Since the discovery of Chile by the hard-working conquerors led by Don Diego de Almagro (year 1536), until the present time, the national literature in its various phases has been either a genuine product of our political and ethnographic environment, or a reflection Through this medium, intermittent philosophical or artistic projections emanating mainly from the old Latin civilizations.
During the Colony, -our foggy and sleepy Middle Ages, (1541-1810), there were: few intellectual manifestations in prose or verse, and had a merely historical, epic or religious character.
Our dark natives, the Araucanians, emerged from the depths of a jungle nature, did not know how to write their barbaric epics, nor did they offer the Spanish conquerors but the rhythmic brandishing of their coligües and the waving trajectory of their arrows.
One of those warriors, the Madrid-born Alonso de Ercilla (1533-1594), wrote in the shadow of the Indian forests, his historical epic La Araucana, in which he sang the formidable clash of the two races whose marriage was to engender a new and strong.
Among other poets, Pedro de Oña with his Arauco Domado, Hernando Álvarez de Toledo with his Purén Indómito and Diego Santisteban Osorio with his Continuation of the Araucana expanded the work of warrior poetry of the most illustrious of Spanish epics.
The motley legion of writers, almost all occasional, of that time, pondered on the most heterogeneous subjects: chronicles, grammars, geographies, didactic treatises.
There was no public spirit then; and the mentalities fainted, burdened by the spiritual vassalage of the clergy and under the oppression of the monarchical power.
Countless monks, Spaniards and Creoles, also secular, although of monastic culture, wrote individual poetry for the taste of the inhabitants of the cloisters and the exaggeratedly sinful society of those times.
The distinguished abbe and naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina wrote "El jovenado", a Latin composition in pentameter verse, and the Jesuit priest Juan José Guillermo wrote some elegies and poetry also in Latin.
And on the other hand, Father López, a Dominican friar, who has been called the Chilean Quevedo, - the priest Clemente Morán, Father Escudero and the artillery captain Lorenzo de Mujica, do you want to leave an indelible mark on the popular imagination. they rejoiced the good people of our innocent colonial life with their sparkling improvisations of a mocking and festive nature, written in the rattle verse of tenths and letrillas.
There were, then, in that nebulous time, but mere verses, since the emergence of lyricism would have been untimely, which requires, in order to manifest itself, breadth of thought and freedom in the expression of intimate and personal emotions.
However, the long night of the Colony was to have its dawn.
The light of truth began to ignite the new fires of independence rebellion in darkened brains.
La filosofía enciclopédica que fulminó la Revolución Francesa, empezó a estremecer y templar los espíritus emparedados de los hijos de nuestro suelo.
Camilo Henríquez, el fraile de la Buena Muerte, dio los primeros chispazos del nuevo credo político en sus versos ásperos y rudos, pero caldeados de ardor patrio.
El argentino Bernardo Vera y Pintado forjó nuestra primera canción bélica, que después hubo de sustituirse, salvo el coro, por la de Eusebio Lillo, más suave y benigna.
Sin embargo, el choque de las armas no dio tiempo sino para escribir con caracteres de sangre, sobre el campo de combate, la epopeya triunfal de nuestra Independencia.
La espada impedía coger la pluma, y cuando algún patriota logró tomarla, produjo obra urgida y fragmentaria, fiel reflejo de los sobresaltos de nuestro génesis republicano.
Escritor típico de este período de disolución monárquica y fundación de una nueva patria, es el guatemalteco don Antonio José de Irisarri, llegado a Chile en 1809, que desarrolló una asombrosa actividad intelectual escribiendo poesías líricas y satíricas, como también estudios sobre gramática, historia y filología.
Este escritor trajo a Chile la primera imprenta digna de este nombre, y culminó su brillante carrera pública,revistiendo la primera representación diplomática de nuestro país en Europa, en donde conoció a don Andrés Bello, al que hizo su secretario e invitó a avecindarse entre nosotros, lo que efectuó el insigne venezolano el año 1829.
La poesía de este período tiene una marcada índole revolucionaria y acrática con relación al régimen inquisitorial y monárquico que ella contribuyó a derrocar.
Más que por su forma, urgida e incorrecta, vale por su espíritu libertario, exponente de la idiosincrasia de una raza valerosa y fuerte, y por sus incipientes bríos hacia una tendencia más humana y más criolla.
Pasada la efervescencia épica que causara en los espíritus la violenta sustitución de los regímenes político y civil, transcurrió un lapso de efervescencia literaria.
Los estudiosos laboraban los gérmenes de un florecimiento lírico que había de irruir hacia el año 1842. The encyclopedic philosophy that struck down the French Revolution, began to shake and temper the sandwich spirits of the children of our soil.
Camilo Henríquez, the friar of the Good Death, gave the first sparks of the new political creed in his harsh and rude verses, but heated with national ardor.
The Argentine Bernardo Vera y Pintado forged our first war song, which later had to be replaced, except for the chorus, by that of Eusebio Lillo, softer and more benign.
However, the clash of arms did not give time but to write in characters of blood, on the battlefield, the triumphal epic of our Independence.
The sword prevented taking the pen, and when some patriot managed to take it, he produced urgent and fragmentary work, a faithful reflection of the shocks of our republican genesis.
A typical writer of this period of monarchical dissolution and the founding of a new homeland, is the Guatemalan Don Antonio José de Irisarri, who arrived in Chile in 1809, who developed an amazing intellectual activity writing lyrical and satirical poetry, as well as studies on grammar, history and philology.
This writer brought to Chile the first printing press worthy of this name, and culminated his brilliant public career, covering the first diplomatic representation of our country in Europe, where he met Don Andrés Bello, whom he made his secretary and invited to come among us. , which the famous Venezuelan did in 1829.
The poetry of this period has a marked revolutionary and acratic nature in relation to the inquisitorial and monarchical regime that she helped to overthrow.
More than for its form, urgent and incorrect, it is worth for its libertarian spirit, exponent of the idiosyncrasy of a courageous and strong race, and for its incipient vigor towards a more human and more Creole tendency.
After the epic effervescence caused in the minds of the violent substitution of the political and civil regimes, a period of literary effervescence passed.
The scholars worked the seeds of a lyrical flourishing that was to erupt around the year 1842.
Don José Joaquín de Mora, ilustre humanista y poeta español, dictó sus enseñanzas clásicas a un escogido núcleo de jóvenes en el Liceo Chile (1827-1830).
A su llegada al país, don Andrés Bello,-la más alta intelectualidad hispano-americana,-abrió su biblioteca a la juventud estudiosa, estableció su cátedra privada de derecho y literatura (1834) e- inauguró la Universidad de Chile (1843), en reemplazo de la vieja Universidad de San Felipe, cuyas paredes estuvieron decoradas con retratos de Santo Tomás de Aquino y de los filósofos griegos Aristóteles, Heráclito y Demócrito.
En su discurso inaugural el sabio Rector incitó a la juventud a abanderizarse en la escuela literaria romántica, muy en boga en aquella época: no quería «la docilidad servil que lo recibe todo sin examen ni la desarreglada licencia que se revela contra la autoridad de la razón».
Las enseñanzas catedráticas y los tratados de gramática, métrica y poesía de este varón insigne habían de influir y han influido grandemente en el desarrollo de la literatura nacional.
Entre tanto, doña Mercedes Marín de Solar daba con su Canto fúnebre a la muerte de don Diego Portales (1837), el primer grito de nuestro verdadero lirismo, al menos dentro de las formalidades literarias que ella conocía.
A nuestra tierra, que siempre fue asilo de proscritos ilustres, llegó hacia él año 1841 don Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, que en nuestra metrópoli, en el tercer piso de una casa opulenta, fundó una escuela, para ganarse el pan del ostracismo.
Con él vinieron otros argentinos: Gutiérrez, López, Mitre, Alberdi, y todos, espíritus enardecidos por el azote del despotismo imperante en su país,dirigieron miradas aviesas a nuestros gobernantes «pelucones» y motejaron a nuestros literatos de esterilizarse por el abuso en el estudio de los gramáticos y puristas.
En cuanto a carácter independiente y reformador, no iba en zaga a aquellos proscritos, nuestro renombrado escritor y sociólogo José Victorino Lastarria, quien inauguró la «Sociedad Literaria» (1842), con un discurso de bandería, pletórico de espíritu «libre y progresivo», en que invitaba a impulsar nuestra literatura mediante la libertad del genio, restringida únicamente por la moderación y el buen gusto.
Al mismo tiempo fundó el Semanario Literario (14 de Julio 1842-43), revista en que el escritor festivo José Joaquín Vallejo (Jotabeche) y el poeta Salvador Sanfuentes mantuvieron en pro del romanticismo una sonada polémica con los argentinos López y Sarmiento, quienes contestaban los juegos desde las columnas de «El Mercurio» de Valparaíso; polémica que en realidad no fue sino una ardorosa repercusión del célebre manifiesto romántico con que Víctor Hugo encabezó su drama «Hernanin».
Echando su cuarto a espadas, Alberdi pretendía que el romanticismo es una ley niecánica, por ser comprensiva de todas las condiciones materiales y externas del estilo, ley según la cual Homero, Shakespeare y Dante serían vencidos en certamen por un estudiante de retórica de quince años.
Por esta época publicó don Andrés Bello traducciones parafrásticas de «Les Fantômes» y de otras composiciones de Hugo.
José María Núñez se dedicó a escribir sobre literatura francesa contemporánea y Francisco Bello sobre poesía inglesa.
Así se preparó la verdadera iniciación de nuestra poesía lírica: el movimiento-literario del año 1842, cuya omnipotencia clásico-romántica no vino a romperse sino allá por el año 1895, al choque de un espíritu nuevo y fecundo, como lo veremos más adelante.
Al reto que los expatriados argentinos lanzaron a nuestra juventud por su inacción y falta de originalidad, contestó Salvador Sanfuentes con su hermosa leyenda en verso El Campanario.
Hermógenes de Irisarri da elevación y majestad al himno, con esplendores de belleza ática y serena, dentro de una forma trabajada bajo el rigor de un artífice culto y exigente.
Eusebio Lillo, el «Ruiseñor chileno», ritma al amor y las flores con verdadero encanto lírico, en alas de una música verbal nítida y harmoniosa.
Guillermo Blest Gana nos embriaga con la ambrosia de sus versos de ensueño y sus romances plañideros, íntimos y vehementes.
Guillermo Matta arranca sonoros arpegeos al broncíneo cordaje de su lira, aunque en sus versos cerebrales chocacierto desentono de propaganda filosófica y doctrinaria.
José Antonio Soffia escucha el ritmo de la Naturaleza y evoca episodios legendarios, en poemas frescos y retozones, nutridos de recuerdos y afectos.
Luis Rodríguez Velasco rapsodia en verso epopéyico el sublime heroísmo de Iquique, que sucumbe para alzarse grande e imperecedero entre los pliegues azul, blanco y rojo del orgulloso emblema de la patria.
Pablo Garriga, en fin, da la sensación de un panteísmo poético con escasas raíces en nuestro suelo.
Al lado de estos poetas de primera magnitud, figuran otros no menos entusiastas que se posesionan febrilmente de las cualidades estéticas de Hugo Lamartine y Musset, Byron, Espronceda y Zorrilla, y siguen tan de cerca a esos modelos, que su labor reminiscente llega a empañar el albor de originalidad que despunta en la obra de los mejores.
Eduardo de la Barra es el más prominente de estos bardos culpables del pecado de imitación.
Algunos institutos y certámenes literarios contribuyen secundariamente en este largo período al estímulo de la producción poética.
The country is concerned with consolidating its political and administrative organization and establishing its civil, religious and economic legislation on new bases.
These concerns are the cause of the artistic quality being indisputably advantageous by legislative, oratory and forensic production.
We have said that the classic-romantic movement that began in 1842 came to a break in 1895.
However, prior to this date some renovating currents are manifested in our literary environment, with promises of better days for our lyricism.
It was essential to react against the cramming of reminiscences of the ancient and contemporary Spanish writers, against the mass of volumes of ... Poems ... that frequently left the printing presses to be buried in the dust of the shelves.
The newspaper "La Época" (1887), which widely offered its columns to artists, corresponds to the first award of this crusade.
Beneath the bohemian tent of that newspaper, a nucleus of writers found refuge who began to feel on their foreheads the caress of the "blue wind of France."
Manuel Rodríguez Mendoza, Alfredo Irarrázaval, Luis Orrego Luco, Pedro Balmaceda Toro, stood out with their sparkling or Parisian prose, forming a true literary mosaic.
The young Rubén Darío, with no other credentials than having published, on his errant path, 1472, a small book, "First Notes" (1885), came to join this studious and cultured group, with his face as a "sad Indian". that it was but a sporadic product of heterogeneous readings.
In Pedro Balmaceda, a stylist of unprecedented precocity, still a young man, Dario discovered a crusader brother who was ahead of him in his knowledge of modern French art: he found in him an efficient friend and a possessor of novel books, of which he the young Nicaraguan served to broaden his views along new aesthetic directions.
In 1887, Darío published in Santiago his booklet «Abrojos», dedicated to Manuel Rodríguez Mendoza, which is a set of light, spontaneous rhymes with a bohemian color.
In transit in Valparaíso, he published in 1888 his most celebrated book: «Azul» ... or «Year Lyrical», prologue in extenso by Don Eduardo de la Barra, whose verses and prose of frankly modern art, constituted the first in Hispano-America and in Spain later, a kind of gospel of the Parnassian and symbolist tendencies of the French poets that began with Aloysius Bertrand, Nerval, Baudelaire, Gautier and Banville, continued with de Lisle, Heredia, Prudhomme, Mendés, Lahor and Dierx and progressed with Mikhaël, Laforgue, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Samain, Moréas, Verhaeren, Fort and Maeterlinck, apart from many others who represent today in France the multiple vibrations of new and recent lyricism.
The Varela contest (1887), which was attended, not counting Darío, Pedro N. Préndez and Ramón Escuti Orrego with individual "epic songs to the glories of Chile" and Eduardo de la Barra and several others with their collections of Becquerian rhymes, It did not leave in our literary history but a verbose flurry of imitative verses, with no other originality than that of lacking it.
Due to the civil revolution of 1891, a void arose in our intellectual production that lasted until 1895, the year in which the book «Ritmos», by Pedro Antonio González, appeared, the most lyrical of the poets of this country and the initiator of the period. contemporary of our poetry.
Around these times, "La Revista Cómica" (1895-98) appeared, whose importance lies in the fact that a transitional era between the old and new currents of our literature appeared.
Thus, Ricardo Fernández Montalva stands out with the romance of his bohemian life, the sentimental and romantic verse;
Julio Vicuña Cifuentes cultivates rhetorical verse, without the current aesthetic renovation of it being suspected at that time;
Eduardo de la Barra repeats his parodies and translations,
Antonio Bórquez Solar pushes the declining trend;
Gustavo Valledor evokes, in decorative style, the names and myths of Hellenism, and finally,
Luis A. Navarrete and Abelardo Varela paraphrase and translate Baudelaire, Prudhomme, Mendés and Verlaine.
Meanwhile, Francisco Concha Castillo and Narciso Tondreau isolate themselves and do not alter, neither then nor later, the conservative nature of their productions.
It succeeded the previous one, "La Lira Chilena" (1898-1911), a popular Sunday magazine, which failed to attract the collaboration of our best writers.
Nevertheless, some romantic vates of some significance stand out in her; like Tito V. Lisoni, Eduardo Grez, Eduardo Castillo, Ignacio Escobar and Luis Galdames, who, absorbed by the practical and professional life, no longer write and limit themselves to remembering their old verses with a regretful and sometimes contemptuous gesture.
Of this scattered phalanx, only Alberto Mauret Caamaño, usually revamps, with a certain brilliance, the erotic-romantic tradition of Guillermo Blest and Ricardo Fernández.
Parallel to the agonizing efforts of these "Portaliras" develops the current of New Art that Pedro Balmaceda and Rubén Darío started in 1887.
The potential and luminous incubation of "Rhythms" infiltrated in the spirits an innovative and prolific ferment.
The modernization of our lyric can no longer stop.
The stale metric formalities die out or evolve.
French Parnassians and Symbolists are imitated to a fault.
Decadentism, "poses" its ridiculous grimaces and wiles at commentary and derision.
And over an accumulation of aesthetic errors, incurred many times on purpose to confuse the delayed and fractional criteria, the rose-colored feet of our Poetry advanced along the earthly path that was to lead it to an elevated but accessible region, where it was Aduna harmonious and fantastic beauty with the splendor of human truth, sincere, intimate, lived.
Marcial Cabrera Guerra was one of the most tenacious champions of this crusade.
After making some preparations in "La Revista Cómica" and in his literary page "Sunday Annex" of the newspaper "La Ley" (1899), he founded the newspaper "Pen and Pencil" (1900-1), the highest banner of the reform movement of our beautiful letters.
Pedro Antonio González, Horacio Olivos, Antonio Bórquez Solar, Miguel Luis Rocuant, Francisco Contreras, Manuel Magallanes Moure, Jorge González, Carlos Mondaca and Víctor Domingo Silva, come to the call of «Guerrette» and undertake, although with uneven success, the most brilliant of our lyrical days.
In the magazines «Instantáneas» and «Luz y Sombras», which were won over by the public thanks to their literary director Augusto G. Thomson, poets of value such as Carlos Pezoa Veliz and Antonio Orrego Barros began to stand out since 1900. Creole-style works contrasted with the French flavor that the prosadores Guillermo Labarca Hubertson and Ignacio Pérez Kallens (Leonardo Penna) were able to give these weeklies, and especially Thomson with his' studies and impressions on art.
Along with the intermittent agetre of these flying publications, the poets summarize their lyrical harvests in the book.
Bórquez Solar by force afrancesa his innate Creole temperament and produces a bastard book, «Campo Lírico» (1900), which, although it contributes to the knowledge of the liturgy of the new literary rite, is but a demonstration of the morbid or degenerate aspect of modern art , vice that this shaken writer has not been able to cure in his later works.
Francisco Contreras wants to exaggerate the decadent note with his "Esmaltines" and his "Raúl" (1902), preceded by a preliminary didactic on "New Art", which is an explanatory manifesto of the formula on the "free development of the creative temperament" by Remy de Gourmont.
Diego Dublé Urrutia, Antonio Orrego Barros, Samuel A. Lillo, Carlos Pezoa Veliz and Víctor Domingo Silva disregard French theories, feel their Chilean blood boiling in their veins and driven by a virtuous love of country, evoke the heroic traditions of our race, psychologize the noble and haughty gestures of our people and channel in massive and harmonious poems the joy and sorrow of the long-suffering inhabitants of the pampas, mines and jungles.
«From the sea or the mountain», «Creole soul», «Chile Heroico», «Chilean soul» and «Towards there ...) are the main books with which each of these bards represents the nationalist and Creole tendency of our poetry .
Together with them, Federico Gana, Joaquín Díaz Garcés (Ángel Pino), Baldomero Emilio Lillo, Carlos Silva Vildósola, Víctor Domingo Silva (Cristóbal de Zárate) and Rafael Maluenda, shake hands with the former writers José Joaquín Vallejo and Manuel Concha and form with his novels, stories and impressions, III a healthy and vigorous artistic flow that, said without disturbing the sectarians of exoticism, is the only thing that can add an original note of ours to the collection of foreign literatures.
Of the main generators and representatives of the modernist movement in our literature, the precursors have died: Pedro Balmaceda (1889), Pedro Antonio González (1903) and Rubén Darío (1916).
The others continue to work for the glory of our beautiful letters and for the honor of Chile.
Thus, Horacio Olivos isolates himself in the cult of external beauty carved in the impassive and marbled form, which constitutes, in terms of the care of the form, one of the highest qualities according to the most modern conception of poetic art.
Ernesto Guzmán abandons the gymnastics of rhyme and following the dictates, not of an esthete, but of a teacher such as Unamuno, he empties his inedulous and serene poems in the old and difficult single or white verse, usually hendecasyllable and amber; something very commendable in an isolated case like this, since he comes to enrich the polyphone concert of poetry.
Zoilo Escobar carries in his spirit the isochronous and sorrowful symphony of the tides and the vision of the daily waves of seafarers.
Rocuant works the solid, chipped and harmonious verse, in poems full of force and rich in pictorial ranges.
Contreras writes artistic-didactic studies, and being a fervent proselyte of the ideal rather than a poet, he has had the fortune to represent our literary republic in Paris, alongside Nervo, Darío, Lugones, Ugarte and Gómez Carrillo, who with more property that Contreras have prestigious abroad the name of their respective countries.
Magellan gropes between painting and poetry, the true purpose of his temperament as an artist, and ends up casting his beautiful fantasy to flight through a poetic garden in which scented breezes rumored among stalactites from crystalline fountains.
Jorge González ends his bohemian civic roundup to return to his homeland, where he finds the reasons for his cultured and elejíaca poetry, with humble and pessimistic nuances.
Mondaca breaks his painful silence and publishes the trains of his inner and deep bitterness in poems that blooms raw.
Víctor Domingo Silva made his tambourine vibrate with sonorous and triumphant arpeggiations, with streaks of human and patriotic notes.
Lagos Lisboa spreads his glances over the horizons and horizons of the native nature and empties the juice of his sensations, memories in chipped glasses with the best classic profiles.
Max Jara is discussed; Between howls and applause he exhibits the process of an indefinite evolution and gets to join the group of his brothers of art with the semi-prestige of a sincere and courageous work, but dotted with aesthetic errors.
Pedro Prado highlights his vigorous artist temperament and lays the foundations for a fragile poetic style of architecture in which his beautiful fantasies fail to find a solid and lasting root.
Alberto Moreno "captures his poems in invisible sources", surprises the most complex moments of ordinary life and stands with his refined and brilliant work as one of the most visible peaks of our Parnassus.
Julio Munizaga shines for his gallant trova and for his clear and sonorous verse.
Enrique Carvajal would like to continue in the silent isolation of him writing more for himself than for the public, those his poems that condense the splendor of poetic philosophy that radiates in souls and things.
Gabriela Mistral solidly molds her glorious poetry, full of energy, and ignites the fires of a new spiritualism, delicate as maternal caresses to the sleeping child, as vehement as the impulse of her firm woman's heart; blue fires that the intellectual youth of Spain are beginning to see as a sure omen that our best poet will be proclaimed the first in Castilian speech of these times.
Daniel de la Vega gently moves with his legitimate romanticism, without false tears, which flows by brushing against the rough edges of daily struggle and by crystallizing, in simple style, his Puebla and bohemian memories and the charms of his intimate life; romanticism full of clarity and emotion that cannot be confused with the hollow and emphatic sentimentality of some poets of yesteryear.
Hübner triumphs with his emotional as well as cerebral verses and forms a wealth of good poetry nourished by the idealism that emanates from the complex or simple aspects of Nature.
Barella's sentimentality interprets the delicate vibrations of Love and removes the romanesque background that sleeps in 'weary souls sick with boredom.
Angel Cruchaga feels, meditates, exists deeply.
Pedro Sienna enlists himself in the entertainment of theater comedians, pretends on the scene the night life of the characterized characters and sketches the reality and color of a representative and fictitious world in funny and light sonnets.
Pablo de Rokha begins with brilliance his bizarre, lyrical and spoils his talent in enigmatic conceptions explained with capricious phrases, almost totally incomprehensible.
Olga Azevedo is one day the Mimi of our cenacles and on any other day she goes in search of the longed for "distance from her" from her ...
Juan Guzmán Cruchaga forms his style with silk softness and moonlight splendours.
Luciano Morgad, Alberto Valdivia, Daniel Vásquez, Juan Egaña and R. Echevarría Larrazábal show that there are almost anonymous poets, but more sincere, more exquisite and less controversial than many of those who strive to publish their "things" in apparently literary magazines.
Alongside this brilliant flock of poets, the youngsters, the legion of the youngest poets, advance, spirited and smiling, in whose ranks true temperaments begin to stand out, such as David Perry, Eusebio Ibar, Roberto Meza Fuentes, Lautaro García Vergara, Arturo Torres Rioseco, Aida Moreno, Juan Marín and some others who, if fate does not provide otherwise, will appear alongside those of our best intellectuals of the present.
As we travel the rugged paths of our lyrical jungle, a set of poisonous weeds and beautiful blooms, we have been able to observe the various nuances that have characterized our Poetry throughout its evolution.
Each stage of our lyricism must be accepted as a necessary means to reach the one that has followed in historical order.
According to this criterion, we cannot be surprised that during the colonial period foreign poets and verses transplanted to our soil prevailed, and that in the era of Emancipation patriotic song arose with no more originality than its rebellious spirit.
And since the same thing has happened in the other Spanish-American countries, we should not be surprised either by that long classical-romantic period that is an ingrained in this country of the Hispanic and French artistic culture, and whose best poetic productions are neighboring today our parents and grandparents to see their memories of youth.
Before concluding, we want to make an appeal to the youth who are beginning in the cult of poetry and shed some strands of the canvas of good sense before their eyes.
It is necessary that healthy and true aesthetic principles penetrate all criteria.
Do not accept schools or literary sects but as an advance and a stimulus.
Do not despise the Ancient Art, without studying it and without taking advantage of its healthy projections.
Give in to the audacious and brand-new influences that extend the empire of fantasy, taking care to avoid presumptuous, morbid and degenerative arrests.
Recognize that the narrow and rhetorical inflexibility of classicism and the bombastic and false sentimentality of the romantic sect were subordinated by the harmonious and Hellenic profiles of the Parnassian tendency and by the flexible, subtle and introspective figurations of symbolism.
Do not forget that Rubén Darío could not establish himself as a spiritual master of style and language except through conscious studies of the poetic art of Greece and Rome, France and Italy, until he took possession of its most secret resources to take advantage of them in giving wealth and breadth to Castilian poetry, and this without detriment to the innovative spirit and divine exaltations of his genius.
Above all, our young people must guard against premature and pernicious exhibitionism, concentrate and polish their incipient or definitive work and apply themselves to the study of the inviolable rules of Grammar and Lexicon, not to allow themselves to be slavishly dominated by them or to boast of purists and scholars, but to build a truly artistic, firm and lasting work.
The clear, concise and select style is a virtue recommended not only by the old and excessive rhetorical canons; it is a universal principle and without it the best artistic faculties are wasted.
Clarity in the images and in the diction that expresses them; in all that beautiful clarity that is the touchstone of the consistency of ideas and the simplicity or complexity of sensations.
After the effervescence of the unbridled inspiration, after the nebulous and impulsive groping, the Alexandrian verse, the repose and the eurythmy of the lyrical verb, the harmonious alliance of the good aspects of all tendencies, be they of classical, new or futuristic.
Only in this way will we be able to definitively secure the triumph of modernism, which is synonymous with the clear, broad and sincere expression of the ideas and sensations of the complex life of our time.
