Rubén Darío : major hispanist

Abstract

No one can doubt today about the Spanishism of Rubén Darío after knowing in depth the work in verse and prose of the citizen of the Spanish language —and its harmonious and imperishable transformer— that was the author of Cantos de vida y esperanza, Los Cisnes y otros poemas (1905). This work aroused the certainty of Jorge Guillén, when the Spanish and Hispano-American vanguards appeared. That love for Spain had been manifested itself in ‘98 when it was in solidarity with its cultural values —i.e. those of the Golden Age— in front of the great “red gorillas” who had defeated them militarily and politically humiliated. But it had its immediate development with the radiant presence of Darío himself — at the age of 32 years old— in the very Spain, which he would walk, according to Federico García Lorca, as his own land.