30 modernist poems commented
Modernism was a Spanish-American literary movement that emerged in the nineteenth century that was characterized by the desire for cosmopolitanism, expressive refinement and the musicality of language.
The best way to understand its aesthetics is by knowing some of the most representative authors and poems. That is why we present here a selection of thirty modernist poems that are references to the Spanish-American movement.
1. Pain! Pain!, my eternal life, of José Martí (Cuba)
The Cuban poet José Martí, located in the transition to modernism, expresses the place of pain in his life, the cause of which does not seem obvious. He connects with his person and makes him poetic of him as if it were his breath, an inevitable condition of existence and, at the same time, as an edifying virtue. Martí shows great poetic freedom when it comes to rhythm and rhyme. Also, he goes to classical references, such as the myth of Prometheus.
Pain! Pain! eternal life of mine,
Be of my being, without whose breath I die!* * *
Enjoy a mean spirit in good time
To the sound of the animating dance, and pledge
His soul in the flowers that the floating flax
Of beautiful women he sets:Enjoy in good time, and your brain ignites
In the reddish fire of the incasta
Bonfire of desire:I, drunk with my sorrows, I devour myself,
And my miseries I cry,
And vulture of myself I rise,
And I hurt and heal myself with my song,
Vulture while proud Prometheus.
2. And I looked for you in townsby José Martí
The lyrical subject looks for the soul of the loved person where it is not found. And when he discovers it, he also loses his. Plastic elements such as colors are at the same time symbols presented to the reader: blue lilies are symbols of purity, while yellows are symbols of liveliness and sensuality.
And I looked for you in the clouds
And to find your soul
I opened many lilies, blue lilies.And the sad ones crying told me:
"Oh, what a living pain!"
That your soul has lived a long time
On a yellow lily! -But tell me - how was it?
Didn't I have my soul in my chest?
Yesterday I met you
And the soul that I have here is not mine.
3. Cultivate a white roseby José Martí
José Martí exposes in this text the value of sincerity and the cultivation of friendship, whose metaphor is the white rose. Once again, the images of nature lend their resonance to the affective universe of the poet.
Cultivate a white rose
in June like January
For the honest friend
that gives me the frank hand of him.And for the cruel that tears me away
the heart with which I live,
Thistle or nettle cultivation;
I grow the white rose.
See also Analysis of the poem Cultivo una rosa by José Martí.
4. Tropic afternoonby Rubén Darío (Nicaragua)
Tropic afternoon is included in the book Songs of life and hope by Rubén Darío, published in 1905. In it he describes a cloudy afternoon that stormy times are approaching, as if it were a revolution.
It is the gray and sad afternoon.
Dress the sea of velvet
and the deep sky saw
mourning.From the abyss it rises
the bitter and sonorous complaint
The wave, when the wind sings,
cries,The violins of the mist
they greet the dying sun.
Salmodia the white foam:
Miserere.Harmony floods the sky,
and the breeze will carry
the sad and deep song
from sea.From the clarion of the horizon
a rare symphony sprouts,
as if the voice of the mountain
vibrate.What if it were the invisible ...
what if he were the rude they are
that gave the wind a terrible
Lion.
5. I love, you love ...by Rubén Darío
With this poem, Rubén Darío exhorts love passion, deep dedication that does not skimp on sacrifices, which are not faced with the abyss, because that passion reveals the very meaning of life human.
Loving, loving, loving, loving always, with everything
the being and with the earth and with the sky,
with the light of the sun and the dark of the mud;
love for all science and love for all desire.And when the mountain of life
be hard and long and high and full of abysses,
love the immensity that is of love on
And burn in the fusion of our very breasts!
6. Thanatosby Rubén Darío
Death is always in the consciousness of the poetic subject, death that is part of the path and imposes itself on human destiny, without forgetting any of its creatures. It is located within the literary topic known as quotidie morimur ("We die every day").
In the middle of the path of Life ...
Dante said. Her verse becomes:
In the middle of the road of Death.And do not hate the ignored
Empress and Queen of Nothing.
By it our cloth is woven,
and she in the cup of dreams
sheds a nepente opposite: she does not forget!
It may interest you: 12 poems by Rubén Darío.
7. In peaceby Amado Nervo (Mexico)
Amado Nervo celebrates her life and her magnificence in this poem, and thanks her for the gifts received. The grace of life focuses on having loved and being loved.
Very close to my sunset, I bless you, my life,
because you never gave me even failed hope,
no unfair work, no undeserved penalty;because I see at the end of my rough path
that I was the architect of my own destiny;that if I extracted the honeys or the gall of things,
It was because in them I put gall or tasty honeys:
When I planted rose bushes, I always harvested roses.... Right, my blooms will be followed by winter:
But you didn't tell me that May was eternal!I certainly found the nights of my sorrows long;
but you didn't just promise me good nights;
and instead I had some holy serene ...I loved, I was loved, the sun caressed my face.
Life, you owe me nothing! Life, we are at peace!
You may also like: Analysis of the poem En paz, by Amado Nervo.
8. I'm not too wiseby Amado Nervo
The concern for the infinite is present in the poet. Life is revealed to him as an irrevocable testimony of the existence of God, when he perceives all its aspects as divine grace, even the pain that crumbles the human soul.
I'm not too wise to deny you
Mister; I find your divine existence logical;
I just have to open my eyes to find you;
the entire creation invites me to adore you,
and I adore you in the rose and I adore you in the thorn.What are our heartaches to want for
argue cruel? Do we know by chance
if you make the stars with our tears,
if the highest beings, if the most beautiful things
are kneaded with the noble mud of bitterness?Let's hope, let's suffer, let's never launch
to the Invisible our denial as a challenge.
Poor sad creature, you'll see, you'll see!
Death is coming... From his lips you will hear
the celestial secret!
9. The day you Love Meby Amado Nervo
The loving subject looks forward to the time of love, the correspondence of the loved subject that gives fullness to the human experience. He convinces himself that all creation will celebrate with the lover the moment of being reciprocated.
The day you love me will have more light than June;
the night you love me will be full moon,
with Beethoven notes vibrating in every ray
the ineffable things of him,
and there will be more roses together
than in the whole month of May.The crystalline fountains
they will go up the slopes
jumping crystalline
the day you Love Me.The day you love me, the hidden groves
arpeggios will resound never ever heard.
Ecstasy of your eyes, every spring
that there was and will be in the world will be when you love me.Holding hands like blonde sisters
Wearing candid golas, the daisies will go
through mountains and meadows,
in front of your steps, the day you love me ...
And if you peel one off, it will tell you its innocent
last white petal: Passionately!When the dawn of the day that you love me breaks,
all clovers will have four ominous leaves,
and in the pond, nest of unknown germs,
the mystical corollas of the lotuses will flourish.The day you love me, every cloud will be
wonderful wing; every blush, look
of "The Thousand and One Nights"; every breeze a song,
each tree a lyre, each mount an altar.The day you love me, for the two of us
the bliss of God will fit in a single kiss.
10. Poem lost in a few versesby Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico)
The poetic voice celebrates the love that comes into his life, after his wandering heart wanders sadly in search of him. With love, the lyrical voice recovers its identity, its passion, its drive to live. It is the time of recovery, of the resurrection of the loving soul.
What if they said I'm like a devastated twilight
where sadness already fell asleep!Simple mirror where I collect the world.
Where I touch loneliness with my happy hand.My ports have arrived, gone after the ships
as if wanting to flee from the nostalgia for her.The extinguished moons have returned to my flash
that I left with my name shouting duels
Until all the silent shadows were mineMy pupils have returned
tied to the sun of her love dawn.Oh love entertained in stars and doves,
like happy dew you cross my soul!
Happy! Happy! Happy!Magnified in cosmic agile gravitations,
without reflection or anything ...
11. Give me my numberby Julia de Burgos
Julia de Burgos focuses her attention on two topics in literature: the memento mori ("Moment of death") and the quotidie morimur ("We die every day"). The number he refers to is the number assigned to corpses in the morgue. The poet longs for the hour of death as if there was no other fate to wait. Every day that passes is only an extension of the inevitable.
What are they waiting for? Don't they call me?
Have they forgotten me among the herbs,
my simplest comrades,
all the dead on earth?Why don't your bells ring?
I'm ready for the jump.
Do they want more corpses
of dead dreams of innocence?Do you want more rubble
of more dripped springs,
more dry eyes in the clouds,
more face wounded in the storms?Do you want the coffin of the wind
crouched between my hair?
Do you want the lust of the stream,
dead in my poet's mind?Do you want the sun dismantled,
already consumed in my arteries?
Do you want the shadow of my shadow,
where there is not a star left?I can hardly handle the world
that whips my entire conscience ...
Give me my number! I do not want
that even love comes off me ...(Kingdom dream that follows me
as my footprint goes.)
Give me my number, because if not,
I will die after death!
12. Dawn of my silenceby Julia de Burgos
The reciprocated love has silenced the voice of the lyrical subject, it has calmed the lawlessness of their inner worlds, their noises and anxieties. The voice is silenced as opening to the expectation of heaven ...
In you I have been silenced ...
The heart of the world
it's in your eyes, they fly away
glaring at me.I don't want to get up from your fertile forehead
where I lay the dream of following me in your soul.I almost feel like a child of love that reaches the birds.
I'm dying in my years of anguish
to stay in you
as a corolla just budding in the sun ...There is not a single breeze that my shadow does not know
nor path that does not extend my song to heaven.Silenced song of plenitude!
In you I have become silent ...The easiest time to love you is this
in which I go through the painful life of dawn.
See also Modernism: historical context and representatives.
13. The death of the heroby Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (Bolivia)
Ricardo Jaimes Freyre sings the hero who, even in his fall, maintains the iron spirit of one who fights for a transcendent cause. Death, however, advances relentlessly to seal his final fate.
He still shudders and stands tall and threatens with his sword
his red and jagged shield covers the shattered chest
sinks his gaze into the infinite shadow
and on his expiring lips the heroic and rude song ceases.The two silent ravens see their agony from afar
and the shadows spread wings to the warrior
And the night of his wings, in the eyes of the warrior, shines like day
and towards the pale calm horizon they take flight.
14. Forever…, By Ricardo Jaimes Freyre
In this poem included in the book Barbarian castalia, from 1899, the Bolivian poet sings to the breath of the last echoes of love that inflame the imagination.
Pilgrim imaginary pigeon
that you inflame the last loves;
soul of light, music and flowers
pilgrim imaginary dove.Fly over the lonely rock
that bathes the glacial sea of sorrows;
let there be, at your weight, a beam of brilliance,
on the lonely grim rock ...Fly over the lonely rock
peregrine dove, snow wing
like a divine host, wing so slight ...Like a snowflake; divine wing,
snowflake, lily, host, mist,
pilgrim imaginary dove ...
15. Between the innby Ricardo Jaimes Freyre
In this poem, included in the book Dreams are life, from 1917, Jaimes Freyre describes the sensuality of a body that stands tall like a prodigy of dreams.
Next to the clear lymph, under the radiant light
from the sun, like a prodigy of living sculpture,
snow and rose his body, his face snow and rose
and on pink and snow his dark hair.The majesty of her goddess does not alter a smile,
Nor does desire stain her with his impure gaze;
in the deep lake of her eyes she rests
her spirit that awaits happiness and bitterness.Dream of marble. Dream of lofty, worthy art
of Scopas or of Phidias, who surprises in a sign,
an attitude, a gesture, the supreme beauty.And she sees her stand out, proud and harmonious,
next to the clear lymph, under the radiant light
from the sun, like a prodigy of living sculpture.
16. Black eyesby Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina)
The black eyes are a metaphor for the sentence of love and death that are contained in each other. The being succumbs to the loving experience just as the body to the challenge of death.
Overwhelms with slenderness
of a languid palm tree
dark hair
the fiery pallor of her.And in this inert blackness
they cross deep daggers,
her long fatal eyes,
of love and death.
17. Story of my deathby Leopoldo Lugones
Leopoldo Lugones returns here on death as an anticipation, as a premonition or omen in the face of fading love. Almost like a game of seduction, death appears as an enveloping thread that leaves the lyrical subject when the absence of the loved subject occurs.
I dreamed of death and it was very simple:
A thread of silk enveloped me,
And every kiss of yours
With one lap less I was girding.
And every kiss of yours
It was a day;
And the time between two kisses,
One night.
Death is very simple.And little by little it was unfolding
The fatal thread.
I no longer held her
But for just one end between the fingers ...
When suddenly you got cold
And you didn't kiss me anymore ...
And I let go of the rope, and my life left me.
18. Spring moonby Leopoldo Lugones
The poet sings of the trustworthy and loving dedication of the loved one. His figurative tours revolve around white tones, a symbol of purity.
The florida acacia
it snows on the bench,
in languid white
your grace flourishes.And to love surrendered,
you give me, confident,
your loaded hands
of flowery moon.
19. Ars, by José Asunción Silva (Colombia)
The center of this poem revolves around the poetic creation itself. With a structure of three stanzas of four lines, the poet reflects on his concerns and aesthetic searches. It is, in every sense of the word, poetic ars.
The verse is a holy vessel. Put in it only,
a pure thought,
At the bottom of which the images boil
like golden bubbles from an old dark wine!There pour the flowers that in the continuous struggle,
the cold world,
delicious memories of times that do not return,
and tuberose drenched in dew drops
so that the miserable existence is embalmed
which of an unknown essence,
Burning in the fire of the tender soul
a single drop of that supreme balm is enough!
It may interest you: Essential poems by José Asunción Silva.
20. Childhood, by José Asunción Silva
In this poem, José Asunción Silva nostalgically reviews the journeys of childhood. The memory of childhood is the golden age of the individual, marked by innocence and candor, the fullness of human existence devoid of the anxieties received from the dominant order. Childhood is, therefore, an original myth, populated with memories of tales and fantastic stories.
Those fern-smelling memories
They are the idyll of the first age.
G.G.G.With the vague memory of things
that embellish time and distance,
they return to loving souls,
like flocks of white butterflies,
the placid memories of childhood.Little Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard, little
Lilliputians, Giant Gulliver
that you float in the mists of dreams,
here spread your wings,
that I with joy
I will call to keep you company
to the mouse Pérez and to Urdimalas!Happy age! Follow with bright eyes
where the idea shines,
the tired hand of the teacher,
about the big red characters
of the broken primer,
where the sketch of a vague sketch,
fruit of moments of childish spite,
the separate letters together put
under the shadow of the impassive ceiling.On wings of the breeze
of the bright August, white, restless
to the region of wandering clouds
get the kite up
in humid morning;
with the new dress in tatters,
on the gummy branches of the cherry tree
the surprising nest of tufts;
hear from grandma
the simple pilgrim stories;
chase the wandering swallows,
leave school
and organize a horrendous battle
where they make shrapnel stones
and the worn flag handkerchief;
compose the manger
from the raised silos of the mountain;
after the long bustling walk
bring light grass,
the corals, the coveted moss,
and in strange pilgrim landscapes
and perspectives never imagined,
make the roads of golden sands
and the waterfalls of brilliant talc.The Kings place on the hill
and hung from the ceiling
the star that leads his steps,
and in the portal the Child-God laughs
on the soft bed
of gray moss and greenish fern.White soul, rosy cheeks,
the skin of a snowy ermine,
golden hair,
eyes alive with placid glances,
how beautiful you make the innocent child ...Childhood, pleasant valley,
of calm and blessed freshness
where is lightning
from the sun that burns the rest of life.
How holy is your pure innocence,
how your brief transitory joys,
how sweet it is in hours of bitterness
look to the past
and evoke your memories!
21. The Cayman dreamby José Santos Chocano (Peru)
The alligator becomes a metaphorical image of the experience of the subject who, between the appearances of strength and brilliance, lives isolated from the whole that surrounds him, trapped in himself.
Huge log that swept the wave,
the alligator lies beached on the shore;
spine of abrupt mountain range,
jaws of the abyss and formidable tail.The sun envelops him in a bright aureole;
and it seems to wear a crest and crest,
like a metal monster that reverberates
and that when it reverberates it turns into solitude.Motionless like a sacred idol,
wrapped in compact steel meshes,
is before the water static and gloomy,like an enchanted prince
who lives eternally a prisoner
in the crystal palace of a river.
22. Who knows?by José Santos Chocano
José Santos Chocano exposes in this poem the paradox of the historical process of colonization, which reduced the legitimate inhabitants of the American continent to the status of serfs. Perhaps the indigenous resignation? The poet questions the dominant order.
Indian you show up at the door
of that your rustic mansion,
You don't have water for my thirst?
For my cold, blanket?
Do I spare corn for my hunger?
For my dream, bad corner?
Brief stillness for my wandering ...
Who knows sir!Indian you work with fatigue
lands owned by another owner are:
Are you unaware that they owe yours
be, for your blood and your sweat?
Do you not know what audacious greed,
centuries ago, did he take them away?
Do you not know that you are the master?
Who knows sir!Taciturn faced indian
and pupils without glare,
What thought are you hiding
in your enigmatic expression?
What are you looking for in your life?
What do you implore your God?
What is your silence dreaming of?
Who knows sir!O ancient and mysterious race
of impenetrable heart,
and that without enjoying you see the joy
and without suffering you see the pain;
you are august like the Ande,
the Great Ocean and the Sun!
That your gesture, it seems
as of vile resignation,
it is of a wise indifference
and of a pride without rancor ...Your blood runs in my veins,
and, for such blood, if my God
ask me what I prefer,
cross or laurel, thorn or flower,
kiss that extinguishes my sighs
or gall that fills my song
he would answer doubting:
Who knows, Lord!
23. The majesty of him time, by Julio Herrera and Reissig (Uruguay)
The poet Julio Herrera y Reissig is devoted in this poem to describe the bowels of the time that he presents as a great patriarch who, although aged, still promises future descendants.
The Old Patriarch,
That encompasses everything,
The beard of an Assyrian prince curls;
His snowy head looks like a great lily,
The snowy head of the old Patriarch looks like a great lily.The pale forehead of her is a confusing map:
Mountains of bone bulge it.
That form the rare, the immense, the thick
Of all the centuries of diffuse time.His old hermit brow
It seems the desert of all times:
In it the hour and the year have carved,
The always started, the always finished,
I vague it, I ignore it, it deluded, I miss it
I miss him and delusional ...The pale forehead of her is a confusing map:
Wrinkles cross it, eternal wrinkles,
What are the rivers of the vague country of the abstruse
Whose waves, the years, escape in rapid escapes.Oh, the old, eternal wrinkles;
Oh the dark grooves:
Thoughts in caterpillar shapes
Where will the magnificent future centuries come from!
24. July, by Julio Herrera and Reissig
In this poem by Julio Herrera y Reissig, the sonority of language predominates as a characteristic feature, the construction of inadvertent literary images that play with the echoes of the imagination.
Cold Cold Cold!
Skins, nostalgia and dumb pains.
They float on the spleen of the campaign
a cold sweaty headache,
and the frogs celebrate in the shady
a strange ventriloquism function.Gray mountain neurasthenia
thinks, by singular telepathy,
with the grim and cloistered monomania
of the senile convent of Brittany.Solving a sum of illusions,
like a Jordan of candid fleeces
The Eucharistic sheepfold is integrated;and in the distance the pensive raven
perhaps dreams in an abstractive Cosmos
like a dreadful black moon.
25. Antique Portraitby Ernesto Noboa Caamaño (Ecuador)
Ernesto Noboa Caamaño evokes in this poem images as taken from visual impressions. This, along with other texts, is a poem that exhibits emotion at the beauty of an instant captured in the image. In some way, it confirms the close relationship between painting and poetry.
You have a haughty, mysterious and sorrowful air
of those noble ladies that Pantoja portrayed:
and the dark hair, the indolent look,
and the imprecise mouth, luciferian and red.In your black pupils the mystery lodges,
the blue bird of sleep is fatigued on your forehead,
and in the pale hand that a rose leaves behind,
the pearl of the prodigious east shines.Smile that was a dream of the divine Leonardo,
hallucinated eyes, hands of Fornarina,
bearing of Dogaresa, neck of Maria Estuardo,
that seems formed -by divine vengeance-
to roll mowed like a tuberose stalk,
like a bouquet of lilies, under the guillotine.Freezing afternoon of rain and monotony.
You, behind the windows of the flowery balcony,
with the shipwrecked gaze in the gray distance
you slowly defoliate the heart.The petals roll withered... Boredom, melancholy,
disenchantment... they tell you tremulous when falling,
and your uncertain look, like a dark bird,
take flight over the ruins of yesterday.Sing the harmonic rain. Under the gloomy afternoon
your last dream dies like a flower of anguish,
and, while, in the distance, the prayer preludes
sacred of twilight the voice of a bell,
you pray the suffering Verlenian litany:
as it rains in the streets, in my heart.
26. Ode to the Atlantic (XXIV), by Tomás Morales Castellano (Spain)
The present poem is a fragment of the work Ode to the Atlantic by Tomás Morales Castellano, a Spanish writer from Gran Canaria. The poem invokes the power of identity that is built into the personal geography of the writer.
Infinite Atlantic, you who order my song!
Every time my steps lead me to your part
I feel new blood throbbing through my veins
and, at the same time that my body, my art takes health ...
The trembling soul drowns in your stream.
With fervent impetus,
the lungs swollen with your salty breezes
and full of mouth,
a fighter yells at you "Father!" from a rock
of these wonderful Fortunate Islands ...
27. Poems of the sea (final), by Tomás Morales Castellano
Life appears before the poet as a spirited sea on which he sails, under the constant opposition of darkness and the north wind, against which nothing can.
I was the brave pilot of my dream vessel,
illusory argonaut of a foreseen country,
of some golden island of chimera or dream
hidden in the shadows of the unknown ...Perhaps a magnificent cargo contained
my ship in its cove, I didn't even ask;
absorbed, my pupil the darkness probed,
and I even had to forget to nail the flag ...And the North wind came, unpleasant and rude;
the vigorous effort of my bare arm
it managed to have a point the force of the storm;to achieve the triumph I fought desperately,
and when my arm fainted, tired,
a hand, in the night, snatched the helm ...
28. To a brunetteby Carlos Pezoa Véliz (Chile)
The Chilean poet Carlos Pezoa Véliz describes a brunette woman with a sensual and evocative language, loaded with passionate and strong images that reveal great eroticism, at the same time as delicacy and seduction.
You have abyss eyes, hair
full of light and shadow, like the river
that sliding its wild flow,
the kiss of the moon reverberates.Nothing more rocking than your hip,
rebel to the pressure of the attire ...
There is summer in your enduring blood
and eternal spring on your lips.Beautiful outside to melt in your lap
the kiss of death with your arm ...
Breathe out like a god, languidly,having your hair as a garland,
so that the touch of a burning flesh
the corpse in your skirt shudders ...
29. To a blondeby Carlos Pezoa Véliz
In contrast to the previous poem, in this poem Carlos Pezoa Véliz describes a blonde maiden using a language that evokes a calm, serene and idealized atmosphere... an almost angelic femininity.
Like the morning glow,
on the snowy peaks of the east,
on the pale tint of your forehead
let your sovereign crencha stand out.Seeing you smile at the window
kneel down the believer
because she thinks she looks at the smiling face
of some white Christian apparition.About your loose blonde hair
light falls in billowing rain.
Like the swan that loses in the distancethe bust of him in dreams of oriental laziness,
my spirit that loves sadness
your green pupil crosses dreaming.
30. Nothingby Carlos Pezoa Véliz
Carlos Pezoa Véliz exposes the situation of a subject who occupies the last place in a social order. It thus describes the fate of the earth's poor, the abandoned and lonely, taken for nothing in the strange world of established society.
He was a poor devil who always came
near a big town where I lived;
young blond and skinny, dirty and badly dressed,
always crestfallen... Maybe a lost one!One winter day we found him dead
within a stream near my garden,
several hunters who with their sighthounds
singing they marched... Between your papers
they found nothing... the judges on duty
they asked the night watchman questions:
he did not know anything about the extinct;
neither the neighbor Pérez, nor the neighbor Pinto.A girl said that she would be crazy
or some vagabond who ate little,
and a funny guy who heard the conversations
he was tempted to laugh... What a simpleton!
A shovel gave him the pantheon;
then he rolled a cigar; he put on his hat
and he started back ...
After the shovel, nothing said anything, nobody said anything ...
