SOURCE: "Rubén Darío," in Inspiration and Poetry, Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1955, pp. 242-64.

Bowra was an eminent English critic, literary scholar, and translator whose studies of classical and modern literature are known for their erudition, lucidity, and straightforward style. His books include The Heritage of Symbolism (1943) and The Creative Experiment (1949). In the following excerpt from the transcript of a lecture that was delivered in 1951, Bowra observes that Darío's fame may have exceeded his achievement, and suggests that the poet's aesthetic and literary goals likely hampered his natural talent.

Rubén Darío (1867-1916) presents a signal case of a man who had a remarkable influence on poetry but whose own achievement may seem in retrospect not fully to deserve its first renown. That he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the dazzling revival of Spanish poetry with the generation of 1898 is beyond question. At the...