The younger generation was drawn to this art by purely psychological motives. The Spanish character had become refined by its new environment; weakened, perhaps, but it had gained a keener intelligence and a greater wealth of fantasy. Chiaroscuro and subtle shades, such as the French delight in, delighted the Creole also, partial as he was to finesse, to a delicate Byzantism, and gracefully sceptical of the robust Spanish faith. Then there were hosts of half-castes, in whom the inimical heredities of two races were in painful conflict. The strangest characteristics—the sensuality of the negro and the melancholy of the Indian—gave the new race a spiritual personality full of contradictory characteristics; melancholy but not without optimism; the desires of a faun or a satyr, violent or languid; and a love of the rare and unusual, of verbal music, of complication in the matter of feeling, of carefully chosen language and unfamiliar rhythms. Reading Verlaine, Samain, Laforgue, Moréas, Henri de Régnier, and not as yet forgetting Gautier and Banville; mingling all cults and asking intoxication from every flagon, the poets of America have struck the national chord. Symbolism has been of little assistance; it calls for a lofty conception of the world and a profound sense of mystery. They much prefer decadence in art, because of its musical lyric quality, its exotic images, and its melancholy rhythms. An elective affinity, to use Goethe's phrase, has enabled them to draw an individual music from the foreign instrument.
So new metres and old fashions refurbished, modern images in sonorous and tortuous measures, all that in Europe was the voice of ennui, the tardy fruit of a world grown old, a Baudelairian art, the art of refined scepticism, was made to serve a young generation in love with life for the expression of its ambitions. This reform has reached Spain; the initiate has captivated the initiator, as in the drama of Renan. The recent voices of Spanish poetry follow that of the pontiff of the new school, Ruben Dario. Similarly Brazil has influenced Portuguese poetry, and, according to Theophilo Braga, surpasses it.
German and French romanticism revived the old forgotten chansons de geste, the despised poetry of the Gothic school; they charmed by the rude naturalism of the primitive legends. Similarly the modernists of America have renewed Spanish literature by listening to the ingenuous voice of Berceo and the more melancholy accents of Manrique. The result is that they are more traditionalist than the classic writers of the seventeenth century, whose intolerance so impoverished the language.
This renaissance is of barely twenty years' date. Certain forerunners—Marti and Julien del Casal, both Cubans, one a revolutionary in politics as in poetry, the other a man of tragic life, and Gutierrez Najera in Mexico—revealed the new poetic speech to a continent weary of sentimentalism. New or unfamiliar rhythms and agile metres were the vehicle of a new and intimate lyrical passion. But the note was not as yet decadent: Banville and Gautier, and De Musset, even, had not yet given way to Verlaine, who was as unknown as Mallarmé. A Venezuelan critic, Pedro Emilio Coll, drew attention to the persistent cult among the "American decadents," of the great Theodore, and of the author of Funambulesques. In the Azul of Ruben Dario he noted the influence of Mendès and Loti, even that of Daudet and the realists of his school, rather than the influence of symbolism.[[13]]
By the vivacity and brilliance of his verse, Manuel Guttierrez Nájera reminds one of Banville. He sings in a new key, at once Creole and exotic, the complicated sensations which are presently to torment Ruben Dario. Spanish verse had never yet held such grace and spirit, nor this sensuality appeased by tears, nor this proud and reserved melancholy. A Cecilia, Vidas Muertas, Castigadas, Mariposas—these contained a new lyric poetry, elegiac and tender, an unknown rhythm, a forgotten manner. He was a forerunner. Who does not know his lines upon the spoiled child whom he loves?
"No hay en el mundo mujer mas linda!
Pié de Andaluza, boca de guinda,
Esprit rociado de Veuve Cliquot,
Talle de avispa, cutis de ala,
Ojos traviesos de colegiala,
Como los ojos de Louise Théo."[[14]]
He is not always so frivolous. Mystery torments him; he knows the bitterness of vanished illusions; a pessimist, he has a vision of the moths of death "which have such black wings, and encircle us in a funereal round." The monologue of the unbeliever is a lament like that of Sigismond de Calderon upon the vanity of life:—
"Si es castigo ¿ cual pecado,
Sin saberlo, cometimos?
Si premio ¿ porque ganado?
Sin haberlo demandado,
Responded ¿ porqué vivimos?"[[15]]
Poems and chronicles are filled with a like restlessness and trouble. He writes Odes worthy of an anthology; he translates De Musset and Coppee. His master is Gautier: he shares his love of the light; he sings, in love with ideal whiteness:—
"¿ Qué cosa más blanca que cándido lirio?
¿ Qué cosa más pura que místico cirio?
¿ Que cosa mas casta que tierno azahar?"[[16]]