‘El espíritu francés’ (1898). Presentation and Edition of an Unknown Article by Rubén Darío

Abstract

In July 1898, the French magazine Revue des Revues published an enquête addressed to prominent French intellectuals around the question of whether or not the so-called French spirit existed in their literature and the possibility that this essence could be somehow assimilated by foreign authors. Two months later, writer Rubén Darío joined on his own account this debate, releasing “El espíritu francés”, in the weekly newspaper El Sol del Domingo, published in Buenos Aires. In this article, unknown until this date, the author firmly upheld his Francophilia -what was defined as galicismo mental- or identification with the universal modernity epitomized by France, and his right of belonging to the world literature Republic which had Paris as its capital. The text presented and commented in this paper is another piece of the unfinished textual map embodied by Darío, casting some new light on a particular moment of his relationship with the French “intellectual homeland”, a crucial aspect in both his critical discourse and the constitution of his place as a writer.