Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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Mediterranean Studies
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La ciudad moderna y los inicios del poema en
prosa en Azul
Jesse Fernandez
State University of New York/College
at Old Westbury
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ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to trace the prose poem in Azul,
Rubn Daro's first significant work, published in 1888 in
Chile. Daro's first encounter with this country, which was
then at the initial stages of industrial development, brought
about the realization that traditional aesthetics and literary
modes were insufficient or inadequate to express the new
realities of daily life in modern urban centers.
Recent studies on the prose poem recognize that there
is a symbiotic relationship between the development of the
new genre and the modern city. Furthermore, critics em-
phasize that the prose poem is "topically prompted by
some evocative place or event," and builds "toward some
sort of maxim or moral." The poeme en prose, "is a child of
the city . . . presenting verbal genre pictures, typical scenes,
picturesque (or worse) happenings, with an explicit or
implicit moral provided by the stroller's point of view."
Following the French literary models, of Armand Sil-
vestre, Alphonse Daudet, Leconte de Lisle, and especially
Catulle Mends, Daro proceeds to cultivate a short non-
narrative form, using a poetic prose that, in some cases,
achieves the lyrical intensity of the prose poem. There
doesn't seem to be any doubt that Daro, either by direct
knowledge of the French prose poem, or by intuition,
recognized the symbiotic relationship between life in the
modern city and the origins of the new genre, as first
cultivated by Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and
other minor writers such as Catulle Mends, who seems,
however, to have been one of Dario's main sources of
inspiration in the use of "artistic prose."
The negative view of the modern city, combined with a
mistrust of the new monied aristocracy- the bourgeoisie-
becomes the main theme of various short stories and prose
poems included in Azul: "La cancin del oro," "El rey
burgus," "El velo de la reina Mab," "El pjaro azul,"
among others. In general, however, Rubn Daro fell short
of achieving the kind of intense lyricism that one finds in
the prose poems of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarm, or any
of the other major Symbolist poets. With few exceptions,
therefore, the poetic prose found in Azul remains within
the aesthetic boundaries of the complex and sometimes
contradictory Modernist movement in Latin American
literature, without achieving the autonomy of the modern
prose poem as such.
332
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p.
la publicacin de Azul (junio de 1888), Juan V
un estudio augural sobre el pequeo volume
verso que le llegaba desde Chile, en el que se
singular inters, a la "originalidad extraa," a
"rarezas" y "extravagancias" del libro.1 Hoy
duda que la originalidad (por que no tambin
nidad"?) de Azul, el primer libro significati
Daro, se debe a los elementos temticos, ideolgicos,
lingsticos y formales que el autor incorpora por primera
vez en su obra. Con Azul, en efecto, se inicia en la litera-
tura hispanoamericana lo que Octavio Paz llama "la tradi-
cin de la ruptura," uno de cuyos ingredientes principales
es lo que Hugo Friedrich denomina elementos "disonantes,"
tales como lo imprevisto, la irona, el humor, el prosasmo
intencionado y la irrevencia.
Los elementos disonantes o discordantes en el arte,
como es bien sabido, aparecen casi siempre en aquellos
momentos de crisis, ya sea a nivel social o en el plano
personal del artista, cuando ste siente la necesidad de
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334 IBERIA & THE MEDITERRANEAN
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la posibilidad de un enriquec
parece arriesgado sugerir, p
prosa forma parte de ese vene
la necesidad de encontrar un instrumento lrico ms flexible
que el poema en verso para representar las nuevas expe-
riencias de la vida diaria en las grandes ciudades. Se com-
prueba, adems, que el poema en prosa, no se basa nica-
mente en los elementos estilsticos y formales de la com-
posicin, sino tambin en los valores semnticos, y hasta
"onotolgicos" del texto potico.
Para entender mejor la articulacin que se establece
entre la vida moderna en las grandes ciudades y el poema
en prosa, conviene recordar que para los poetas de la
poca, formados en su mayora dentro de los postulados
ideolgicos y estticos del romanticismo, la contraposicin
campo-ciudad no era una simple "pose romntica," sino
que para muchos signific una reaccin contra los excesos
de la vida moderna. En un importante ensayo titulado
"Las grandes ciudades y la vida anmica," el terico alemn
Georg Simmer observa que "la base sicolgica sobre la que
se levanta el tipo de las individualidades de la gran ciudad
es la intensificacin de la vida de los nervios, que emerge
del veloz e ininterrumpido cambio de las impresiones
internas y externas" que producen las "caminadas," es decir
los paseos, en la calle.4
La relacin mimtica o simbitica entre la gran ciudad
moderna y el poema en prosa, por lo tanto, no fue slo
una intuicin artstica de poetas como Charles Baudelaire y
Arthur Rimbaud, entre otros, sino que aun los estudios
ms recientes del gnero confirman dicha afinidad:
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336 IBERIA & THE MEDITERRANEAN
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Fernndez: La ciudad moderna 337
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338 IBERIA & THE MEDITERRANEAN
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Fernndez: La ciudad moderna 339
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340 IBERIA & THE MEDITERRANEAN
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Fernndez: La ciudad moderna 341
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342 IBERIA & THE MEDITERRANEAN
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