The Aesthetic Imaginary in Ruben Darío”s Azul (1888): Anxiety and Cultural Hybridity at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the construction of a cultural, political and aesthetic hybridity in two poems of Azul (“Estival” and “Anagke”). In these poems, Dario presents the reader with a complex cultural vision of Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century. The poems analyzed show a sort of cultural anxiety as a product of the capitalist modernization, the new circuits of consumption, a new and wider reading public and, finally, the modern function of the writer in a society in constant acceleration. My contention is that the cultural and political transformations of the period engender a mix of literary traditions and cultural imaginaries that create new ways of writing.