Modernism, Ruben Darío, and the Poetics of Despair presents a detailed study of a neglected facet of Ruben Darío, and in general, of Hispanic Modernism: metaphysical and existential dimensions as preludes to Modernity. Alberto Acereda and J. Rigoberto Guevara approach the life and death issues in Darío works with special emphasis on his poetry. The authors demonstrate how the Nicaraguan poet takes the first steps towards poetic modernity. The tragic component of Darío works are examined in the light of Nineteenth Century philosophy, especially the work of Arthur Schopenhauer. Various thematic proposals are also formulated for the study of the works of Ruben Darío.

First complete English translation of "Songs of Life and Hope "and "The Swan and Other Poetry " by Ruben Dario, one of the greatest poets to emerge from Latin America.

A long overdue examination of Rubén Darío's multilingual work and influences alongside the contexts and politics of canonization in world literature. Rediscovering Rubén Darío through Translation addresses the peculiar obscurity of Darío by asking these questions: How can one of the most important writers of a major world language be almost entirely unknown in the English-speaking world? How is it that other writers of the same language (e.g., Lorca or García Márquez) achieve widespread recognition in the anglophone world, while he remains unnoticed? What role does translation play in this? What can it tell us about the way in which world literature is articulated? Carlos F. Grigsby approaches Darío's oeuvre through translation. In doing so, he explores not only the place of Darío in the translation of Spanish American literature into English, but also the place of translation in Darío's own writing. The result is a double-sided painting, as it were: the recto is titled “Translation in Darío” and the verso “Darío in Translation.” This book challenges the field of world literature by revealing some of the biases present in its representation of Spanish American literature. It adopts a multilingual framework – chiefly using English, Spanish, French, and to a lesser degree Latin and Catalan – in analyzing Darío's writing alongside that of his contemporaries. As a result, it reveals the multilingualism of Darío's own writing, opening new avenues for the study of his work and of Spanish American modernismo more generally.

Rubén Darío (1867-1916) of Nicaragua was the leader of the important Latin American literary movement known as Modernism. He is considered by many to be the greatest poet in Latin American literature, and the volume of writings devoted to his work since 1884 is perhaps greater than that on any other writer in the history of Spanish American literature. The celebration in 1967 of the centenary of his birth gave rise to a formidable number of new analyses, increasing the need for the classification and assessment of the many studies. In this book Professor Ellis examines and evaluates the wide range of methods and perspectives available to the reader of Darío's works. He considers the biographical approach, social and political questions, influences and sources, structural analysis (providing three structural studies of his own), and, in an appendix, Darío's own concept of the role of the literary critic. His book is comprehensive both in time and in range, and includes an up-to-date bibliography. This is the first systematic study of the critical works on a Spanish American writer. It is significant not only in its treatment of the work on an individual author, but also as a reflection on and an indication of the trends, methods, and preoccupations of modern appraisals of Latin American writing.

Modernism was the major Spanish American literary movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Leader of that influential movement was Rubén Darío, the Nicaraguan now recognized as one of the most important Hispanic poets of all time. Like the Romantics in England and the Symbolists on the Continent, Darío and other Modernists were strongly influenced by occultist thought. But, as the poet Octavio Paz has written, "academic criticism has ... preferred to close its eyes to the stream of occultism that runs throughout Darío's work. This silence damages our comprehension of his poetry." Cathy Login Jrade's groundbreaking study corrects this critical oversight. Her work clearly demonstrates that esoteric tradition is central to Modernism and that an understanding of this centrality clarifies both the nature of the movement and its relationship to earlier European literature. After placing Modernism in a broad historical and literary perspective, Jrade examines the impact of esoteric beliefs upon Darío's view of the world and the role of poetry in it. Through detailed and insightful analyses of key poems, she explores the poet's quest for solutions to the nineteenth-century crisis of belief. The movement that Ruben Darío headed brought Hispanic poetry into the mainstream of the "modern tradition," with its sense of fragmentation and alienation and its hope for integration and reconciliation with nature. Rubén Darío and the Romantic Search for Unity enriches our understanding of that movement and the work of its leading poet.