modernismo , movement in Spanish literature that had its beginning in Latin America. It was paramount in the last decade of the 19th cent. and the first decade of the 20th cent. Modernismo derived from French symbolism and the Parnassian school. However, too much stress can be laid on the French influence, for modernismo was spontaneous, and it borrowed from many sources, including the Spanish classics, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman. Modernist poetry often created an exotic tapestry of distant landscapes dotted with symbolic swans, peacocks, lilies, and princesses. In some of its aspects it represented, like contemporary movements in other literatures, a rejection of the materialist world of the day. Modernismo is now usually said to have first appeared in the poetry of the Cuban leader, José Martí. Julian del Casal, Salvador Díaz Mirón, José Asunción Silva, and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera were also writing fin de siècle verse in the modernist vein before modernismo became an acknowledged world event with the publication, in Chile, of Azul [blue], a volume of poetry by Rubén Darío , in 1888. The Nicaraguan Darío was the great genius of the movement. His exotic, highly colored, and finely wrought verse made a sensation, and soon a host of little magazines and literary groups were forwarding his ideas of elegant form, carefully chosen images, and subtle word music. The modernists...
modernismo , movement in Spanish literature that had its beginning in Latin America. It was paramount in the last decade of the 19th cent. and the first decade of the 20th cent. Modernismo derived from French symbolism and the Parnassian school. However, too much stress can be laid on the French influence, for modernismo was spontaneous, and it borrowed from many sources, including the Spanish classics, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman. Modernist poetry often created an exotic tapestry of distant landscapes dotted with symbolic swans, peacocks, lilies, and princesses. In some of its aspects it represented, like contemporary movements in other literatures, a rejection of the materialist world of the day. Modernismo is now usually said to have first appeared in the poetry of the Cuban leader, José Martí. Julian del Casal, Salvador Díaz Mirón, José Asunción Silva, and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera were also writing fin de siècle verse in the modernist vein before modernismo became an acknowledged world event with the publication, in Chile, of Azul [blue], a volume of poetry by Rubén Darío , in 1888. The Nicaraguan Darío was the great genius of the movement. His exotic, highly colored, and finely wrought verse made a sensation, and soon a host of little magazines and literary groups were forwarding his ideas of elegant form, carefully chosen images, and subtle word music. The modernists...
