar por el progreso vertiginoso de la época presente, jamás visto en tiempos pasados, en el siglo XX habrán de realizarse maravillas increíbles. ¡Oh sí! La navegación aérea y la navegación submarina serán medios vulgares de comunicación. . . . [E]levarse aquí en un globo aerostático, pasar sobre las nubes, con las tempestades bajo sus pies, y caer a pocos minutos en medio de la Plaza de la Con-cordancia en París . . . todo esto que hoy parece extraordinario, será natural, corriente, real y verda-dero. (1)

So much was happening so quickly in so many fields during the Modernist period that the writers who lived at that time could not help but be affected by those phenomena. Because of all the novelty and all the change, to a great extent the present for the Modernists was like a foreign country. Although living in that coun-try gratified them in many ways, it often caused them deep pain. In his 1883 prologue to Pérez Bonalde’s “El poema del Niágara,” José Martí explained why this was the case. What follows is not a translation of his words, but a rendering of the ideas he expressed. The last part of the 19th century was a period when the barriers that had existed in earlier times were being broken. When people could go wherever they wanted without facing the obstacles that had impeded their movement before. It was a time of splendid production

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and transformation—an age of expansion, communica-tion, flowering, dissemination, and infectious transmis-sion. While these features of the period were positive in many ways, they had negative consequences, as well. They led to an emphasis on material acquisition, thus causing the proof of existence to change from Des-cartes’ “I think, therefore I am” to “I have, therefore I am.” They reduced the certainty of religious belief and raised insoluble questions about life and death. Even God was going around confused and the female of the species was out of joint and bewildered—“Dios anda confuso; la mujer como sacada de quicio y aturdida,” Martí said. (2) It was a time when the mind was being filled with an unbroken flow of conflicting ideas and, as a result, the individual had no time to form sound judgments. The world became a place of ubiquitous impermanence. For many, this turned the fin del siglo into a period of turmoil and pain that was leading to “un desmembra-miento de la mente humana”—a dismemberment of the human mind, “una descentralización de la inteligencia” —a decentralization of the intelligence. Julián del Casal summarized the situation this way: “En ningún final de siglo más que el nuestro se han visto tantas cosas contradictorias e inesperadas. De ahí que ha nacido en los espíritus una incertidumbre que cada día reviste caracteres más alarmantes.” (3) The result: “la

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vida nos parece abominable, y brota incesantemente de nuestros labios impíos la súplica diabólica de Baude-laire: ‘O Satan! aie pitié de ma longue misère...’” (4) Professor Unamuno, to a greater or lesser degree, this is what the modernistas had in common. We’ve said a lot about Modernism in the previous segments. We’ve alluded to expressions of religious rebellion in Rubén Darío’s early years. We’ve talked about the role of travel, the press, and economic policy in effecting a globalization in the movement of people, information, and things during the Modernist period. We’ve mentioned the emphasis that people in this epoch placed on material acquisition. We’ve discussed how science, technology, and innovation in philosophical thought helped bring about rapid change and altered the traditional view of progress. And we’ve heard the opin-ions of Martí and Casal about the effect of all this on the human mind and spirit. These introductory remarks have revealed a lot about Modernism, but there’s a lot more to discuss—especially relating to the major writers of the period. As we saw in Darío, Romanticism did not die out com-pletely. What it did during the Modernist age was reveal a persistent desire to be free:

• Martí longed to be free of the Spanish yoke that heldCuba in its grasp for four centuries—a goal whichhe was willing to fight and die for.

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• Nájera longed to be free of the traitorous realities oflife and his doubts about the possibility of findinganswers from God in this world.

• Casal longed to be free of the noise, crowds, andfoul odors of urban living, the unrelenting burden ofprofessional journalism, and the unyielding melan-choly that dogged his spirit and goaded him todream of finding an artistic haven of comfort, se-renity, and beauty.

• Silva longed to be free of a world of ignorance,ugliness, and disorder in which he was not under-stood by others, yet lacked the ability to find an-swers to his own questions about the meaning of lifeand death.

• Darío longed to be free of the humiliation inflictedby a world that worshipped material wealth and de-meaned the intellectual and moral riches producedby poets.Both the content of poetry and its form were

consistent concerns of the Modernist writers. With re-spect to content: • For Martí, the feverish intimate life of the individ-

ual—uncertain, frightened, probing, restless, bedev-iled—came to be, along with Nature, the onlylegitimate subject of modern poetry.

• Nájera concluded that “¡Todos están enfermos de lavida!” But in his mind, this was no reason to fillpoetry with outrage or anger. He aspired to write

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poetry that would speak softly and be filled with compassion.

• Casal considered poetry to be a vehicle for theexpression of his most intimate thoughts and feel-ings, as well as a tool for the creation of works ofbeauty that could stand as a counterbalance to theworld of ugliness and disenchantment that existedaround him.

• Silva offered perfect examples of what might becalled “poetry of the tormented soul.” This is thekind of poetry to which Martí had alluded in hisprologue to “El poema del Niágara.”

• Darío, on the other hand, was galled by the poortreatment given him by others. If the French Revolu-tion inspired his wish for Liberté, it also held out thehope of achieving Égalité and Fraternité—if not acrowning as Poet-King in society.Whatever the subject of their work, the modernistas

shared the conviction that hypocrisy, falsehood, and deceit should be vigorously combatted, for they con-taminated every aspect of life. Sincerity, the writers believed, was the ideal they should strive for. Two important examples may be cited: in his 1891 publica-tion Versos sencillos, Martí described himself as “un hombre sincero / de donde crece la palma,” and five years later, in Prosas profanas, Darío stressed that “ser sincero es ser potente.” The importance of sincerity to these writers is a reflection of something much more

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widespread in society at the time: namely, an effort to purify the physical, social, and moral environment in which they lived, by removing the noxious elements that were contaminating it. In Part 4 of these lectures, we’ll see this effort in its broader context.

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Notes to Part 3

1. Sequeira, Diego Manuel, Rubén Darío criollo, oraíz y médula de su creación poética. Buenos Aires:Kraft, 1945, p. 195. We are also reminded of thepossible symbolism of Darío’s title Azul..., a colorwhich he identified as “ese color célico.”

2. Martí, José, Prologue to Juan Antonio Pérez Bonal-de, “El poema del Niágara.”

3. Julián del Casal, Prosas. Havana: Consejo Nacionalde Cultura, 1963, vol. 3, p. 18.

4. Ibid., p. 27.

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Part 4 Purify! Purify! Purify!

Research by John Snow, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and other medical scientists in the second half of the century proved that diseases such as cholera, rabies, anthrax, and tuberculosis were caused by germs, and that by eliminating these contaminating microorgan-isms from the water, food, and air, the health of the population could be greatly improved. And in the 1870s, Joseph Lister showed that by using antiseptics to com-bat germs in medical settings, the onset of infection could be prevented. (1) These medical concerns about the need for puri-fication were given prominence in the press, and when Rubén Darío was in Chile, purification efforts were being made in three seemingly unrelated areas: environ-mentalism, spelling reform, and penal reform. However, these were not unrelated fields in the minds of their proponents. In the 1880s and 1890s, individuals such as A. E. Salazar and Carlos Newman were doing research on impurities in the waters in certain areas of Chile, the ice that was being consumed by the public in Valpara-íso, and the air inhaled by patrons in specific theaters in Valparaíso and Santiago. The goal of these studies was to improve the health of the population by purifying the

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environment. At the same time, Salazar, Newman, and others were studying ways to make the spelling system used in their country “más higiénica.” The solution to that problem was to remove all deceitful letters in the alphabet and create an ortografía rrazional. See: <http://acadarts.org/articles_essays/Spelling_Reform.pdf.>. In addition, Carlos Newman gave his views on penal reform in his book Notas sueltas sobre la pena de muerte (Valparaíso, 1896). The nature of punishment for criminal behavior was a subject of growing interest at the time, and appropriateness of the death penalty figured as a major part of the discussion. Naturalist writers like Émile Zola had done intense studies of life in French society and, in novels such as those in the Rougon-Macquart series (1871-1893), he described the harsh conditions which gave form to the character of its inhabitants. The question then was “Why did individ-uals such as those described in the novels turn out to be morally wanting?” The answer, according to Hippolyte Taine and others, was that each person’s nature is de-termined by three inexorable formative factors: the in-dividual’s heredity, the environment, and the time in which that person lived. For criminologists, one of the results of this view was that wrongdoing should no longer be treated as individually inspired misconduct, but rather as the result

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of victimization of the offender by society. For that reason, it would be mistaken to imprison criminals in penitentiaries and punish them cruelly to achieve their redemption or to put them to death for their wrong-doings. Criminality was a “sickness” and reformation of the delinquent—in other words, a “cure” of that sick-ness—could be achieved through the use of scientific disciplines such as psychiatry in conjunction with humane penal practices. These, it was claimed, would remove the societally-produced toxicity that had pro-voked the individual to commit crime in the first place. In contradiction to the past, reform of criminality should now be conducted as a process of purification. This was the position of Carlos Newman in Notas sueltas sobre la pena de muerte. (2) The world of poetry was also influenced by the purification trend. Some of this trend’s most compelling examples in literature are found in the Parisian journal Le Parnasse contemporain, which was published in 1866, 1869, and 1876. Among the ninety-nine writers who contributed to the journal were Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, and José-María de Heredia. Reacting to the excessive sentimentality and socio-political ac-tivism of the Romantic poets who preceded them, these authors followed Théophile Gautier’s doctrine of art for art’s sake, and selecting exotic, classical, and historical subjects, they strived to create an objective, form-focused art that would eliminate the toxicity of

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sentimentality and reveal the pristine purity of the subjects they selected. Two modernista examples of Parnassian-style poetry are Darío’s “Caupolicán” (July 1889) and Casal’s “Prometeo” (August 1891). Caupolicán was a subject that had been part of the country’s literary tradition since Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga wrote La Araucana in the sixteenth century. Ercilla’s inspiration came from his experience fighting against the Araucanian Indians during his stay in Chile between 1557 and 1559. On returning to Spain, he pub-lished La Araucana in three parts (1569, 1578, and 1589). What’s interesting here is that while Ercilla chose to embed his tale in an extremely long, multifac-eted, and often rambling three-part epic poem, Darío selected the constricted form of the sonnet for his work and focused on a single incident in the story. Then, in true Parnassian style, he crafted an almost sculptural image of impassivity on the part of the Indian hero and capped it with a controlled expression of emotion by the members of his tribe.

Caupolicán Es algo formidable que vio la vieja raza; robusto tronco de árbol al hombro de un campeón salvaje y aguerrido, cuya fornida maza blandiera el brazo de Hércules, o el brazo de Sansón.

Por casco sus cabellos, su pecho por coraza, pudiera tal guerrero, de Arauco en la región, lancero de los bosques, Nemrod que todo caza,

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desjarretar un toro, o estrangular un léon.

Anduvo, anduvo, anduvo. Le vio la luz del día, le vio la tarde pálida, le vio la noche fría, y siempre el tronco de árbol a cuestas del titán.

“El Toqui, el Toqui!”, clama la conmovida casta. Anduvo, anduvo, anduvo. La aurora dijo: “Basta”, e irguióse la alta frente del gran Caupolicán. (3)

And now, Casal. We’ve already spoken about the influence of Romanticism in the poems of Julián del Casal. That influence is mainly discernible in his first book, Hojas al viento (1890). What we must emphasize, however, is that as a true Modernist, he absorbed the influence of other literary trends that were current in his time. One of those was Parnassianism. This approach to composition is primarily visible in Casal’s second book, Nieve (1892), which is divided into sections whose titles are: “Bocetos antiguos,” “Mi museo ideal,” “Cromos es-pañoles,” “Marfiles viejos,” and “La gruta del ensueño.” (4) “Mi museo ideal,” the second section in Nieve, is of particular interest, because it’s the product of Casal’s correspondence with the French painter, Gustave Mo-reau (1826-1898). In the summer of 1891, Casal ob-tained black-and-white photographs of paintings by Moreau from the Photographie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Then, on 11 August, Casal wrote a letter in imperfect French to the painter, whom he addressed as his “Très-adorè [sic] maître” and signed as “le plus fervent, le plus

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sincere, le plus fidèle et le plus loyal de vos admirateurs et de vos serviteurs.” (5) Of the ten paintings by Moreau which inspired “Mi museo ideal,” “Prometeo” offers a fine example of Casal’s Parnassianism. The poem is set in a remote, rocky, isolated place. Prometheus, the forward-looking Titan of Greek mythology, is described like a statue with no feelings of pain, suffering, or compassion. Words of the kind preferred by the Parnassians—words like “marmóreo,” and “marfileñas”—reinforce the sculptural image of the Titan.

Prometeo

Bajo el dosel de gigantesca roca yace el Titán, cual Cristo en el Calvario, marmóreo, indiferente y solitario, sin que brote el gemido de su boca.

Su pie desnudo en el peñasco toca donde agoniza un buitre sanguinario que ni atrae su ojo visionario ni compasión en su ánimo provoca.

Escuchando el hervor de las espumas que se deshacen en las altas peñas, ve de su redención luces extrañas,

junto a otro buitre de nevadas plumas, negras pupilas y uñas marfileñas que ha extinguido la sed en sus entrañas. (6)

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No Romantic sentimentality here! Purification attained through the practice of Parnassianism!

Prometheus by Gustave Moreau

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Casal sends his photo to Gustave Moreau

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Casal writes to Gustave Moreau, p.1

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Casal writes to Gustave Moreau, p. 2

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Notes to Part 4

1. One of the most absorbing articles on this subject isJosé A. Pérez’s “El mundo infinitesimal” which ap-peared in La Lectura of Santiago de Chile in 1883.The author’s fascination with this subject can beseen in the following paragraphs:

Antes de descubrirse las propiedades de las lentes, no se conocía más que lo que estaba al alcance de la vista desnuda; pero desde el mo-mento en que la visión tomó un poder extra-ordinario, los conocimientos fueron también mayores y más sorprendentes. El telescopio ha venido a revelarnos la exis-tencia de nuevos mundos que pueblan los es-pacios estelares, y el análisis espectral, las dife-rentes sustancias de que se componen.

El microscopio nos ha puesto en contacto con esa infinidad de seres diminutos que habitan por doquiera nuestro planeta y cuya existencia, antes de descubrirse, ni aun se sospechaba.

(See Glickman, Robert Jay, Fin del siglo: retrato de Hispanoamérica en la época modernista. Toronto: Canadian Academy of the Arts, 1999, p. 85 #73.) Interesting information about the Germ Theory of Disease may be found at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease>.

2. According to Newman (writing in the ortografíarrazional script), the criminal:

a sido echo por la soziedad en qe a nazido i bibido; es el produqto de una infinidad de in-fluenzias soziales, i no abria sido asesino o ladron si no le ubiese impelido a serlo por medio

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del ejemplo o de la nezesidad. Luego, se agrega, el delinquente no debe ser qastigado, sino rre-formado, rrejenerado i sanado por esta misma soziedad qe a sido su autora; ella debe ponerlo en una qárzel qómoda i agradable, i tratar, por todos los medios qe estén a su alqanze, de qe no sufra mortifiqazion alguna; su bida en todo qaso debe ser mas ijiéniqa i qonfortable qe la de miles de obreros onrrados, o inofensibos a lo ménos, qe tienen qe ganarse el sustento qon su trabajo. Por último, el juez debe dezirle, al pronunziar la sentenzia, qe se le guardarán toda qlase de qon-sideraziones, porqe la soziedad qomprende qe ella es la qriminal por aberlo enjendrado en su seno, i no él (Notas sueltas sobre la pena de muerte, pp. 96-97).

3. First published in La Época, 11 November 1888;then in Azul . . . , additions of 1890.

4. For a list of poems in Nieve whose titles clearlyreflect Casal’s interest in the visual, see Glickman,Robert Jay, The Poetry of Julián del Casal. Gaines-ville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1978, vol. 2, p. 132.

5. For all the letters which Casal wrote to Moreaubetween 1891 and 1893 (11 in French, 1 in Spanish),see Glickman, Robert Jay, “Julián del Casal: Lettersto Gustave Moreau,” Revista Hispánica Moderna,nos. 1-2 (1972-1973), pp. 111-135.

6. First published in La Habana Elegante, 16 August1891; with modifications in Nieve, 1892. Sincepainting is a non-chronometric art form, Moreauused two vulture images to represent the passage oftime in his depiction of Prometheus. This “move-ment-of-time” device was quite common in theworks of Medieval and Renaissance painters. In

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lines 6-7, the “buitre sanguinario / que ni atrae su ojo visionario / ni compasión en su ánimo provoca” is really the same vulture as the one described at the end of the poem—but at an earlier time. In other words, the vulture, in lines 6-7, represents the present torment of Prometheus. The dead vulture at Prometheus’s feet, described in lines 12-14, depicts the result of the Titan’s ability to see the future—a future in which his agony will come to an end.

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Part 5 Keeping up with the –isms

Although the impact of the French Parnassians on Casal was very strong, (1) it must be noted that his familiarity with French literature was not limited to that group of writers. (2) Through his readings, Casal also became acquainted with the Decadents. This can be seen in works like “Post umbra” and “La canción de la morfina” in Hojas al viento; as well as in poems like “Blanco y negro,” “La reina de la sombra,” and “Horri-dum somnium” in Nieve. What’s interesting in this regard, however, is that while Casal’s Cuban critics censured Nieve for its Decadent features, Paul Verlaine was struck by the book’s debt to Parnassianism. (3) To a considerable degree, Casal’s Decadentism stemmed from his growing detachment from Catholi-cism. God seemed frigidly impassive to Casal and could not be counted on to grant his deepest wishes. As a result, Casal turned in another direction. Ars religio nostra, “Art is our religion,” he proclaimed, and Beauty would be his new Deity. (4) One of the clearest signs of the wholehearted commitment to Beauty which charac-terized the latter period of Casal’s life can be seen in “A la Belleza,” the fervent hymn with which he opened Rimas. From the outset—“¡Oh divina Belleza!”—the

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reader is aware of the similarity between this poem and songs of praise that are addressed to the Deity in con-ventional religions. This similarity derives from the fact that Casal used the language and imagery of Catholi-cism as media for expressing his feelings toward the new divinity, Beauty. Art had two clear advantages for Casal: on the one hand, it allowed him to worship a female figure—la Belleza—who would never abandon, betray, or bore him; on the other, it made it possible for him to join a loose, but inspired brotherhood of coreligionists—los artistas—which permitted him to enjoy the warmth of kindred spirits without limiting any of his personal free-dom. Although Beauty was the supreme divinity, there existed other exalted beings, as well: men who had im-mortalized themselves in the service of Beauty and who, much like the saints of Catholicism, could also become objects of veneration. As we know, Gustave Moreau was outstanding among these for Casal. Another virtue of Art was that, like Catholicism, it drew the attention of the faithful away from this transi-tory vale of tears and led them to concentrate on an ideal meta-reality. Art differed from Catholicism, however, in that it offered immediate access to its promised land. In the sublime world of Art, the ugly sights, the shock-ing sounds, the repellent odors, and the terrifying deeds that were integral parts of daily living could be purged

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of their repulsiveness or omitted altogether; one could resist the temptation of material rewards and conquer immortality by heroically defending the purity of his dreams; and the human spirit, rising above the limi-tations of matter, could travel with utmost freedom through time as well as space. Belonging to a heroic elite that faithfully served a beneficent divinity, finding inspiration in the immortal works of saintly masters, and abandoning the horrors of reality for the wondrous realm of Art not only helped Casal to forget his sadness for a while, but infused him with spiritual vigor and gave him a considerable meas-ure of inner peace. When the subject of Decadentism arises, it’s often contrasted with Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism and associated with Symbolism and Aestheticism. Each of the “-isms” just mentioned represented a particular view about the nature of art—what it should be like, what it should do, and how it should do it. Let’s take a brief look at each of these artistic varieties. Romanticism. As you know, Romanticism was a multifaceted movement that originated toward the end of the 18th century, hit its peak around the middle of the 19th, and diminished in vigor as the years passed. It impacted many aspects of life: philosophy, politics, the graphic arts, literature, music, fashions in clothing, and so on. Poets tended to pursue opportunities for experi-mentation and their art became less girdled by the

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formal rules of the past. Nature for the Romantics was fascinating, but often unpredictable and extreme in its power. The following lines of “En una tempestad” by José María Heredia (1803-1839) offer an example:

¡Qué nubes! ¡qué furor! El sol temblando Vela en triste vapor su faz gloriosa, Y su disco nublado sólo vierte Luz fúnebre y sombría . . .

But most of all, Romanticism put its stress on the individual, and so we find poets writing about their intimate emotions, idiosyncratic areas of their imagi-nation, and their visualizations of the supernatural. The early Gutiérrez Nájera—a modernista with clear links to Romanticism—shows this focus on the personal in poems like “La duda,” the opening stanza of which reads as follows:

La duda

¡Aparta, sombra horrible, Aparta de mi frente Tus alas, que la cubren Con fúnebre crespón! ¡Aparta, que a mis ojos Asoma el llanto ardiente, Y roto está en pedazos Mi triste corazón!

Realism. For its part, Realism attempted to picture the familiar, mundane aspects of life—and it did this in

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a straightforward way, without idealizing or drama-tizing the subjects. Although literary Realism mainly expressed itself in the novel, it did play a part in the poetry of Modernism, as well. The opening lines of José Asunción Silva’s “Los maderos de San Juan” present an example of this. They set the scene for the upcoming message of the poem:

¡Aserrín! ¡Aserrán!

Los maderos de San Juan, piden queso, piden pan,

los de Roque alfandoque, los de Rique

alfeñique ¡Los de triqui,

triqui, tran!

Y en las rodillas duras y firmes de la Abuela, con movimiento rítmico se balancea el niño y ambos agitados y trémulos están . . .

Naturalism. Like Realism, Naturalism manifested itself primarily in the novel. It was an approach to com-position that directed the writer to analyze the forces that influenced behavior, in as objective and scientific a way as possible. As we saw in Part 4 of these lectures, Naturalist writers like Émile Zola had done intense studies of life in French society and, in novels such as

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those in the Rougon-Macquart series (1871-1893), described the harsh conditions which gave form to the character of its inhabitants. One of the major features of the Naturalist mode of writing was the belief that the lives of characters it portrayed were shaped by the time and place in which they lived and by inner traits that were determined by Nature. This deterministic aspect of Naturalism shrouded it in a veil of pessimism that was difficult for many readers to accept. Because of its very nature, this philosophy of composition was rare in modernista poetry. However, one poem that does suggest its existence in the modernist corpus is Silva’s “Enfermedades de la niñez.” This work depicts a young man moved by natural forces to engage in a sexual encounter that leaves him emotionally depressed and diseased in body. Because of its subject, I prefer to leave the examination of this poem to you, rather than look into it here. Decadentism. High ideals and social activism were not goals which the Decadents pursued with any inter-est. Unlike the Romantics, they disparaged Nature and prized Beauty made by man’s creative talents. In À rebours (Against the Grain, Paris, 1884), the foremost Decadent novel of the time, J. K. Huysmans’ protago-nist Jean des Esseintes holds artifice to be the distinctive mark of human genius. According to him:

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Nature has had her day . . . what a tiresome store of green fields and leafy trees, what a wearisome commonplace collection of mountains and seas! In fact, not one of her inventions, deemed so subtle and wonderful, which the ingenuity of man-kind cannot create . . . Yes, there is no denying it, she is in her dotage and has long ago exhausted the simpleminded ad-miration of the true artist; the time is undoubtedly come when her productions must be superseded by art. (5)

Despite their adverse feelings about Nature, the Spanish American Decadents had no faith either that the successes achieved by science and technology would lead to the perfection that was predicted by some think-ers of the day. Such doubts about the time to come are evident in poems such as Silva’s “Futura.” Symbolism. The term symbolism designates a phi-losophy of composition that was described by Jean Moréas in his 1886 Le Symbolisme (The Symbolist Manifesto). The advocates of this manner of writing aimed to invent modes of expression that would corre-spond to the new sensitivity that was evolving as the century progressed. The symbolist aesthetic can be traced back to the 1857 publication of Charles Baude-laire’s Les Fleurs du mal. It was developed in later years by Paul Verlaine who enunciated the principles of this writing style in his “Art poétique,” which was published

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in 1884. The following lines are suggestive of his philosophy of composition:

De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela préfère l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air, Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose. . . . . . . . . . . . . Pas la Couleur, rien que la Nuance!

Music before all else, So favor the Irregular, Vaguer and more soluble in the air, With nothing in it weighty or fixed. . . . . . . . . . . . Not color, nothing but Nuance!

A main tenet of the Symbolists was that since life is basically mysterious, the artist must find ways of pre-serving this mystery. This could be done through sug-gestion rather than through unambiguous statements, through symbols rather than explicit depiction, through mood creation rather than the direct transmission of information. Using these techniques, the Symbolists aimed to reach the whole personality of the reader. On occasion, however, their use of symbolic images and indirect suggestion to express mystical ideas, emotions, and states of mind tended to hinder full comprehension of their poetry.

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Aestheticism. Aestheticism was a reaction to the utilitarian values and moral constraints of 19th century bourgeois culture that predominated in society and were pictured in the realist and naturalist novels of the time. Aestheticism’s philosophy of composition was that "true" art is created for its own sake and has no political, didactic, moral, or utilitarian purpose. Although writers like Edgar Allan Poe and other 19th century authors espoused this idea, the concept of "L'art pour l'art" is generally attributed to Théophile Gautier (1811–1872). Because our modernista poets put so much emphasis on artistic creation, critical opinion has often seen Aes-theticism as the basis of the Modernist movement. For example, Arturo Torres-Ríoseco saw Modernism as “all decoration, sensuality, internal rhythm, color, passion, creative spontaneity.” (6) And Pedro Salinas saw it as “a literature of the senses, vibrant with sensual attrac-tions and dazzling in the display of color. It spiritedly pursued successes in sonority and form. Never had the words of Spanish sung with such colorful gaiety, never before had they shone with such luster and sparkle . . . ” (7) To this we might add that the source of Modernist art and artifice was not only the personal experience of the writers, but also works of art that others had created. We recall, for instance, the poems of Casal’s “Mi museo ideal” that were based on specific paintings by Gustave Moreau. The same is true of Darío’s “Bouquet,” which was inspired by Théophile Gautier’s poem “Symphonie

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en blanc majeur,” a work that was published in Émaux et camées in 1852. As far as the Symbolists, Aestheticists, and Deca-dents were concerned, criticism abounded during the Modernist age. Even writers whom we clearly identify as modernistas were unabashed about finding fault with their peers. A fine example of this is Silva’s “Sinfonía color de fresa con leche,” which is dedicated “A los colibríes decadentes.” Its opening lines are:

¡Rítmica Reina lírica! Con venusinos cantos de sol y rosa, de mirra y laca y polícromos cromos de tonos mil oye los constelados versos mirrinos, escúchame esta historia Rubendariaca, de la Princesa verde y el paje Abril, Rubio y sutil.

If Silva panned Darío for his excesses, Darío also criticized his fellow poets. In his opinion, their work was “aún vana, estando muchos de los mejores talentos en el limbo de un completo desconocimiento del mismo Arte a que se consagran.” (8) Well, there’s always a critic around!

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Notes to Part 5

1. According to Max Henríquez Ureña, the influenceof Théophile Gautier, author of the ParnassianÉmaux et Camées, “es la que con mayor persistenciase manifiesta en Casal” (Breve historia del moder-nismo, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2nded., 1962, p. 121). This point was stressed by PaulVerlaine in a commentary on Nieve which was pub-lished in La Habana Elegante on 17 June 1894:“estoy seguro de que los poetas que más han influidoen él son mis viejos amigos los parnasianos.”

2. Corroboration of this fact may be found in the list ofthe French authors whom Casal mentioned in news-paper articles before the 1890 publication of Hojasal viento. See Glickman, Robert Jay, The Poetry ofJulián del Casal. Gainesville: Univ. of FloridaPress, 1978, vol. 2, pp. 18-20.

3. Glickman, Poetry, vol. 2, pp. 144-146.4. The cover of Bustos y Rimas showed the figure of

Poetry and the inscription “ARS RELIGIO NOSTRA.”5. Huysmans, J. K., À Rebours (Against the Grain).

Introduction by Havelock Ellis. New York: Dover,1969, ch. 2, p. 22.

6. Torres-Ríoseco, Arturo, Ensayos sobre literaturalatinoamericana. 2nd series. Mexico: Fondo de Cul-tura Económica, 1958, p. 29.

7. Salinas, Pedro, Ensayos de literatura hispánica.Madrid: Aguilar, 1961, p. 284.

8. Darío, Rubén, “Palabras liminares” in Prosas pro-fanas. Buenos Aires: Coni, 1896. See the Poesíascompletas, edited by Alfonso Méndez Plancarte,Madrid: Aguilar, 1968, p. 545.

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Part 6 How to recognize a modernista

During the course of these lectures, we’ve talked about aspects of life during the early period of Modernism—from about 1880 to 1896—and we’ve tried to see if the authors who lived during that period had anything in common. In the course of our search, we found that exposure to the globalization of goods and information was one basic that all the major modernis-tas shared. For many, the advances in science and tech-nology, the entry of objects of every kind from every part of the world, the unbroken flow of new ideas, and the influx of innovative trends in the approach to artistic creation turned the world into a place of turmoil and pain, which, according to Martí, was leading to a dis-memberment of the human mind and which, in the opinion of Casal, made life itself abominable. As we proceeded, we took a brief look at the major literary trends of the 19th century: Romanticism, Real-ism, Naturalism, Parnassianism, Decadentism, Symbol-ism, and Aestheticism. What we didn’t have time to do then, however, was see what the creative process was like for the poets of that period. Some clues about this process can be seen through a study of “Un poema,” a work by José Asunción Silva. As we explore this sub-ject, however, let’s just remember that the modernistas

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lived in a time that was different from our own, and had a cultural heritage that also differed from ours. Our fin de siglo authors, for example, were not generally accus-tomed to writing poetry in free verse, but expressed themselves in specific meters and used rhyme. This was traditional in Hispanic poetry. So with this in mind, let’s see what Silva had to say about poetic composition in “Un poema.” If we analyze the poem, we see that it consists of several parts. These are numbered below and their cor-responding segments are shown beside the body of the poem on the following pages.

(1) Conception: The poet dreams of writing a daring new type of poem. (2 lines)

(2) Choice of subject: His first task is to choose a subject from a group of possibilities. (1 line)

(3) Choice of rhythm: To this end, he must choose a special rhythm. An array of rhythms comes and goes in his mind. Finally, after devoting 15½ lines to the issue of rhythm, the poet makes his choice. (Alejandrinos are selected.)

(4) Choice of rhyme: The next step is to select an appropriate rhyme scheme for the tragic story that is to be told in the poem. The poet gives that 1½ lines. (Rhyming couplets are used.)

(5) Specifics of the story: The tragedy mentioned earlier is now given in detail. (4 lines)

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(6) Choice of a fitting lexicon: The poet aims to create a particular feeling in his readers. To do this, he must use melodic sounds, create a fitting physical and emotional environment for the sub-ject, and embed symbolic words into his poem. (He devotes 12 lines to the choice of lexicon.)

(7) Self assessment: The poet judges the quality of the poem he has written. (2 lines)

(8) Conclusion: Having personally assessed the value of his creation, the poet shows the poem to a superb critic. Despite all the thought and work that were put into the poem, the critic doesn’t understand. (2 lines)

What is obvious here is that the poet’s entire creative process is purposeful—everything from the type of poem he wants to write, to his selection of subject, rhythm, rhyme, and lexicon is the product of meticulous thought, careful analysis, thorough consideration. (1) Nothing here springs ungoverned from the writer’s being. Would that everyone would write that way! Well, that all sounds great, and the poet himself was satisfied—“Complacido en mis versos,” he says. But is his composition as good as he thinks it is? Let’s examine it now and decide for ourselves:

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(1) Soñaba en ese entonces en forjar un poema, de arte nervioso y nuevo, obra audaz y suprema.

(2) Escogí entre un asunto grotesco y otro trágico; (3) llamé a todos los ritmos con un conjuro mágico.

Y los ritmos indóciles vinieron acercándose, juntándose en las sombras, huyéndose y buscándose,

ritmos sonoros, ritmos potentes, ritmos graves, unos cual choques de armas, otros cual cantos de aves.

De Oriente hasta Occidente, desde el Sur hasta el Norte de metros y de formas se presentó la corte.

Tascando frenos áureos bajo las riendas frágiles cruzaron los tercetos, como corceles ágiles;

abriéndose ancho paso por entre aquella grey vestido de oro y púrpura llegó el soneto rey.

Y allí cantaron todos . . . Entre la algarabía, me fascinó el espíritu, por su coquetería,

alguna estrofa aguda que excitó mi deseo, con el retintín claro de su campanilleo.

(4) Y la escogí entre todas . . . Por regalo nupcial le di unas rimas ricas, de plata y de cristal.

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(5) En ella conté un cuento, que huyendo lo servil tomó un carácter trágico, fantástico y sutil.

Era la historia triste, desprestigiada y cierta de una mujer hermosa, idolatrada y muerta.

(6) Y para que sintieran la amargura, exprofeso junté sílabas dulces como el sabor de un beso.

Bordé las frases de oro, les di música extraña como de mandolinas que un laúd acompaña.

Dejé en una luz vaga las hondas lejanías llenas de nieblas húmedas y de melancolías,

y por el fondo oscuro, como en mundana fiesta, cruzan ágiles máscaras al compás de la orquesta,

envueltas en palabras que ocultan como un velo, y con caretas negras de raso y terciopelo.

Cruzar hice en el fondo las vagas sugestiones de sentimientos místicos y humanas tentaciones . . .

(7) Complacido en mis versos, con orgullo de artista, les di olor de heliotropos y color de amatista . . .

(8) Le mostré mi poema a un crítico estupendo . . . Y lo leyó seis veces y me dijo . . . “¡No entiendo!”

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Well, it sounds pretty good to me. It’s clear what kind of poem he wants to write—something new and daring. His subject, the sad history of a beautiful woman who’s now dead, certainly attracts our interest. His struggle choosing suitable rhythms, rhymes, and lan-guage is fascinating to people like us who don’t write poems. And the images he projects, the flow of the words, the sounds he creates, the music—all this has a profound effect on our sensibilities. So what do you think? Was he justified in being pleased with his poem? Well, the “crítico estupendo” wasn’t so happy. He read the poem six times and didn’t understand! But what was it that he didn’t get? And why didn’t he get it? Was he simply a cold, unfeeling, insensitive person? Or maybe he was so used to old-fashioned poetry that this new type of poem simply went over his head. Or did he have some other problem? The fact is that there is no answer to these questions. And the reason is that neither the poet nor the critic in this poem were real people. Both were the creations of an author—José Asunción Silva—who had a very high opinion of his own ability as a writer and a very low opinion of critics in general. Silva saw himself as mis-judged and unappreciated, and saw critics as members of a group that failed to recognize his qualities as a writer. “Un poema,” then, was really designed to com-municate that message to the readers of his time.

Unsuccessful communication was the constant bane

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of Silva’s life. It reveals itself in poems like “La res-puesta de la Tierra,” “Estrellas que entre lo sombrío...,” and “El mal del siglo.” But Silva was not alone in this regard. The inability to communicate despite desperate efforts to do so also left wounds in the lives of the other modernistas. Not so much, of course, as in the case of Silva, who, like Juan de Dios in “Cápsulas,” “se curó para siempre con las cápsulas / de plomo de un fusil.” No, the pain the others suffered stemmed from the fact that they were so different from their contemporaries. Let’s see how. On May 12th, 1896, the University of Arequipa, Peru, published a Bachelor’s thesis written by Francisco Mostajo. It was titled “El modernismo y el america-nismo.” The date when this took place is important, because by that time, the first phase of Modernism had already established itself firmly in Spanish America. In fact, three of the major early Modernists—Martí, Nájera, and Casal—had already died, and Silva, the fourth, would join them just eleven days later, on the 23rd of May. The only one who remained was Darío. (2) What Mostajo says about modernismo shows how these authors differed from their contemporaries. (3) First, they were iconoclasts: revolutionaries who broke the old molds of composition and escaped the prisons of traditional rhetoric. Inspired by France, they strived for artistic liberty. Theirs, they said, was not dec-adence, but a movement of reform. And if there was

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artifice in their work, it corresponded to a spiritual state that stemmed from the labyrinthine nature of modern life. As Nájera had said, theirs were “espíritus en zigzag, que tienen pliegues y repliegues.” The creed of these authors was to bring Beauty into reality without concern for precepts, criticisms, or plau-dits, each according to his own temperament and with-out help from others. For this reason, Modernism was eminently varied. It revolutionized both the form and content of lit-erature. It gave external contours to the forms that existed within the artist’s being. The Modernist authors appealed to the senses; they looked for strange meta-phors, exotic images, and daring turns of phrase; they even put syntax out of order. In the process, they gave unfamiliar meanings to existing words or they invented new ones. They also innovated in meter and rhyme. According to Mostajo, these Modernist innovations gave poetry in Spanish buoyancy, vitality, suppleness, color, feeling, variety. All of this can be summarized as a boundless quest for Liberty. Youngsters applauded the strides made by the modernistas. Old-timers looked at them with indiffer-ence or smiled disdainfully.

The modernistas not only changed the nature of poetry, they also changed the character of prose. As you recall, Mostajo said that the modernistas gave unfamil-iar meanings to existing words or invented new ones. It

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turns out that the invention of new words was not a minor issue. Research has shown that José Martí, for example, created some 800 neologisms. (4) Well, a lot more than that was happening in the words department. A. Gustajo Cornejo gives us a lot of details in his article “El modernismo del léxico.” (5) To begin with, Cornejo asserts that cosmopolitanism was the trend of the times. And this cosmopolitanism even appeared in Modernist articles. Those articles were like a cosmopolitan café—a café with representatives from every nation, guests who spoke every language and had the physical features of every race. Words no longer had a nationality, Cornejo said. They were transfigured by the dress and manners of other lands, and even words of the same ethnicity didn’t know each other. All this confusion made for a lexicographical Babel, one in which countless archaic words rose up to claim their rights and offer their services to the expression of ideas. Words also changed from specialists to general-ists: that is, they departed from their traditional de-notations and took on all sorts of other meanings. Even exalted scientific words relinquished their titles of no-bility and journeyed freely into the picturesque realms of art. (6) The Parnassians formed legion with all kinds of unknown words. The Instrumentalists and Decadents whipped up musical concerts, using rhythmic words that

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lay forgotten in that necropolis of language: the Diction-ary. Immigration was also set in motion by those who favored references to the oriental, exotic, and antique. Finally, thanks to the immense intellectual expan-sion and wide-ranging culture that was then in vogue, an entire archeological world was revived in the Mod-ernist lexicon. This, Professor Unamuno, was also what the moder-nistas had in common and what separated them from the traditionalists who lived around them.

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Notes to Part 6

1. “Un poema,” with its indications of an awareness ofhow to effectively construct a poem, suggests thatSilva was conversant with Edgar Allan Poe’s 1846essay “The Philosophy of Composition.” See:<http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/59043/edgar-allen-poe-the-philosophy-of-composition>.

2. The chronology of these authors is: Martí (1853-1895), Nájera (1859-1895), Casal (1863-1893),Silva (1865-1896), and Darío (1867-1916).

3. See Glickman, Robert Jay, Fin del siglo: retrato deHispanoamérica en la época modernista. Toronto:Canadian Academy of the Arts, pp. 215-218 #335.

4. Gordon, Alan M. “The Neologisms of José Martí,”NorthSouth: Canadian Journal of Latin AmericanStudies, vol. 3, nos. 5 & 6, pp. 199-209.

5. For the full text, see Fin del siglo, p. 273 #445.6. In his poetry, Silva includes references to scientific

fields like medicine. For example, we see him nam-ing individuals such as Georges Dujardin-Beau-metz, a French specialist in clinical therapeutics, andusing words like “psicoterapéutica,” “espermatozoi-de,” “sífilis,” and “blenorragia.”

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Part 7 A new generation of explorers

In Part 2 of this series, I spoke about a change that took place in the concept of progress during the Modernist age. Progress, of course, means forward movement. But what did “forward movement” mean to the modernistas? In good part, it meant catching up with the societies they deemed to be “advanced.” But what had caused this progress, this advancement? Was it technological achievement shown by the presence of steamships, railroads, electric lights, telegraphs, and tel-ephones? Was it the attainments of those societies in medicine, overcoming disease and strengthening the human body? Was it the achievement of military suc-cess? Was it economic growth that gave men better pay for the jobs they did, fewer hours of labor, and more compassionate treatment in the workplace? Was it greater independence for women—the independence to become educated, to choose a spouse without family intervention, to support themselves through meaningful occupation, to possess property, even to vote? (1) An important point I made in Part 2 was that the Hegelian dialectic and Darwin’s theory of evolution suggested that progress did not follow a horizontal trajectory, but a diagonal one in space and time—a

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movement from left to right, yes, but also from down to up, that is, from the lower and imperfect, before, toward the higher and perfect, later. Progress, then, meant movement toward perfection. And movement toward perfection depended on the presence of freedom. With-out freedom, the engineers and technicians would have been unable to invent the new machines and devices that increased the physical power of humanity. Without freedom, the physicians and clinicians would have been unable to prevent the onset of crippling disease or cure our common ailments. Without freedom, trade in goods, machines, and ideas would have stagnated in place. Without freedom, women would have been unable to dream of attaining a release from the shackles of per-petual domesticity. And without freedom—that glorious gift of Roman-ticism—the Modernist authors whom we have been studying would have been unable to seek inspiration from abroad; pioneer new themes, vocabulary, meters, and rhymes at home; and, through dedicated experi-mentation, unlock their power to touch all the human senses, create stirring melodies, animate the imagina-tion, and penetrate the mysteries of the mind. Freedom helped them break the chains of tradition, training, and habit, and set them on exciting new paths of creativity. Freedom made their world come alive and gave them the hope of reaching perfection in their art. This is what it was like to be modern—a modernista: literally, one

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who is up-to-date, who is with it, in step with the times, or au courant, as the French would say. And that’s what our Modernist writers strived to be. That was the unify-ing factor that made them recognizable—and memo-rable. These 7 lectures have dealt with the first phase of Modernism: the phase that encompasses the work of Martí, Nájera, Casal, Silva, and the early Darío. We recall, however, that the publication of Francisco Mos-tajo’s bachelor’s thesis, “El modernismo y el ameri-canismo,” indicated that a new phase was coming into being around 1896. This was an important date, for, as I indicated, all the major early modernistas except Darío had died by that time and new people were coming on the scene. In addition, by 1896, Spanish America had begun to turn away from earlier free trade leanings and had tended to adopt a protectionist outlook. In literature, this meant that the new generation of writers was less inclined to look abroad for inspiration and was more interested in seeking inspiration in their own world. The nature of this movement was described as follows by Mostajo: First, in order to fully express themselves, the up-and-coming writers had to emancipate themselves liter-arily. “Que la América no sea ya una colonia. El período de la imitación, imprescindible en la infancia, es hora que concluya.” And, according to José Santos Chocano: “¿Cómo—se nos dirá—vais al extranjero en busca de

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inspiración y de escuela, cuando podéis encontrar lo primero y formar lo segundo en vuestro propio suelo?” (2) Second, they should not bind themselves to any aesthetic school. “Cada escritor es un Colón que va, en su carabela propia, a descubrir un mundo desconocido.” Third, the new writers should fix their attention on American nature. If they were to accept influence from abroad, however, that influence should be blended with the essence of Americanism and produce a hybrid type of literature—one reflective of Spanish American reality. As José Santos Chocano said in his “Poesía nacional,” “hoy los pueblos civilizados de América, los pueblos que leen y escriben, son pueblos enteramente híbridos.” (3) Fourth, we must accept the fact that everything, in-cluding language, is subject to evolution. (4) “Se muda, se cambia, se transforma. Querer cristalizarlo es locura de necio o intransigencia de fanático.” As a result, if our language differs from the one promulgated by the Spanish Academy, we will use our own words, and if our vocabulary is insufficient, we must invent a new one. We must speak and write in American Spanish. Even the eminent Ricardo Palma said this in his “Neologismos y americanismos,” a study which was also published in the key year of 1896. (5) “Hablemos y escribamos en americano; es decir, en lenguaje para el que creemos las voces que estimemos apropiadas a

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nuestra manera de ser social, a nuestras instituciones democráticas, a nuestra naturaleza física.” Mostajo’s conclusion: The future is ours. What splendid new horizons will reveal themselves to artists yet to come!

As we look beyond the decisive date of 1896, we wonder whether the second generation of modernistas actually sought inspiration in America and created the “literatura americana” that Mostajo, Chocano, and Palma hoped would come. To discover the character of Modernism in its second phase will be our task in Series 2 of these lectures.

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Notes to Part 7

1. See Glickman, Robert Jay, Vestales del TemploAzul: notas sobre el feminismo hispanoamericanoen la época modernista. Toronto: Canadian Acad-emy of the Arts, 1996.

2. La Neblina, 5 April, 1896, p. 22.3. Ibid.4. It’s interesting to note that only 37 years after

Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859), theconcept of evolution should be so readily acceptedthat it would be applied to language.

5. Palma, who is remembered for having created theliterary genre known as tradiciones, was nameddirector of the National Library of Peru after theChilean forces looted that Library during the Guerradel Pacífico. Palma was able to recover some 10,000of those books and thus helped restore the Libraryto its former stature. Palma’s “Neologismos y ame-ricanismos” is a stunning contribution to our knowl-edge of Americanisms. It lists 460 words that werenot accepted by the Spanish Academy but were usedin Spain’s former colonies in the New World.

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José Martí Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera

Rubén Darío José Asunción Silva

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QUESTIONS

The following pages contain questions on issues raised in Parts 1 to 6 of this Series. Readers are en-couraged to answer these questions after completing each Part. Once the questions relating to a Part are an-swered, it is recommended that readers move on to the section titled “Answers to Consider.” Here, they will find possible responses, as well as additional information that may be helpful in understanding the nature of Spanish American Modernism.

Questions on Part 1

1. At the beginning of this lecture, Professor Miguel deUnamuno was identified as “the foremost Spanishthinker of the time.” Indicate what informationabout him your research has provided.

2. Some critics have called Modernism an “epoch,”others have called it a “movement,” still others havecalled it a “school.” Give precise definitions of thesethree terms and, as you follow these lectures, de-termine how you would describe Modernism: an“epoch,” a “movement,” a “school,” or somethingelse.

3. What does Darío reveal about himself in the poem“Ingratitud”?

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Allá va—siempre afligido, aunque aparenta la calma—; las tempestades de su alma condensa en hondo gemido.

Su valiente inspiración ofrenda a la Humanidad, en sus cantos, la verdad, la gloria y la redención.

Con un libro entre las manos, con un mundo en su cabeza, la frente a inclinar empieza cansada de esfuerzos vanos.

Por unas joyas Colón legó su soñada tierra; para el numen que él encierra sólo encuentra admiración.

Busca su planta otro suelo: aquella atmósfera quiere, donde el talento no muere sin espaciarse en su cielo.

Pero en vano; que, fatal, el mundo al talento humilla, ya sea en una bohardilla, ya sea en un hospital.

Melancólico y sombrío, allá va. ¿Sabéis quién es? Oíd, si lo ignoráis, pues: El vate Rubén Darío.

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Questions on Part 2

1. How did the War of the Pacific affect the belliger-ents?

2. In 1888, while in Chile, Darío published Azul . . . .Azul . . . soon became recognized as a turning point in Hispanic literature, and it still occupies a special place today. What justifies its positive standing among the critics?

3. What does “El rei burgués” reveal about Darío as awriter and as a man?[For the text of this story, go to READINGS.]

Questions on Part 3

1. Martí said that “Dios anda confuso.” Assessingthis statement in the religious context of Martí’stime, what might justify this assertion?

2. Darío said that “ser sincero es ser potente.” Somepeople see this statement as positive; however,others see it as having a negative side. Present youropinion on the consequences of sincerity.

Question on Part 4

1. Who was “Caupolicán” and why was he important?

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Question on Part 5

In this Part, we discussed a series of literary trends whose designations end in the suffix “-ism.” This suffix is used for many purposes, among them the following:

1. To form the name of a system of religious, philo-sophical, political, social theory or practice: e.g.,Catholicism, empiricism, fascism, feminism.

2. To form the names of beliefs or ideologies that arenot systematized: e.g., altruism, pacifism, radical-ism.

3. To describe the action or conduct of a class ofpersons: e.g., chauvinism, heroism, patriotism.

4. To form a simple noun of action, process, or itsresult: e.g., baptism, criticism, plagiarism.

5. To denote a peculiarity or characteristic of language:e.g., archaism, Gallicism, neologism.

On the basis of the above, how would you categorize Modernism? Why? Do you have any caveats that might affect your answer?

Questions on Part 6

1. In what ways is Silva’s “Una noche” similar toCasal’s “A la Belleza”? How does Silva’s “Una noche” differ from it? [For the texts of “Una noche” and “A la Belleza,” go to READINGS.]

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2. From what you have heard and read in this series,could you convince Prof. Unamuno that there wasunity in Modernism?

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ANSWERS TO CONSIDER

Part 1

1. At the beginning of this lecture, Professor Miguel deUnamuno was identified as “the foremost Spanishthinker of the time.” Indicate what informationabout him your research has provided.

Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) was a Spanish philosopher, educator, and author. In 1895, he published En torno al casticismo, 5 essays examining the meaning of casticismo—i.e., attachment to the belief that the real Spain is devoid of foreign elements and committed to tradition—and how Spain should respond to the pres-sures of modernity that come from abroad. In 1901, Unamuno became rector of the University of Sala-manca. In 1913, he published Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, a contemplation of the fact that people are caught between reason, which says that everyone must die, and the yearning for immortality. The conflict is tragic because it has no solution. Unamuno produced many works—among them were essays discussing faith and doubt, and life and death; innovative novels called nivolas, light on description, heavy on dialogue; plays

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probing the anxieties of his characters; and several books of poetry. In 1924, Miguel Primo de Rivera be-came dictator. After criticizing him, Unamuno was exiled to the Canary Islands. Shortly thereafter, he es-caped to France where he lived until the fall of Primo de Rivera in 1930. At that point he resumed his rectorship at the University of Salamanca. In 1936, Unamuno de-nounced the dictator Francisco Franco and was placed under house arrest. Soon after, he died of a heart attack.

2. How you would describe Modernism: an “epoch,” a“movement,” a “school,” or something else?

An “epoch” is a period of time whose characteristics differ from those of the preceding and following peri-ods. For example, La Belle Époque or “Golden Age” in France was the period of peace, optimism, prosperity, scientific progress, and artistic creativity between the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the out-break of World War I in 1914. In the U.K., it coincided with the late Victorian and Edwardian periods; in Germany, with the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II; in Russia, with the rule of Czars Alexander III and Nicholas II; in the U.S., with the prosperity following the Panic of 1873; and in Mexico, with the Porfiriato (1876-1911). Although we may label this general period “Modernist,” use of this term does not reveal what the works of our Spanish American authors had in common.

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A “movement” in the arts is the perceived consoli-dation of a major change in the creative principles that motivate a leaderless, but identifiable group of writers who independently produce works of art in concert with the spirit of their times. Movements do not begin and end on specific dates, but arise and decline in response to developmental changes in philosophical, economical, political, and societal determinants in a given commu-nity.

A “school.” According to Merriam-Webster, a school is: a : a group of persons who hold a common doctrine or follow the same teacher; also : the doctrine or prac-tice of such a group

b : a group of artists under a common influence c : a group of persons of similar opinions or behav-ior; also : the shared opinions or behavior of such a group

<https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/school While one or another of our modernista writers may have tried his hand at employing the principles of a given school in certain circumstances, the common doctrine of the modernistas was individualism.

3. What does Darío reveal about himself in the poem“Ingratitud?”

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In this poem, written when he was 15 years old, Darío shows himself to be boastfully self-important: more than just a poet, he is a bard with vast knowledge, inspiration, and a courageous willingness to enlighten humanity so that it might be redeemed and know glory. Unfortunately, the world in which he lives grossly humiliates talented people [like him]. Though he feigns calmness, on the inside he is churned up, heartbroken, and gloomy. For this reason, he seeks a better place for his talent. The idea that he is someone special whom the world puts down is an on-going concern in Darío’s mind. His solution to this problem was to prove himself to the world through his literary accomplishments.

Part 2

1. How did the War of the Pacific affect the belliger-ents?

Bolivia lost its access to the Pacific Ocean, includ-ing the province of Antofagasta with its nitrate, copper, and other mineral deposits, and became a totally landlocked country. Peru: For three centuries the seat of Spanish power and culture in South America, Peru was defeated militarily, had its National Library plundered, ceded the region of Tarapacá to Chile in perpetuity and allowed it to occupy the regions of Tacna and Arica for 10 years.

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According to Manuel González Prada, it was a country run not by professionals, but by amateurs. In order to restore its lost power, Peru turned to Germany for trade, weapons, military strategy, and immigration, because Germans were considered to be physically strong, profoundly intellectual, scientifically minded, calm, energetic, tenacious, moral, and orderly—a truly supe-rior people. Chile: Because of the contributions that German settlers were making to Chile’s progress, the German military was chosen as the nation’s model. In 1885, President Santa María contracted Emil Körner, an outstanding Prussian artillery specialist and professor of military history, tactics, and ballistics to professionalize Chile’s military. The Officers’ College (Escuela Mili-tar) was reorganized, a War Academy (Academia de Guerra) was established, the military’s curricula and regulations were restructured, and Prussian-style uni-forms were adopted. From 1885 to 1915, a total of 205 German educators were imported to work in Chile’s teacher-training institutions, as well as in its primary and secondary schools.

Globalization was in full swing in the region and, although France and Britain had interests there for many years, the victory of Germany over France in the Franco Prussian War (1870-1871), the active salesmanship of German companies like Krupp, and the success of

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German educational procedures changed the balance of foreign influence during the fin del siglo.

2. Azul . . . soon became recognized as a turning pointin Hispanic literature, and it still occupies a specialplace today. What justifies its positive standingamong the critics?

With its diversity of subjects and styles, Azul . . . was a departure from the writings of most other His-panic authors of the time. As Juan Valera says in his Cartas americanas, Darío was neither “romántico, ni naturalista, ni neurótico, ni decadente, ni simbólico, ni parnasiano. Usted lo ha revuelto todo . . . y ha sacado de ello una rara quintaesencia.” According to Valera, Darío possessed a mental Gallicism (“galicismo de la mente,” “galicismo mental”). However, even though Azul . . . was saturated with French influence, it was infused with a cosmopolitan spirit. It contained a wealth of poetic images in a style that was precise, concise, and elegant, and made the reader think deeply about the subjects it brought up. In the opinion of Eduardo de la Barra, Da-río’s style was “nervioso, delicado, pintoresco, lleno de resplandores súbitos y de graciosas sorpresas, de giros inesperados, de imágenes seductoras, de metáforas atrevidas, de epítetos relevantes y oportunísimos, y de palabras bizarras, exóticas aun, mas siempre bien so-nantes." The opinions of these contemporaries of Darío

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explain why Azul . . . has such a positive standing even today. That book provided the first really important proof that a new style of writing, especially in prose, had come on the scene in Spanish America.

3. What does “El rei burgués” reveal about Darío as awriter and as a man?

• The word “rei” in the title of the original editionshows that Chile had a somewhat different spellingsystem than the one that prevailed elsewhere in theHispanic world at the time Azul . . . was published.See my discussion of the spelling changes suggestedfor Chile by Andrés Bello and, subsequently, thediscussion of the ortografía rrazional in:<http://acadarts.org/articles_essays/Spelling_Reform.pdf>.

• The story is embedded in a frame that starts and endswith an address to an unnamed “Amigo”—probablythe reader. At the beginning, the frame describes theenvironment: “el cielo está opaco, el aire frío, el díatriste” and tells what the purpose of the story is:“para distraer las brumosas melancolías.” At theend, it indicates what the antidote to that melan-cholic situation is: “una frase, un apretón de manosa tiempo.” This suggests that Darío was uncomfort-able in Chile because the climate was cold andgloomy, and the human climate was like that, too.Their lack of warmth produced sadness.

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• The story is told like a fairy tale. Underneath, how-ever, there was a reality that Darío and other writersof his time experienced. Darío’s genius here is tohave avoided writing like contemporary realists, andto have chosen an innovative, beguiling form for hisstory.

• The story proper consists of 3 parts. All parts arerecounted by the narrator.1. The long introduction about the king, beginning

with “Había en una ciudad . . . .”2. The long discussion between the king and the

poet, beginning with “Un día le llevaron . . . .”3. The somewhat shorter description of the life of

the poet in the bourgeois kingdom, beginningwith “Y desde aquel día . . . .”

• The story is made up of long sentences which con-tain strings of nouns, sometimes modified by one ormore adjectives, sometimes by descriptive phrases.These strings of words are expanded into strings ofsentences when the poet tells what he has done: forexample, “He tendido mis alas . . .,” “he nacido enel tiempo de la aurora . . .,” “He abandonado . . .,”“He roto . . .,” etc. There are 11 examples of this inthe poet’s speech. After this, there are 15 examplesof polysyndeton (the use of “y” as a connective be-tween statements). The frequency with which thesestrings are used creates a breathless pace in thestory’s development.

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• The story includes a variety of criticisms of contem-porary groups and individuals, among them:1. The bourgeoisie, for its greed, insensitivity, lack

of refinement, lack of ideals, and ignorance where art is concerned.

2. The French novelist Georges Ohnet. Born into awealthy bourgeois family, he was one of the most prolific and highly successful French playwrights and novelists of the 19th century. Apparently, Darío didn’t think much of his work.

3. José Gómez Hermosilla, a foe of liberalism andstout supporter of conservatism in Spain. His Arte de hablar en prosa y verso (1826) was made a standard text in Spanish schools. Darío, like the other modernistas, rejected authoritarian principles and fiercely advocated individualism in writing.

• In this story, Darío created powerful visual images:e.g., “Los perros de patas elásticas,” “mariposas deraros abanicos,” “la lluvia blanca de plumillas cris-talizadas.” All of these factors made “El rei burgués” a powerful literary contribution—one whose value is still untarnished. Judging from this story, it seems that Darío harbored intense feelings of resentment and anger at the injustice of what he considered the misplaced system of economic and social status that

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reigned in the real world. Despite their intensity, these feelings did not express themselves in socio-political activism, but in the form of ideas communi-cated through words—words which turned out to be vehicles for the literary revolution we know as Modernism.

Part 3

1. Martí said that “Dios anda confuso.” Assessing thisstatement in the context of Martí’s time, what mightjustify this assertion?

As the 19th century progressed, significant changeswere taking place throughout the Western World in the realm of religion. In Germany, Reform Judaism was challenging the dominance of orthodoxy. In the U.S. of 1872, Mary Baker Eddy founded the religion which she called Christian Science, and in 1892, she established the First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston. Although religious normality seemed to reign in Spanish America at this time, doubt began to show itself in many ways. In 1875, writing in the Revista Universal of Mexico, Martí indicated that a new current was manifesting itself in the Catholic world: “Los artículos de la fe no han desaparecido: han cambiado de forma. A los del dogma católico han sustituido las enseñanzas de la razón.” One of the changes was open opposition to clerical control of the educational system and support for science-based

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systems of education controlled by the laity. But there were also direct attacks on the Catholic Church. For instance, in 1872 the Jesuits were expelled from Ger-many. In 1875, the German clergy were subordinated to the authority of the State and civil marriage was made obligatory. And, elsewhere in the Catholic world, in-cluding Spanish America, the Church was attacked on questions of politics, diplomacy, attitudes toward sci-ence, excessive acquisitiveness, and immorality. As we recall from Part 1 of this lecture series, in 1880, Darío, at the tender age of 13, revealed that he was an anticleri-cal rebel, denounced the Jesuits as purveyors of sin and obscurantism, called the Pope a Tyrant, and denied the divinity of Jesus. In response to assaults such as those just mentioned, the Vatican went on a war footing, af-firming in the words of Jesus, “Qui non est mecum contra me est”—he who is not with me is against me. One of the weapons used by the Church was the pen. As a result, many pro-Catholic books and periodicals were published. As stated in La Sociedad of Santiago de Chile, the purpose was to “salvar a la sociedad y alejarla de los abismos . . . iluminando las inteligencias, calen-tando los corazones, alentando la fe que vacila, desper-tando las pasiones generosas y llamando a los católicos al sacrificio, a la lucha y a la victoria.” Of course, the enemies of the Church also used the pen as a weapon, and as time passed, the battle of words became more and more violent. But when women like Clorinda Matto de

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Turner began publishing articles stating that women should spend less time in church consulting priests on matters of consequence, and more time consulting their husbands and educating their children, the strength of the Church as a social institution began to weaken, for it was losing the unconditional loyalty of many mem-bers of its key constituency: women. With all these goings-on, women couldn’t help being rattled. And if God existed, confusion was probably the least of His problems.

2. Darío said that “ser sincero es ser potente.” Somepeople see this statement as positive; however,others see it as having a negative side. Present youropinion on the consequences of sincerity.

In answering this question, it’s essential to define “sincerity.” Wikipedia tells us that “Sincerity is the virtue of one who communicates and acts in accordance with their feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and desires.” (1) Dictionary.com defines it as “freedom from deceit, hypocrisy, or duplicity; probity in intention or in com-municating; earnestness.” (2) Another definition that is found online says that: “Sincerity is a state of being genuine, honest, and free from hypocrisy and pretense.” (3) These definitions sound pretty good, so let’s identify the advantages and disadvantages of sincerity. Here are some answers:

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Advantages. • Sincerity allows others to know where you stand on

specific issues. They may not agree with you, butthey are prone to have confidence in dealing withyou. Sincerity, then, is a source of trust. Sincerity,however, must be paired with realism and com-passion, for, when ideas are communicated withoutthose qualities, they can hurt the recipient.

• Sincerity can also make you feel good about your-self, for you know that since you are “genuine,honest, and free from hypocrisy and pretense,” thetruthfulness of your words or actions cannot bedistrusted.

Disadvantages • Oscar Wilde said that “A little sincerity is a danger-

ous thing.” In directly commenting about anotherperson, sincerity can hurt if that comment is nega-tive. Wilde added that a great deal of sincerity “isabsolutely fatal.” That would be true, for example,if one head of state were to make a sincere, butderisive statement about the leader of anothercountry, for it could lead to conflict.

With respect to the modernistas, it’s important to remember that sincerity has been cited as one of the key features of Romanticism, (4) and that sincerity remained an imperative in fin del siglo society, as well. In Part 1 of this Series, it was said

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that “Darío was a poet. And a Romantic one at that. He dressed like one, he wore his hair like one, he walked the streets like one.” This Romantic es-sence remained with him throughout his life. Proof of this is found, for example, in “La canción de los pinos,” (5) where he proclaimed: “Románticos somos … ¿Quién que Es, no es romántico?” But if sincerity remained an imperative in fin del siglo society, what was there about it that carried such weight for Darío as a writer? Adam Smith wrote that “Frankness and openness conciliate confi-dence. . . . The man who . . . invites us into his heart . . . seems to exercise a species of hospitality more delightful than any other.” (6) When you are per-ceived as sincere, you have the power to move others.

For the writer, projection of a tone of sincerity makes it possible to convince the reader that the person who is writing and the words that he writes are genuine, authentic, honest, and worth keeping in mind for the future. Without doubt, this is something that every writer would strive to achieve!

Notes on Question 3

1. < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sincerity>.2. < http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sincerity>.

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3. <http://positiveenergyguide.com/personal-%20the-%20%20%20%20%20%20%20development/guidance/life-guidance-series-part-12-role-of-sincerity-in-guidance/>.

4. Keats’ Kingdom indicates that the key features ofRomanticism were freedom of individual expres-sion; feelings of sincerity, spontaneity and origi-nality; emotional directness; emotional intensity;power of the imagination; the centrality of Nature-Transcendence, and carpe diem. (See:<http://www.keatsian.co.uk>.)

5. Published in El canto errante (1907).6. Quoted by Pam Morris in Imagining Inclusive Soci-

ety in 19th-Century Novels: The Code of Sincerity inthe Public Sphere. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,2004, p. 20.

Part 4

1. Who was “Caupolicán” and why was he important?

Caupolicán was an important figure in Chile’s his-tory. He became known to the Hispanic literary world thanks to Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s 16th century epic poem La Araucana. In that work we are told that after defeating a number of contestants in a competition for the leadership of his tribe, the one-eyed Caupolicán cou-rageously fought against Spanish troops under the command of governor García Hurtado de Mendoza.

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Caupolicán was finally captured and brutally put to death by impalement. Over the years, especially after Chile won independence from Spain, the valor of this native chieftain became a symbol of the stoic grandeur, unconquerable heroism, and nobility of the Chilean people.

Darío’s sonnet “Caupolicán” is both a poetic carry-over from Romanticism’s interest in the noble savage and a manifestation of the modernistas’ longing to escape the present.

• The Romantic background: François-René Cha-teaubriand’s novel Atala: ou Les Amours de deuxsauvages dans le desert (1801) stands with JamesFenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1825)as examples of the noble savage trend in the early19th century. Heredia’s poems “En el teocalli deCholula” (1820), which begins with “¡Cuánto esbella la tierra que habitaban los aztecas valien-tes,”and “Niágara” (1832) illustrate early steps inthe discovery by Spanish Americans of the unique-ness of their own nature, histories, legends, and localtraditions. As the century progressed, other regional,historical, and sociocultural works were written.Among these were Jorge Isaacs’ novel María(1867), Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde’s “Poema delNiágara,” Manuel Jesús Galván’s novel Enriquillo

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(1879-1882), and Clorinda Matto de Turner’s novel Aves sin nido (1889).

• Modernista escapism: In addition to being a carry-over from Romanticism, Darío’s “Caupolicán”(1889) was a manifestation of the escapist longingof the modernistas. The wish to dissociate them-selves from bourgeois society expressed itself inseveral ways. Sometimes the writers created nega-tive images of the bourgeoisie. This can be seen inDarío’s “El rei burgués.” Sometimes they soughtinspiration in distant lands like Japan. Casal offersexamples of this in poems like “Kakemono” and“Sourimono.” Sometimes they looked to the past—preferably a heroic one. This temporally-orientedescapism is where Darío’s Caupolicán fits in.

Part 5

In this Part, we discussed a series of literary trends whose designations end in the suffix “-ism.” On the basis of the above question, how would you categorize Modernism? Why? Do you have any caveats that might affect your answer?

Modernism in Spanish America was a literary movement that manifested itself at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. If Modernism is

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to be categorized on the basis of the choices given, it is closest to #2, a belief or ideology that is not systema-tized. However, since it was the product of the work of a group of innovators who broke with past aesthetic principles and practices, absorbed the spirit of their time of rapid change, and believed in the importance of individual freedom to create without restraint, it might also be placed in category #3. Although, in literature, it was not a formal aesthetic system based on explicit theory or practice, in the case of José Asunción Silva’s “Un poema,” it did show awareness of how to apply specific compositional principles such as those outlined by Edgar Allan Poe in his 1846 essay “The Philosophy of Composition.”

Part 6

1. In what ways is Silva’s “Una noche” similar toCasal’s “A la Belleza”? How does Silva’s “Unanoche” differ from it? [The texts of “Una noche” and“A la Belleza” are found in READINGS.]

Similarities a. In both poems, the speaker searches for something

that cannot be found.b. In both poems, the speaker brings up memories of

the past.c. In both poems, there is a projection of great personal

emotion.

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d. In both poems, there are areas of repetition thatintensify the message.

Differences a. In “A la Belleza,” the search is for a figment of the

speaker’s imagination, while in “Una noche,” thesearch is for a known person.

b. In “A la Belleza,” the speaker tells of a great deal ofmovement in his search, while in “Una noche,” thefocus is on a specific place: “la senda que atraviesala llanura florecida.”

c. “Una noche” has much more repetition than “A laBelleza.” And the nature of the repetition is differ-ent. In “Una noche,” more similar lines are repeatedthan in “A la Belleza.” Sounds are repeated, as well.Notice the frequency of the “u,” the “a,” and the “a-a.” This creates an atmosphere, which is quite ap-propriate for the story being told.

d. “A la Belleza” follows a regular form: 4-line stan-zas, consisting of alternating 11- and 7-syllablelines. The metrical scheme in “Una noche” is notimmediately apparent. However, it does consist ofstrings of 4-syllable components throughout. Thesestrings do not fall into a traditional pattern likeCasal’s stanzas do. They spring forth in whicheverway Silva is inspired to place them.

e. As far as rhyme is concerned, “A la Belleza” follows a consistent 11- and 7-syllable line pattern and

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contains rima asonante (in á-o) in lines 2 and 4 of every stanza. “Una noche” has lines of a varying number of syllables—a number that cannot be easily anticipated. However, it does have rima asonante (in á-a), although the consistency of the rhyme seems to be broken at the end of the poem by the vertical repetition of “se acercó y marchó con ella.” The fact is, though, that if those three clauses were printed on one line instead of three, and line breaks were inserted at the end, the assonance would be obvious.

f. The formatting and punctuation of these poems arereflections of the spiritual essence of the two poets:Casal, a timid innovator, is diffident, unassertive,conventional; Silva is self-assured, idiosyncratic,individualistic, unconventional.

2. From what you have heard and read in this series,could you convince Prof. Unamuno that there wasunity in Modernism?

• With an intense longing for progress toward per-fection, the modernistas engaged in a passionatesearch for beauty. Theirs was an era of free trade,and free trade gave them exposure to a previouslyunimagined globalization of goods and information.Thanks to the immense intellectual expansion and

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wide-ranging culture that resulted from the policy of free trade, like the society of the time the literature of the modernistas became one of incredible acquis-itiveness. Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera explained why writers benefitted from that policy: “El libre cambio es bueno en el comercio intelectual y tiene sobre el libre cambio mercantil la ventaja de que podemos establecerlo hasta con pueblos y naciones que no existen ya.” In tune with their times, the modernistas imported ideas, themes, writing styles, composi-tional techniques, images, and vocabulary from every historical period and every part of the globe. By incorporating those elements into their prose and poetry, they helped open an entire world to Spanish America. If they put more stress on poetry and short stories than on long epics and lengthy novels, it was because of the times of rapid change they lived in. As Martí explained: “[Las ideas] se deshacen en chispas encendidas; se desmigajan. De aquí peque-ñas obras fúlgidas, de aquí la ausencia de aquellas grandes obras culminantes, sostenidas, majestuosas, concentradas.”

• Martí spoke of “chispas encendidas” and “pequeñasobras fúlgidas.” Pedro Salinas saw Modernist lit-erature as “a literature of the senses, vibrant withsensual attractions and dazzling in the display ofcolor. It spiritedly pursued successes in sonority and

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form. Never had the words of Spanish sung with such colorful gaiety, never before had they shone with such luster and sparkle . . . .” All of this was so very positive. However, there was a negative side, as well. The fin de siglo world put enormous strains on the modernista writers. Martí spoke of his age as one of “¡Ruines tiempos en que no priva más arte que el de llenar bien los graneros de la casa, ysentarse en silla de oro, y vivir todo dorado . . . época de tumulto y de dolores dorado . . . Nadie tiene hoy su fe segura . . . Y hay ahora como un desmembram-iento de la mente humana.” In Casal and Silva we have seen examples of the types of personal struggle that people of the period had to face—each one often heartrending, but each one different. And difference is a key concept here.

• The modernistas’ stress on individualism generateda literature of diversity, rather than one of uni-formity. An overriding unity of thought and feeling,but without uniformity of practice, is what madeModernism stand out so richly in the history ofHispanic literature. This concept of diversity withinunity, but without uniformity, is what Prof. Una-muno, native of an isolated country corseted bycasticismo and tattered visions of past glory, couldnot understand.

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READINGS

First page of the original edition

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El rey burgués —

Cuento alegre —

Amigo!, el cielo está opaco, el aire frío, el día triste. Un cuento alegre... así como para distraer las brumosas y grises melancolías, helo aquí:

* * *

Había en una ciudad inmensa y brillante un rey muy poderoso, que tenía trajes caprichosos y ricos, esclavas desnudas, blancas y negras, caballos de largas crines, armas flamantísimas, galgos rápidos y monteros con cuernos de bronce que llenaban el viento con sus fan-farrias. ¿Era un rey poeta? No, amigo mío: era el Rey Burgués.

* * *

Era muy aficionado a las artes el soberano, y favorecía con gran largueza a sus músicos, a sus hace-dores de ditirambos, pintores, escultores, boticarios, barberos y maestros de esgrima. Cuando iba a la floresta, junto al corzo o jabalí herido y sangriento, hacía improvisar a sus profesores de retórica canciones alusivas; los criados llenaban las copas del vino de oro que hierve, y las mujeres batían palmas con movimien-tos rítmicos y gallardos. Era un rey sol, en su Babilonia

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llena de músicas, de carcajadas y de ruido de festín. Cuando se hastiaba de la ciudad bullente, iba de caza atronando el bosque con sus tropeles; y hacía salir de sus nidos a las aves asustadas, y el vocerío repercutía en lo más escondido de las cavernas. Los perros de patas elásticas iban rompiendo la maleza en la carrera, y los cazadores, inclinados sobre el pescuezo de los caballos, hacían ondear los mantos purpúreos y llevaban las caras encendidas y las cabelleras al viento.

* * *

El rey tenía un palacio soberbio donde había acumu-lado riquezas y objetos de arte maravillosos. Llegaba a él por entre grupos de lilas y extensos estanques, siendo saludado por los cisnes de cuellos blancos, antes que por los lacayos estirados. Buen gusto. Subía por una esca-lera llena de columnas de alabastro y de esmaragdina, que tenía a los lados leones de mármol como los de los tronos salomónicos. Refinamiento. A más de los cisnes, tenía una vasta pajarera, como amante de la armonía, del arrullo, del trino; y cerca de ella iba a ensanchar su espíritu, leyendo novelas de M. Ohnet, o bellos libros sobre cuestiones gramaticales, o críticas hermosillescas. Eso sí: defensor acérrimo de la corrección académica en letras, y del modo lamido en artes; alma sublime, aman-te de la lija y de la ortografía.

* * *

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¡Japonerías! ¡Chinerías! Por moda y nada más. Bien podía darse el placer de un salón digno del gusto de un Goncourt y de los millones de un Creso: quimeras de bronce con las fauces abiertas y las colas enroscadas, en grupos fantásticos y maravillosos; lacas de Kioto con incrustaciones de hojas y ramas de una flora monstruo-sa, y animales de una fauna desconocida; mariposas de raros abanicos junto a las paredes; peces y gallos de colores; máscaras de gestos infernales y con ojos como si fuesen vivos; partesanas de hojas antiquísimas y em-puñaduras con dragones devorando flores de loto; y en conchas de huevo, túnicas de seda amarilla, como teji-das con hilos de araña, sembradas de garzas rojas y de verdes matas de arroz; y tibores, porcelanas de muchos siglos, de aquéllas en que hay guerreros tártaros con una piel que les cubre hasta los riñones, y que llevan arcos estirados y manojos de flechas. Por lo demás, había el salón griego, lleno de már-moles: diosas, musas, ninfas y sátiros; el salón de los tiempos galantes, con cuadros del gran Watteau y de Chardin; dos, tres, cuatro, ¿cuántos salones? Y Mecenas se paseaba por todos, con la cara inun-dada de cierta majestad, el vientre feliz y la corona en la cabeza, como un rey de naipe.

* * *

Un día le llevaron una rara especie de hombre ante su trono, donde se hallaba rodeado de cortesanos, de

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retóricos y de maestros de equitación y de baile. —¿Qué es eso?— preguntó. —Señor, es un poeta. El rey tenía cisnes en el estanque, canarios, gorrio-

nes, senzontes en la pajarera; un poeta era algo nuevo y extraño. —Dejadle aquí.

Y el poeta: —Señor, no he comido. Y el rey: —Habla y comerás. Comenzó:

* * *

—Señor, ha tiempo que yo canto el verbo del por-venir. He tendido mis alas al huracán; he nacido en el tiempo de la aurora; busco la raza escogida que debe esperar, con el himno en la boca y la lira en la mano, la salida del gran sol. He abandonado la inspiración de la ciudad malsana, la alcoba llena de perfumes, la musa de carne que llena el alma de pequeñez y el rostro de polvos de arroz. He roto el arpa adulona de las cuerdas débiles, contra las copas de Bohemia y las jarras donde espumea el vino que embriaga sin dar fortaleza; he arrojado el manto que me hacía parecer histrión, o mujer, y he ves-tido de modo salvaje y espléndido: mi harapo es de púrpura. He ido a la selva, donde he quedado vigoroso y ahito de leche fecunda y licor de nueva vida; y en la ribera del mar áspero, sacudiendo la cabeza bajo la

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fuerte y negra tempestad, como un ángel soberbio, o como un semidiós olímpico, he ensayado el yambo dando al olvido el madrigal. He acariciado a la gran naturaleza, y he buscado, al calor del ideal, el verso que está en el astro en el fondo del cielo, y el que está en la perla en lo profundo del océano. ¡He querido ser pujante! Porque viene el tiempo de las grandes revoluciones, con un Mesías todo luz, todo agitación y potencia, y es preciso recibir su espíritu con el poema que sea arco triunfal, de estrofas de acero, de estrofas de oro, de estrofas de amor. ¡Señor, el arte no está en los fríos envoltorios de mármol, ni en los cuadros lamidos, ni en el excelente señor Ohnet! ¡Señor, el arte no viste pantalones, ni habla en burgués, ni pone los puntos en todas las íes! El es augusto, tiene mantos de oro o de llamas, o anda des-nudo, y amasa la greda con fiebre, y pinta con luz, y es opulento, y da golpes de ala como las águilas, o zar-pazos como los leones. Señor, entre un Apolo y un ganso, preferid el Apolo, aunque el uno sea de tierra cocida y el otro de marfil.

¡Oh, la Poesía! ¡Y bien! Los ritmos se prostituyen, se cantan los lunares de las mujeres y se fabrican jarabes poéticos. Además, señor, el zapatero critica mis endecasílabos, y el señor profesor de farmacia pone puntos y comas a mi inspiración. Señor, ¡y vos lo autorizáis todo esto!... El ideal, el ideal . . .

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El rey interrumpió: —Ya habéis oído. ¿Qué hacer? Y un filósofo al uso: —Si lo permitís, señor, puede ganarse la comida con

una caja de música; podemos colocarle en el jardín, cerca de los cisnes, para cuando os paseéis. —Sí— dijo el rey; y dirigiéndose al poeta: —Daréis vueltas a un manubrio. Cerraréis la boca. Haréis sonar una caja de música que toca valses, cuadrillas y galopas, como no prefiráis moriros de hambre. Pieza de música por pedazo de pan. Nada de jerigonzas, ni de ideales. Id.

* * *

Y desde aquel día pudo verse, a la orilla del estanque de los cisnes, al poeta hambriento que daba vueltas al manubrio: tiririrín, tiririrín... ¡avergonzado a las miradas del gran sol! ¿Pasaba el rey por las cercanías? ¡Tiririrín, tiririrín...! ¿Había que llenar el estómago? ¡Tiririrín! Todo entre las burlas de los pájaros libres, que llegaban a beber rocío en las lilas floridas; entre el zumbido de las abejas, que le picaban el rostro y le llenaban los ojos de lágrimas, ¡tiririrín...! ¡lágrimas amargas que rodaban por sus mejillas y que caían a la tierra negra! Y llegó el invierno, y el pobre sintió frío en el cuerpo y en el alma. Y su cerebro estaba como petrificado, y los grandes himnos estaban en el olvido, y el poeta de la montaña coronada de águilas no era sino un pobre diablo que daba vueltas al manubrio, tiririrín.

Y cuando cayó la nieve, se olvidaron de él el rey y

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sus vasallos; a los pájaros se les abrigó, y a él se le dejó al aire glacial que le mordía las carnes y le azotaba el rostro, ¡tiririrín! Y una noche en que caía de lo alto la lluvia blanca de plumillas cristalizadas, en el palacio había festín, y la luz de las arañas reía alegre sobre los mármoles, sobre el oro y sobre las túnicas de los mandarines de las viejas porcelanas. Y se aplaudían hasta la locura los brindis del señor profesor de retórica, cuajados de dáctilos, de ana-pestos y pirriquios, mientras en las copas cristalinas hervía el champaña con su burbujeo luminoso y fugaz. ¡Noche de invierno, noche de fiesta! Y el infeliz, cu-bierto de nieve, cerca del estanque, daba vueltas al manubrio para calentarse, ¡tiririrín, tiririrín!, tembloroso y aterido, insultado por el cierzo, bajo la blancura implacable y helada, en la noche sombría, haciendo resonar entre los árboles sin hojas la música loca de las galopas y cuadrillas; y se quedó muerto, tiririrín..., pensando en que nacería el sol del día venidero, y con él el ideal, tiririrín..., y en que el arte no vestiría panta-lones sino manto de llamas o de oro.... Hasta que al día siguiente lo hallaron el rey y sus cortesanos, al pobre diablo de poeta, como gorrión que mata el hielo, con una sonrisa amarga en los labios, y todavía con la mano en el manubrio.

* * *

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Oh, mi amigo!, el cielo está opaco, el aire frío, el día triste. Flotan brumosas y grises melancolías .... Pero ¡cuánto calienta el alma una frase, un apretón de manos a tiempo! Hasta la vista.

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Una noche (Nocturno)

The text below brings up an important issue in literary scholarship: namely, the need to establish the accuracy of the text that is being read and analyzed. What you see below is a reproduction of the facsimile copy of “Una noche” which appears under the title “Nocturno” in Obras completas de José Asunción Silva, Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1965. The facsimile copy is the version written by the poet himself. In adherence to tradition, every line of the poem begins with a capital letter—an aspect which at times obscures the structural clarity of the poem. As time passed, both Silva and those who reproduced his work made changes in the wording, punctuation, and formatting of the poem. One version appeared in August, 1894, in La Lectura para Todos, a monthly journal published in Cartagena, Colombia. Printed when Silva himself was in that city, it bears 1892 as the date of composition and has been designated as “la primera versión” of the poem. To see that version, which includes an extensive commentary by Héctor H. Orjuela, see: <http://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/thesaurus/pdf/29/TH_29_001_118_0.pdf> An edited version bearing variants from the facsimile copy of the poem can be found on pp. 25-26 of the Banco de la República edition. The ques-tions that must be answered are: To what extent do the

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variants in the later versions of the poem affect the essence of the original composition and the cadences that Silva intended it to have?

Nocturno

Una noche,

Una noche toda llena de perfumes, de murmullos y de músicas de älas,

Una noche

En que ardían en la sombra nupcial y húmeda, las luciérnagas fantásticas,

A mi lado, lentamente, contra mí ceñida, toda,

Muda y pálida

Como si un presentimiento de amarguras infinitas, Hasta el fondo más secreto de tus fibras te agitara, Por la senda que atraviesa la llanura florecida

Caminabas, Y la luna llena

Por los cielos azulosos, infinitos y profundos esparcía su luz blanca, Y tu sombra Fina y lángida, Y mi sombra

Por los rayos de la luna proyectadas Sobre las arenas tristes De la senda se juntaban Y eran una Y eran una

Y eran una sola sombra larga! Y eran una sola sombra larga! Y eran una sola sombra larga!

Esta noche Solo, el alma

Llena de las infinitas amarguras y agonías de tu muerte, Separado de ti misma, por la sombra, por el tiempo y la distancia,

Por el infinito negro, Donde nuestra voz no alcanza, Solo y mudo

Por la senda caminaba, Y se oían los ladridos de los perros a la luna,

A la luna pálida Y el chillido De las ranas,

107


Sentí frío, era el frío que tenían en la alcoba Tus mejillas y tus sienes y tus manos adoradas,

Entre las blancuras níveas De las mortüorias sábanas!

Era el frío del sepulcro, era el frío de la muerte, Era el frío de la nada . . .

Y mi sombra Por los rayos de la luna proyectada,

Iba sola, Iba sola,

Iba sola por la estepa solitaria! Y tu sombra esbelta y ágil Fina y lánguida,

Como en esa noche tibia de la muerta primavera, Como en esa noche llena de perfumes, de murmullos y de músicas de

[alas, Se acercó y marchó con ella, Se acercó y marchó con ella,

Se acercó y marchó con ella... ¡Oh las sombras enlazadas! ¡Oh las sombras que se buscan y se juntan en las noches de negruras y

[de lágrimas! . . .

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ROBERT JAY GLICKMAN

A la Belleza

¡Oh divina Belleza! Visión casta de incógnito santuario, yo muero de buscarte por el mundo

sin haberte encontrado.

Nunca te han visto mis inquietos ojos, pero en el alma guardo intuición poderosa de la esencia

que anima tus encantos.

Ignoro en qué lenguaje tú me hablas pero, en idioma vago, percibo tus palabras misteriosas

y te envío mis cantos.

Tal vez sobre la tierra no te encuentre pero febril te aguardo,

como el enfermo, en la nocturna sombra, del sol el primer rayo.

Yo sé que eres más blanca que los cisnes, más pura que los astros,

fría como las vírgenes y amarga cual corrosivos ácidos.

Ven a calmar las ansias infinitas que, como mar airado,

impulsan el esquife de mi alma

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hacia país extraño. Yo sólo ansio, al pie de tus altares,

brindarte en holocausto la sangre que circula por mis venas

y mis ensueños castos.

En las horas dolientes de la vida tu protección demando,

como el niño que marcha entre zarzales tiende al viento los brazos.

Quizás como te sueña mi deseo estés en mí reinando,

mientras voy persiguiendo por el mundo las huellas de tu paso.

Yo te busqué en el fondo de las almas que el mal no ha mancillado

y surgen del estiércol de la vida cual lirios de un pantano.

En el seno tranquilo de la ciencia que, cual tumba de mármol,

guarda tras la bruñida superficie podredumbre y gusanos.

En brazos de la gran Naturaleza de los que hui temblando

cual del regazo de la madre infame huye el hijo azorado.

110

ROBERT JAY GLICKMAN

En la infinita calma que se aspira en los templos cristianos

como el aroma sacro del incienso en ardiente incensario.

En las ruinas humeantes de los siglos, del dolor en los antros

y en el fulgor que irradian las proezas del heroísmo humano.

Ascendiendo del Arte a las regiones sólo encontré tus rasgos

de un pintor en los lienzos inmortales y en las rimas de un bardo.

Mas como nunca en mi áspero sendero cual te soñé te hallo,

moriré de buscarte por el mundo sin haberte encontrado.

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INDEX

Aestheticism characterisitcs of, 46 Gautier, Théophile, 46

Barra, Eduardo de la "Darwin y el mono," 13 opinion of Darío's style, 80

Baudelaire, Charles, 20 Les Fleurs du mal, 44

canje exchange of periodicals, 11

Casal, Julián del "A la Belleza," analysis of, 92 and Beauty, 38 Ars religio nostra, 38 Art vis-à-vis Catholicism, 39 critique by Paul Verlaine, 38 Decadentism in, 38 familiarity with French literature, 38 Hojas al viento, 29, 38 Japanese influence, 91 longing to be free, 21 "Mi museo ideal," 29 Moreau, Gustave, 39 Nieve, 29, 38 Parnassianism in, 28 photo of Moreau's Prometheus, 31 "Prometeo," 30 role of poetry, 22 Romanticism in, 29 sends photo to Gustave Moreau, 32 views on life in his time, 19 writes to Gustave Moreau, 33-4

Caupolicán importance of, 89 in La Araucana, 28 sonnet by Darío, 28

Chateaubriand, François-René

112

Atala, 90 Chile

on the path to progress, 9 War of the Pacific, 9, 78

Chocano, José Santos Modernism’s Americanist phase, 62

Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans, 90

Corinto, Nicaragua Darío's port of departure, 5

Cornejo, Gustavo "El modernismo del léxico," 57

criminality. See Newman, Carlos a sickness needing cure, 26 determinants of, 26 reform of, 27 victimization by society, 26, 35

Darío, Rubén a teenage romance, 3 anticlerical beliefs, 4 at La Época, 10 Azul . . ., 80 birth and upbringing, 2 "Caupolicán," 28 contributions to El Mercurio, 10 early influence of Romanticism, 3 "El rei burgués," 81 El Termómetro, 3 his critique of contemporary poets, 47 his opinion of Georges Ohnet, 83 his opinion of José Gómez Hermosilla, 83 importance of sincerity, 22 in Santiago, Chile, 10 in Valparaíso, Chile, 9 influence of Antonio Zambrana, 5 "Ingratitud," 70, 77 Juan Valera’s opinion of Darío, 80 longing to be free, 21 Parnassianism in, 28 poetry an inborn talent, 3 possibility of flight, 17

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readings in the National Library, 4 role of poetry, 22 Romanticism in, 87 trip to Chile, 5

Darwin, Charles evolution, theory of, 14, 60 movement toward perfection, 13 See Barra, Eduardo de la

Decadentism attitude toward Nature, 43 characteristics of, 43 J. K. Huysmans, 43 in Julián del Casal, 38

Descartes, René, 19 El negro Francisco. See Antonio Zambrana El Porvenir de Nicaragua. See Darío "El rei burgués”

analysis of, 81 El Termómetro. See Darío epoch

meaning of the term, 76 Ercilla y Zúñiga, Alonso de

Caupolicán, 28 La Araucana, 28

evolution and a new view of progress, 13 effect on religion, 13 linguistic, 63

fin del siglo drive for acquisition, 19 state of religion, 19 time of turmoil and pain, 19

flight. See Darío, Rubén; Montgolfier Brothers; Santos-Dumont, Alberto; Wright Brothers balloons, 17 dirigibles, 17 heavier than air machines, 17

free trade, 12, 15, 62, 94 importance to the modernistas, 94

freedom from deceit, 86

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ROBERT JAY GLICKMAN

gift of Romanticism, 20 importance to the modernistas, 61 in Julián del Casal, 39 movement toward perfection, 61 offered by art, 40 of the press, 12, 16 praised by Rubén Darío, 4

Galván, Manuel Jesús, Enriquillo, 90

Gautier, Théophile Aestheticism, 46 art for art's sake, 27, 46

germ theory of disease, 25, 35 Germany

influence on Chile and Peru, 79 globalization, 11, 20, 49, 94 Goldberg, Isaac

concept of Modernism, 1 González Prada, Manuel

Peru, a nation of amateurs, 79 Gullón, Ricardo

concept of Modernism, 2 Gutiérrez Nájera, Manuel. See Nájera Hegelian dialectic, 13, 60 Heredia, José María, 41

"En el teocalli de Cholula," 90 Huysmans, J. K.

Decadentism in, 43 novel À rebours, 43

information rapid dissemination of, 11 types in circulation, 11 value of freedom of the press, 12, 16

"Ingratitud," 6 Isaacs, Jorge

María, 90 Koch, Robert, 25 Kosmos

German shipping company, 5 La Araucana. See Ercilla y Zúñiga, Alonso de Le Parnasse contemporain, 27

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León, Nicaragua university city, 3

Lister, Joseph, 25 Martí, José

changes in religion, 84 content of poetry, 21 effects of rapid change, 18 longing to be free, 20 Modernism produces "pequeñas obras fúlgidas," 95 neologisms in, 57 sincerity, 22 views on life in his time, 18, 95

Matto de Turner, Clorinda Aves sin nido, 90 religion, 86

Metapa, Nicaragua, 2 Modernism

a boundless quest for Liberty, 56 a cosmopolitan phenomenon, 57 description of, 76 discussion of its nature, 91 diversity within unity, but without uniformity, 96 free trade phase, 62 linguistic innovations, 56 protectionist phase, 62 reason for its great variety, 56 stress on individualism, 96 view of Francisco Mostajo, 55 view of Pedro Salinas, 46 view of Arturo Torres-Ríoseco, 46

modernista one who is au courant, 61

Montgolfier Brothers non-maneuverable balloons, 17

Moréas, Jean The Symbolist Manifesto, 44

Moreau, Gustave, 39 Mostajo, Francisco

"El modernismo y el americanismo," 55 his views on Modernismo, 55

movement

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meaning of the term, 77 Nájera, Manuel Gutiérrez

"La duda," 41 content of poetry, 21 importance of free trade, 94 longing to be free, 21 view of modern life, 56

Naturalism characteristics of, 42 Émile Zola, 42

in José Asunción Silva, 43 Newman, Carlos

Notas sueltas sobre la pena de muerte, 26 Onís, Federico de

concept of Modernism, 1 ortografía rrazional

details of the system, 26 Palma, Ricardo

Modernism’s Americanist phase, 63 "Neologismos y americanismos," 64

Parnassianism art for art's sake, 28 Théophile Gautier, 27 Le Parnasse contemporain, 27 Paul Verlaine, 38 vis-à-vis Romanticism, 27

Pasteur, Louis, 25 Pérez Bonalde, Juan Antonio

"El poema del Niágara," 18, 90 Poe, Edgar Allan, 46, 59, 92 Poirier, Eduardo

El Mercurio, 10 host to Darío, 9 Telégrafo Nacional, 9

progress a new way to see it, 12 meaning to the modernistas, 60 movement toward perfection, 61

Prometeo image by Gustave Moreau, 31 sonnet by Julián del Casal, 30

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purification environment, 25 penal system, 25 poetry, 27 spelling system, 25

Realism characterisitics of, 41 in José Asunción Silva, 42

religion changes during the fin del siglo, 84 Matto de Turner, Clorinda, 85

Romanticism. See Darío, Rubén; Sierra, Justo and the desire for freedom, 20 characterisitcs of, 40 interest in the noble savage, 90 loses vigor as time passes, 12 Nature in, 40 stress on the individual, 41

Salazar, A. E. See purification Salinas, Pedro

on the nature of Modernism, 46, 95 Santos-Dumont, Alberto

dirigibles, 17 school

meaning of the term, 77 Sierra, Justo

ubiquity of Romanticism, 16 Silva, José Asunción

"Cápsulas," 55 content of poetry, 22 his opinion of critics, 54 longing to be free, 21 "Los maderos de San Juan," 42 Naturalism in, 43 Realism in, 42 references to medicine, 59 self-assessment, 54 "Sinfonía color de fresa con leche," 47 "Un poema," analysis of, 50 Unamuno's prologue, 1

sincerity

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definition of, 86 ideal of the modernistas, 22 its advantages and disadvantages, 86 key feature of Romanticism, 87 relation to striving for purification, 22 Adam Smith, 88 Oscar Wilde, 87

Snow, John, 25 Symbolism

Charles Baudelaire, 44 characteristics of, 44, 45 Jean Moréas, 44 Paul Verlaine, 44

Taine, Hippolyte determinants of behavior, 26

Torres-Ríoseco, Arturo on the nature of Modernism, 46

Uarda 1500 ton coastal steamer, 5 Darío's trip to Chile, 5

Unamuno, Miguel de brief bio, 75 Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, 75 En torno al casticismo, 75 Prologue to Silva's poems, 1 understanding the nature of Modernism, 20, 58, 96

Valera, Juan opinion of Darío’s style, 80

Verlaine, Paul and Julián del Casal, 38 "Art poétique," 44

War of the Pacific effects of, 78

Wright Brothers heavier than air machines, 17

Zambrana, Antonio El negro Francisco, 5 influence on Darío, 5

Zola, Émile determinants of behavior, 26 Rougon-Macquart, 26, 43

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