Inter-America, Vol. 1 of 1: October, 1917 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Inter-America, Vol. 1 of 1: October, 1917

(After a brief characterization of the principal works of Dario, the author analyzes the poet and his poetry, and he gives a number of citations of verse, both to illustrate its quality and to justify his views regarding it.)

Rubén Dario has a reputation among those of his kind, not only as an eminent poet, the prince of the poets of the Spanish language, but also as the first, the most complete, the leading and most interesting man of letters of contemporary Spanish-American literature. In the continental press, as also in the criticism of Spain, the supreme esthete of Los raros is spoken of with respect, and the new generation, fascinated by the grandeur of his star, chants, in a noisy riot of neophytes, hymns of joy and affection to him, as if in the presence of a new Homer. For splendor, unexpectedness of imagery, excellence of form, vigor of vocabulary, force and depth of thought, and for the originality of his genius and the singularity of his temperament, Ruben Dario is, with the Colombian Guillermo Valencia, the Argentine Leopoldo Lugones, the Peruvian Jose Santos Chocano, the Cuban Julian del Casal, the Mexican Amado Nervo, one of the greatest poets, if not the greatest poet, of Spanish America in the present period of the race and language.

Elyso de Carvalho.

The work of Rubén Dario begins positively with those marvelous Prosas profanas, verses which the author calls prose, although they are pure poetry, and poetry of fine metal.

Regarding it, Justo Sierra says, in his prologue to Dario's Peregrinaciones:

Such prose is pure poetry, pure art, goblets of Bohemian, cups of Sevres, chalices of gold, gems from the treasures of the Italian churches, amphoras of ceramic, into which Ruben has poured the essence of his soul, informed by the instincts that rise to the soul from the depths of the organism, and tinge and turn it opaque like blood; fashioned by that pain which contact with other souls communicates to one's own soul and renders its essence transparent like tears; formed of what the soul gathers from the atoms that emanate from a hidden sun (the theory of emanations is manifest in poetry), from images without outline, projected by a world not seen, by the universe that begins there beyond, where this universe ends, and that transmute the shadow into a mysterious and infinite clarity. These are the poems that serve in our inner life as an altar-lamp which, at times, seems darkened, when it is inundated with what the poet delightfully calls a "sweetness of light."

The title Prosas profanas, applied to an exquisite volume of verse, was much discussed, although the most of the critics did not know that under it was set forth merely the purpose of making an allusion to one of the ancient forms of ecclesiastical poetry. For Remy de Gourmont, the learned author of Le Latin mystique, the title is a trouvaille.

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