Overview

A study of Hispanic planetary modernism’s use of prophetic discourse as an attempt to counter modern nihilism and provide modernity with poetry as its new Scripture. Traditional studies of established literary modernisms (such as in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) have long acknowledged the prophetic authority and tragic struggle for sacredness within modernity. As Poetics of Prophecy and Planetary Hispanic Modernism argues, the aesthetic and ideological phenomenon of the Vates (or prophetic) poet is also present in the rich tradition of Hispanic literature that spans more than 20 countries. However, the later modernization of Spain and Spanish America postpones its adoption until the advent of literary modernism. Matthew Fehskens shows that this prophetic role is consistent across multiple poets in Europe, Spanish America, and the United States and constitutes a fundamental aspect of the transatlantic production of modernism in Spanish. The phenomenon is wide ranging, from the movement’s founding authors, such as Cuban José Martí and Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, to Uruguayan poets Delmira Agustini and María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, and Spanish authors Antonio Machado, Miguel de Unamuno, and Ramón del Valle Inclán. Hispanic modernism had lofty aims, namely to speak poetic words of divine import to a culture ravaged by the Age of Reason and the materialism of modernity. Its authors aimed to transcend the limitations of literature, reason, and a disenchanted culture to create modern scriptures. This study demonstrates the centrality of prophecy in the development of Hispanic poetry in modernity.

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Reviews

This is a highly engaging study of the prophetic mode across poetic genres and in conjunction with figures as varied as Henri Bergson, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Ignatius of Loyola. Through this analysis, Matthew Fehskens makes an impactful contribution to ongoing efforts for greater consideration of Hispanic modernism in transatlantic and trans-European contexts. * Elizabeth Drumm, John and Elizabeth Yeon Professor of Spanish and Humanities, Reed College, USA * Poetics of Prophecy and Planetary Hispanic Modernism is an effective and innovative retelling of the Hispanic modernist story by way of Henri Bergson’s secular prophetic framework. In this way, the book positions modernist writers in a global sphere in dialogue with themes, texts, writers, and traditions that creates a cohesive literary movement transformative in their approach to modernity at the turn of the 20th century. This framing positions the book as an essential contribution to modernist studies and Spanish American modernista criticism. * Andrew R. Reynolds, Professor of Spanish Language and Literature, Texas Tech University, USA *

Author Information

Matthew Fehskens is Associate Professor of Spanish at East Tennessee State University, USA. He is a scholar of Hispanic modernism, a translator, and an author of short stories. Most recently he published From the Air to the Hand, an anthology of translated poems by Colombian poet Armando Romero (2021). His research focuses on the transnational and decolonial dimensions of literary modernism in Spanish, and he has published on travel literature, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and the overlap of word and image in poetic self-portraits in modernismo.

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