Rufino Blanco Fombona: Promoter of literary modernism in Venezuela (+Christmas)

On June 17, 1874, in the city of Caracas, Rufino Blanco Fombona, a writer, poet, politician and prominent promoter of literary modernism, was born.

His participation in the Legalist Revolution and his spirit of combating conservatism led him to be part of the editors of the magazines El Cojo Ilustrado and Cosmópola.

In his political and diplomatic life, he worked as a politician, he was the Venezuelan consul in Philadelphia. Back in the country, he joined the opposition against Juan Vicente Gómez, and was imprisoned between 1909 and 1910. Upon his release from prison, he went into exile in Europe, where he lived for 26 years and dedicated himself to extensive editorial work.

His exile led him to live in Paris (1910-1914), and then in Madrid (1914-1936). In Spain he continued his work as a writer and founded the Casa Editorial América in 1916, designed for the dissemination of forgotten authors and books with detailed prologues and illustrative notes.

During his exile, his friends from Spain and Latin America unluckily proposed him to the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. His opposition to the dictatorship in Spain of Miguel Primo de Rivera allowed him, with the support of the Republicans of the Radical Party, to serve as civil governor of the provinces of Almería (1933) and Navarra (1933-34), after the fall of the Spanish dictatorship.

When Gómez's death became known in Venezuela and with it the end of the dictatorship, he returned to his homeland in 1936 and in 1939 he was incorporated into the Academy of History.

He disseminated the best literary works and was the master of modernism in Venezuela, exerting a notable influence in Latin America. Among his greatest works is: Road to Imperfection: Diary of My Life (1933), in which he recited about death and what he wanted to have at some point said in his bed. Other of his works are: Homeland (1895), Little Lyric Opera (1904), Iron Man (1910), Great Writers of America (1917), Aladdin's Lamp (1921), Modernism and Modernist Poets (1929).

This illustrious Venezuelan died on October 16, 1944, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to which he had come as part of his usual trips.

Mazo News Team