Professor Fein has divided his study into four chapters and four appendices: Chapter I, The Second Period of Modernismo in Chile; Chapter II, Revista cómica, Periodical of Transition; Chapter III, Pluma y lápiz, the Movement’s Workshop; and Chapter IV, Francisco Contreras, Theoretician of Modernismo. The appendices consist of Contreras’ introduction to Raúl, an index to the Revista cómica, a bibliography of Contreras, and a general bibliography.
Chapter I gives us a panoramic view of the leadership and trends of the second period. The first period, consisting only of Rubén Darío, had a leader without followers, whereas the second period comprised a school without a leader. Three poetic currents are noted in this period, decadentismo, criollismo, and humanitarian poetry. The aesthetic conclusion of modernismo seems to have come in 1908 with the publication of Pedro Prado’s first book, Flores de cardo. In 1905, when Cantos de vida y esperanza appeared, the descent from the ivory tower had already been accomplished in Chile.
The Revista cómica was published from August 1895 to March 1898. Its stated purpose was to “reír y llorar con las cosas diarias, sin odios para nadie, sin adulos para nadie … y sin pretensiones” (pp. 42-43). It afforded a climate of tolerance towards experimentation, and the bulk of its material was non-modernista in content. Pluma y lápiz, one of the least known organs of modernismo in Chile, was published from December 1900 to July 1904. It served as an outlet for young, untried authors, and it was more of a general than a literary review. It contained a strange mixture of cosmopolitanism and isolationism, the feeling that modernismo in Chile had little literary contact with other countries. A new Pluma y lápiz appeared briefly in 1912.
Fein portrays Francisco Contreras as one of the most productive and least understood of the Chilean modernistas. He was editor of the Spanish American section of the Mercure de France for twenty-two years. His column in the Mercure is considered his greatest literary contribution, and Contreras did more than other writers of the period to spread Latin American literature in France and in Europe.
The author has produced a painstakingly thorough investigation of a neglected period in Chilean literature. The work is interesting and valuable not only for the new information on modernismo in Chile but also for the link which it provides to the next generation of writers.
