We explain who Rubén Darío was, what his life and diplomatic career were like, and what his characteristics, works and tributes are.
Rubén Darío is considered the most important figure of modernism.
Who was Ruben Dario?
Named Felix Ruben Garcia Sarmiento, but nicknamed Ruben Dario, He was a journalist, diplomat and prominent poet. of Nicaraguan nationality, considered the greatest exponent of the literary movement of modernism in the Spanish language. He is also known as the “prince of Castilian letters”.
Many claim that Rubén Darío was the poet who had the greatest and most lasting influence in the field of Hispanic literature in the 20th century. He is also considered the most important figure of modernism. and one of the central ones in the history of Latin American literature.
His work includes poetry, but also prose: chronicle, narrative and essay. He was a highly celebrated author nationally and internationally.
See also: Latin American boom.
Family context
Ruben Dario Born on January 18, 1867 in Metapatoday named after him Ciudad Darío, in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. He was the firstborn of Manuel García and Rosa Sarmiento, second cousins, who were separated at the time of his birth, since she had left the family home due to Manuel’s fondness for drink and women.
For this reason, Ruben Dario He grew up with his grandparents in the city of León and he had little news of his mother, who met another man and went with him to Honduras, and of his father, whom he called “Uncle Manuel”. He was a precocious reader and at the age of fourteen he already aspired to publish his first book, and was considered a literary prodigy: the “child poet” of León.
Brief biography of Ruben Dario
Rubén Darío ended his days with Francisca Sánchez.
Rubén Darío’s life was full of travel: he grew up in León, then went to Manuagua and He spent time in El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Cuba and Central Americawhich formed his Latin American character, despite having lived at times with many hardships and being despised by the local aristocracies. This character would later be felt in his poems.
With all that baggage he went to Spain and Paris, as Latin American newspaper chroniclerand being there he would arouse the sympathies of the young modernist writers, who were despised by established authors and by the Royal Spanish Academy.
Ruben Dario He married Rafaela Contreras Cañas in San Salvador in 1890. and with Rosario Murillo later, and ended his days in an illegal union with Francisca Sánchez, a Spanish peasant from Ávila. When the First World War broke out, he returned to America, abandoning his family in the Old Continent, and returned to Nicaragua, where he died on February 6, 1916.
Diplomatic career
Rubén Darío became Nicaragua’s ambassador to Spain.
At the height of his literary popularity and as a columnist for the Argentine newspaper La Nación, Rubén Darío was appointed by his country’s government to various diplomatic positions: Ambassador to Spain until 1909a member of the official delegation in Paris, Mexico and many other nations, was even appointed Colombian consul in Buenos Aires. This allowed him to visit around 17 countries.
Modernism
Rubén Darío is considered the founding father of Modernism, a literary movement of great importance in Hispanic literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly poetic, characterized by a profound aesthetic and linguistic renewal, with a marked cosmopolitanism and a narcissistic and aristocratic refinement.
It was called “The Return of the Caravels” given the influence that its Latin American followers had in Spain, when traditionally it was the other way around. Its beginning is considered to be with the publication of the poetry collection Blue…by Ruben Dario.
Continued on: Modernism.
Influences
Victor Hugo was Rubén Darío’s main influence.
French poetry was central to the formation of Rubén Darío’s poetry, especially The Romantic School, with Victor Hugo at its headand then the so-called Parnassians: Gautier, de Lisle, Mendès and Heredia. But in particular the verses of Paul Verlaine were an inspiration to him, and with him those of the symbolist school.
Poetry
Darío obeyed the motto of the French poet Verlaine, who proclaimed “music before everything else.” As a good modernist, He understood poetry as a form of musicin which rhythm was of great importance. For this reason he frequently used obsolete or ancient metrics, such as the hendecasyllable, the dodecasyllable and the alexandrine, as well as numerous internal rhymes and playful elements in his verses.
His vocabulary used tended towards cultisms, coming from Latin or Greekin an extremely elevated register, starring myths from mythical antiquity or exotic places and daydreams. There is a strong exotic air in his imagination.
His central themes were eroticism, the exotic and travel.the occult and mysteries, as well as politics, especially American politics, and the exaltation of Latin American nations and their cultural achievements.
Famous poems
Some of Rubén Darío’s best-known poems are the following:
- “To Columbus” (fragment):
Unfortunate Admiral! Your poor America,
your virgin and beautiful Indian woman of warm blood,
the pearl of your dreams, is a hysteric
of convulsive nerves and pale forehead.
A disastrous spirit possesses your land:
where the united tribe brandished their clubs,
Today a perpetual war breaks out between brothers,
the same races hurt and destroy each other.
- “The Swans” (fragment):
What sign do you make, oh Swan, with your bent neck?
in the path of sad and wandering dreamers?
Why so silent about being white and being beautiful,
tyrannical to the waters and impassive to the flowers?
I greet you now as in Latin verses
Publius Ovidius Nason greeted you in the past.
The same nightingales sing the same trills,
and in different languages it is the same song.
- “Oh my darling girl!”
Oh, my darling girl!
I will tell you the truth:
Your eyes seem to me
Embers behind glass;
Your curls, black mourning,
And your peerless mouth,
The bloody footprint
From the edge of a dagger.
Prose
Darío wrote an unfinished autobiographical novel entitled The Gold of Mallorca.
Much of the author’s literary output was written in prose, something that is often forgotten. Much of his prose was published in newspapers and magazines, although his experiments with extended narrative are also notable.
- Novel. Darío wrote an unfinished autobiographical novel entitled The Gold of Mallorca.
- Stories. He wrote several short stories such as “On the Banks of the Rhine”, “The Bourgeois King”, “The Deaf Satyr”, “The Death of the Empress of China”, “The Nightmare of Honorius”, “Tears of a Centaur” and many more.
- Chronicles. Darío’s chronicles were published in the press and were very famous. There are several collections of them: Contemporary Spain (1901), Journey to Nicaragua and Tropical Intermezzo (1907), among others.
Plays
Rubén Darío’s literary career is extremely extensive, but we can highlight the following books as his best known:
- Collections of poems. Caltrops (1887), Rhymes (1887), Blue… (1888), Secular prose and other poems (1896), Ode to Mitre (1906), Song to Argentina and other poems (1910).
- Prose. The Weird Ones (1905), Contemporary Spain (1901), Solar lands (1904), The life of Rubén Darío written by himself (1913), History of my books (1916).
Tributes
There are busts of Rubén Darío in most cities in America.
Rubén Darío has received numerous tributes, among which we can highlight the various literary awards that bear his name, such as the International Poetry Prize that bears his name and awards Nicaragua, or the Rubén Darío Order of Cultural Independence, the highest decoration awarded by the government of that country to cultural figures or institutions of Latin American importance.
There are also, busts of him in most cities on the continentthe poets’ squares and the institutions dedicated to Hispanic American literature in general. Paradoxically, the poet has been little translated into other languages, so he is not very well known outside the Spanish-speaking world.
Followed by: Gabriel García Márquez