Mitología clásica en la poesía de Salvador Rueda

Abstract

Classical mythology is very much present at Latin-American modernism, as a legacy of French parnassianism; it is a shelter of ideal beauty for a poetry which is essentially escapist and nonconformist towards the reality of its time. That tendency to the Classical Antiquity and its mythology goes together with a certain criticism and detachment from Christianity, in Salvador Ruedass poetry (1857-1933); it collaborates in shaping a religious cosmovision of a pantheistic tendency. In the verses by the poet from Málaga, there is a larger inclination towards myths than towards legends, because of the symbolic value of the former ones, and particularly to female deities like Venus. However, we have available a curious recreation of Actaeons legend, in three serial sonnets, with reminiscences of Ovid and other interferences. Classical sculpture, and especially the reproductions of the Parthenon marbles (which were contemplated by the poet in the Artistic Reproductions Museum of Madrid, where he used to be an employee) are a frequent mediation in his poetical recreations of mythology. He also uses the ancient myth to idealize the marine sceneries.