Rubén Darío
Nicaraguan poet
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Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as
modernismo (modernism) that flourished at the end of the 19th century. Darío has had a great and lasting influence on
20th-century Spanish literature and journalism. He has been praised as the "Prince of Castilian Letters" and undisputed
father of the modernismo literary movement.
Darío
wrote three books and a great number of loose poems which make up what is known as his "literary prehistory"
("prehistoria literaria".) The books are Epístolas y poemas (written in 1885, but published until 1888, under the title
Primeras notas), Rimas (1887) and Abrojos (1887). In the first of these works his readings of Spanish classics is
patent, as is the stamp of Victor Hugo. The metric is classic and the tone is predominantly romantic.
Legacy
- In honor of the centenary of Darío's birth in 1867, the government of Nicaragua struck a 50 cordoba gold medal and issued a set of postage stamps. The commemorative set consists of eight airmail stamps (20 centavos depicted) and two souvenir sheets.
- There is a Rubén Darío street and a Rubén Darío museum, and his face appears on statues, paintings, and lottery tickets in his homeland of Nicaragua. The National Library of Nicaragua Rubén Darío was renamed in his honour.
- There is a Rubén Darío Plaza and a Rubén Darío metro station in Madrid, Spain.
- The Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) by Giannina Braschi features an argument about Rubén Darío's genius versus that of other Spanish language poets Quevedo, Góngora, Pablo Neruda, and Federico García Lorca.
- The postcolonial novel United States of Banana (2011) by Giannina Braschi features Rubén Darío as a character and credits him with inspiring the book which begins with an epigraph by him: “If Hamlet grieves, Segismundo feels it.”