The politics of Spanish American modernismo: by exquisite design

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICAN AND IBERIAN LITERATURE

The politics of Spanish American modernismo

The politics of Spanish American modemismo elucidates the professional and literary means through which Spanish American 111lJl/emistas negotiated a cuJ.. tural politics of rd.pprochement with Spain and Europe in order to differentiate their American ness rrom that of the United States. Gerard Aching argues that these tum-of-the<entury men of letten were in fact responsible for the burgeoning role that intellectuals and writers had (and continue to have) in defining pan-Hispanism. Aching's arguments contribute to current debates about modernity and the colonial/postcolonial condition in nineteenthcentury Hispanic literatures. The interdisciplinary approach will appeal to scholars in literature, cultural studies, latin American studies, and history.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICAN AND IBERIAN LITERATURE Gnreral Editor ANIBAL GoNzALEZ-PEREZ

Pennsylvania State Universtiy

EditmiJJIBoard Rot.ENA AoORNO

Yale Univenity I. ALoNSO Emory Univenity

CARLOS

CuvEGRimN Trinity College, Oxford K. DAVID jACKSON Yale Univenity JOHN

w. KRONIK

Cornell Univenity LucE L6PEZ-BARALT Universiry or Pueno Rico SYLVIA MOLLOY

New York University

Booluintheseries Gerard Aching, The politics of spanish Ammcan 1111Hkrnismo: fly exquisite design 10. Michael Solomon, The literatu'" ofmisOf:Jfly in medieval Spain: the "Arr:ipreste de TalaV<m • and "The sp;u· 9· Kathleen Ross, The barerary production would facilitate a bridge between his self. consuming intellect and the nation. Even though he objectifiel Casal's work, focusing attention on his so-called self-destrnction. Dario still considers the poet's contributions essential reading for future generations. In his concern for posterity, Dario considers the Cuban's writings tangible proof of nationhood and regionalism. That the conflictive interior/exterior paradigm of Casal'• besieged ego helped to structure a critical language resurfaced 1 few years after the poet's death, when M. Marquez Sterling in ,got and Pedro Henriquez Urena in 1914 informed their readers tha'

THE REINO INTERIOR

5!!

El Figaro, the review for which they both published their articles on Casal, had celebrated its annual pilgrimage to the poet's tomb. Lara, Marti, and Dario had substantiated their analyses of the poet's reino interior by juxtaposing Casal's psychic life and Cuba's colonial condition. In Marquez Sterling's and Henriquez Urena's articles, the figure of the poet's tomb provides a rhetorical polarity analogous to the reino interior's manichean separation between the interior and the exterior. These critics, however, distinguish between a lost, valuable art embodied by Casal's works and the contemporary decadence and impoverishment of Cuban literature; they (and El Figaro) employ Casal's tomb rhetorically in order to ground their critique of Cuban culture in nostalgia. Marquez Sterling criticizes independent Cuba's lack of appreciation for the arts by recalling the site of the poet's remains. He facilitates a critique based noJ only on retrospection but on an unfavorable comparison between Cuba and the rest of Spanish America as well. Recalling how Casal and his art were superHuous to Cuba during his lifetime, Marquez Sterling argues that "para nosotros, un poeta como Casal era un exceso" [for us, a poet like Casal was an excess] (p. 40). Although he concurs with Lara's earlier claim that Casal's art was premature for the cultural politics of a colony struggling for nationhood, Marquez Sterling goes further and implies that it was the public which had not been prepared to understand and support the poet's works. By contrast, he urges young artists to imitate Casal's excellence, claiming that

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1111< "~""'""" 1111\\1111- "'"'- ~'"" '" ,_., •111\"1'1"\'Ic. II y'a 11\1... mcnt dana le peuple quclque choae de mVllh'ricux ct rlc pmltmrl" IOh my mutcr, our art Ia wnqulahl'd; It Ia powc1·lc"'• "M"Inat thc pt'oplt'. Thct'!' 11 sul"t'ly aomcthln11 myateriou' 11nd pmfmmrlln thciK'oplt'( (IV,Iv). It Ia 111 this point that thc nu1girhm ollt-r~ tht' R"nlt' Ita 1\'t"t'rlmn. Replyh"' that such 1\.....-dmn all{llll\t'a ita dt'llth, tht' R"nit' rll'liVl'l'lltht' 1\nal wurds of the phi\' in 11 m11nncr th11t opc-nlthctcxtto Rorlo'a aub.~ucnt readlq """ appmp1i11tion: ~)clt't-ai l'uur rlcl11 mcr, 111 vic dt' Ia plante,le tlllrliuu rlt' Ia llcur, 111 nt'IR" hlcut' dte8 KIRcil'l'll. ,It' ~ral mon deull dc "" plua pRrtidpc-r &\ 111 vit' dca hommes. (:t-Ut' vic te8t lt>rte, mala impm.... II mc faut dc ph11 rhutl'l hallt'l'll" (I ahall be the Sl!ll'l "'·"""· thc pl11nt'a li~. tht'llower'a pt"rl\nnc, the K!aclt'r's blue anow. I ah111l Ill)' 1{\KKI-hyc to no lo1""'r partlclpathtK In men's Uvea. That lilt- is •II~IIIR, hut impm.... I h11ve nl't'd of mm'l' diMlC klllt's) (V,II). In Rcmm 'spiRY, tht' apitit ia nQt 11h.•orlll'd into nRIIII'RI dt'ments, u in '/'It# '/~1. hut into 11 diml'n•ion nf l)'liln; y ron lnsplnr16n dlchnaa, elal'tt' que habfa dado llnnrt.~t n.·uhuml "111 lm~Rf'n. hab(a let'rllldo 1 con~erwr en t>lla. al mi~mn tlrmpo. htapotri.-ndaacnlfica y Ia lealllld Ideal. (p. 16)

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l'l'hr ~IRlllr, nr tnl«" Rl1, R'prndun-d the airy spirit In tht' moment whrn. li...-.1 by l'nl.,pcru'lmllgic, hIs RUll\110 hurii~Rirlntn the air ,., "" "' wnish lu " Huh. Whlfii•P'"d; the IIJht prb looR and Holtin!{. lhRt the- llght'l carea nn the bronl\" clunuked with ROkl: tht' amplr fm'l'hc-ad railed; lips halt:opened by a aen-ne smile; ""'rythlllf in :\lirl'~ dc-mt'IUior lldmlnhly reYl'llled the fi!Jht'l gncloualmpube; ami thm11Rh rununa~ htsplratlon, the art that had (liven ~eulptural llrmnr..• 111 h• hu"Rl'• had ntanared tn ronaerve In It, 111 the IIIII«' llllll', ~~~ ~III{C'Ik "I'IM'RI"llnft' and ldt'llllnyally.) Snllptm'l'llnd rasting are tht' mediums ,..~ofRod6's art nf nillll'i to argue that the connection between his and Dario's aesthetics falls into a loosely defined spirit of the times. But the bond is even closer than these words might first suggest. Rod6 writes of his intellectual relationship with Daria: "Yo tengo Ia seguridad de que, ahondando un poco mas bajo nuestros p..nsares, nos reconoceriamos como buenos camaradas de ideas" [I have the assurance that, investigating a little more below our motks of though~ we would recognize each other as good comrades in ideas) (p. 191 ). On what should this friendship be based if not on the common struggle for an autonomous, Spanish American voice? In 1899 - the year after Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War- when Dario was traveling to Spain, Rod6 depicts the poet's reception for his readers: "EI poeta viaja ahora, rumbo a Espai\a. Enconuani un gran silencio y un dolorido estupor.... Llegue alii el poeta llevando buenos anuncios para el

110 THE POLITICS OF SPANISH AMERICAN MODERNISMO

Horecer del espfriru en el habla comun, que es el area santa de Ia raza" [The poet trnvels now, on the road to Spain. He will encounter a great silence and a painful stupor.... May the poet arrive there bearing good news for the flowering of the spirit through common speech, which is the raz.a's holy ark] (p. 191). Undoubtedly, the most important common denominator for both Spanish American writers is their complementary constructions of the modemis14 mno interior. I noted in Chapter 2 how Dario perceived this interior space as the site of an artistic creativity removed from the socioeconomic contingencies of the markeL Rod6, to judge by his skillful use of the political economy that supponed his literary production, was more successful at promoting a specific reading of Ariel in the literary canon as well as in the marketplace. Nevenheless, for some critics- like Gonon Brotherston - Rod6's recourse to the celebration of a mno interior in order to express his political message rewlted in an unfonunate "confusion" and "indecision" for his agenda. Brotherston writes: Rod6 suggests that man's highest faculty is an aesthetic one, that morality is dependent in the last resort on beauty; ... and he assumes simultaneously that beauty is not the propeny of the m:yority but the preserve of a select minority.... With this he comes close to sympathizing with the attitudes of his contemporaries the modemista.s. (p. 7) Brotherston maintains the trnditional separation between Rod6's work and that of the modemistas, for, according to him, "much of the modemisw movement was nothing more than the decadence and an for an's sake of the French Pamassians and Symbolists" (p. 7). Rod6, however, is conscious of the limits of the mno interior. His reference to the presence of this space in Dario not only shows the extent to which he was aware of the margins of the modemis14 W.. course but also indicates the manner by which he is able to appropriate and elaborate a more politicized version of the same di5course. "Su 'alcazar interior,'" Rod6 writes, • - ese de que el nos habla con frecuencia - permanece amorosamente protegido por Ia soledad frente a Ia vida mercantil y tumultuosa de nuestras sociedades, y s61o se abre el sesamo de los que piensan, y de los que sueiian" [His "internal palace- that one about which he frequently

speaks to us - remains affectionately protected by solitude in the face of the mercantile and tumultous life of our societies, and open sesame is only for those who think, and those who dream] ("Ruben Darfo," Obras completas, p. 170). In this commentary, Rod6 does not criticize Dario's hermetic art; rather, he emphasizes its potential comprehensibility, its communication of a message, albeit to a few. Rod6 supplements Dario's mno interior by opening up th~ poet's discourse to a meaning beyond what for Brotherston is 'the art for art's sake of the modernista aesthetics of self-referentiality. By applying his usual watchwords "pensar" [think] and "sentir" [dream] to Dario's reino interior, Rod6, the literary critic, opens ("se abre el sesamo") this closed space to wider semantic horizons. Furthermore, in the most elaborated anecdote in Ariel, Rod6 employs a modernista style to describe a private domain that a fictitious king kept apart for the practice of his meditation. Rod6 prefaces the tale by calling it "el sfmbolo de lo que debe ser nuestra alma" [the symbol of what our soul ~ught to be] (p. 52): Pero dentro, muy dentro aislada del alcazar ruidoso por cubiertos canales, oculta a Ia mirada vulgar - como Ia "perdida iglesia" de Uhland en lo esquivo del bosque- al cabo de ignorados senderos, una misteriosa sala se extendfa, en Ia que a nadie era licito poner Ia planta, sino al mismo rey, cuya hospitalidad se trocaba en sus umbrales en Ia apariencia de ascetico egoismo. Espesos muros Ia rodeaban. Ni un eco del bullicio exterior, una nota escapada al concierto de Ia Naturaleza, ni una palabra desprendida de los labios de los hombres, lograban traspasar el espesor de los sillares de p6rfido y conmover una onda del aire en Ia prohibida estancia .... Graves cariatides custodiaban las puertas de marfil en Ia actitud del silenciario. En los testeros, esculpidas imagenes hablan de idealidad, de ensimismamiento, de reposo. (pp. 54_5 ) [But within, deep within isolated from the noisy palace by covered canals, hidden from vulgar gaze- like Uhland's "lost church" in the evasiveness of the forest- at the end of unknown paths, a mysterious

room stretched out, in which no one was allowed to step foot but the king himself, whose hospitality transfonned il'lelf at the threshold into the appearance of ascetic self-indulgence. Thick walls surrounded iL Not an echo from the external bustle, a wayward note from NaiUre's concen, not a word given off from the lips of men, managed ro pene-

trate the thickness of the porphyr ash Iars and move one waft of air in

112 THE POLITICS OF SPANISH AMERICAN MODERNISMO

the forbidden room .... Grave caryatids guarded the marble doon in the quiet room "s setting. On the fat;ade, sculpted images spoke of idealness, of absorption, of repose.] Like the poet/monk's workshop that Dario describes in "Palabras liminares," the king's private chamber is surrounded by thick walb that protect the interior from all outside disturbances. The description of this space in Ariel stands out amid the didactic and propagandistic prose of Rod6's essay. Its lyrical treatment of some of the common themes in rnotkmista poetry makes it difficult to distinguish the style of this passage from the aesthetics from which this essay is supposed to distance itself. Rod6 claims that the recourse to the "pensar" and "sentir" of this interior realm is the sole antidote against threats not only to the integrity of the individual spirit but also to the inviolable essence of a Spanish American cultural identity. Like Dario, Rod6 is cognizant of the dangers that. the total, unreflexive immersion into economic life portends for the employed individual and, on a larger scale, for modem societies. According to him, the division of labor essentializes and objectifies the worker. Rod6 associates this atomism with the mutilation of the spirit and hence of society. An important contributing factor to this deformation is a vocational system of education that by definition responds solely to economic demands for specialized professions. Rod6 argues against the mutilation brought on by the exclusive and unbridled pursuit of material gain: A Ia concepcion de Ia vida racional que se funda en el Iibre y armonioso desenvolvimiento de nuestra naturaleza, e induye, por Io 131110, entre sus fines esenciales, el que se satisface con Ia contemplaci6n sentida de lo hermosa, se opone -como norma de Ia conducta humana -Ia concepcion utilitaria, porIa cual nuestra actividad, toda entera, se orienta en relaci6n a Ia inmediata finalidad del interes. (p. 75) [To the conception of rational life that is based on the free and hal'" monious development of our nature, and includes, therefore, among its essential aims, he who satisfies himself with the earnest contemplation of beauty, is opposed- as a norm of human conduct- the notion of the utilitarian, through which our activity, in its entirety, is oriented in relation to the immediate finality of gain.)

Utilitarianism, lhe socioeconomic counterpan of Calibin's gross materialism, is lhe danger lhat presses against lhe rationality of an apparently predetermined unraveling of"nuestra naturaleD" [our nature]. And, for Rod6, what community should incarnate and offer as a model this appreciation for material weallh but lhe United States? "Los Estados Unidos," Pr6spero ~ "pueden ser considerados Ia encamaci6n del verbo utilitario" [The United States can be considered lhe incarnation oflhe utilitarian \'erb] ,(p. 109).9 To resist lhese sieges against lhe integrity ofpenonal and cultural identities, Rod6 advises a return to lhe meditative intimacy of lhe mrw imlrior. In lhe following excerpt, Pr6spero counsels his students (and Spanish America's youlh) to adopt lhis resolution: Pensar, sonar, admirar: he ahi los nombres de los sutiles visitames de mi celda. Los antiguos los clasifican denlro de su noble inteligencia del ocio, que ellos tenian por el mas elevado emp~ de una ezistencia verdaderamente racional, identifiaindolo con Ia libertad del pensamiento emancipado de todo ignobl_e yugo. E1 trio ftllblltnJ Ia ;,.. si6n deltiempo qu.e oponian. """"a:prmDn de Ia vids ...,nor. IJ Ia tiCiiuitJIId tv:on6mictJ. (pp. 56-7; emphasis added) [Think, dream, wonder. herein lie the names of my cell's fine visitoB. The ancients classify them in their noble intelligence as t.inn, which they held as lhe highest use of a truly rational existence, identifying it with the freedom of thought emancipated from ew:ry detestable yoke. N~ /nsu,. was of"-111111 t1wJ ~,.. 1.111 ~of higlon /Mng, to tr:OIIOIIIic activi~J-1

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In the final analysis, "ocio" or leisure provides lhe cure for lhe psychosocial maladies of lhe time. But by advocating leisure as lhe means to maintain an essential spiritual integrity ("nuestra naturaleza"), Rod6 constructs and advocates a cultural identity for specific socioeconomic groups only. This political propaganda, in other words, is couched in lhe language of lhe leisure class. Few people in Spanish America were and are able to a\'Oid complete immersion in lhe activities of economic life. But by rejecting this economic dimension of daily life and, by inference, its atomistic, Calibanesque side-effects, Rod6 promotes a classical, arisl:ocratic pastime as lhe model for a Spanish American cultural identity. In olher words, despite illl critical reception as a work of action

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committed to the expression and dissemination of a Spanish American identity, Ariel's mno interior appears to be as explicitly exclusive as Dario's. In an argument for a cultural identity based on the privileged activities of certain economic classes, there iJ no "confusion," as Brothers ton would have us believe, concerning the constituencies to which Rod6 directs his political and cultur.ll agenda. That Rod6's description of the mno interior should complement and elaborate on Daria's- daring to propagandize what Dario "merely" poeticized - runs counter to the way in which the essay has been historicized. The terms that Rod6 used to distinguish his work from Daria's cannot be the result of purely aesthetic considerations. As I have argued, Rod6's promotion of his essay to certain socioeconomic groups and through specific critical/professional practices have to a large degree determined the configurations of this difference. -

5 Founding a transnational cultural literacy The modernista literary reviews

I have examined the extent to which the dissemination of Ariel's political messages and cultural projects relied on a system of propaganda to actualize the essay's semantic horizons. Indeed, it may be argued that the text attained its canonized status partly because of the successful work of groups of artists and intellectuals whose correspondence, newspaper columns, and review articles provided A.Uiwith a discursive life that crossed national borders. To illustrate more fully how these groups attempted to engage and interpellate their reading constituencies, I now tum my attention to some of the motkmista literary reviews and examine the role that these reviews and their creators played in conceptualizing, critiquing, and expressing a Spanish American cultural space. By examining the editorial remarks that introduced the inaugural number of literary reviews to readers, it is possible to glean how regional culture had been imagined. These writing spaces or- as I refer to them - manifestos represent moments in which a variety of discourses coincide. In this chapter, I explore these inscribed moments in order to iiiU5trate how the modemistas' development of these new writing spaces Was intimately tied to the promotion of regional cultural autonomy. There is little doubt thatjoumalism and the writing of articles for reviews and magazines offered the modemistas important areas of professional activity. According to Angel Rama, "Ia generaci6n '"odernista fue tam bien Ia brillante generaci6n de los periodistas" [the modernista generation was also the brilliant generation ofjournalisb I (Ruben Dario y el modemismo, p. 67). And among the various type, of journalistic formats, the newspaper column provided the

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movement's memben with an opportunity to punue their liter.uy vocations in creative ways. In an article that explores the role of Jose Marti's journalism in the development of the modemista movement, jose Oliviojimenez observes that "al margen (o simultaneamente) del veno y Ia poesia, fue Ia cr6nica periodistica el genero mas caracteristicamente modernista. La practica de ese genero actu6 como escuela de entrenamiento para el ejercicio dinamico y brillante de Ia palabra a que se urgian aquellos escritores" [at the margins of (or simultaneously with) vene and poetry, the neMpaper column was the most characteristically modemista genre. The practice of that genre acted as a training school for the dynamic and brilliant use of the word to which those writers were compelled] (p. 208). The work of Anibal GonZlilez in La cr6nica motkrnista hispano-americana ( 1983) and journalism and tM Developmmt of Spanish American Narrative ( 1993), and Susana Rotker's La invenci6n de Ia cr6nica ( 1992) also illustrate how the newspaper column had been characterized by the i-;,tenection and disjunctures between journalistic facticity and the flourishing of the liter.uy in a sequential writing format. Even though this new space registered the difficulties writers experienced in adapting their vocational practices to the marketplace, it must be remembered, as Rotker argues, that the modemistas were at the same time intent on promoting the autonomy ofliter.uy discourse (p. 6o). Under pressing circumstances that signaled the loss of social status, these writen actively sought to empower themselves through the aesthetic elaboration of"facts." In light of their efforts to preserve the literary and, in the best of scenarios, to promote it over other competing, intellectual discounes, such as philologyGonz:ilez observes Uoumalism and the Development of spanish American Narrotive, pp. 18, 85) - it is no surprise that the literary review became for the modemistas a writing space in which they could take their work to its furthest aesthetic and geographical extensions. Daria's Azu~ for example, is often cited as the chef d'oeuVTI! that launched the motkrnista movement in Spanish America; yet it must be remembered that this book is a collection of poems and stories previously published by the Chilean reviews La EfJoca, &vista de Artes v LeiTas, and La Libertad Electoral. 1

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However, before examining some of the manifes10s that launched the literary reviews, it will be necessary to look at the ideological and cultural importance that has been generally ascribed to these publications. In Literalura y sociedad en Amhica Latina: El modemismo, Fran.;oise Perus registe~ the literary movement's development in direct relation to the penetration ofEuropean capitalism into Spanish America between 188o and 1910. Because in this kind of critical approach, the reviews have too unhesitatingly been associated with economic expansion, the modernization of urban infrastructures, and the concurrent emergence of national and regional consciousness, I argue in this section of the chapter that the "progressive" technologies that provided for the dissemination of modemista cultural agendas were the instruments and not the agents of engagement. Because of certain propensities toward infusing the economic with subjectivity- especially in the social sciences and their related approaches to literature- this argument is not as obvious as it might fi~t seem. Inquiring into the social specificity of those technologies should not separate so uncritically the literary movement's cultural ideology from its political economy. The perspective that I offer here represents an effort to mitigate approaches to the contingency of nationalism and the press, such as Benedict Ande~on's in Imagined Communities, which can sometimes overestimate the technical activity of the publishing industry because they view technology as the principal catalyst of national sentiment. Inadvertently or not, Ande~on suggests that print capitalism ossifies language into more or less effective bureaucratic models of noncontestatory "print languages." This conHation of capitalism and language cannot account for representations ofideological struggles within language itself. In the second part of this chapter, I reassert (vis-a-vis Ande~on 's notion of community) an ideological engagement that emphasizes the desire for community and its articulation through rhetorical strategies. A,, potential vehicles for a common cultural expression, the JMo demista literary reviews enjoy a uniquely powerful role in the movem.-nt's criticism. Boyd Carter, for example, claims that Mexico's Rrvi.•ta Azul was the first and foremost means of mediating and inspiring Hispano-A.merican cultural unity:

Es licito suponer que casi todas estas revistas, en su mayoria organos del movimiento modemista, y tambien otras muchas a las que no aludimos, debian su vida a Ia fructifera existencia de Ia &vista AzuL Nunca antes y acaso nunca despues pudo alcanzar el concepto de Ia unidad cultural de Hispanoamerica el alto grado de reciproca identidad que se realizo en Ia &vista AzuL Aun cuando los modemistas no quisieron encararse con los problemas fundamentales de sus paises y de su epoca, no deja ban de tener plena conciencia de Ia obra literaria de sus colegas, porque colaboraron todos en las mismas revistas. (p. 356)2 [It is permissible to suppose that almost all these reviews, for the most part organs of the modemista movement, and many others to which we do not allude, owed their life to &vista Azufs fruitful existence. Never before and perhaps never afterward could the concept of HispanoAmerican cultural unity attain the high degree of reciprocal identity that was realized in Rroista AzuL Even when the modemistas refused to face their counuies and era's fundamental problems, they did not filii to have full awareness of their colleagues: literary work, because they all collaborated in the same reviews.)

Even though he subscribes to the escapist detachment hypothesis, Carter nonetheless claims that the &vista Azul represented the superlative expression of a Spanish American identity. Although Carter posits a reciprocal relationship between the review and a regional cultural expression, some critics perceive these publications as instrumental for the spread of certain ideologies of culture. Guillermo Kom notes, for instance, that "El Cojo llu.siFIJJlo incorpora a Venezuela - pese a todas las limitaciones coactivas en el orden politico - a Ia renovacion positivista impregnada de fe creadora en el Progreso y Ia Ciencia" [El Cojo Ilu.slrodo incorporates Venezuela - despite all the coercive limitations in the political order - in the positivist renewal impregnated by creative faith in Progress and Science] (p. 5). Although Kom writes about the a priori existence of the Venezuelan nation, there is no doubt that in this context "nation" is a passive entity brought under the "civilizing" tutelage of the positivism espoused by the publication. In these assessments, literary reviews "imagine" Spanish America and concretize the region in their pages. Yet, in this confluence of discourses on socioeconomic progress

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and cultural definition, economic expansion often becomes the privileged trope of cultural meaning. Notice in the following excerpt how Luis Mongui6 describes the movement's aesthetics not only in tenns of intertextual models but also as if it were an imported technology: En Ia segunda mitad del siglo XIX Ia literatura espanola se hallaba en un cstado que nolo hacia modelo deseable. Por otra parte, los paises hispanoamericanos, con sw riquezas, acaban de entrar en el campo de explotaci6n de los grandes paises indwtriales expansionistas de Europa, a los que los grupos detentadores del poder y de Ia cultura en Ia America espanola mira ban como lideres de Ia economia, de Ia civilizaci6n y de Ia cultura, a los que era deseable iguala.ne. Entre tales paises, Francia ofrecia culturalmente los mejores modelos y los mas asequibles al espiritu hispanoamericano. De este mimetismo, unido al lirismo del escritor de Ia America espanola, naci6 un movimiento litera rio, singularmente en poesia, en el que con las nuevas ideas y a traves de Ia asimilaci6n de nuevos procedimientos tecnicos elaborados por escuelas literarias extranjeras, se produjo una renovaci6n ideologica y tecnica en Ia literatura de lengua espanola. ("Sobre Ia caractcrizaci6n del modernismo," p. 21) [In the second half of the nineteenth century Spanish literature found itself in a condition that did not render it a desirable model. On the other hand, the Hispano-American countries, with their riches, recently entered the field of exploitation of Europe's great expansionist, industrial countries, toward which the unlawful holders of power and culture in Spanish America looked as leaders of the economy, of civilization, and of culrure, and with which it was desirable to be on par. Among such countries, France offered culturally the best models and the most accessible ones for the Hispano-American spiriL From this mimicry, bound to the Spanish American writer's lyricism, a literary movement was born, uniquely in poetry, in which with new Ideas and through the assimilation of new technical procedures elaborated by foreign literary schools, an ideological and technical renewal in Spanish-language literature was produced.) Except for the local raw material- the unexplained "lirismo" of the Spanish American writer- the fiiOdn?lista technical expertise comes from France. Mongui6's analysis implies that external agents SIJ5o lain the movement, and it is notsurprising, from the perspective of Lhis dependency model, that he ultimately associates the decline in

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the movement's popularity with the economic, philosophical, and cultural disorder in Europe around 1914 (pp. 21-2). In 1983, these kinds of approaches to understanding the construction of national identities through literature culminated in Benedict Anderson's seminal I'IIUJ!Iined Communities. In his study, Anderson investigates the relationship between print technology and the proliferation of nation states in the last century. His principal argument is that the nation can be imagined in the act of reading because of the reciprocal and simultaneous awareness that readers have of their own collective existence. What formerly was too vast a reality to apprehend - that is, the perceived existence of all the individuals of the national community- becomes more tangible through publications and their readership. Central to the formation of "the bases for national consciousness" is Anderson's elaboration of what he calls "print-languages" (p. 47). These languages were instrumental in three ways: they generated fields of linguistic exchange that allowed for the continuous evolution and play of a standard language; once this field of exchange had been established, "printre, as a mostly urban and transnational practice and argue that 1is class-grounding experience of the modem informed the oovement's expression of a postcolonial cultural identity. In oaking these claims, I bear in mind de Man's view that at various ooments in history, "the topic 'modernity' might be used just as an ltempt at self-definition, as a way of diagnosing one's own pre'nt" ("Literary History and Literary Modernity," p. 143), and I mploy it to elucidate the modmli.stas' idealized definitions of pan ish America at the tum of the century.

began this study by stating my reasons for employing certain con'mporary approaches to the study of Spanish American mt>t'nli.<mo. The fin~t and foremost reason pleaded the obvious- that is impossible to extricate oneself from a particular moment to

148 THE POLITICS OF SPANISH AMERICAN MOI>h'RNISMO

·~onstruct" another historical period. Perhaps the most evident use of such an approach was my poststructuralist reading of "Salutaci6n del optimista." Homi Bhabha's essay, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrativt:, and the Margins of the Modem Nation." was useful for this reading because it allowed me to highlight a suspension of cultural meaning between the pan-Hispanic people's rhetorical strategies of self-generation and "their" self-Inundation through the poem's language. "Cultural difference." Bhabha argues, "is to be found where the 'loss' of meaning enters, as a cutting edge, into the representation of the fullness of the demands of a culture" (p. g 1g). My analysis of this cutting edge and suspension of meaning took as its point of departure the premise that today we read "Salutaci6n del optimista" as a text. Yet, because IJ't>ating the poem as if it were a text alone is a shoncoming, it was esst"ntialto illustrate that the poem's cultural meaning also resided in its historical performance before a specific audience. In this twn-pronged approach, the tension between my poststructuralist reading of the poem and the poet's recitation emerged: Dario had never intended to "suspend cultural meaning," but he could within the specificity of his performance earnestly try to convince listeners of the splendor of the pan-Hispanic community that he envisaged and promoted. So what is to be gained in a poststructuralist approach to this I!Wikmistaculturaltext? The most important advantage is that if we assume that a community's fullest self-expression can nevt:r be more absolute than an interrupted address, then it is possible to consider "Salutaci6n del optimista" a valid attempt in its own right to define a cultural identity p~isely because this accomplishment lies in the slnJUgic apfnwtillllJiions and inro.. rnmsurnbiliiW< of that identity. (By contrast, the ev-dSive detachment hypothesis presumes the absolm.- ,·ommensur-.tbility of national bord.-t-s, cultu.--..1 identity. and liter-.tl)' exprr-ssion.) E.llhrts in thr- poem to create a unique nu.n by sulllring into an Ol'!{'.tnic wholr- rr-rerences to the ll"gendat)' pasts or imperial Roml" and Spain and thr- future pmmise or Spanish Ametica at the tum of the century at-.- exarnplr-s or such stratr-gies. Th.-y d.-scribe what Ni.-11.sche calls the "plruli< powrrofa man. a JX'"P'"· a culture· -that is, "the capaci"

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o develop out of oneselfin one's own way, to transform and incorK>rale into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to eplace what has been lost. to recreate broken moulds" (p. 6a). lin• symbolic attempts to transcend the geography and history of he Atlantic are informed by a utopian design and ilS inherent hortcomings; they manifest themselves in the very closures that hey are meant to and cannot enforce. In this respect, the agenda o fo~ a pan-Hispanic community in "Salutaci6n del optimista" llustrates what Emesto Laclau calls the ideological- that is, "those liscursive forms through which a society tries to institute ilSelf as

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and traditions met with immediate and often vehement opposition. Eagleton points out that a commercially viable, free, and open market ensures the assimilability of literary texts, thereby weakening the capability of any culture to produce an idiosyncratic expression of its uniqueness. Among the first in a long tradition, critics and contemporaries of the movement like Juan Valera and Jose Enrique Rod6 elaborated the stereotype that because these artists had "imported" these artifacts and ~ditions in order to supplement and lend credibility to their community's self-expression, the modemistas either vacated or exceeded their own cultural locations and merely indulged in the "excesses" of art for art's sake. The competition between Daria and Rod6 to be the spokesman for Spanish American cultural independence illustrates this point. Although both sought to formulate a language that would correspond to this quest for autonomy, Rod6 rejected the modemistas' art by claiming that they employed a particular superficiality and frivolity and that Dario, through this -practice, had exhibited an involuntary anti-Americanism. These critics associated the language that the community must use to refer to itself with the appropriateness of signifiers in the text. In short, with respect to Spanish American modemismo, the relation that the signifier maintained with the signified became an issue of cultural politics in which the language of identity and difference that was used to stabilize and naturalize the cultural sign became a battleground among poets, writers, and their critics. Strategies to privilege forms of cultural meaning not only played out class conflicts and allegiances as they were being experienced and inscribed by particular groups but were also informed and deeply affected by the memory and aftermath of a recent colonial past. From the perspective of this conflictive semiotics of cultural meaning, it is easier to comprehend how the modemistas' art could be subversive and why, for example, Pedro Salinas chose to safeguard his literary and cultural values by disparagingly calling the movement a poetic practice in which the modemi.slas have access to an extraordinary variety of referents but fail to conserve a Hispanic essence or raz.a. The anxiety that the deterritorialization of European cultural

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tifacts caused is inadvertently well documented among those >servers who insisted in the modemistas' aloofness. This insistence ok the form of ethical and aesthetic determinations that these lists and intellectuals ultimately had no right to "import" cultural ~ects that belonged to other counuies for Spanish American msumption; what it in fact camouflaged was the disturbing realilion that the 7TWdemistas had indeed been successful at creating particular social imaginary and, furthermore, that in doing so eir aesthetic practices had exposed precisely how national cuires were and could be constructed through language. By iUU<ing the c1171Siructedness and fragmentary nature of identities, ilrio and others threatened to destabilize privileged and/or 1posed signs of cultural meaning; they shifted attention away Dm the essence of cultures - as Salinas, Diaz Plaja, and other itics maintained - to their material representations. This focus 1 imaging and the creation of identity is evident, for instance, in •rio's poetic language. In her analysis of his early poetic voices, olloy comments on Dario's coupling of subjectivity and appearIce in a manner that aptly addresses the emergence of Spanish nerican 71Wdemis7TW as a discourse of cultural identity: uio postula una persona mas atenta a Ia apariencia que a su esencia, ;is preocupada por Ia manera en que ha de expresarse que por lo 1e Ia constituye. De estos primeros ejemplos podria decirse que mas 1e verdaderas personas son simulacros de personas, simples vehicus de una voz poetica que aun nose encuentra: verdaderos shijten en 1 enunciado fluctuante. ("Conciencia del publico y conciencia del en el primer Dario," p. 445)

lario postulates a personage more attentive to appearance than to sence, more concerned by the manner in which it must be

pressed than by what constitutes it. Of those first examples it could · said that more than true personages they are simulacra of persones, mere vehicles of a poetic voice that is yet to be found: true shijten a fluctuating enunciation.]

olloy's notion that a poetic voice- that is to say, the creation of a 1etic subject- is composed of a series of shifters, also resonates in 1dau's and Mouffe's argument that "society and social agents

152 THE POLITICS OF SPANISH AMERICAN MODERNISMO

lack any essence, and their regularities merely consist of the relative and precarious form of fixation which accompany the establishment of a certain order" (p. g8). This precariousness of subject positions is well illustrated in "EI rey burgues" ["The Bourgeois King"], Dario's most famous shon story. The shon story itself may be read not only as the plight of a troubled poet but as the shifting coordinates of an aesthetic and intellectual practice peculiar to its tirr.#and place. In the text, the disenfranchised though idealistic poet/protagonist enters the exquisite coun of the monarch and complains that the integrity of his literature has been placed under siege by those below and above his station. No longer the composer of "grandes himnos," the poet has come down in the world to suffer the humiliation of wage labor. The accord that the Bourgeois King strikes with the protagonist is unequivocal: "Pieza de mU.sica por pedazo de pan" [A piece of music fora piece of bread) (p. 20). And it is against this background of a displaced social status and the professionalization of his an that the poet searches for a permanent subjectivity and closure. His only speech, which can be read as an attempt to define a stable discursive ground, is characterized by a mesmerizing multiplicity of once inhabited subject positions; at the same time, it tells the tale of a poetic language in search of a privileged social meaning:

yo canto el verbo del porvenir. He tendido mis alas at huracan, he nacido en el tiempo de Ia aurora; busco Ia raza escogida.... He aban· donado Ia inspiracion de Ia ciudad malsana.... He roto el arpa adulona de las cuerdas debiles ... he arrojado el manto que me hada parecer histrion o mujer, y he vestido de modo salvaje y esplendido.. . . He ido a Ia selva, donde he quedado vigoroso y ahfto de leche fecun· day licor de nueva vida .... He acariciado a Ia gran Naturaleza, y he buscado el calor ideal, el verso que esta en el astro, en el fondo del cielo, y el que esta en Ia perla, en lo profundo del oceano. ("EI rey burgues," p. 19) [I sing the word of the future. I have spread my wings before the hur· ricane, I have come to life in dawn's season: I search for the chosen race .... I have abandoned the unclean city's inspiration .... I have smashed the adulating feeble-stringed harp ... I have thrown off the

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cloak that made me appear a histrion or woman, and I have dressed in a savage and splendid way.... I have gone to the jungle, where I have been made vigorous ljnd satiated by enriching milk and the liqueur of new life .... I have caressed great Nature, and I have sought ideal warmth, the verse that is in the star, at the back of the sky, and the one that is in the pearl, in the depths of the ocean.) This quest for a permanent subjectivity raises a variety of issues, including the prophetic capabilities of the poet (and poetry), th~ search for a chosen community or m:z.a, the an~biguous shift from cities to nature as the source of poetic inspiration, the rejection of a "weak" lyricism, and the concurrent gendering of that rejection. More than a dramatic display of loss and powerlessness, the repeated self-enunciations mark a perennially shifting, discursive landscape and a conscious effort to establish the boundaries of class as well as cultural meaning. In the final analysis, that Spanish American modemista.s seemed capable of producing only imprecise or inferior copies of European cultural artifacts and signs should not dissuade us from elucidating the manner in which they introduced these objects and meanings into their societies. In today's critical climate, it is possible to associate those approximations and incommensurabilities with the poststructuralist emphasis on the ultimate impossibility of fixed meaning. This conflation permits me to reassess the 1IUJd,. emistas' "excesses," their so-called production of empty signs, and posit a subjectivity that emerges to contest a colonial past. The postcoloniality ofSJHmish Ameriam modemismo

If the deterritorialization of cultural signs illustrates the constructed ness of national and transnational cultures, then this modemis/IJ practice must also be evaluated as a proper response to the literary traditions of the region's colonizers. I noted in his recitation of "Salutaci6n del optimista" and in their anticipation of a potential reading public that Daria and the creators of the modemis/IJ literary reviews were aware that the moment had arrived to participate in a historical fullness previously forbidden to Spanish Americans. Do

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the writings inspired by this state of awareness constitute a postcolonial literature? In determining the postcoloniality of these texts (that is, the degree to which they resist, subvert, and/or abrogate the colonizer's codes) according to the acquisition of political independence by the countries in which they were produced, then, with the exception of literature from Cuba and Puerto Rico, what Spanish Americans wrote after Sp;fln had lost most of its colonies in the first quarter of the nineteenth century must be regarded as postcolonial. Yet political independence is an inadequate yardstick with which to measure the postcoloniality of a literature. For example, one need only examine the inaugural remarks and pages of La Habana Elegante and La Habana Literaria to notice the extent to which the cultural politics of these Cuban publications coincides with that of reviews in other parts of Spanish America before and after its independence in 18g8. The forging of a culture or "patrimonio ~omun" - as the general director of Seville's Expo 'g2, Manuel Olivencia, implied- is a project that goes beyond the "fixed meanings" of statecraft and geopolitical borders. In Gutierrez Najera's denunciation of parliamentary procedure in the Reuista Azuls opening remarks and in the CosmOpolis' simultaneous celebration of literature and belittling of diplomatic intrigue, it was not uncommon to find among mtr dernista artists and intellectuals the creed that literary discourse was better suited to defining Spanish American culture than the language of state politics. In this study, I have illustrated how cultural meanings were constructed and promoted across national borders and in dialogue with the literary production of Europe and to a lesser extent with that of the United States. However, any discussion of Spanish American mDIIemismo's status as a postcolonial, literary movement must account for a difficult theoretical issue: If resistance to colonizers forms one of the principal characteristics of a postcolonial subjectivity, what can be said about the mDIIernistas' stated appreciation for Europe's metropolitan cultures and art? How can one rationalize the Reuista tk Amenca's seemingly paradoxical vow to innovate, to revolutionize on the one hand and respect "las tradiciones y Ia gerarquia de los maestros" [the traditions and hierarchY

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f the masters] on the other? What was its motive in working lward "el brillo de Ia lengua castellana en America" [the brilance of the Castilian tongue in America]? Postcolonial literary 1eory today is intimately tied to recent experiences of political nd cultural decolonization in which forms of resistance to the colnizer's tongue (and its political, socioeconomic, and cultural 1frastructures) appear to be the norm. These forms of resistance r contestation also have a theoretical counterpart that regards the se of "European theory" to explicate non-European contexts as n imposition or even a kind of neocolonialism. In The Empm Vrites Back, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin argue that "the idea of lQSt
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