Rubén Darío
Rubén Darío is a famous poet who pioneered a literary movement titled ‘Modernismo’ and changed the face of Spanish literature.
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, known to literature as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who launched the Spanish-American literary movement known as Modernismo. Born on 18 January 1867 in Metapa (now Ciudad Darío), Nicaragua, he died on 6 February 1916 in León, Nicaragua, at the age of 49.
A precocious reader and writer, he published his first newspaper poems before turning thirteen and travelled to Chile in 1886, where he produced Azul… (1888), the slim volume of verse and short prose generally taken to mark the birth of Modernismo. Drawing on French Parnassianism and Symbolism, he refreshed Spanish-language poetry's vocabulary, metrical range, and imagery of swans, princesses, and exotic landscapes.
Subsequent collections Prosas profanas y otros poemas (1896) and Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905) deepened his work, the latter introducing more meditative reflections on identity, mortality, and the political pressures that the United States was bringing to bear on Latin America. The poem "A Roosevelt" stands as one of the period's most quoted political verses in Spanish.
He served as a diplomat for Nicaragua, Colombia, and Argentina at various points, living for long stretches in Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Paris. Alcoholism eroded his health, and he returned to Nicaragua in 1915 to die the following year. He is buried beneath the cathedral of León beside a marble lion.
The name Rubén is the Spanish form of Reuben, from the Hebrew Re'uven, traditionally interpreted as "behold, a son". It is the name of the eldest son of Jacob in the Book of Genesis, and he carried it through the entire arc of modern Spanish-language poetry.