Modernism in Spanish Literature: Characteristics and Poetic Innovations

Modernism in Spanish Literature: Characteristics and Innovations

Modernism was an ephemeral literary manifestation, a formal aesthetic and escapist trend that spanned the years 1885 to 1915. Its most representative poet is Rubén Darío (author of Azul). Other notable names include Antonio Machado, Manuel Machado, and J.R. Jiménez, who were Modernist during certain stages of their production.

Key Features of Modernism

• Aesthetic Principles

  Modernist poets showed a deep dissatisfaction with the bourgeois lifestyle, synonymous with banality. They rebelled against apathy, conformity, and mental laziness.

• Themes

  Modernist themes explored two main areas: sensible reality and the intimacy of the poet.

  • Sensible Reality

    Typical elements of Art Nouveau include the swan, a symbol of whiteness and the ideal of beauty, as well as nymphs, princesses, etc. Exotic, indigenous, and cosmopolitan elements were not symbols of escape for them, but rather tools to combat the dullness, vulgarity, and commonness of a world dominated by interest, benefit, and profit.

  • Intimacy of the Poet

    This theme often expressed a general feeling of loneliness.

Formal Innovations in Modernist Poetry

• Vocabulary

  Their search for originality led them to innovate in vocabulary. This included building nouns from adjectives, creating neologisms, introducing Gallicisms, and forming adverbs from nouns or adjectives.

• Formal and Metrical Resources

  The search for sensory values led to bold synesthesia—an association of elements from different sensory domains—with brilliant visual, olfactory, gustatory, auditory, or tactile correlations, such as Rubén Darío's "sun sound." They also combined phonic resources—alliteration, parallelism, internal rhyme—to achieve an ideal of musicality.

• Verses and New Rhythms

  The Alexandrine was their favorite verse, learned from French poets. This French influence also brought the dodecasyllable and hendecasyllable. Of course, they continued to use traditional verses from Spanish literary history, such as the hendecasyllable and octosyllable.

• Stanzas Employed

  The sonnet held a central place, not only the classical sonnet in heroic verse, but also in various Alexandrine or innovative combinations.