THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

2.2 Modernismo and its Masters: Darío and Quiroga The Avatar in Panama2.2 Modernismo and its Masters: Darío and Quiroga“Si”, dijo el maravilloso Salomón negro. “Soy tu igual, sólo que soy todo lo opuesto ati”.Rubén DaríoContrary to the trend in European literature, the double hashardly been a high-profile literary device in the field of Latin Americanliterature, particularly in the short story. Nevertheless, it does have ahistory originating from writers as diverse as the continent itself.Certainly references can be found as far back as Sor Juana Inés de laCruz (1651-1695), whose best known lyric poem, “Primer sueño”(1692), recounts the astral journey of the soul through the differentspheres while the body sleeps. During the most productive period of thenineteenth century, that is, in terms of European output in the genre,several works of note were produced: Amado Nervo’s well known occultnovel El donador de almas, and “Él del espejo”, discussed in 3.1.Rafael Arévalo Martínez, who combined bestial and humancharacteristics in “El hombre que parecía un caballo”, LeopoldoLugones, who employed doubling in various short stories including “Elhombre muerto”, and, of course, two of the most prolific story tellers,Rubén Darío, whose story “El Salomón negro” features the classicdouble, and Horacio Quiroga, whose doubling techniques infiltratednarrative perspective. The double appears in the twentieth centurythrough the labours of Felisberto Hernández, Pablo Palacio, VicenteHuidobro, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Carlos Onetti, José Donoso, VictoriaOcampo, Carlos Fuentes, and Enrique Anderson Imbert, among manyothers. 1 Heading the list of those recent exponents were of course,Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar who will be examined in thefollowing chapter.Of these writers, Rubén Darío and Horacio Quiroga stand outas two of the greatest exponents of modernism in Latin America. Theircombined inception of, and contribution to, Latin American modernismobrought many new technical and thematic aspects to its proponents.The use of the image and adjective were aspects of literary techniquethat Darío, particularly, brought to the forefront and the movement itselfwas inaugurated by the publication of Darío’s collection of poems, Azul1 Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964), “Las dos historias”; Pablo Palacio (1906-1947),“La doble y única mujer”; Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948)), "Tragedia"; Alejo Carpentier(1904-1980), “El camino de Santiago” (1967); Juan Carlos Onetti (1909-1994), La vidabreve and “Un sueño realizado” (1950, 1951); Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979), “Elimpostor”; Julio Garmendia (1898-1977), “El difunto yo”; José Donoso (1924-96),“Gaspard de la Nuit”; Carlos Fuentes (1928 -), Aura; Enrique Anderson Imbert (1910-2000) Fuga.92