Introduction
WITH the death of Rubén Darío, the Spanish language loses its greatest poet of to-day,—the greatest because of the aesthetic value and the historical significance of his work. No one, since the times of Góngora and Quevedo, has wielded an influence comparable, in renewing power, to Darío’s. Zorrilla's influence, for instance, was enormous, but not in the sense of a true innovation: when it spread, the romantic movement he represented was already the dominant force in our literature. Darío did much more, in prosody and in style as well as in the spirit of poetry. Darío's victory was not without surprising elements,—especially because, born in the New World, he was unreservedly acclaimed by the intellectual groups of our former metropolis, Madrid. The homage of the Spanish writers to Darío was great and sincere. Even Royal Academicians, in spite of the timidity natural in traditional institutions, paid signal tribute to his genius. Upon the news of his death, the writers and artists of Spain, headed by Valle-Inclán (the greatest literary force in the present generation), organized a movement to erect a monument to his memory in the royal gardens of the Buen Retiro.
Darío began, when very young, writing quite within
