Understanding Modernism: Concepts, Features, and Hispanic Roots
Modernism
Concept
Modernism is a movement that began around 1880, aiming to break with prevailing aesthetics. Its fundamental development reached the First World War. Modernism can be seen as an attitude of moral rebellion, represented in the daily life of the bohemian, who defends the autonomy of artistic expression and rejects social modes implemented by the bourgeois class.
Features
- Dissent: Efforts opposed to current trends (Realism).
- Anti-bourgeois attitude: A reaction to the utilitarian spirit of the time.
- Idealistic and irrational.
Hispanic Modernism
Hispanic Modernism shares the same spirit of renewal. It is an artistic movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century.
Sources or Literary Models
Spanish American modernists reject the Spanish tradition (with the exception of Bécquer), looking instead to France and other cultures for literary models. They are in contact with literary trends such as:
- Romanticism: Represented in France by Victor Hugo, this was the first movement that prioritized feelings over reason. Individual freedom was practiced when using or mixing genres.
- Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: (Precursor of Symbolism) takes the intimate and sentimental vein.
- Parnassianism: Defends art for art’s sake and the ideal of beauty through clean and sleek language, very careful with word choice. Also characterized by a taste for the exotic, the medieval, and classical mythology.
Topics
The topics point in two directions:
- Sensory Trend: Worship of beauty perceived through the senses and sensuality. Writers are determined to express ideas and feelings, sometimes using synesthesia (combining two words that are perceived through two different senses). Many poems by Rubén Darío respond to this trend, as does the poetic prose of Valle-Inclán in the Sonatas.
- Intimate Trend: Poets are frustrated with the world in which they live, leading to melancholy. Expression of autumn and the crepuscular, with symbolic values that point to a more intimate mood. An example is the first book of Antonio Machado, Soledades, galerías y otros poemas, and also the early poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez.
According to this, the most important issues are:
- Feelings (boredom, sadness, melancholy), the fantastic, irrational rejection of vulgar society, the mystery… are common features of Romanticism.
- Escapism: Escape in time to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance… in space, towards the East. This is compounded by a taste for classical mythology.
- Poets seek the strange and unique, found in beautiful objects that are superfluous in luxury and exoticism, with a taste for Italian Renaissance portraits and celebrations of the gallant 18th century Versailles.
- Myths, heroes, and environments of pre-Columbian cultures.
- Love and eroticism: The idealization of women is mixed with large samples of erotic and sensual descriptions.
Aesthetics and Language
There is a great renewal of poetic language. Phonic resources abound, such as alliteration. The vocabulary is enriched with the use of cultisms, archaisms, neologisms, and foreign words (unicorns, camels, tapestry, pavanas…), and there is a careful use of adjectives.
Versification
There is a renewal of versification. Traditional verses, such as the Alexandrine, are still used. Amending verses dedicated: it is very common to use the sonnet in Alexandrine verses.