Antifonario

One of the regular writers in the literary magazine Domus Aurea was Fernando María Guerrero (1873-1929), a member of a family saga that included writers such as Evangelina Guerrero (1904-1949), Nilda Guerrero Barranco, Leon María Guerrero III (1915-1982) and Carmen Guerrero Napkil (1922-2018). Guerrero was one of the first in the Philippines to change a more Romantic-rooted poetry for an aesthetic that tended towards Latin American modernismo. This is precisely what the Spanish critic Wenceslao Retana accused him of in his book La evolución de la literatura castellana en Filipinas (1909). Retana was of the opinion that Guerrero had abandoned the poetry of Castilian roots that reflected the idiosyncrasy of his homeland for a bad imitation of French poets through the translations of Latin American poets (Retana 1909: 18-19).

Guerrero acknowledges his taste for Latin American modernismo in the autobiographical note that serves as a prologue to his posthumous work, Aves y flores (1971). There he states the following: 

My third lyrical phase can be described as a simple modernist essay or essayism. The main source of this new influence-Rubén Darío. The very modern French poets co-operated with him, the "rare ones", as the late Maestro would say.

He demonstrates this in issue 3 of Domus Aurea, in which he includes some poems that already connect with Latin American modernism. The series is called Antifonario and contains the poems "Oración de toda hora", "Oración matinal", "Oración de mediodía", "Oración del crepúsculo" and "Oración de la alta noche". In them he shows his readings of other poets from outside the Philippines, mentioning, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Morning Prayer". 

If we look at "Noon Prayer", the grandiloquent aesthetics of Latin American modernism, the characteristic references to distant cultures through invocations of Mesopotamian, Greek and Egyptian gods, and the sensuality in the use of colours and temperatures are already evident. He ends, in no way by chance, by invoking the "New Art": 

Father and Lord: You, Mithra, he of the sanguine eye,
Great celestial Archer,
who penetrate all with thy luminous dart;
Thou of the red robe
with fringes and fringes of eternal ignitions;
Thou, Helios, and Thou, Osiris,
by whom lives the empire of the constellations
and the miracle of the iris is performed on the heights;
Thou, fair Emperor,
send us thy gifts,
Thy purples of glory and Thy vital warmth:
Melt with Thy coals all hearts,
So that at last, O Lord,
they may emerge from the arctic cold of their inertia and disdain,
and in a new Equator
they may receive the Spirit of the New Art. Amen.

Feria, Miguel Ángel. 2018. “El Modernismo Hispanofilipino Ante La Crítica Española (1904-1924).” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 44, num. 88: 241–66. 

Guerrero, Fernando María. 1971. Aves y flores. Manila: Ediciones Fil-Hispanas.

Retana W. E. 1909. De la Evolución de la literatura castellana en Filipinas. Los Poetas. Madrid: V. Suárez.