Sounding The Great Vacio: The Abyss in the Poetry of Rubén Darío and Amado Nervo

Abstract

As followers of Spanish-American Modernism are aware, the focus of "Modernista" criticism has sharply shifted in recent years, moving away from an emphasis on form and technical innovations towards a greater concentration on metaphysical themes, in some cases connecting the literary movement with the so-called "Generation of 1898." What has been lacking, however, is a serious study of some of the most important Modernist imagery and how this aspect of poetic technique is actually inseparable from the philosophical themes. This paper examines the use of the image of the abyss in the poetry of Rubén Darío and Amado Nervo, tracing the development of the image into a signifier for the existential anguish suffered by both poets and its eventual shift in meaning accompanying Nervo's renewal of religious faith. In Darío's earliest poetry the image tends to be rather straightforward, associated in some cases with erotic love and in others with the seas and the heavens. However, as the poet matures, the abyss comes to represent an internal void created by a loss of faith, as one sees in such poems as "La fuente," "Yo soy aquel... ," and "Venus." In Nervo's poetry the "abismo" is used to represent the same doubt and anguish, as is the case in "A Felipe II," "Yo no nací para reír," and "La sombra del ala," though it eventually becomes a metaphor for death or what may await us after death, especially in the collection La amada inmóvil. Later in life, after Nervo regains his faith, the image comes to represent God, as exemplified by the poems "Inaccesible" and "La lección," thus bringing the cycle of an image that was originally associated with doubt to a tidy close.