The Rise and Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish America

Seldom has a literary device had such international political resonance as the famous Ariel-Caliban contraposition of José Enrique Rodó's essay. In the decades immediately following its publication in 1900 Ariel was an exceptionally valued credo for Spanish American youth, not only for its intrinsic grace, but also because it provided a timely answer to a widespread need. To a generation depressed by the frequently pessimistic conclusions of racist doctrines and an uneasy sense of inferiority, and irked by the admonitions of ninteenthcentury “Nordomaniacs,” Ariel offered in sonorous periods a set of values assumed to be peculiarly Latin and therefore the patrimony of Latin America. As Alberto Zum Felde says, “It was the longed-for reply of this weak backward America to the Titanic potentiality of the North: its self-justification, its compensation, its retaliation.” Luis Alberto Sánchez's generation must have derived, as he says he did, its primary image of the United States from Ariel . Arturo Torres-Ríoseco describes it as “the ethical gospel of the Spanish-speaking world.”

Antithesis · Art · Art history · Gospel · Latin Americans · Literature · Political science · Politics · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Philosophy · Spanish Culture and Identity · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies

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