El modernismo en el arte

Domus Aurea was a literary magazine launched in1908. It featured the country's most prominent writers and often discussed both Filipino and Latin American modernist literature. Directed by Sixto Roses, writers of two generations passed through the magazine: those who were already developing solid works at the end of the 19th century, such as Pedro A. Paterno, and those writers, especially poets, who triumphed in the first half of the 20th century, such as Fernando María Guerrero, Cecilio Apóstol, Jesús Balmori, Manuel Bernabé, Epifanio de los Santos and Pacífico Victoriano. Prose writers and intellectuals who were politically relevant in the early years of American colonization, such as Teodoro M. Kálaw, Rafael Palma, and Jaime de Veyra, also contributed to the magazine.

Domus Aurea, which included both original literary works and studies on the literature, architecture, art, and culture of Latin America and the Philippines, published five issues from its launching in June 1908. It promoted so-called "modernista" works from Spain, other parts of Europe –especially France– and Latin America, which were on sale to subscribers at a substantial discount at the Manila Filatélica bookshop.

The magazine had the added value of contributing to disprove the idea (originated by Spanish diplomat Luis Mariñas Otero) that modernism arrived in the Philippines through the Malaga poet Salvador Rueda in 1914 (Mariñas Otero 1974, 60).

Issue 3 of the magazine features a dissertation by Sixto Roses on Modernism in art, in which he traces the origins of Latin American modernism to the French Parnassian school and quotes the Guatemalan modernist writer Enrique Gómez Carrillo and Rubén Darío, of whom he speaks as follows:

Rubén Darío is the highly original, refined bard who revolutionised poetry, master of the novelties of rhythm, of the exquisite expressions of the sensitised language, of the curious lyrical flights, pretending to paint the intimate vibrations of the soul. Vague, complicated, symbolic, slightly Versaillesque, he chiselled his verses like an impeccable sculptor. In "Prosas Profanas", "Cantos de Vida y de Esperanza", in "Los Raros", he is Hellenic in form, strange, swayed by reverie.

It is therefore obvious that modernist literature was known years before Salvador Rueda's arrival in Manila.

The magazine also includes a chronicle of the gatherings at the Euterpe club, where lectures, poems and musical pieces were read and performed. In July 1908, the then young poet Jesús Balmori gave a lecture at the club, also entitled "El modernismo en el arte", which, according to Sixto Roses, 

was an amalgam of erudition and elegance, the modernismo that the poet gave us. He spoke of the tendencies, the novelty, and the future triumph of this school: more than a dissertation against archaic dogmas, and a superb vision of freedom in art, with his highly suggestive style, it was a lyrical talk.

Álvarez Tardío, Beatriz. 2019. “‘Un bizarro poema de granito al infinito’: Modernismo and National-building in Philippine Poetry in Spanish. Unitas 92(1). May 2019. Pp. 167-199.

Barrera, Beatriz. 2019. “Razones del Modernismo hispanoamericano en Bancarrota de almas de Jesús Balmori”. Unitas 92(1). May 2019. Pp. 200-228.

Donoso, Isaac. 2013. “Crónica de Filipinas en la poesía de Zoilo Hilario”. Kritika Kultura 20. Pp. 205-231.