Notes on Religiosity in the Poetry of Amado Nervo

Abstract

In line with the artistic and philosophical concerns inherited from romanticism and symbolism, modernist writers find in poetry a space to express the spiritual dimension of man, in a fusion or mixture of various religious doctrines that has been analyzed under the name of syncretism and which is presented as a central characteristic of the work of authors such as Amado Nervo and Rubén Darío. In Nervo, the complex spiritual vision resulting from the fusion of a pantheistic Christianity and a Hindu orientalism, is materialized in the conception of a personal religion that is more evident in two of his latest books: Serenidad and Elevación, and is manifested in three recurring characteristics: the assessment of intuition; moral didacticism and the poem as a prayer. And while the purification of modernist ornament leads Darío to seek a religion in art and poetry, Nervo ends up making poetry a profession of his religion