THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

2.2 Modernismo and its Masters: Darío and Quiroga The Avatar in Panama(1888). 2 In fact, Enrique Anderson Imbert points out that “the loftyposition he [Darío] holds in literary history is due to his poetry, not to hisfiction”. 3 Darío believed the artist was a “spiritual aristocrat, ennobled bythe painful search for the ideal through the creation of poetry itself andthe sacralization of sexual love”. 4 However, aside from themes such asthe pursuit of beauty and the ideal, artistic elitism, decadentism and theglorification of the writer, for which modernism became known, therealso existed another darker side, which Darío and Quiroga intuitivelyfound. Both clearly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, together theybrought the shadowy themes of horror, madness, vampirism, and theliving dead to the literature of the time in the form of the short story.Darío’s references to dreams, drugs, alcohol and asylums encouragethe reader to challenge the veracity of his storytellers’ recollection.Quiroga’s narration from the perspectives of animals, corpses, andcharacters crossing over from one world to another motivates thereader to think laterally. These particular aspects of Darío’s andQuiroga’s writing are compared with those found in several of JaramilloLevi stories. The Latin American, as opposed to the European shortstory, and its various fantastic sub genres, will also be examined in thischapter, as will be the role of biography in fantasy and Jaramillo Levi’sthoughts on the fantastic in relation to his work.Darío was the most notable fin-de-siècle author, more so forpoetry than fiction, but this was not the only similarity he shared with hisgreatest influence. Darío’s imagery, symbolism, and adjectives werecompared to Poe’s, which smacked of the Gothic. These tools, and hisuse of them, were aspects of literary technique that Darío brought to theforefront in Latin America. 5 Said to be the first to use the termmodernismo, Darío was, of all the Spanish American writers, thought tobe the instigator of the movement. 6 Two years after using the term,2In fact, two recurrent symbols form part of the Modernist mythology: the colour blueand the swan. César Fernández Moreno, Latin America in its Literature. (New York:Holmes, 1980) 73.3 Enrique Anderson Imbert, “Rubén Darío and the Fantastic Element in Literature”114.4 Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (London: Allen Lane, 1992)303.5 Darío shared with Poe “a love of the strange, alcohol abuse, fear of death, sensitivityto auditory hallucinations and both were denied the blessings of a mother’s care”.John Eugene Engelkirk, Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature (New York: Russell,1972) 168-170.6 “His initial use of the term in the essay ‘La literatura en Centro-América’ (1888) wasin the context of praise for the creative work of his first significant critic, the MexicanRicardo Contreras. As a synonym for modernidad, it was used to explain thatContreras was in keeping with the times and a developed writer who reflectedknowledge of the historical processes by which the contemporary state of literaryexpression was reached.” Keith Ellis, Critical Approaches to Rubén Darío (Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 1974) 46-47.93