Jose Enrique Rodo

José Enrique Camilo Rodó Piñeyro (Montevideo, July 15, 1871 - Palermo, present-day Italy, May 1, 1917), cited as José Enrique Rodó, was a Uruguayan writer and politician. Creator of Arielism, an ideological current based on an appreciation of the Greco-Roman tradition, his works expressed the Spanish-American end-of-the-century malaise with a refined and poetic style, typical of modernism.

Biography

Youth

A member of a well-off family, Rodó learned to read at the age of four, with the help of his sister, and has been an avid reader ever since. His school performance had ups and downs from the start. He began his studies at the Elbio Fernández School and Lyceum in Montevideo, where he was mainly interested in subjects such as history and literature; he entered in 1882 and the following year he had to go to another official school due to financial problems in his family, due to some failures in his father's business. He began working at the age of 14, after the death of his father, as an assistant in a notary public's studio.

Essays

He developed his journalistic facet and from 1895 his poems and articles were published in newspapers, as well as some articles of literary criticism in the National Magazine of Literature and Social Sciences (1895-1897), which he founded together with other Uruguayan intellectuals. In 1896, in the same organ, he published two essays, "El que vénera" and "La novela nueva", which he would republish together with another article in 1897 under the title La vida nueva . In these essays Rodó proposed to analyze some of the aspects that contributed to the feeling of malaise of his time. He offered a spiritual alternative with the expected arrival of a redeemer who could, according to him, establish a new life based on love, harmony and peace.

He did not finish his university studies, although in 1898, thanks to his fame as a writer and thinker, he was appointed Professor of Literature at the University of Montevideo, today the University of the Republic. In 1900 he published his masterpiece, Ariel, origin of a current called arielism.

Politics

José Enrique Rodó was part of the political life of his country as a member of the Colorado Party of José Batlle y Ordóñez: he was deputy for Montevideo in 1902 and resigned from his position in 1905, because he was disillusioned with the political reality of his country. After publishing Liberalism and Jacobinism in 1906, a compilation of his writings debating with Pedro Díaz about the removal of crucifixes from public hospitals, and as a consequence of various antagonisms, such as the Batllista idea of forming a collegiate Executive Power, he distanced himself from Batlle..

Between 1904 and 1907 he suffered a mental crisis. Despite his vital pessimism, he wrote Proteus Motives, a series of didactic articles with an optimistic tone and moderate idealism. One of the fundamental themes is regeneration, which implies that each individual has to aspire to perfection and selfless ideals, developing a harmonious balance in the process. His moral and ethical advice is expressed in many cases through parables.

In 1907 he returned to politics two more times: when he was elected deputy in 1908 and again in 1910.

Trip to Europe

He published another important essay, El mirador de Próspero, in 1913. In 1915, he devoted himself to the works of Rubén Darío, Simón Bolívar and Juan Montalvo. When his health worsened, he undertook the long-dreamed trip to Europe, appointed as a correspondent for the Argentine magazine Caras y Caretas. Between 1916 and 1917, the impressions of his trips through Spain, France and Italy were published in the magazine, in articles whose melancholic tone reflects his disappointment and sadness.

Rodó died in oblivion in a hotel in Palermo (Sicily) on May 1, 1917, at the age of 45. His remains were not transferred to Montevideo until 1920.

Influence

Rodó's essays, marked by the defense of Americanism and criticism of North American culture, had an extraordinary diffusion. His terse prose and sharp thinking have influenced generations across America. The Latin American movement of the University Reform, initiated in 1918, considered him one of the "masters of youth."

Works

José Enrique Rodó.

• The new novel (1897).
• The one who will come (1897).
• Reuben Darius. (1899).
• Ariel (1900).
• Liberalism and Jacobinism (Montevideo, 1906).
• Reasons for Proteus (Montevideo, 1909).
• The Prospero Lookout (Montevideo, 1913). - anthological work of 45 trials in which he worked since 1908. It includes, among others, "Bolívar", "Magna Patria", "Montalvo" and "Artigas".
• The way of Paros (1918).
• Reuben Darius 2. (1920).
• Epistolary (1921).
• New Protest Reasons (1927).
• Last Reasons for Proteus (1932).

In 1915 there was also Five essays: Montalvo - Ariel - Bolívar - Rubén Darío - Liberalism and Jacobinism (Madrid: Editorial América, 1915), and in 1920, Men of America: (Montalvo-Bolívar-Rubén Darío). Parliamentary speeches (Barcelona: Editorial Cervantes, 1920).

Translations

• José Enrique Rodó, Ariel: appel à la jeunesse latino-américaine, et autres textes, sélection, traduction, notes et préface de Brigitte Natanson et Emmanuelle Rimbot, Saint-Etienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 2014, 216 p. Long courriers Collection. ISBN 978-2-86272-650-2

Additional bibliography

• Get out, Hugo. “Modernization, europeization, questioning: Social lyricism in Uruguay between 1895 and 1911.” Revista Iberoamericana 47 (1981), pp. 7-32.
• Bachellier, C. C. "An Introduction for Studies on Rodó". Hispania 46.4 (December 1963): 764-769.
• Brando, Oscar and Rilla, José. Carlos Real de Azúa: the years of formation (1934-1943)- Unpublished writings about Rodó. Montevideo: National Library, 2018
• Brotherston, Gordon. “The Literary World of José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917)”. In Tribute to Luis Alberto Sánchez. Eds. Víctor Berger and Robert G. Mead, Jr. Madrid: Editorial Ínsula, 1983: 95-103.
• Concha, Jaime. “The Ariel of Rodó, or youth, ‘human treasure’.” New Critical Text 9-10 (1992), pp. 121-134.
• Earle, Peter G. "Utopia, Univerópolis, Macondo." Hispanic Review 50 (1982): 143-157.
• Earle, Peter G. "José Enrique Rodó." Latin American Writers. Vol. II. Ed. Solé/Abreu. NY: Charles Scribners Sons, 1989: II: 447-455.
• Ette, Ottmar. “That’s how Prospero spoke: Nietzsche, Rodó and Ariel’s philosophical modernity.” Hispanic American Cuadernos 528 (June 1994), pp. 49-62.
• Foster, David William. “Processes of Literaturization in Ariel de Rodó”. Explanation of Literary Texts 10.2 (1981-1982), pp. 5-14.
• González Echevarría, Roberto. "The Case of the Speaking Statue: Ariel and the Magisterial Rhetoric of the Latin American Essay." The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985: 8-32.
• Hernandez, Rafael Esteban. “Rodó and Ortega y Gasset: The idealist elite and the perspectivist.” Doctoral thesis. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee, 1983.
• Miller, Nicola. In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Latin America. London: Verse, 1999: 96-114.
• Natanson, Brigitte, Rimbot, Emmanuelle, “Vericuetos ytraps de la intertextualidad: Rodó translator del francés”, in Lafarga, Francisco, et Luis Pegenaute, Aspects of translation history in Hispanic America: authors, translations and translatorsVigo: Academy of Hispanism, “Gyambattista Vico Library” No. 27, 2012, p. 241-251.
• Pereyra-Suarez, Esther. "José Enrique Rodó and the selection in democracy." Hispania 58.2 (1975): 346-350.
• Rodó, José Enrique. Complete works. Ed. Emir Rodríguez Monegal. Second edition. Madrid: Aguilar, 1967.
• Rodríguez Alcalá, Guido. About Rodó’s “Ariel”. Assumption: Criterion Editions, 1990.
• Rodriguez Monegal, Emir. "On Rodó's Anti-Imperialism." Revista Iberoamericana 80, Vol 38 (1972): 495-501.
• Rodriguez Monegal, Emir. "The modernist utopia: the myth of the new and the old world in Darius and Rodó." Revista Iberoamericana 46 (1980): 427-442.
• Sanchez, Luis Alberto. Representative Writers of America. First series. Second edition. 3 tomos. Madrid: Gredos, 1963: Volume III, "José Enrique Rodó", 77-94.
• San Román, Gustavo. Rodó in England, Montevideo: Asociación Amigos de la Biblioteca Nacional, 2002.
• Scavino, Dardo "The Messiah of Rodó or the figure of an alternative modernity", Revista de crítica latinoamericana n.° 78, 2013, pp. 219-238.
• Sotelo Vázquez, Adolfo. “The Criticism of Clarín in the Light of José Enrique Rodó (Two articles by Rodó in the National Journal of Literature and Social Sciences, 1895).” Hispanic American Cuadernos 462 (December 1988), pp. 7-22.
• Symington, James W. "Echoes of Rodó." Americas 20.3 (March 1968): 8-13.
• Time, Caesar. "I see José Enrique Rodó." Hispania 39.3 (1956): 269-274.
• Urello, Antonio. “Ariel: referenceality and textual strategy.” Canadian Journal of Hispanic Studies 10.3 (1985-86), pp. 463-474.
• Ward, Thomas. "Rodo and the 'emptive hierarchies'. In Cultural resistance: the nation in the essay of the Americas. Lima: Universidad Ricardo Palma, 2004: 72-85.
• Ward, Thomas. "The krausist concept of beauty in Rodó" and "Beauty as a Solution", In Literary theory: romance, krausism and modernism in the face of industrial 'globalization'. University, MS: University of Mississippi, "Romance Monographs", 2004: 70-82.