Origins of Modernism in Hispanic American Poetry

Source of Modernism

Source of Modernism has been said that Modernism is the expression of the cultural and ideological crisis of the century that occurs on both sides of the Atlantic. The political and social situation in which writers live immerses them in circumstances with which they express their disagreement and rebellion, and in some cases (the Cuban José Martí) leads to political activism. In this malaise, fatigue joins artistic forms produced by the Realist movement—an eminently bourgeois movement—and the need to find a new style, more poetic and refined, that allows creative release and the rebellious spirit of the artist. American authors also perceived the need for ideological and aesthetic renewal in Spain and other places, adopting a more cosmopolitan outlook.

Early development

The early years, as always, were timid and full of difficulties. Small groups of writers, dissatisfied with the historical period in which they lived and dissatisfied with France, where enfants terribles of Romanticism (with Baudelaire and Verlaine at the head) had diverted their interest in poetry toward a way to access reality by interpreting the signs that later became Symbolism.

Influences: Parnassianism and Symbolism

The American modernist poetry movement adopted another French current, Parnassianism, to move away from realistic aesthetics and to provide the style with the elegance and refinement it lacked. The real precursor of Hispanic American Modernism was Leopoldo Lugones.

Themes and Ideas

They take as references irrationalism, symbolism and impressionism. Central themes include:

• fantasy
• dream
• mystery
• melancholy
• anguish
• love
• eroticism
• evasion
• bohemian life
• cosmopolitanism (veneration of Paris)
• social and political criticism
• etc.

Language and Style

The literary language is filled with sound effects (alliteration, onomatopoeia), colorful images, cultisms, synesthesia, and all sorts of stylistic devices that produce a style sometimes brilliant, other times delicate. As for the metric, there is an enrichment in strophic rhythms, with the addition of new meters in Castilian verse (Alexandrine triadic, endecasyllable, and dodecasyllable) alongside the cultivation of traditional meters (hendecasyllable, octosyllable).