Poets

Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo (modernism) that flourished at the end of the nineteenth century. Darío has had a great and lasting influence on twentieth-century Spanish literature and journalism. He has been praised as the "Prince of Castilian Letters" and undisputed father of the modernismo literary movement. Darío is revered as Nicaragua's greatest diplomat and a leading voice of Central and South America.

French poetry was a determinant influence in Dario's formation as a poet. In the first place, the romantics, particularly Victor Hugo. Later on, and in a decisive fashion, Dario was influenced by the parnassians: Théophile Gautier, Catulle Mendès, and José María de Heredia. The final defining element of Darianian esthetic is his admiration towards the symbolists, most importantly, Paul Verlaine.[13] Recapitulating his own poetic trajectory in the initial poem of Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905) Dario himself synthesized his main influences when he affirms that he was "strong with Hugo and ambiguous with Verlaine" ("con Hugo fuerte y con Verlaine ambiguo".)

In the section "Palabras Liminares" of Prosas Profanas (1896) Dario had already written a paragraph that reveals the importance of French culture in the development of his literary work:

The old Spaniard with a white beard points towards a series of illustrious portraits: "This one -he says- is the..