SOURCE: Craig, G. Dundas. “José Asunción Silva.” In The Modernist Trend in Spanish-American Poetry, pp. 251-54. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934.

In the following essay, Craig discusses Silva as a member of the group of Spanish-American writers associated with the early Modernist movement.

José Asunción Silva was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1865, and died there in 1896. He is properly regarded as one of the precursors of the Modernist movement, and is so grouped along with Julián del Casal, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, and José Martí by Arturo Torres-Ríoseco in his volume, Precursores del modernismo (Madrid, 1925). Blanco Fombona has asserted that Rubén Darío drew some of his inspiration from Asunción Silva;¹ but this is unlikely. The poems of Silva did not appear in book form till 1908, twelve years after the author's death. During his lifetime they circulated among his friends or...