SOURCE: Smith, Mark I. “José Asunción Silva: The Literary Landscape.” Romance Quarterly 29, no. 3 (1982): 283-92.

In the following essay, Smith examines the influence of Victor Hugo and other contemporary French and American writers on Silva's poetry.

The work of José Asunción Silva represents such a fine synthesis of the influences he suffered and his own original perception that there are no seams discernible. As Bernardo Gicovate has observed, “La asimilación de ideas y procedimientos heterogéneos y la absorción completa de sus lecturas en una obra variada a pesar de su exigüedad, no permite fácilmente el encuentro de reminiscencias que guíen en el estudio de las influencias extranjeras.”¹ Despite this real difficulty, however, generations of critics have devoted time to determining the precise extent and nature of such influences on the Colombian modernist's work. The reason for this continued search goes beyond...