Ruben Dario

Félix Rubén García y Sarmiento

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Pseudonym(s):	Rubén Darío
Born:	January 18, 1867 Ciudad Darío, Nicaragua
Died:	February 6, 1916 León, Nicaragua
Occupation(s):	Poet, Journalist
Nationality:	Nicaraguan
Literary movement:	Modernismo
Influences:	Diaz Miron, Julian de Casal
Influenced:	Pablo Antonio Cuadra

Félix Rubén García y Sarmiento (January 18, 1867 – February 6, 1916) was a Nicaraguan journalist, diplomat, and influential poet who wrote under the pseudonym of Rubén Darío. He was a leader in the movement known as Modernismo in Spanish American literature and his poetry brought vigor to the stale, monotonous Spanish-language poetry of the time.

Early Years

Félix Rubén García y Sarmiento was born on January 18, 1867 in San Pedro de Metapa, Nicaragua, which was later renamed Ciudad Darío in his honor. Rubén's parents, Manuel Garcia and Rosa Sarmiento Alemán, separated before his birth. Félix was very intelligent as a child and learned to read when he was only three years old. In 1870 he enrolled in Jacoba Tellería's kindergarten and later attended public school in 1874. Félix went to private school for a short time before he attended a Jesuit school.

Félix displayed much talent from an early age, gaining a reputation as "El Niño Poeta" (the boy poet). When he was just 13 years old, he published his first poem "Una lágrmia" (A tear) in the periodical El Termómetro on June 26, 1880. It was then that he assumed the name Rubén Darío from his great grandfather.

Life and work

As a teenager he became a regular contributor to the journal El Ensayo. In 1881, Darío attended the Instituto de Occidente; and, later taught Spanish grammar at a friend's school after he quit the Instituto.

After leaving school, Darío traveled to Mangua in hopes of receiving financial support from the government to study abroad; instead, he was offered a stipend on the condition that he enroll at a Nicaraguan school. He rejected the offer and traveled to El Salvador, where he was introduced to contemporary Eurpoean literature. Here, he met Francisco Gavidia, who introduced him to Castilian and French poetry that would influence his own writing.

File:RubenDario.jpg

A framed picture of Rubén Darío hanging in the National Theater.

In 1883, Darío returned to Nicaragua, where he took a position working for President Adán Cárdenas on the plan for a Central American Union, until he was offered a job at Nicaragua's National Library in Managua.

Darío published his first book Epístolas y poemas (Epistles and Poems) in 1885, and cofounded the newspaper El Imparcial in 1886. In June of that same year, Darío moved to Chile where he lived for the next three years, where he became a regular contrinbutor to the publication La Epoca.

In 1887, Darío earned first prize for his Canto épico a las glorias de Chile. That same year, Darío published Abrojos (Thistles) and Rimas (Rhymes). In 1888, Darío published Azul (Blue), a collection of poems and verse that contained experimental and new forms, and marking a departure from Darío's more traditional work.

In 1889 Darío returned to Central America after receiving news of his father's death. In June he traveled to El Salvador where he founded La Unión.

Darío married Rafaela Contreras on June 21, 1889, and later moved to Guatemala. Here he launched the newspaper El Correro de la Tarde.

In 1890 the second, enlarged edition of Azul was published, which further reflected Darío's trend toward modernism.

In 1891, Darío and his wife traveled to Costa Rica, where their son, Rubén Darío Contreras was born on November 11.

Darío contributed to La Prensa Libre, before writing for El Heraldo in 1892.

A few months later Darío returned to Guatemala, where he was informed that he had been nominated as the Nicaraguan representative to the Quadricentennial Celebrations in Spain, which marked the discovery of America. Thus, Darío departed for Spain later that year, also on assignment for the Latin American newspaper La Nación. Darío later returned to Nicaragua after traveling through Cuba and Colombia where he was appointed as a diplomat in Buenos Aires, and subsequently nominated as Colombian Consul to Buenos Aires.

Darío's wife died on January 26, 1838; and, on March 8 of that same year, Darío married Rosario Emelina Murillo. His second son was born six weeks later.

In August 1839 Darío moved to Buenos Aires where he worked as consul until 1894. Nonetheless, in Buenos Aires, Darío had a lot of time to work on his writing and cofounded Revista de América. After his consulate post was terminated, Darío worked as a journalist even while taking up other jobs and suffering from alcoholism and depression. Moreover, while in Argentina, Darío wrote a collection of short stories in the genre of horror and magic.

In 1896 Darío published Prosas profanas (Profane prose), folled by Los raros (The eccentrics), which was a collection of essays on various writers, such as Edgar Allen Poe and Leconte de Lisle.

Darío spent a majority of his later years in Europe. He returned to Spain in 1898 where he continued to work as a reporter for La Nación. While in Spain, Darío published the poems Cantos de vida y esperanza (Songs of life and hope) and El canto errante (The wandering song). Moreover, Darío wrote many articles and stories while in Spain, including España contemporánea (Contemporary Spain), Peregrinaciones (Pilgrimages) and La caravana pasa (The caravan passes on).

While in Spain, Darío met Francisca Sánchez, and they had two childreno together, both of whom passed away while they were young.

Darío was counsul of Nicaragua to Paris from 1902 until 1907; and, attended the 1906 Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janerio in July and August as secretary of teh Nicaraguan delegation.

He continued to travel widely; and, in 1904, wrote Tierras solares (The lands of our ancestral home), which chronicled his travels throughout Africa, Europe and Russia. He resided in Europe for several years, where he spent some time trying to recover from alcoholism.

In late 1907 Darío returned to Nicaragua, only to return to Europe when he became Nicaragua's Mister to Spain and consul in Paris. He was named Nicaragua's representative to Mexico's centenary independence celebrations in 1910; but, Darío's diplomatic career came to a hault when the Nicaraguan government was overthrown.

In his final years, Darío worked as an editor for Mundial, which was a Spanish magazine published in Paris. Later, he compiled Canto a la Argentina y otros poemas (Song of Agrentina and other poems) while in Barcelona, Spain.

Following the beginning of World War I in 1914, Darío gave lectures on world peace and poetry readings in New York City and Guatemala. However, due to poor health, Darío moved to León, Nicaragua where he finally died on February 6, 1916, from atrophic cirrosis of the liver.

Death and legacy

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Rubén Darío; Nicaraguan Postage, 1967

Original article

His childhood was filled with difficult economic and personal situations. He felt the abandonment from his parents from a very early age. During his lifetime, Rubén Darío only met his mother on two occasions and very briefly. He viewed his father like one of his uncles.

By the age of 12 he was publishing poems, the first three being "La Fe" ("Faith") and "El Desengaño" ("Deceit").

He later moved to Chile at the age of 19. There he published an unsuccessful first novel, Emelina and fell under the protection of Pedro Balmaceda, who helped him to publish his book of poems, Azul in 1888. This 134-page, privately printed book, printed in Valparaiso, a city that at the time was not a notable intellectual center, was nonetheless, in González Echevarría's words, "a turning point in Spanish-language literature." Initial reviews were disparaging, but Spanish critic Juan Valera of the Real Academia Española launched the young poet's career, praising his poems, although sharing other critics' disparagement of his degree of adoption of French models.

Rubén Darío produced many exquisite literary works that greatly contributed to revive the literarily moribund Spanish language, thus he became known as the Father of Modernismo . Other great literary writers call him "Príncipe de las Letras Castellanas" (The Prince of Spanish Literature).

Rubén Darío participated in, or was the leader of, many literary movements in Nicaragua, Chile, Spain and Argentina. The Modernismo movement was a recapitulation of three movements in Europe: Romanticism (romanticismo), Symbolism (simbolismo) and Parnassianism (parnasianismo). These ideas express passion, visual art, and harmonies and rhythms with music.

Darío was the genius of this movement. His style was exotic and very vibrant. In his poem Canción de Otoño en Primavera ("The Song of Fall in Spring") there is much evidence of passion and strong emotions. Soon many literary writers would start using his style in a cautious and elegant form to make music with poetry.

His fundamental collection, Azul ("Blue"), was published in 1888 and established his reputation as one of the most important Spanish-language exponents of Modernismo. Many critics consider his death in 1916 to mark the symbolic end of Modernismo.

He has been cited as inspiration for later Latin American and Carribean writers such as Álvaro Mutis, Reinaldo Reinas, Lezama Lima, Luisa Valenzuela, Clarice Lispector, and Giannina Braschi.

Darío marks an important shift in the relationship between literary Europe and America. Before him, American literary trends had largely followed European ones; however, Darío was clearly the international vanguard of the Modernist Movement.

Roberto González Echevarría considers him the beginning of the modern era in Spanish language poetry: "In Spanish, there is poetry before and after Rubén Darío. … the first major poet in the language since the seventeenth century … He ushered Spanish-language poetry into the modern era by incorporating the aesthetic ideals and modern anxieties of Parnassiens and Symbolism, as Garcilaso had infused Castilian verse with Italianate forms and spirit in the sixteenth century, transforming it forever. Darío and Garcilaso led the two most profound poetic revolutions in Spanish, yet neither is known abroad, except by Hispanists. They have not traveled well, particularly in English-speaking countries, where they are all but unknown."

In honor of Darío's 100th birthday in 1967, the government of Nicaragua struck a 50 cordoba gold medal and issued a set of postage stamps. The set consists of eight airmail stamps (20 centavos depicted) and two souvenir sheets.

"My pick is working deep in the soil of this unknown America, turning out gold and opals and precious stones, an altar, a broken statue. And the Muse divines the meaning of the hieroglyphics. The strange life of a vanished people emerges from the mist of time."

"Si la patria es pequeña, uno grande la sueña."

"If the homeland is small, one dreams it large."

Selected bibliography

• Azul (Blue), 1888.
• Cantos de vida y esperanza, los cisnes y otros poemas (Songs of life and hope, the swans and other poems), 1905.
• Castelar, 1899.
• El canto errante (The wandering song), 1907.
• Epístolas y poemas (Epistles and poems), 1885.
• España contemporánea (Contemporary Spain), 1901.
• Los raros (The rare ones), 1893.
• Muy antiguo y muy moderno (Very old and very modern), 1915.
• Poema del otoño y otros poemas (Poem of autumn and other poems), 1910.
• Prosas profanas (Profane prose), 1896.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Tardiff, Joseph C. and L. Mpho Mabunda. Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. New York: Gale Research, 1996. ISBN 9780810383029

External links

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