Ruben Dario

Rubén Darío is considered the most influential Spanish language modernist poet, and his book of poems, Azul, the opening salvo of Spanish language modernist poetry. I stress the term ‘Spanish language’ because Darío was born in Nicaragua but traveled throughout the world fulfilling his post as a foreign diplomat. He is most associated with el cisne, which led to one Mexican poet to write an anti-modernist poem in which he manifests his protest with the line: “torcerse el cuello del cinse.” Darío experimented with foreign and little used forms in Spanish lyricism, such as the alejandrino, in his search for musical harmony. For Darío, music was the ideal language, and his poetry reflected this conceptualization. In addition, his poetry is characterized by synesthesia, especially sensations sound (music) and sight (a plethora of colors), and an abundance of analogies, metaphors, alliteration, symbols, signs, different tones and registers, and an elaborate display of language. While Bécquer was characterized by 4 verbs for every adjective in his poetry, Darío employed many adjectives to evoke the same sentiment.

Modernists were identified by among other characteristics for their distancing from the social world that they inhabited, alejarse del mundo ruin, looking for beauty outside of their materialistic and dehumanized environment and denouncing their contemporary world with subtlety. Darío’s poetry exemplifies this attitude; “Era un aire suave” navigates the princely courts of the French king, Louis the XIV, whose self-given nickname was the Sun King. “Venus” is a poem of anguished love directed at the planet and goddess aptly named Venus. “Responso”, a poem dedicated to Paul Verlaine, compares the aforementioned, deceased poet to the god Pan and the mythological creature the centaur. Classical mythology, foreign spaces, imagined spaces, frivolous luxury of the ancients, pastoral figures and a ghostly absence of anything modern is prevalent in his poetry. His poems are outside of history, time and reality. “Yo el tiempo y el día y el país ignoro,/ pero sé que Eulalia ríe todavía,/ ¡y es cruel y eterna su risa de oro!” (“Era un aire suave”). This poetic trope is also in response to the secularization of society and the loss of the sacred…his poetry searches for the answers to transcendent questions that religion had once taken on.

Symbolism was a great influence on Darío’s works, and his admiration for French symbolist poets is evident in both his poetics and in such explicit examples as his elegy to Paul Verlaine. One important symbolist aspect of Darío’s works, and one that Bécquer also utilized, is synesthesia. “Era un aire suave” names a plethora of musical instruments, sounds and dances (movement): ritmar, violoncelos, trémolo, liras, Eulalia’s laughter, orchestra, magical notes, a chorus of winged sounds, dances to Hungarian violins, staccati, trino, arpegio, etc…etc…The poem reflects this obsession with musicality. It is written as an alejandrino (“Sonatina” being another example), has a consonant rhyme scheme, alliterations (“que desdenes rudos lanza bajo el ala,/ bajo el ala aleve del leve abanico”) and reflects the lyrical rhyme mentioned in the poem. Trémolo is a rapid succession of many equal notes of the same duration; 3 times repeated “la divina Eulalia ríe ríe ríe”. This repetition of ríe achieves trémolo, as does the tactic that Darío uses of ending a verse and beginning the next verse with the same word (“boscaje,/ boscaje”).

This leads into the discussion of language, music and analogies. For the Modernists, as well as the Symbolists and Romantics, the world is a harmonized place and all things are interconnected, no matter how distant they may seem. Things cease to only be things and are transformed into signs or symbols, representations of spaces; also, the poetic tropes utilized by Darío not only make his poetry beautiful but reinforce his vision of the world, beautiful and musical; they are expressive forms in their own right (as mentioned in the previous paragraph). Language for Darío as for Bécquer is not sufficient in capturing beauty; for Darío, the perfect language is music, signs that refer to nothing outside of themselves. Music is essential to life and existence for Darío and his poetry.