So new metres and old fashions refurbished, modern images in sonorous and tortuous measures, all that in Europe was the voice of ennui, the tardy fruit of a world grown old, a Baudelairian art, the art of refined scepticism, was made to serve a young generation in love with life for the expression of its ambitions. This reform has reached Spain; the initiate has captivated the initiator, as in the drama of Renan. The recent voices of Spanish poetry follow that of the pontiff of the new school, Ruben Dario. Similarly Brazil has influenced Portuguese poetry, and, according to Theophilo Braga, surpasses it.
German and French romanticism revived the old forgotten _chansons de geste_, the despised poetry of the Gothic school; they charmed by the rude naturalism of the primitive legends. Similarly the modernists of America have renewed Spanish literature by listening to the ingenuous voice of Berceo and the more melancholy accents of Manrique. The result is that they are more traditionalist than the classic writers of the seventeenth century, whose intolerance so impoverished the language.
This renaissance is of barely twenty years' date. Certain forerunners--Marti and Julien del Casal, both Cubans, one a revolutionary in politics as in poetry, { 261} the other a man of tragic life, and Gutierrez Najera in Mexico--revealed the new poetic speech to a continent weary of sentimentalism. New or unfamiliar rhythms and agile metres were the vehicle of a new and intimate lyrical passion. But the note was not as yet decadent: Banville and Gautier, and De Musset, even, had not yet given way to Verlaine, who was as unknown as Mallarmé. A Venezuelan critic, Pedro Emilio Coll, drew attention to the persistent cult among the "American decadents," of the great Theodore, and of the author of _Funambulesques_. In the _Azul_ of Ruben Dario he noted the influence of Mendès and Loti, even that of Daudet and the realists of his school, rather than the influence of symbolism.[13]
By the vivacity and brilliance of his verse, Manuel Guttierrez Nájera reminds one of Banville. He sings in a new key, at once Creole and exotic, the complicated sensations which are presently to torment Ruben Dario. Spanish verse had never yet held such grace and spirit, nor this sensuality appeased by tears, nor this proud and reserved melancholy. _A Cecilia_, _Vidas Muertas_, _Castigadas_, _Mariposas_--these contained a new lyric poetry, elegiac and tender, an unknown rhythm, a forgotten manner. He was a forerunner. Who does not know his lines upon the spoiled child whom he loves?