To commemorate his birth, we bring you some curious facts about the Prince of Castilian Letters
Nicaragua commemorated the week of Wednesday, January 18, the 156th anniversary of the birth of its most illustrious son, the poet Rubén Darío, considered the greatest exponent of literary modernism.
To celebrate his birthday, we bring you some curious facts about this writer:
He was born on January 18, 1867 in Metapa, Nicaragua, but his family moved to León a month after his birth.
His hometown of Metapa officially changed its name to Ciudad Darío on February 25, 1920, in honor of the famous poet.
His real name was Félix Rubén García Sarmiento. His great-great-grandfather was called Dario, and his descendants were known as the “Dario family,” which is why he would use that name in the literary world. He was not raised properly by his parents, with whom he had a very distant relationship, but by his great-uncles Félix Rámirez and Bernarda Sarmiento.
His love for letters began at a very early age, he learned to read fluently when he was only 3 years old, taught by his aunt Bernarda.
Among the first books that Rubén Darío read were the works of Moratín, The Thousand and One Nights, the Bible, Cicero’s Offices and Don Quixote.
After the death of his great-uncle, his aunt Bernarda tried to get Rubén to learn the tailor’s trade, with poor results since he frequently escaped from his lessons to be able to go read quietly. In León de Nicaragua he was known as “The poet boy”, since he wrote his first poems at the age of 10, publishing his sonnet “Una lágrima” in the Diario El Termómetro at the age of 12. It is said that when he was about 13 years old he fell in love with a circus trapeze artist and when she left he wanted to go with her, so he auditioned to be a clown, but he didn’t pass the test. At just 19 years of age, in 1886 he traveled to Santiago de Chile, where he published his first title: Azul (1888), a book that caught the attention of critics. He was known as “The Prince of Castilian Letters” and “Father of Modernism”, since, according to several poetry experts, Rubén Darío is the poet who has had the greatest influence on the genre throughout the 20th century within the Hispanic language. He published 12 books of poetry and 14 of prose, written in different countries. He died in León, Nicaragua, in 1916.
