The Poetry of Julio Herrera y Reissig and French Symbolism

Abstract

When most successful, the Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig (1875–1910) wrote within the aesthetic assumptions of the French Symbolists and Decadents. He followed them in their revolt against reason, which was of course the continuation of a Romantic attitude. Because it tries to avoid logical discourse, his poetry, as well as that of his predecessors, tends to an excessive dependence on the use of sensorial representations. Through images, which in themselves carry no meaning, the Symbolist poet transmits his emotional state and conveys his understanding of nature. It is his task to create a system of coordinates with a complete existence of its own. The third dimension—the one which is to awaken in the reader a response parallel to the poet's experience—is the power of suggestion which supplies the depth in an otherwise two-dimensional world. The suggestive power of an image, when incorporated into a context, can radiate and penetrate the several spheres of meaning necessary in the creation of a symbol. This system of coordinates may become an explication of the significance of natural phenomena—a myth—when it is considered as the relation of its own individuality and the reality to which it refers by indirection.