On Reading Cantos de vida y esperanza and Other Subjects

Abstract

Cantos de vida y esperanza unites life and song in a confrontation of two different concepts of time, through which life becomes part of the conflict of writing, leading to the question: is this an ephemeral problem? Is this radical duality not the basis of Spanish American identity, and for that reason was the exuberant imagery of Darío’s beginnings not a way of putting into literary practice this very existential and social conflict as a consequence of a reflection that the poet never eluded? And was it not, at the same time, a personal affirmation of self in the poetic worldview? The article rereads Cantos de vida y esperanza as the book in which experience strives to reveal itself in everyday reality, as a result of Modernism’s aspiration towards «rebellion» and of poetry as a search for being and saying.