SOURCE: "Rubén Darío's Final Profession of Pythagorean Faith," in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. X, No. 20, Spring-Summer, 1982, pp. 7-18.

In the following essay, Jensen traces the influence of theosophic Pythagoreanism on Darío's poetry, noting his classical and Christian sources and the prevalent tensions in his works.

Because of their richness, and the multiple currents encountered in his works, and perhaps the paradoxes and eccentricities of his life, scholars have been reluctant to hypothesize that any one of countless ideologías [ideologies] or manías [whims] manifested in Rubén Darío's writings might be predominant. Consequently, while some analysts have begun to point to Pythagoreanism as a strong influence on the Nicaraguan bard, only Raymond Skyrme [in his Rubén Darío and the Pythagorean Tradition, 1975] and Erika Lorenz [in her Rubén Darío bajo el divino imperio de la música, 1960] have come...