Rubén Darío in the French literary field

Abstract

While at the end of the 19th century, Pedro Emilio Coll and other contemporaries of Rubén Darío complained about the lack of reciprocity in their relationship with French writers, Darío himself made great efforts to be accepted and welcomed in the French literary field. He had his book Los Raros distributed among the poets still alive who were portrayed in it, he was proud of the signs of appreciation that various European writers offered him, among them Félix Fénéon, Edmond de Bruijn, Vicente Lutosławski and William Archer, he published essays in the Parisian magazines Revue Blanche, Mercure de France, and La Renaissance latine, and in the German magazine Das litterarische Echo, and employed a translator, Abbé Charles Marie Claude, to translate his texts into French. However, his excessive shyness and his contempt for the rituals that were cultivated among the Gallic literary elite made it difficult for him to insert himself into the literary field of Paris.