Rubén Darío and Santiago Rusiñol: another exemple of painting as a writing

Abstract

The bond between painting and poetry is, once again, the main topic of this paper about Rubén Darío. It follows Darío’s educational stage with young Pedro Balmaceda in Chile during the year of 1886, and depicts his persistent insight into European and Spanish painting since his second travel to Spain in 1899. The blend of painting, landscape and poetry drove his attentionto the work of Catalonian writer and painter Santiago Rusiñol, in which he would remain interested ever since. Particularly, Rusiñol’s Jardins d’España (1902) gave rise to many remarks and appreciations, undoubtedly relevant to his later writing. Thus,Darío turned his prose and poetry in an ensemble of images closely related to painting and its models, in accordance to the modernist movement he had earlier established in Hispanic-American tradition.