Martí and Darío 7/7/19

Given Walt Whitman’s notoriety as a poet, it comes as no surprise that José Martí and Rubén Darío admired his poetry enough to emulate it. Darío’s “Fatality” and Martí’s “I Am an Honest Man” both share elements in keeping with Whitman’s poetic style, including his discusses of nature and death in “Song of Myself.”

Although the Norton Anthology only provides one of Martí’s poems as a comparison, the example offers plenty of similarities to Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Whitman toys with his sense of mortality in “52” of his poem, saying “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow” (ln 10, 653). In a similar fashion, Martí expresses his honesty “before I die” (3). Both poets wished to express themselves before death came knocking, and both men harnessed this whim to create poetic harmony.

Of the selected poems from Darío, “Fatality” contained several elements reminiscent of Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Darío particularly captured the simplicity of existing as an element of nature in comparison to living as a human being -- conscious of one’s mortality. The tree and the rock have no worries or fears, unlike Darío’s concerns about the future and all its possibilities (695). In “7” Whitman contemplates the fine line he walks between birth and death, realizing that birth inevitably brings death (1-4).

The saying that imitation is a form of flattery holds true when comparing Darío and Martí’s poems to the writing style of Whit Whitman. Between the two poems analyzed here, the senior poet’s influence clearly inspired his contemporaries to strive for similar poetic beauty.

Works Cited
Darío, Rubén. “Fatality.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Gen. ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter Third edition. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 695. Print.
Martí, José. “I Am an Honest Man.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Gen. ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter Third edition. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 681-682. Print.
Whitman, Walt. “From Song of Myself.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Gen. ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter Third edition. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 648-653. Print.