Today, January 18, marks the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Rubén Darío, Nicaraguan poet. Modernism was definitively established with his figure and given his great importance in the world of poetry, we want to pay him this small tribute in Actualidad Literatura, briefly analyzing three of his most important works: "Blue", "Profane prose" y "Songs of life and hope".
For a more detailed version of both his life and his work you can read the biography of Rubén Darío in the link that we just left you. We hope you enjoy it!
"Blue"
This work was published in 1888. It is a set of stories, short stories and poems. Its title has a symbolic character for the poet, since it represents the ideal, the dream and the art to which Darío gives himself with his writings. Here is a short excerpt from it:
OF WINTER
In winter hours, look at Carolina.
Half huddled, rest on the couch,
wrapped in her sable coat
and not far from the fire that shines in the living room.
The fine white angora beside her reclines,
brushing his snout Aleçón's skirt,
not far from china china jugs
that half hides a silk screen from Japan.
With its subtle filters a sweet dream invades her:
I go in, without making a sound: I put down my gray coat;
I'm going to kiss her face, rosy and flattering
like a red rose that was a fleur-de-lis.
Open your eyes; look at me with your smiling gaze,
and while the snow falls from the sky of Paris.
"Profane prose"
With this book, Rubén Darío's Modernism reaches its ceiling and reaches maturity. In it you can see an important metric revolution, recreating thematically in a world of fantasy and beauty, where they can be seen from swans to princesses, passing through certain mythological beings. It also talks about life, history and of course, literature:
SAYS MINE
- My poor pale soul
It was a chrysalis.
Then butterfly
Pink.
.
. . . A restless zephyr
He told my secret ...
-Have you learned your secret one day?
.
. . . Oh my!
Your secret is a
Melody in a moonbeam ...
-A melody?
"Songs of life and hope"
This book published in 1905, supposes a transcendental change in the trajectory of the Nicaraguan poet. It is a reflective work full of nostalgia and melancholy. In it, the author accentuates the tone of review of your own life. It can be seen in this next poem, where whose title ("Fatal"), already announces a pessimistic vision, the author's anguish is manifested in his sensitivity to suffering. Therefore, what this capacity does not represent, that is, the human, not synonymous with happiness:
FATAL
Blessed is the tree, which is hardly sensitive,
and more the hard stone because that no longer feels,
because there is no greater pain than the pain of being alive
nor greater sorrow than conscious life.
To be, and to know nothing, and to be aimlessly,
and the fear of having been and a future terror ...
And the sure horror of being dead tomorrow,
and suffer for life and for the shadow and for
what we do not know and hardly suspect,
and the flesh that tempts with its fresh bunches,
and the grave that awaits with its funereal bouquets
and not knowing where we are going,
or where we come from! ...
We could not talk about the birth of this poet without naming what made him great and what made us remember him today after many years of his death: his lyrics.