11 - The modern essay in Spanish America

Summary

The contemporary Spanish American essay is born simultaneously with the twentieth century in 1900, the year in which José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917) publishes Ariel [Ariel] in Montevideo. Nearly a century later, it is a book that continues to be read with interest and even debated with passion. While much of what was once at stake in Ariel is largely outdated, Rodó’s essay has not lost a certain brand of intellectual mundonovista charm which still touches something deep within the Spanish American spirit. Before establishing what is today at issue in Ariel, it is necessary to situate it within its historical context.

When Ariel appeared in 1900, the modernista wave that swept America and even extended to Spain was at its apogee. After publishing Prosas prof anas (1896), a founding text of the modernista aesthetic, Rubén Darío travelled to Spain in 1899 and to Paris the following year. It was a moment of apotheosis for the great poet whose revolutionary writing was already a phenomenon internationally known and revered. Ariel was at once a reflection and an exaltation of this spiritual climate, as evidenced by its florid, précieux language and its gallicized Hellenism, not at all different from that cultivated by Darío. Yet what is striking is that Rodó was among the first harsh critics of Modernismo and specifically of Darío, in whom he recognized a superior artistic sensibility but whom he nonetheless eschewed for remaining aloof to the profound intellectual questions of the day. Rodó’s 1899 criticism of Darío is perhaps best characterized by its famous accusatory declaration: “He [Darío] is not the poet of America” (Rodó, Obras completas, 169).