La vida modernista del ‘yo’ : sobre el archivo en algunos escritos autobiográficos de Rubén Darío

Abstract

Based on a series of autobiographical texts by Rubén Darío, this essay aims at reflecting on the notion of archive as it intersects with the pro-blems inherent to the “writings of the self.” My analysis focuses on the autobiographical impulse of the late Darío, who, faced with the first glo-bal crisis of the twentieth century –that is, the first Great War–, revisits his writings in the chronicles known as Historia de mis libros (1913). These texts can be read as an archive, that is, as the product of cataloguing his own works according to multiple criteria, which are not necessarily har-monious. The position from which this archive is constituted is that of an authorial subject who declares to have a panoramic view of his work and who can, therefore, control it. However, the cracks in the cohesion of this archive run through the texts and emerged for decades in critical approaches. In this context, I seek to reposition Darío’s autobiographies as an avant-garde narrative that can be foreseen in the aesthetic and po-litical project of Los Raros (1896-1905), a demystification of the great cultural monuments of the 19th century.