Rubén Darío and Modernismo: How a Nicaraguan Poet Changed Spanish Poetry
Rubén Darío, the Nicaraguan poet who started modernismo: his life, his key books Azul and Prosas profanas, and why he is called the Prince of Letters.
Rubén Darío (1867–1916) was the Nicaraguan poet who started modernismo, the Spanish-language literary movement that flourished at the end of the 19th century, and he had a great and lasting influence on 20th-century poetry and journalism in Spanish. He brought the ideals of the French Parnassians and Symbolists into Spanish verse, and the Mexican poet Octavio Paz described his work as one of the most profound poetic revolutions in the language. In the Spanish-speaking world he is still called the "Prince of Castilian Letters".
What is modernismo?
A quick warning for English speakers: Spanish-American modernismo is not the same thing as English "modernism". It is an earlier movement, flourishing at the end of the 19th century, that wanted poetry to be musical, cosmopolitan and free from the old realist and local-color writing. Darío's book of essays Los raros (1896) works almost as its manifesto, defending the independence of art, cosmopolitanism, the music of verse and a break with realism. His conclusion from years of travel was that a Latin American writer should not shut himself up in national themes but absorb foreign traditions and recreate them in Spanish.
Félix Rubén becomes Rubén Darío
He was born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento on 18 January 1867 in Metapa, a town now called Ciudad Darío in his honor. So where did "Darío" come from? In his autobiography he explained that an ancestor had been known in town as "Don Darío", so the whole family came to be called "the Daríos", and his father even did business as Manuel Darío.
His parents separated, and the boy grew up in the city of León, raised by his mother's aunt and her husband, whom he considered his real parents as a small child.
The "child poet"
He began to publish very young. His first printed poem, an elegy called "Una lágrima" ("A Tear"), appeared in a newspaper in Rivas on 26 July 1880, shortly after he turned thirteen, and soon the literary magazines of León were calling him the "child poet". At first he imitated the Spanish poets popular at the time, such as José Zorrilla and Ramón de Campoamor; later Victor Hugo became a decisive influence.
In El Salvador he met the poet Francisco Gavidia, a connoisseur of French poetry, and under his guidance tried for the first time to adapt the French alexandrine to Spanish verse. It was a small technical experiment with big consequences.
Azul: the book that started a revolution
In June 1886 he sailed to Chile and landed in Valparaíso, later working for a newspaper in Santiago. In July 1888 his book Azul... (Blue...) was published in Valparaíso. It collected poems and prose pieces that had appeared in the Chilean press, and it is considered the key work of the modernist revolution.
The book was not an instant success, but the influential Spanish novelist and critic Juan Valera praised it in two public letters in the Madrid newspaper El Imparcial in October 1888. Soon he became a correspondent for La Nación of Buenos Aires, then the most widely read newspaper in Spanish America.
Buenos Aires and Prosas profanas
His life was restless. In 1890 he married Rafaela Contreras in San Salvador, and a military coup broke out the very next day; she died in 1893. The same year he went to Buenos Aires as an honorary consul of Colombia.
There, in 1896, he published two crucial books: Los raros, essays on the writers who fascinated him, and Prosas profanas y otros poemas, the collection that definitively established literary modernismo in Spanish. As Darío himself explained, these poems would in time become hugely popular across the Spanish-speaking world, even though they were not well received at first.
Spain, Paris and Cantos de vida y esperanza
At the end of 1898 La Nación sent him to Spain to report on the mood of the country after its defeat by the United States and the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. In Madrid he inspired a group of young modernists that included Juan Ramón Jiménez, Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Jacinto Benavente, and there he met Francisca Sánchez, his companion for the rest of his life.
In 1905 he published Cantos de vida y esperanza (Songs of Life and Hope), edited by Juan Ramón Jiménez. The same year saw "Salutación del optimista" and "A Roosevelt", poems in which he exalts Hispanic identity against the threat of United States imperialism. The playful poet of Azul had become a deeper, more political voice.
How did Rubén Darío die?
After years in Europe and the Americas, he returned to León, the city of his childhood, on 7 January 1916. He died there on 6 February of liver cirrhosis caused by alcoholism, and he was buried in León Cathedral. He was 49.
Why Rubén Darío still matters
Few poets changed a language so completely. Before him, Spanish-American poets mostly followed Spanish models; after him, poets in Madrid learned from a Nicaraguan. That reversal is why he still sits at the center of school syllabuses from Managua to Madrid, and why his musical lines are a pleasure for learners to read aloud.
Learn with Rubén Darío: English expressions
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a child prodigy | a child with exceptional talent | Darío was a child prodigy in León. |
| break new ground | do something original | Azul broke new ground in Spanish poetry. |
| on both sides of the Atlantic | in Europe and the Americas | He was famous on both sides of the Atlantic. |
| a restless spirit | someone who cannot stay still | A restless spirit, he moved from country to country. |
| come full circle | return to where you started | His life came full circle in León. |
Practice: Write three sentences about a writer you admire, using "break new ground" and "come full circle".