SOURCE: Pearsall, Priscilla. “Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera: Modernity and the Destruction of the Romantic ‘Angel Consoladora.’” In An Art Alienated from Itself: Studies in Spanish American Modernism, pp. 40-65. University, Miss.: Romance Monographs, 1984.

In the following excerpt, Pearsall considers Nájera's defense of romanticism and the changing perspectives on life and literature reflected in his poetry.

In the late summer of 1876, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera published, in a series of sections, a long article, “El arte y el materialismo,” which is often considered to be the first Modernist manifesto.¹ Many of the conflicts about literature which would continue to be present in Modernist writings were already found in this early discussion of the new art. Nájera insists that his study is a defense of poetry's spiritual nature against Positivism and its manifestations in literature, Realism and Naturalism—the “materialism” of the title—which he perceived...