referred to Brazil. In such a sense, too, it would be possible to deny (or, at least, it would have once been possible) the existence of a North American as distinguished from an English literature. Yet despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of speech to similarity of thought, the environment (which helps to shape pronunciation as well as the vocabulary and the language itself) is, from the standpoint of literature, little removed from language as a determining factor. Who would pretend, on the basis of linguistic similarity, to say that there is no United States literature as distinguished from English literature? Is it not national life, as well as national language, that creates literature, especially in the broader sense as used by both Mitre and Verissimo? Time here, as elsewhere, plays a leading rôle, creating new languages out of old, new literatures out of old, even new worlds out of old. And although Rémy de Gourmont's characterization of SpanishAmerican speech as "neo-Spanish" is rash, it recognizes the innovating power inherent in a change of environment and outlook; perhaps he spoke the word too soon rather than too thoughtlessly.20 After all, the question as to whether the word literature 20 In this connection, with reference to the transformations English has undergone in the United States, it is worth while to point out an exceedingly useful and vivacious volume entitled The American Language, by Henry L. Mencken, New York, 1919. Mr. Mencken is a sober thinker, for all his occasional levity, and is one of the few stimulating critics writing in our country today. He is very much alive to the changes going on daily in the structure, pronunciation and vocabulary of the English tongue as spoken (and even written) in this land, and has in his own book suggested more than one path that our more academic spirits would do well to follow. There is something incongruous about the eagerness with which we study, for example, the evolution of the Romance tongues out of Vulgar Latin, neglecting similar phenomena in our very surroundings. may be applied to the literary products of Spanish and Portuguese America is largely academic; few readers, when roused by the strophes of some modern Tyrtæus or entranced by the sheer musical beauty of a Guitérrez Nájera, a Julían del Casal, an Amado Nervo, or a González Martínez, stop to ask themselves whether they are reading part of a well-defined literature or not; the query is philosophical rather than literary. Yet if the term literature, in the philosophical sense, be denied to the past productions of Spanish Americans, the very reasons for that denial seem to be disappearing; for none could ask a clearer statement of conscious purpose than comes from spokesmen of literary Americanism today. That literary Americanism is an artistic precursor of a political unity. "If this unity is impossible in political affairs," says F. García Godoy in his group of essays entitled "Americanismo Literario," "let us labor to impart a common orientation to what is worth more and is more durable than the political: the harmonic, coherent cultural vibration of peoples identified by blood, by speech and by history." The conditions of Mitre are thus well on the road to fulfillment, and the vast dream of Bolívar is born anew in the cradle of art. CHAPTER II RUBÉN DARÍO (1867-1916) THE life of Rubén Darío itself, quite apart from the poems which flowered out of it, reads with all the interest of a fictive account. In his own day he became, to more than one admirer, a god with a legend all his own. He is with little doubt, both as person and as artistic creator, one of the most attractive figures in modern poetry. Perhaps such adulators as Vargas Vila have done him as much harm as good; he may not have been, as was asserted during his lifetime, the greatest poet that ever used the Castilian tongue. Such worship, however, is significant; the man impressed his personality upon the writers and readers of two continents; he was a servitor as well as a master of beauty; he has written works of dazzling technical perfection and of penetrating vision; he is the outstanding representative of modernism in poetry; he is a chiseler of luminous, glittering prose rich alike in imagery, melody and substance. He is not merely a Spanish-American poet, nor a Castilian poet; he is of the consecrated few who belong to no nation because they belong to all. I believe that many Spaniards, on both sides of the Atlantic, have stressed Darío's technical perfection and innovating significance at the expense of his essential humanity. I believe that despite his aristocratic search after flawless form, despite his hatred of the crowd, despite his intellectual sybaritism, he was as human in a great part of his poetry as in his life. This wanderer sought to distil beauty from joy and sorrow, and at the bottom of this beauty the joy, the sorrow, the vain questioning, the doubt, the vacillations of the age are vibrant. There is another Darío, I know,— the Darío of the marquis's hands, of the pastels à la Watteau, of the insubstantial symbolism wafted to the reader upon winged words, the Darío that had the weakness for vain display, for the anodyne of drink, for creature comforts. Yet is it another Darío, or the same? In our creations of beauty we transform ourselves as well as life. And has not a very wise Frenchman said that we differ mostly from ourselves? At the root of Darío's work as a whole lies agitated, multifarious life; without a knowledge of that life we may appreciate the beauty of his productions, but we miss much of their humanity. And without taking sides with Art for Art's sake or Art for Heart's Sake, it is easy to understand that beauty shorn of its human aspect is only half beautiful. Darío has left us a personal account of his career, written four years before his death; it is not a complete account,there are intentional omissions and strange caprices of memory, yet by collating his own record with that of his contemporaries it is possible to arrive at a fairly complete knowledge of the man's career. I The poet's personal account (La Vida de Rubén Darío, Escrita Por El Mismo) is on the whole a book of engaging candor, revealing the man behind the poet; Darío puts on no airs, he assumes no rôle of an inspired prophet, nor does he, on the other hand, impart to his frankness a suspicion of parading pose, of sensational confession. He is aware of his faults, but takes them for granted and wastes no time in futile repentance or ostentatious "peccavis." He is generous in his appraisal of others, and charitable to those who have sought to do him harm. He displays a deep sense of humor, which, like most deep humor, has overtones of sorrow. His prose is simple, unpretentious, conversational, yet melodious and rich in colorful words and happy phrases. It is not the prose of an Azul or a Los Raros, yet it is well matched to its direct purpose. Here, as elsewhere, we come upon a spirit that is surely cosmopolitan, with a touch of the exotic, yet more than these, restless and migratory. In the cathedral of León, Nicaragua, he tells us, may be found the baptismal record of Felix Rubén, legitimate son of Manuel García and Rosa Sarmiento. Following the Spanish custom of composing the family name from that of both parents, his name should have been Felix Rubén García Sarmiento. Why, then, Darío? A great-grandfather of his had borne that name, and was known in the hamlet as Don Darío; hence all his offspring were called the Daríos. Rubén's own father did business under the name of Darío, so strongly had it become embedded. The marriage of Rubén's parents had been a loveless match of convenience; the couple had separated eight months later; the following month the child was born. He soon passed under the care of his maternal grandmother, Doña Bernarda Sarmiento de Ramírez, whose husband had come to Honduras for him, and he was brought up as the child of Colonel |