Modernism and the Initiation of Ruben Dario's Centaurs

Abstract

de los centauros enables Dario to integrate ancient themes from Leconte de Lisle with fashionable esoteric doctrines from Schurd for three aims germane to worldwide modernism: to subordinate tradition to novelty, to reconcile science and religion, and to elevate cultural creativity to a religion. or decades, Hispanists conceived modernism as the preciosity and imitation of Ruben Dario in Prosasprofanas (1896). Yet current criticism contextualizes Hispanic modern- ism within world modernism. Modernism signifies not a literary movement, but an outlook on all spheres of culture, including architecture, music, painting, and every genre of literature. On five continents, modernism denotes a mindset of cultural creativity which (1) appre- ciates innovation over static tradition, with tradition subordinated to the desire to be modem; (2) springs from the economic and post-Darwinian cognitive crisis of the mid-nineteenth-century, tending to liberalize religion; and (3), given this religious instability, it elevates to a religion creative effort in all endeavors (Gamache 33, Orringer 29). Dario shows this mindset even in Prosasprofanas. The purpose of the present study is to show that the most ambitious poem of that anthology, Coloquio de los centauros (henceforth CC), incorporating motives visible in other poems of the same collection, illustrates modernism as here defined. Dario pits his creativity against that of French Pamassian Leconte de Lisle. He employs Greek mythological tradition to serve his new purpose: to find a tentative poetic solution to the cultural crisis of science versus religion. That solution is an esoteric religion of poetic creation. Dario integrates ideas from Edouard Schure's book Les Grands Inities (1889) with elements from Leconte de Lisle's poem Khir6n in harmony with the worldwide modernist sensitivity. The learned Arturo Marasso Roca (13) long ago noted Schure's presence throughout Dario's poetry. He observed isolated borrowings in CC, though without detecting Dario's modifi- cations of Schurd and without making a total interpretation of that poem. Moreover, Marasso showed some reluctance to acknowledge Leconte de Lisle's sustained influence. Scholars after Marasso sporadically refer to Schure (Skyrme, Jensen), yet a concentrated study of his and Leconte de Lisle's contributions to CC still remains to be made. First, I summarize Schur6's thinking on Orphism and Pythagoreanism. Next, I show how Dario strives for greater depth than Leconte de Lisle by introducing Pythagorean doctrines into CC. Finally, I point out Dario's alteration of those doctrines by integrating them with a sensual estheticism germane to Orphism as described by Schur6 (cf. Jensen 10). The poetic result exemplifies modernism as here conceived. Les Grands Initids has the main aim of reconciling religion and science, whose conflict, the greatest evil of Schur6's times, has shaken civilization to its roots. The Church privileges faith over reason, while science, agnostic and materialistic, overlooks spirit. Philosophy, powerless and skeptical, has opened a fissure in individual souls and in society (ix-x). Schur6 laments that literature and art have lost the sense of the divine. Literary materialism calls itself naturalism, thereby debasing nature. Positivists like Comte and Spencer conceive truth as the accumulation of facts. But Schur6 thirsts for a superior, total, eternal truth. He finds Europe a collective Hamlet, undecided whether to be or not to be (xxvi). The solution lies in esoteric knowledge. A