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modernismo[mOthArnE´smO] Pronunciation Key, 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, JosE MartI. Julian del Casal, Salvador DIaz MirOn, JosE AsunciOn Silva, and Manuel GutiErrez NAjera were also writing fin de siEcle 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 RubEn DarIo, in 1888. The Nicaraguan DarIo 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 were supremely conscious of their art, and there was more than a hint of artificiality in their works. Among the leading figures of the movement were Leopoldo Lugones, Julio Herrera y Reissig, Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, Guillermo Valencia, JosE Santos Chocano, and Amado Nervo. Modernismo had an extraordinary prose writer in JosE Enrique RodO. The movement constituted a sudden and vigorous intellectual awakening in Latin America and had profound repercussions even in politics and economics. Manuel Ugarte, Francisco and Ventura GarcIa CalderOn, and Rufino Blanco-Fombona all had their roots in modernismo.
The movement had a powerful effect in remolding Spanish literary ideas and language and was the first Spanish American movement to affect peninsular Spain deeply. The Spanish writers of the Generation of '98, notably Miguel de Unamuno, RamOn del Valle InclAn, and Juan RamOn JimEnez were influenced by modernismo. The force of the movement began to wane after 1914 as many writers became increasingly concerned with the consideration of the social and economic problems of a changing world. Other more extreme aesthetic movements arose, such as ultraIsmo (see Borges, Jorge Luis), but in general the social and political strains grew stronger.
After World War I the writers of the new generation revolted against the mannerisms and hollow elegance of early modernismo, and in the words of Enrique GonzAlez MartInez they "wrung the neck of the deceitful swan." The Brazilian artistic renaissance, which began in 1922, was regional in nature and is also termed modernismo: its principal theorizer was MArio de Andrade and most vocal proponent was Oswald de Andrade, both from SAo Paulo.
See G. M. Craig, The Modernist Trend in Spanish-American Poetry (1934, repr. 1971), an anthology; study by W. Martins (1971).
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