I. Young people stick to the inside of the Modern Review
Members of the Ateneo de la Juventud art educator in the Porfiriato: formed by reading the early modernists and began his career working in major journals in the scheme, the Revista Azul and the Modern Review. Almost none of them showed signs of wanting the dissolution of the regime. In any event, dreamed of his early end in democratic terms. When Porfirio Diaz reporter James Creelman said that Mexico was ready for democracy, young writers were close to the path of succession. What is really important was to strengthen ties with the power and ensure the legacy of Justo Sierra, the Minister of Public Instruction. The actors in this transition: a generation with ages ranging between 17 and 34 in 1906 when he founded the magazine Modern Sap (the largest, Enrique González Martínez and Alfonso Reyes and Julio Torri, children) first founded Society Conference and subsequently the Ateneo de la Juventud (28 October 1909).
La Revista Moderna de Mexico (1903-1911) Jesus E. Valenzuela also hosted on its pages to young writers. New names such as Abel C. Salazar can be read from the first issue (September 1903), so in subsequent years, the poetic works of the modernists students appear daily in the leading journal of the decade. These writers were necessarily close with poetry that drove into the magazine: Enrique González Martínez, Manuel de la Parra, Roberto Arguelles Bringas and many of the poets who would then be members of the University began in the school of Symbolism practiced by Nervo, Tablada or Diaz Miron . Only several years later, to consolidate as a group apart, try a facelift.
Alfonso Cravioto, son of former governor of Hidalgo gave the young writers the first opportunity for independence: with paternal inheritance rented an office in the building's Palestine Street on May 5, and sponsored the magazine appeared Savia Moderna January to June 1907. The publication ended when the sponsor left honeymoon to Europe and stopped the money needed to survive. The six months were not enough momentum for the group to continue with life itself, and soon returned to the pages of the Revista Moderna. In this second period formed a group inside the magazine and began work as a parallel organization of the Conference League, operating from 1907 to 1909.
Between December 1907 and March 1909, the increase in young poetry in the Modern Review was remarkable in this period appeared almost 60 poems of writers while participating in the Conference League.
Since then, certain trends can be observed of poetic schools that would come the following years. Briefly, I discuss the main directions of young poetry magazine Valenzuela:
1) First, there are the poets who began in the symbolism, some of them are very closely Nervo, "Luis G. Urbina, Enrique González Martínez, Manuel de la Parra, Alfonso Reyes and Luis Castillo Ledón. The figure of Louis G. Urbina was important for Athens: From 1901 he served as Private Secretary Justo Sierra, Secretary of Public Instruction, strategic position it was between cultural power and youth literature. He was a poet who was not a literary place as it was called romantic modernist modernists and the Romantics. Although he was born in 1864 (was greater than Nervo and Tablada), was only fully accepted by the stick. Among González Martínez Urbina and continuity can be poetic, conversational poetry, the basic construction of symbols and personification, tone evening of his work, the notion of the poem as the inner world ... Some of his poems are aware correlation, others show very close literary interests. See the following examples:
-Pain: what you come quietly!
you be the same one day
went left me hostage
a jewel of poetry?
(Ballad of the return of the minstrel, Luis G. Urbina)
Pain, if by chance to knock on my door
arrival, welcome, wide open
the left to enter ... not to disturb the placidity
santa of my mind ... to contemplate, just
the swarm of my youth such serene
departs a point
shaky ground ... (Pain, if by chance ... of Enrique González Martínez)
Martínez González's poetry poetry determine first half of the decade of the Revolution. She found inspiration in authors such as Porfirio Barba Jacob, Rodrigo Torres Hernandez and the young students of Xavier High School as Villaurrutia and Salvador Novo. Within the University, this influence will continue in the work of Porfirio Barba Jacob. His poem "Song of the inner life seems inspired by a poem by Albert Samain, Fernando Vallejo, Colombian poet's biographer, believes the influence of nearest González Martínez, since the expression" inner life "appears in the famous sonnet Wring the Swan ...: "Avoid all form, all speech / which are not consistent with the latent rate / of life ..." Forty years of friendship between Jacob Barba Martínez González was fruitful for both, says Vallejo. It was for young writers who saw in the work of González Martínez a way to continue the process of independence of the poem.
2) The presence of Salvador Diaz Miron notes only fully into the poetry of Roberto Arguelles Bringas. Amado Nervo, walking down the street with the poet, introduced him to Luis Castillo Ledón with these words: "It's the future
great poet of Mexico.
There was, however, to collect his work and only until 1986 the critic Serge I. Zaïzeff released his complete poetry. The main subject of his poetry is the same poetry, his work is the result of an aggressive and poetic demanding. It has been rightly said that in his "choking force strength", as he was a poet who, endowed with a great expressive force, attempting to tame the form in the same way that Diaz Miron. One of the positive contributions of the Ateneo was the "bisoneto." In this composition, the verses rhyme in a sonnet as normal, and so does the hemistiches, which rhyme with each other. The bisoneto "Blizzard" is an example of his literary requirement:
the Boreas, as a poet furious
travel far to reach the mountain streams of harmony
of inspiration sparks in the plain weird shade,
in the blue lymph discrete and at the bottom of the grove.
already groaning at the bare ruin a song savage
and bathes the pleasant meadow shouting angry, sullen oak shakes
well with hoarse and cold injury;
well in the roof challenge seizure of courage!
With plectrum gives lashes! And the loose strings to hurt Lit
pain hollow tree starts to lose
voices bouncing ...! Vibrate and make that anguish
hoarse and dry, like the swift,
flee, their swift trot roaring between stiff leaves,
as apostrophes, echoes that hurt, like beef?
3) Rafael López was during his years in the Modern Review, an example of decadent Symbolism: following in the footsteps of Jose Juan Tablada and Nervo. Along with the same table, was one of the few poets who rejuvenated after his contact with the work of López Velarde. Literary versatility and irony, characterized his mature work. His poem Laguna de Chapala (1927) is a successful parody tribute to the gentle country. In 1911 he published his poem The Legend of volcanoes, one of the few examples of poetry national issue in the Modern Review (the other: Ruben M. Campos).
There are, what invincible towers of God. With rust
a hundred centuries and remains a hundred races. Its pillars, holding
of heaven the splendid roofs,
throw the hard blue capitals of their summits,
burned by the fire of purple sun.
4) From April 1907 to March 1908, Efren Rebolledo sent to the Modern Review your poetry in Japan. Tablada often compared to show that Rebolledo not assimilate Japanese poetry, he forgets that the young writer published his poems several years before the author of Li-Po. Octavio Paz summed up the discussion in his book The Sign and the squiggle (1975) with this comment:
Although known more intimately Rebolledo Japan Tablada, his poetry has never been Beyond the rhetoric 'modernist', between Japanese culture and his eyes always brought the stereotypical image of French poets of the century and Japan was a Parisian exoticism rather than a discovery Hispanic. "
However, Rebolledo poems prepared the curiosity of literary readers by Japan, it is true that never left the confines of French-style education as Rebolledo Parnassian is primarily a facing for the first time in Mexican literature to an alien landscape and draws on his experience as a reader of French literature to account for their experience.
5) Finally, the Othon poetry (d. 1906) work appears in the Alfonso Reyes, Luis Castillo and Alfonso Cravioto Ledón unveiled in Modern Review. The classical culture of both writers fit perfectly with the Arcadian vision of the landscape. When he founded the magazine Savia Moderna, the writers would be placed under the work of Gutiérrez Nájera, but also under that of Otho. The poet potosino would be essential for literary development, from the modernist Porfirian to López Velarde, there was a general recognition for his poetry and a continuity of interest in landscape and poetic sincerity.
II. The cultural project of the Ateneo
Although it is commonly said that the Ateneo had no magazines, its members wrote to nearly all publications of the period. Martínez González himself was director of three of them: Argos, Pegasus and Modern Mexico. Vasconcelos directed the Teacher, the magazine announced the soft country. This, not counting the journals in which members often collaborated Ateneo: La Nave, We Magazine Magazines and El Universal Ilustrado. Fernando Curiel and Gabriel Zaid, the two leading scholars of the literary group, have argued that preferred to stick to move in different areas of the editorials, they're right when you consider that its publications were in the service much more comprehensive projects, were cultural officials, secretaries of state, presidents of the University and diplomats. His publications make sense in a broader context: for example, editions of classical driven Vasconcelos are inseparable from the literacy crusade.
In 1908, soon after created the Society Conference, organized a ceremony to honor Gabino Barreda, founder of the National Preparatory School. However, the event recognized the importance of honor while Barreda ended with positivism as the dominant pedagogical thinking. A few days before the event, Pedro Henríquez Ureña writes, strutting, Alfonso Reyes: "We have become so close to Don Justo." Sierra, in fact, had given encouragement to the new generation and had to Luis G. Urbina, his Private Secretary, mixed with literary youth. But one of the intentions of the Secretary of Education was to prevent the handover of the Preparatory Diaz clergy (Zaid is the subject extensively in his article "Lopez Velarde, Athens, included in the book Three Catholic poets.) The tribute because the anger of the positivists but consolidates the Ateneo: Case obtained his first important post as Secretary of the University. This is the beginning of collection of the intellectual power of the group, can be reviewed biographies of Athens and will be before a final X-ray power of Porfirio Diaz.
writes Gabriel Zaid in his essay "Lopez Velarde, Athens:" The unfortunate thing is that the stick could dream of technocratic power or Sierra Parra: porfiriato prolonging cultural, rather than restoring the autonomy of the literary republic, founded free for Altamirano. " But Altamirano founded the independent literary republic, but in the service of liberal nationalism, and created an intellectual space comply with legitimizing that has adapted to the various regimes: Díaz, Huerta, Carranza and Obregon.
However, the University went through a period of disintegration at the end of Huerta. In general, they supported the regime of Huerta and had helped to discredit the regime of Madero. Repentant or not their participation, helped create an atmosphere of inner peace and aesthetic concerns in a country devastated. Caso who admire a man who kept the spirit of teaching college during the days of the Ten Tragic forget that the teacher taught his classes as a way of not seeing beyond the classroom and to avoid what he called "the loss bases of aristocratic society. "
unintentionally Caso was a philosophical precursor of the Revolution: to challenge the positivist thinking undermines the foundations of the which was based on the order and progress. That is, faced with a thought that trying to believe that "inertia is the way of perfection" (in the words of Alfonso Reyes). But Case's right-Enrique Krauze, "snatched the positivists thought, but only to leave at the foot of intuition."
The Huerta was the last space enjoyed by the stick of relative calm, intellectual, they lived with the illusion of a restored Porfiriato restore peace so painfully achieved in the Diaz regime. In the year and half year Huerta regime, Nemesio Garcia Naranjo ended positivists plans study but only to attempt the establishment of an education "humanist" based on intuitionism, Luis G. Urbina led the National Library, Enrique González Martínez worked in Education. They were followed by the names of Francisco M. of Olaguíbel, Salvador Diaz Miron, Ricardo Gómez Robelo and Porfirio Barba Jacob, among others. Porfiriato
If during the writers were devoted mostly to journalism, between 1911 and 1920 literature became increasingly dependent on the public: many of the stand, and his contemporaries had a public official or diplomat. In this regard, it can be diplomatic, public officials, congressmen, presidents of the University, governors, judges and senators. Besides the many writers who studied law-profession-nearest points in this period, note the significant presence of a doctor: Enrique González Martínez. There were journalists who combined their work with literary criticism and historical research. Other occupations were those of librarian, bureaucrat and professor, becoming more frequent use for writers. You can add to the list a visiting poet in Mexico businessman (Jose Santos Chocano), a normal school student died in the Revolution (Rodrigo Torres Hernández) and a priest (Alfredo R. Placencia).
The Colombian poet Leopoldo de la Rosa, unique in the century, not ever worked, lived to borrow. Only once was contracted: in 1921, by José Vasconcelos, for winding a clock in the SEP. According to documents Fernando Vallejo: "As always remained standing as the clock, and when he called on Leopold Vasconcelos he answered that there was little the six dollars he was paid daily. Leopold never worked heroically. "
Finally, it must be said that the poetry of the decade of the revolution occurred in the capital. There were only two notable exceptions: Francisco González León and Alfredo R. Placencia, poets ever visited Mexico City and met the literary prestige to the early 20's. It must be said, finally, perhaps due to editorial and educational development, most of the poets come from only four institutions in the country: Federal District, Jalisco, Veracruz and Guanajuato.
III. Poetic contributions
Ateneo Ateneo poetic work written between 1911 and 1915 was marked by continuing the modernists (especially those of Gutiérrez Nájera, Othon Diaz Miron and Nervo) incorporating new trends in French poetry. González Martínez popularized the work of Francis Jammes, and through his translations force retook the prosaic: the author may be the source of the prose of López Velarde. His book of translations Jardines de France (1915) is a sum of recognized French influences in the mid-decade. This poetic, immediate outside, it would soon confront reality. The same year, Jardines de France, Manuel Gomez Morin wrote his book in 1915 which, referring to his generation, says that with the Revolution discovered that there was Mexico. "
Ateneo poetic production as a dominant group occurred between 1911 and 1915 (between the end of the Revista Moderna de Mexico and the beginning of poetry provincial). Four books defined the period: Lamps in agony (1910), Louis G. Urbina, Hidden Trails (1911) and The Dying Swan (1915), Enrique González Martínez, and with eyes open (1912), by Rafael López. Caro Victrix (1916) Efren Rebolledo could be the last great book installed in Modernism "outside", ie that the manner of Gutierrez Najera Diaz Miron or care about the scenery and makes the poem to the visual. Other writers under the Ateneo collected his work into a book and so almost always late: Manuel de la Parra (farsightedness, 1914), Luis Castillo Ledón (What I look and what I feel, 1916) Eduardo Colin (The life intact, 1916), Erasmo Castellanos Quinto (From the bottom of the open, 1919). It is notable the case of Alfonso Reyes, who only until 1922 he released his first book of poetry, Footprints. Others, like Roberto Arguelles Bringas, failed to meet his poetry in life.
With translations, González Martínez introduced to the poets of his time, a vast map of what the French lyric writers offered the Mexicans. This vision meant a lot, as presented to the French writers who sought to the poetry of his country in a stalemate, according to critic Marcel Raymond, had reached its peak in 1905.
Among Urbina and González Martínez, from 1906 to 1911, is developing an aesthetic theory based essentially on the influence of neosimbolistas writers (especially of the poets gathered at the Phalange magazine, Paul Valéry's intellectual history, the relationship of this group with Mexican literature has been discussed by Ulalume González de León in his preface to Selected Works Barnabooth AO, Valery Larbaud, Mexico, Vuelta, 1987). Among the principles enunciated neosimbolistas that Marcel Raymond, some were followed faithfully by González Martínez:
"The conception of poetry as a" metaphysical informal "penetrate into reality and knowing the self. (Salvador Elizondo, nephew of González Martínez, referred to poetry as "irrational knowledge").
-The image is the embodiment of states of the soul which expresses itself in duration. (Note that the presence of philosophical intuitionism Mexico introduced the idea of \u200b\u200bduration.)
"The only legitimate intention for the poet must be a deep knowledge of reality.
"Despite the intention to learn the reality of symbols from the poets scorn the symbols consequential prefer unprocessed symbols, which manifest themselves" naturally. "
No There were many swans walked along the Mexican literature, and Amado Nervo and Jose Juan Tablada people were distinguished for his work of white swans. So when Enrique González Martínez, in 1911, wrote the sonnet in which were encouraged to twist the neck of the swan's plumage misleading, most thought it was a rebellion against aesthetic Parnassian a specific recrimination against the Mexican poets.
Héctor Pérez Martínez, in a lecture delivered in 1924, says the sonnet González Martínez gave guidance on writing poetry since then. This new poetry was characterized by the lack of attention to the outside and prefer honesty. In the work of González Martínez, the symbol is a keystone of the world: a knowledge of reality. Since the symbol suggests, depends on the reader find the full implications of the image. Martínez González was the same who explored the possibilities of this poetic and it was he who initiated the period clausuraría his work. In 1915, with The Dying Swan, makes clear that poetry could not continue on the path of self-contemplation. What would be the way forward? Martínez González himself had a personal response that was imposed: the death of his wife and his son, the poet Enrique González Rojo, and secondly, the presence of the world wars. These events imposed on his work a tension that was resolved in beautiful poems in the interior garden staggers to the ravages of reality. After living a personal pain, Martínez González's work leads to personal experimentation away from the literary fashions. With its capacity for renewal, González Martínez could write the best of his work in the years of maturity, even in his later years released two magnificent long poems: Babel (1949) and The New Narcissus (1952).
But contemporary poets to The Dying Swan at the time did not attempt to break with the modernist aesthetic: Efren Rebolledo Parnasianism continued to the maximum refinement; Nervo took refuge in the sincerity, Diaz Miron focused his technique in the development of a few poems. That would be Ramon Lopez Velarde the author to give a solution to the situation of poetry in 1915. The Ateneo
became independent and matured a literary genre, the prose poem. Three writers, readers of Charles Lamb and Marcel Schwob, of Nietzsche's aphoristic prose, and especially of Small Baudelaire's prose poems, marked a watershed in the prose: Julio Torri, Carlos Diaz Dufoo jr. and Mariano Silva y Aceves. They are the seeds of the literary works of authors as Max Aub, Gilberto Owen, Juan Jose Arreola and Augusto Monterroso. The work of the three was a break with Modernism's artistic prose, in fact, it is possible that the work of these authors is the first literary manifestation outside the movement. Read in the overall context of the prose of the decade can be said even that Athenaeum literary renewal began prose: Alfonso Reyes, Martin Luis Guzman, José Vasconcelos ... For these authors can be added the work of the finest prose writers, but seen from within, the University was in this sense a stylistic tension: first, the prose monumental bombast Vasconcelos and Case, and secondly, the improvement stylistic work resulted in a minimal and perfect. Do not have their genesis in the Ateneo is split Mexican prose? Julio Torri admits that his text The opposition between oratorio and the artistic temperament was a critique of Antonio Caso. Means the chagrin of Case if you read the opinion of Torri on the speakers: "Needless to say that I think will never gain a deep understanding that any writer who becomes flesh and blood one, and transcends even the gestures and habitual gestures. " Until then, no Mexican writer had dared to write a composition in prose that might seem a work of exquisite miniaturist as the following, also Torri:
Lips kiss today and tomorrow will be bloodless, when the occasional friend sit in the cozy iron morgue. We will have to argue before the judge our honorable history of respectable clerks or an alibi that seems quite unlikely.
Another (very little attention) is the poetry of the University: the incorporation of our poetry free verse. It was Alfonso Reyes, in the poem The outcast, 1916, the first use. But Reyes poetic innovation had no impact visible: still have to wait until the next generation of writers, TRADITION, to incorporate Mexican poetry to free verse collection.
Finally, need to add to the list of interests of the University's interest in the culture of New Spain. Nervo was the revaluations of Sor Juana in 1910, after a conference in Madrid, which left her book Joan of Asbaje. Later, Reyes followed in the footsteps of Ruiz de Alarcón and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier. Since the plane of the narrative, Genaro Estrada Galín But Mariano Silva y Aceves and Arquilla ivory with awakened interest in the times of Philip III and Charles III, by the court of Viceroy Mancera and folk legends. According to Abate Gonzalez de Mendoza, colonialism was the result of the impact of "the revolutionary shock." Thus, a group of writers wanted to find an idealization of time novohispanos a safe city, friendly and civilized, far from revolutionary movements. Alfonso Cravioto, a member of the Athenaeum, published in 1921 The new soul of the old things, poems novohispano topic. Despite the poor quality of the texts, Cravioto's book is important because it is the only example of a poetic art that was said a few years before the late 20's. Here, the author posits the importance of Mexican art. "Let's find and if not, inventémoslo" he suggests. Very few are their positive contributions (lines disyllabic, eneasílabos and thirteen syllables). However, this book should be read in the context of an ideology that formed around that time: the national discourse that would distinguish the power from the twenties. Hernan Cortes, Cuauhtemoc, Sor Juana, Sigüenza y Góngora, Tolsá are some of the names Cravioto joined his vision of Mexican art. And it should not surprise the thematic resemblance to the smooth country or murals in several of his poems. In fact, what this book contains are findings on the categories of official history, not all figures and scenes that belong to the proposed Cravioto nationalist discourse of following decades, but it is interesting to note that, unlike their ancestors Liberal Cravioto New Spain seeks to integrate art banished by the nineteenth-century liberal thought. (We can assume that Cravioto had much to do with the colonial museum which was formed in San Juan de Ulua in the days when he used Carranza Government Palace). The recreation of the life and culture of New Spain as sisters with Mexican traditions and legends published by Vicente Riva Palacio and Juan de Dios Peza in 1885 amid the controversy of the liberals against the positivists: Cravioto, thirty-five years later participates the same issues in a different debate and close. In fact, rescues Justo Sierra notions about Cortes (Sierra calls him "father of the race" and Hidalgo "father of the nation" in response to Bulnes called "father of the nation" to Cortes).
IV. We
magazine in 1912 comes the first group of followers of Athens, the magazine Us (1912-1914), formed by students of Rafael López Normal School: Francisco González Guerrero, Rodrigo Torres Hernandez and Gregorio López y Fuentes. Although his work was based on the written by Rafael López and Enrique González Martínez, his literary interest was to build a new group. From this came a memorable book, The syrinx Glass (1914), Lopez and Fuentes. The book was characterized by overemphasizing certain uses of Modernism as unstressed rhyme particles, the division of adverbs in mind to use internal rhyme, the word hemistiches breaking in two. The work of Lopez and Fuentes was recognized by Manuel Maples Arce as one of the starting points for breaking with the modernist aesthetic. See Deshojación poem, included in the syrinx of glass:
There are many rare gems in the clear sky case
, who has dressed in their richest attire, and snow
moon as pilgrim
heron feathers fly their defoliating wings.
way you stand on a sharp thorn
and look me in the eyes with your hand, to
the moon, like pot, if you just flour, a flower
hate Despetal air.
see how the petals flee and you get very sad and weep and moan
Why not get started
his secret
then slowly with your shoulders wet ash
moon "in your garden is," I tell you and recline the front Despetal
and unless your lips into smiles.
On the other hand, Gonzalez Guerrero will be the first anthology published in Mexico by Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig (Cvltvra, 1916), who influenced both Lopez and Fuentes as Ramon Lopez Velarde. The group ended abruptly in 1914: Torres Hernandez died fighting for Zapata in Morelos, Lopez and Fuentes enlisted to fight the U.S. invasion of Veracruz, and Guerrero Gonzalez was devoted to literary criticism in Mexico City.
poetry Us members has been almost unexplored though life were against, we need to know the importance of the work of Lopez and Fuentes and their influence on the strident, lack extensive study the critical work of Gonzalez Guerrero and almost ghostly figure of the poet Rodrigo Torres Hernández Oaxaca. Still owes a study of the literary magazine that could only endure in the days after the fall of Diaz.
V. Lopez Velarde and provincialism
A mid-decade began the influence of Belgian poetry, was read, especially the work of Emile Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach and Maurice Maeterlinck. Luis Noyola documented the influence of Rodenbach in Lopez Velarde. This author had a more profound: the work of Xavier Villaurrutia began with a literary sense very close to the Belgian author. Enrique González Martínez also gave three lectures on these authors and published in 1918 by Cvltvra. Years later, in 1931, Francisco Castillo Najera was an anthology, A Century of Belgian poetry met to 78 poets. Gabriel Zaid believes that Catholic writers were interested in this poem because it symbolized the modern Catholic culture. In addition, Belgian poets touched the issue of nationalism that interested the generation of López Velarde.
Publishing devout Blood (1916) was a renewal of Mexican poetry: the lack of originality and experimentation reached can be seen in the work of the stick less prominent, in general, had been devoted to follow uncritically work of major modernists. The work of some Athens as Manuel de la Parra, Luis Castillo and Ricardo Gómez Robelo Ledón read in light of the first López Velarde book makes them unrecoverable what will have been its charm before the onset of Zacatecas? Blood continued devout roads initiated by the works of Gutiérrez Nájera and Othon, was a continuation of the poetic tradition and did not constitute a break with the paradigms of modernism. However, the substantial part of the work of López Velarde was not understood in depth, his followers (Fernández Ledesma, Martinez Valadez) copied only the outermost of his poetry. In best cases, such as Alfredo Ortiz and Francisco González León Vidal contributed to the literary creation of the province, the villages and streets of work are more like a French novel to Mexican reality. His work was a way to apply their social utopia.
But do not forget that devout Blood contains poems written since 1908, so the book can be read as a sign of poetry written from the province as a response to the aesthetics of the city. Outside the world of Athens, the work of López Velarde was provinicial readers who saw it as a recovery of the country and the people who corrupt purified aesthetics of the city, some waved these ideas to capture literally the province. But unaware that the genius of López Velarde came from a series of literary procedures, construction the poem in a form so complex that has earned him comparisons with Góngora (Enrique Diez Canedo, José Emilio Pacheco). Antonio Castro Leal was in a note published in El Nacional, who passed the critical threshold surface, "This poet is, moreover, a bit strange and begins to show a dark and difficult art gradually. These new qualities born of the old qualities ... "
Indeed, from the beginning, the work of López Velarde had several interpretations. The thirtieth anniversary of the disappearance of the poet, Alfonso Reyes wrote a comprehensive text that speaks of three waters that run through his poetry: the flowing of time lag, of everyday life, the water glass that comes from Parnasianism: sculpture and harmony and the deep water "pathetic voice, sensuality and fear, more or less conscious symbolism, sleepwalking 'surrealism' ..." At the time, no all critics and all the poets were able to locate the source of these three waters.
De Zacatecas's work highlights two ways of thinking about poetry, who saw in the province on track to exploit the resources of poetry in France and Belgium (Jammes, Rodenbach, Verhaeren) and those taken from the poetry of Zacatecas tools to renew the lyrics. The latter, estridentistas and contemporary, nourished in Modernism, but began the decade of the 20 with a novel experiment. In contrast, among the followers of López Velarde provincialist is a last unexplored period of Modernism (on item only know the conference Héctor Pérez Martínez, "Poets provincials" Huytlale 11, February 1954, pp. 118-122 .) Modernist provincials were Alfredo R. Placencia, Ramon Lopez Velarde, Manuel Martínez Valadez, Alfredo Ortiz Vidales, Francisco Castillo Najera, Eduardo J. Correa, Enrique Fernandez Ledesma, Francisco González León and Jesús Zavala. In general, these authors joined the province's vision through French poetry. That this period of extraordinary poets hides bill may prove the work of González León or the forgotten Ortiz Vidales. The publication of a book virtually unknown in the peace of the people (1923), could spell the end of Modernism, "in the room. IX ", a poem in which the frame via resonates quietly, can attest to the quality of this stage of poetry:
I am a poor man without enthusiasm, and as sad
pen, ruler do not know what
clerical desk I live methodize
saved, not moving, in the midst of the people.
I would have been cross, star, pink or enjoy
life time pointing
of hand, stiff, as a serious person who already has full
face ceremony.
But I did not want it and life, life,
I do not know, I always had a cold look and
judging her as a woman lost
now makes a mockery of my melancholy. Moreover
is sweet, oh, yes, it's soft, deep, isolated
this live almost like an ogre.
This sun, this book, this gold fund
in the room are one, are not really all?
Provincialism To position correctly, it must be noted that it was a way to write almost entirely rejected by the Ateneo de la Juventud. In the work of González Martínez, only "neighborhood church" may belong to this aesthetic can provide more examples Rafael Lopez, Ateneo only poet of literary marked by the friendship of López Velarde.
* * * * *
Postmodernism has been called the period between the publication of hidden trails and death of Ramón López Velarde. However, the existence of Postmodernism depend on the break with the tenets of Modernism. In fact, Art Nouveau works in reverse: Mexican poetry between 1880 and 1921 was a collection of literary modernists. Flows in Europe were clearly differentiated and sometimes even opposite, lived in Mexico with no problem even in the work by the same author. Is it possible to differentiate, for example, in the work of the decadence of Efren Rebolledo Parnasianism?
The idea that it is necessary to know the French poetic tradition is true for all the poetry of the decade: the poets of the Modern Review to Mexico were able to transplant the symbolist French poetry to the end of the century, the authors follow neosimbolistas joined. With the death of López Velarde in June 1921, ending the Mexican Modernism. There is a literary connection with youth: José Gorostiza is responsible to request the script Zacatecas country's soft.
But it's true: there was a book-Blue ... - that was the entrance to Modernism. Another will be the exit door, that's Zozobra (1919), Lopez Velarde too. It is beyond the scope of this trial and trial-to determine if this book can be considered out of modernism. The truth is that read only the criteria of modern poetry, the great poetic achievements of López Velarde vanish at the sight.
Find the best living poet or the most important in a period is more than a year: the implementation of the belief in the poet's position as the most prominent of the literary world. In 1913, Pedro Henríquez Ureña asked the question: Who is the poet of tomorrow? Not seem to realize that the question was directed at who was expected to happen to González Martínez, Alfonso Reyes. Julio Torri, reviewing blood devotion, drew attention to Ramon Lopez Velarde and responded to the question of Henríquez Ureña, "Lopez Velarde is our poet of tomorrow, as it is today González Martínez, and like it was yesterday Manuel José Othon. Used to guide the direction of literature, Henríquez Ureña López Velarde wanted to read without much significance, in his critical texts, the writer Zacatecas is only a footnote of the page. In the dossier accompanying the edition of the poetry which prepared José Luis Martínez (Mexico, FCE Archives, 1998), Comment Henríquez Ureña (written in 1949) stands in the way of merit grudge the poet:
Other Baroque poetry, where the complication and novelty of the images that go hand in hand with a loving tenderness for the common everyday things, came up with Ramon Lopez Velarde, who portrayed the colorful life of the old cities of central Mexico, and finally drew a brief summary of your soft home country.
The great fact of the establishment was the succession of González Martínez: when everyone wanted Alfonso Reyes inherited the scepter of the Poet, was the greatest poet outside the group appeared in the form of a provincial bureaucrat, well away from large pedigrees of Porfirio Diaz. This series broke the rules enforced intellectual groups, but it was the place where it came from contemporary Mexican poetry.
(This text was written with a grant from the Mexican Center of Writers, 2004-2005)
