The collaboration of Professors Iván A. Schulman and Manuel Pedro González on the literary accomplishments of the Cuban José Martí continues in this collection of seven essays. The purpose of the authors is to compare the contributions of Martí and the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío to Modernism, which the writers maintain is not only a literary school, but an epoch, a movement of spiritual and expressive rebellion by which the Latin American peoples achieved political maturity and independence. This approach dismisses the search for specific currents and directions of Modernism, and especially refutes the date of 1888 as the initiation of the movement with the publication in that year of Darío’s poem “Azul.” The authors insist that Modernism began some years earlier in prose efforts, and that Darío is not the father of the movement. That honor belongs to Martí, who combined the best of Spanish writing with mid-nineteenth century French writing in the Parnassian school’s emphasis on impressionism and symbolism.
Professor Schulman devotes the first essay to an examination of the term “Modernism,” with citations of opinion by such critics as Max Henríquez Ureña, and excerpts from Modernist writers, not only Martí and Darío, but also Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, José Asuncion Silva, and González Martínez. Professor Schulman’s two other essays investigate “resonances” of Martí in the prose of Rubén Darío in the period 1898-1916, and finally compare prose similarities in Martí’s “Centenario de Calderón” (1881) and Darío’s “Marcha triunfal” (1895) and “Castelar” (1899). Darío’s debt to Martí is emphasized.
Professor González writes on the evolution of Martí’s literary achievements, with ample quotation from foreign and domestic critics writing in warm praise. In another essay Professor González writes that, with the exception of Cervantes, no other writer in the Spanish language has placed so many in his debt as Martí for his creative genius, not only in the literary realm but also as a spokesman for his times and humanity. Professor González’ other essays concentrate on the one hand on Martí’s originality of style in writing in the period 1875-1880, and on the other he concedes that Daríos influence in poetry was greater than that of Martí, but insists that the latter surpasses Darío as the prose originator in Modernism. Both Professors Schulman and González present convincing evidence of Marí’s contributions to Modernism, and in so doing do not reduce the stature of Darío, but rather elevate Martí to equality with the Nicaraguan.
