3 - Latin American poetry, c. 1920–1950

Summary

introduction

Before the blossoming of narrative in the second half of the twentieth century poetry occupied a pre-eminent position and role in the world of Latin American literature. Before Borges, the short-story writer, interest and attention focused more on Borges as a poet; or on the Peruvian poet, César Vallejo, and the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, whose Canto general burst upon the scene in 1950, dividing the century into equal halves and becoming the prime testimony of Latin American consciousness. The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral in 1945, more than two decades before the Central American novelist Miguel Angel Asturias, in 1967; it was awarded to Neruda himself, in 1971, more than a decade before the Colombian novelist, Gabriel García Márquez, in 1982. With the help of these four representative names, it is possible to observe a swing from poetry to narrative prose in the central forces that shape the literary process. The first half of the twentieth century is in fact characterized by the special relevance of poetry; without this antecedent and example, the emergence of narrative would be incomprehensible.

Although from Vasconcelos to Paz and from Mariátegui to Salazar Bondy the essay also contributed to the development of Latin American cultural identity, it was poetry that first crossed national frontiers, formulating a global reality which reached the Spanish world as a whole. This situation had existed since Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867–1916), whose most mature poetry—the poems in Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905)—was in one way a search for a cultural definition of the Spanish-speaking peoples.