Carmen de Burgos and Spanish Modernism

Abstract

Normal School in the early twentieth century, described Burgos in an interview from the 1970s as algo (somewhat modernist).' Burgos's modernism, according to Vilela, was attributable to the fact that she did things that other Spanish women of her time (she lived from 1867 to 1932) did not dare, such as having coffee alone at a public caf6. Vilela further deemed Burgos rather Bolchevique, because she openly stated her thoughts in a frank, down-to-earth manner. Concepci6n Vilela's use of the term to describe a socially liberated woman reminds us of the slipperiness of the term in defining early twentieth-century Spanish culture. It can refer to social phenomena as in Villela's comments on Burgos, to Hispanic literary trends associated with those who followed Ruben Dario's symbolist/Parnassian use of language, or to European high modernism that includes an emphasis on consciousness and artistic forms that break with nineteenth-century realism (Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, and William Faulkner, or Miguel de Unamuno, Ramon del Valle-Inclin, Pio Baroja, Azorin, Gabriel Mir6, and Ram6n P6rez de Ayala in Spain). Even though she lived and wrote in the Spanish modernist period (roughly 1898-1939), Carmen de Burgos is rarely mentioned in studies of it (nor is any other woman writer, for that matter).2 Burgos's case, however, is instructive when defining Spanish modernism in general and the role of women writers within it. Concepci6n Villela's mildly pejorative statement about Burgos's modernista qualities also reminds us that literary modernism was a particularly masculine movement and that women were out of place. Literary modernism emphasized form and philosophy over social phenomena such as women's shifting roles in the world. Thus, I propose (at least for the Spanish case) a concept of modernism that includes the kind of social modernism in which Burgos participated. Carmen de Burgos was a modern (in Spanish una mujer moderna), if not (modernista) writer as the term is