Rubén Darío

However, Manuel's conduct of allegedly engaging in excessive consumption of alcohol prompted Rosa to abandon her conjugal home and flee to the city of Metapa (modern Ciudad Darío) in Matagalpa where she gave birth to Félix Rubén.[6] Around December 1881 he moved to the capital, Managua, at the request of some liberal politicians that had conceived the idea that, given his gift for poetry, he should be educated in Europe at the expense of the public treasury.[7] Although he enjoyed much fame and an intense social life in El Salvador, participating in celebrations such as the centenary of the birth of Simón Bolívar, things began to get worse.The book was not an immediate success, but was well received by the influential Spanish novelist and literary critic Juan Valera, who published in the Madrid newspaper El Imparcial, in October 1888, two letters addressed to Darío, in which, although reproaching him for the excessive French influence in his writings (Valera's used the expression "galicismo mental" or 'mental Gallicism'), he recognized in Darío "[a] un prosista y un poeta de talento" ("a prose writer and poet of talent").[citation needed] The newly attained fame allowed Darío to obtain the position of newspaper correspondent for La Nación of Buenos Aires, which was at the time the most heavily circulated periodical in Hispanic America.In León, he was received as a guest of honor, but his stay in Nicaragua was brief, and he moved to San Salvador, where he was named director of the periodical La Unión which was in favor of creating a unified Central American state.The coup was mainly engineered by general Carlos Ezeta, who had been a guest at Darío's wedding, which ended with the death of his wife, which led him to remarry for a brief period, only for him to separate very shortly thereafter.Three months later, the periodical which Darío was editing, El Correo de la Tarde, ceased receiving government subsidies, which forced it to close.During the trip to Spain, Darío made a stop in Havana, where he met Julián del Casal and other artists, such as Aniceto Valdivia and Raoul Cay.Among those with whom he interacted frequently were poets Gaspar Núñez de Arce, José Zorrilla and Salvador Rueda; novelists Juan Valera and Emilia Pardo Bazán; erudite Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo; and several distinguished politicians such as Emilio Castelar and Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.His position as the Colombian consul was merely honorific, since, as Darío has stated in his autobiography: "no había casi colombianos en Buenos Aires y no existían transacciones ni cambios comerciales entre Colombia y la República Argentina.Darío arrived in Spain committed to sending four chronicles per month to La Nación about the prevalent mood in the Spanish nation after the defeat it suffered to the United States of America, and the loss of its colonial possessions; Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam.In Spain, Darío won the admiration of a group of young poets who defended Modernism (a literary movement that was not absolutely accepted by the most established writers, especially those belonging to the Real Academia Española.)[citation needed] In 1899, Rubén Darío, who was still legally married to Rosario Murillo, met Francisca Sánchez del Pozo in the Casa de Campo of Madrid.In April 1900, Darío visited Paris for a second time, commissioned by La Nación to cover the Exposition Universelle that took place that year in the French capital city.That year he published, in Madrid, the third of his most important poetry books, Cantos de vida y esperanza, los cisnes y otros poemas, edited by Juan Ramón Jiménez.Some of his most memorable poems came to light in 1905, like "Salutación del optimista" and "A Roosevelt", in which he extols Hispanic traits in the face of the threat of United States imperialism.Eres los Estados Unidos, eres el futuro invasor de la América ingenua que tiene sangre indígena, que aún reza a Jesucristo y aún habla en español You are the United States you are the future invader of the naive America that has indigenous blood that still prays to Jesus Christ and that still speaks Spanish In 1906 he participated as secretary of the Nicaraguan delegation to the Third Pan-American Conference held in Rio de Janeiro where he was inspired to write his poem "Salutación del águila", which offers a view of the United States very different from that offered in prior poems:In Paris, he reunited with Francisca and together they spent the winter of 1907 on the island of Mallorca, which he later frequented the company of Gabriel Alomar, a futurist poet, and painter Santiago Rusiñol.However, the Nicaraguan government changed while Darío was abroad, and Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz refused to receive the writer, an attitude that was probably influenced by United States diplomacy.In his autobiography, Darío relates those protests with the Mexican Revolution, which was about to occur:For the first time in thirty three years of absolute control, the house of the old Caesarean emperor had been stoned.[15] In light of the slight by the Mexican government, Darío left for La Habana, where, under the effects of alcohol, he attempted to commit suicide, perhaps triggered by the way he had been scorned.To promote said publications, he went on tour in Latin America visiting, among other cities, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Montevideo and Buenos Aires.The funeral lasted several days, and he was interred in the city's cathedral on 13 February 1973 at the base of the statue of Saint Paul near the chancel under a lion made of marble by the sculptor Jorge Navas Cordonero."[18]Los raros is an illustrative volume regarding literary tastes, which he published on the same year as Prosas profanas, and dedicated to briefly glossing some of the writers and intellectuals towards whom he felt profound admiration.Conscious of contemporaneous Spanish decadence in politics and the arts (a preoccupation he shared with the so-called Generation of '98), he frequently was inspired by characters and elements of the past.Regarding authors in other languages, it is worth mentioning that he felt a profound admiration towards three writers from the United States: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman.The evolution of Darío's poetry is marked by the publication of the books in which scholars have recognized his fundamental works: Azul... (1888), Prosas profanas y otros poemas (1896) y Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905).In 1905, he published Cantos de vida y esperanza, which announces a more intimate and reflexive trend in his works, without renouncing to the themes that have become linked to the identity of Modernism.Since everything is prepared, a priest arrives at the house of Francisco Solórzano Lacayo, one of Andrés' brothers in law: who has made sure Rubén had plenty of whiskey and in this drunken state he proceeds to the religious marriage, the only type allowed in Nicaragua, on 8 March 1893.