SOURCE: Pearsall, Priscilla. “Julián Del Casal: Modernity and the Art of the Urban Interior.” In An Art Alienated from Itself: Studies in Spanish American Modernism, pp. 11-39. University, Miss.: Romance Monographs, Inc., 1984.

In the following essay, Pearsall explains Casal's concept of modernity, tracing the influence of other poets, such as Baudelaire, on his work.

Of all of the Modernist writers, none was more concerned with the problem of literary modernity than Julián del Casal. He wrote one of Modernism's most thoughtful definitions of modern art when he examined, in his review of Aurelia Castillo de González's long poem Pompeya, the European authors of his time whom he admired, and defined them as modern because

en sus obras se reflejan, como en bruñido espejo, el malestar permanente, el escepticismo profundo, la amargura intensa, las aspiraciones indefinidas y el pesimismo sombrío, frutos amargos y ponzo...