Modernism and Avant-Garde Movements
First Third of the 20th Century
Disillusionment and Pessimism
The early 20th century witnessed disillusionment and pessimism regarding the ultimate results of industrialization, science, and positivism. While some immediate problems were solved, many felt plunged into an intolerable atmosphere of conformist, materialistic vulgarity.
Artistic Unrest and Protest
This atmosphere of unrest crystallized into various artistic movements, often contradictory, but united by their anti-realism and subsequent exaltation of the poetic, dreamlike, and magical. These movements sought an aristocratic, refined, luxurious, and exotic art in reaction to the prevailing conformist realism. Examples include Wagnerianism in Germany, Pre-Raphaelitism in England, and Decadence in France and Italy. In Spain and Latin America, this reaction manifested as Modernism, spanning roughly from 1888 (publication of Rubén Darío’s Azul…) to 1916 (Darío’s death).
Influences on Modernism
Alongside Spanish influences (medieval classics like Berceo and Manrique, and the more recent Bécquer), Modernists, particularly in the Americas, drew inspiration from non-Hispanic sources, primarily French Parnassianism and Symbolism.
Parnassianism
Parnassianism, with its motto “art for art’s sake,” emphasized the creation of objectively beautiful, yet often cold, works (e.g., Théophile Gautier, Leconte de Lisle).
Symbolism
Symbolism aimed to uncover mysteries and hidden meanings in everyday elements, establishing correlations between them, as exemplified by Baudelaire’s sonnet “Correspondances” (other Symbolists include Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé).
Form, Language, and Style
A key characteristic of Modernism is its focus on brilliant and sonorous language, distinct from everyday speech. This emphasis resulted in:
Lexical richness, incorporating archaic words and neologisms.
Abundant use of vivid, colorful, sensory adjectives.
Renewal of imagery and figures of speech, often related to color and sound (e.g., alliteration, onomatopoeia, symbols, metaphors, synesthesia—”blue scream,” “golden arpeggio,” “red trumpets,” “golden laughter,” “sunshine sound”).
Metrical innovations, including the revival of forgotten verses (e.g., dodecasyllabic, Alexandrine) and the creation of new ones. This also involved internal rhyme, proparoxytone and acute rhymes, blank verse, and modified stanzas.
Themes
Focus on externality and the sensory world.
Exploration of the poet’s inner feelings.
The first theme often manifested as “escapism,” transporting readers to exotic locales or legendary times (e.g., pagan antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Orient). Modernist poems are populated with gods, fauns, nymphs, dancers, mandarins, princes, princesses, elephants, tigers, and, notably, swans.
Other Modernist themes include idealized love, melancholy, sensual eroticism, and cosmopolitanism (with Paris as its capital).
The theme of intimacy often took on tones of sadness, melancholy, and nostalgia, reflected in a fondness for autumn, dusk, and the color ebony.
More specific themes included:
In the Americas: pre-Hispanic myths and indigenous roots (e.g., Caupolicán).
In Spain: the figure of Don Quixote.
The Avant-Garde and Surrealism
The early 20th century, particularly after World War I, saw the rise of avant-garde movements (“isms”). These artistic experiments broke with previous aesthetics, proposing radically different art forms. They presented themselves as youthful, defiant, provocative, and intentionally minoritarian, often issuing manifestos declaring their intentions. They rejected traditional topics, sentimentality, and emotion in favor of “pure” art, focusing on objects devoid of emotional charge.
Many avant-garde movements (Cubism, Futurism, Fauvism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Creationism, Ultraism) were short-lived, but some, especially Surrealism, left a lasting impact.
Surrealism
Surrealism, led by André Breton, offered a new interpretation of humanity based on Freudian theories. It sought to liberate repressed impulses to access a more complete reality (“super-reality”). Surrealist creation flowed freely from the subconscious, employing techniques like automatic writing, collage, chaotic enumeration, and visionary metaphor. Surrealists aimed to capture the dream world through illogical yet evocative images, enriching language and restoring excitement and passion to literature. Art became “re-humanized” after the “pure” art phase of earlier avant-garde movements.