Darío, Rubén (1867–1916)

Nicaraguan poet. His first major work Azul/Azure (1888), a collection of prose and verse influenced by French Symbolism, created a sensation. He went on to establish modernismo, the Spanish-American modernist literary movement, distinguished by an idiosyncratic and deliberately frivolous style that broke away from the prevailing Spanish provincialism and adapted French poetic models. His vitality and eclecticism influenced every poet writing in Spanish after him, both in the New World and in Spain.