"Mártir del mismo martirio": Agustini y Darío

Abstract

The last decades have seen a generalized reading of the poetry written by Delmira Agustini as reply to the work of Rubén Darío and in general, as an ironic overcoming of Modernist canon. The effort in highlighting Agustini’s feminist discourse has somehow concealed or even denied her equally strong communion with the basic principles of Modernism, while transforming in subversive reading what in fact was a complex, deep mastery shared with Darío, whom she called “mi Dios en el arte” [My God in Art]. This settled interpretation has cast into oblivion many of her central poems, while relegating Agustini to a mere erotic author despite the triad poetry-poem-poet greatly overcomes eroticism in her writings, and shows a remarkable depth. Agustini was aware of the misogynist art codification of the Modernist poets, including Darío, but she understood it as the reflection in the literary field of a hegemonic patriarchal ideology that she was already suffering in her public and private life and work. As a woman, Agustini not only had to face the conflicts and challenges aroused from that codification, but also the prejudices against women authors that modernists had, despite being totally renegades in other matters, refusing to admit her as a member of the literary circle. Agustini suffered the limitations imposed by the modernist sexist views and the social prejudices on her work capacity. However, this author never rejected the ideological and intellectual background of the literary movement and committed herself to the mission of Modernist poetry against the bourgeois, even standing alone against the role that the movement itself assigned to her. In this commitment Darío was a leading figure to the very end, a ‘martyr of the same martyrdom’, evoked in her poems as a symbolic father, brother or partner to harmonize with. Thus, this paper calls into question the alleged negative vision of Agustini on Darío’s work, providing an analysis of the hue left by this brother-master. Beyond the recurring mentions to Leda and the Swan, we aim to identify the sociological and poetical consequences of placing Agustini as a woman literary figure within Modernism.