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1 Delmira Agustini, el modernismo y el romanticismo.

María Alejandra España Calvano.

Agosto 2022.

Colegio Externado Caro y Cuervo.

Español.
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Montevideo, 1886 - 1914) Delmira Agustini was an Uruguayan poetess, ascribed to

modernism, who with her lyric poetry inaugurated the trajectory of women's poetry of the

20th century in the South American continent. Her works were linked to the modernist

movement, which was mostly dominated by men, even so Agustini had the admiration of

the main figures of the time such as Rubén Darío, Miguel de Unamuno and Manuel Ugarte.

Some of her most important works were: Los cálices vacíos, El libro blanco, among others.

The general tone of her poetry is erotic, melancholic, a little somber with waves of

beauty and originality, Delmira deepens her verses towards the soul, romanticism and the

body, so she takes her taste towards romanticism showing that somber side full of dark

scenarios and gloomy character. Agustini uses romanticism as the expression that unifies

the moments of desolation, so she shows us the nakedness of her spirit in her works full of

feelings, with a common problem in most of her works, love. This is how we find, albeit

briefly, the influence of romanticism in Delmira's poems.

To a greater extent the Uruguayan author is linked to the modernist current, which

we know is that taste for novelty, leaving in the past the old literary and artistic forms, is an

original expression of renewal, and this is what Agustini shows with her lyrical work,

joining a scarce movement of women authors.

As shown in her poem "Tu dormías":

You slept

Set in my hands gleamed

Like a strange jewel your head;

I devised cases for her, and I cherished

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Light to light, shadow to shadow your beauty.

In your eyes, perhaps, life was concentrated

Life, like a filter of sadness

In two deep glasses...I dreamt

That your head was a marble flower...

When on your moon-shaped forehead..,

Like a monster in the peace of a lagoon..,

There arose an enormous taciturn reverie...

Ah! Thy head frightened me...An unknown life flowed

flowed from it an unknown life...it looked like

I don't know what anonymous and nocturnal world...

We can evidence the mark of romanticism and love in the first quatrain, since the

author presents a love scene in which she idealized the beauty and certain possibility of full

knowledge of the beloved, Delmira also carries the image of feelings, she bares her soul

showing the love she had for this subject. In the same way, the general tone that Agustini
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uses in her poems is explicitly felt, which is sad and melancholic "In your eyes perhaps life

was concentrated, like a filter of sadness", in these lines of the poem we notice that tone of

sadness to describe the scene that the author relates, describing in a profound way the

feeling that is reflected in the face of her beloved.

We know beforehand that modernism seeks originality and renewal inspired by

nature and with a strong characteristic that is to highlight the individual and his inner

strength, this is how we find the strong influence of this movement in Agustini's work

"Cuando en tu frente nacarada a luna, como un monstruo en la paz de una laguna", here she

highlights the inspiration of nature and how she associates it with the image of her beloved.

In the same way she also highlights the individual, in this case it is the image of her

beloved, how she idealizes him and represents the strength of her feelings.

Bibliography

Alvar, M. (2014). Delmira Agustini's contribution to modernism. Her theory of love

. Bogotá: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.

etece. (2022). INFORMACIÓN Y CARACYERÍSTICAS DEL MODERNISMO.

Bogotá: etece.

Fernández, T. y. (2004). Biografia de Delmira Agustini. Bogotá: Biografías y Vidas.

Varas, P. (2014). Delmira Agustini and the "feminization" of modernism . Bogotá:

Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.

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