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3 - Latin American poetry, c. 1920–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Jaime Concha
Affiliation:
Professor of Latin American Literature, University of California at San Diego
Leslie Bethell
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

introduction

Before the blossoming of narrative in the second half of the twentieth century poetry occupied a pre-eminent position and role in the world of Latin American literature. Before Borges, the short-story writer, interest and attention focused more on Borges as a poet; or on the Peruvian poet, César Vallejo, and the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, whose Canto general burst upon the scene in 1950, dividing the century into equal halves and becoming the prime testimony of Latin American consciousness. The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral in 1945, more than two decades before the Central American novelist Miguel Angel Asturias, in 1967; it was awarded to Neruda himself, in 1971, more than a decade before the Colombian novelist, Gabriel García Márquez, in 1982. With the help of these four representative names, it is possible to observe a swing from poetry to narrative prose in the central forces that shape the literary process. The first half of the twentieth century is in fact characterized by the special relevance of poetry; without this antecedent and example, the emergence of narrative would be incomprehensible.

Although from Vasconcelos to Paz and from Mariátegui to Salazar Bondy the essay also contributed to the development of Latin American cultural identity, it was poetry that first crossed national frontiers, formulating a global reality which reached the Spanish world as a whole. This situation had existed since Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867–1916), whose most mature poetry—the poems in Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905)—was in one way a search for a cultural definition of the Spanish-speaking peoples.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

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References

Alonso, Amado, ‘Estilística y gramática del artículo en español’, in Estudios linguísticos (Temas españoles) (Madrid, 1951).Google Scholar
Cândido, Antōnio, Vários Escritos (Sāo Paulo, 1970).Google Scholar
de Onís, Federico, Antología de la poesía española e hispanoamericana (1882–1932) (Madrid, 1934).Google Scholar
Ferrari’s, Americo concise note (‘C. V. entre la angustia y la esperanza’), in Vallejo, César, Obra poética completa (Madrid, 1982).Google Scholar
Franco, Jean, César Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (Cambridge, Eng., 1976).Google Scholar
Martins, Wilson, The Modernist Idea (New York, 1970).Google Scholar
Molinari, R. (El imaginero, 1927).Google Scholar
Quiñones, Arcadio Díaz, El almuerzo en la hierba. Lloréns Torres, Palés Matos, René Marqués (Río Piedras, 1982) ff.Google Scholar
Ruffinelli, Jorge, Poesía y descolonización: viaje por la poesía de Nicolás Guillén (Oaxaca, 1985) et seq.Google Scholar

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