Azul... is a book of stories and poems by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, and is considered one of the most relevant works of Hispanic Modernism. It was published for the first time in Valparaíso on July 30, 1888. Two years later, in Guatemala, a augmented and corrected version appeared.
Contents
Creation
The poems and stories that make up the book were, in large part, written by Rubén Darío during his stay in Chile, in which he stayed between 1886 and 1889. All of the texts had appeared previously in the Chilean press, between December 7, 1886, the date in which "El pájaro azul," or "The Blue Bird" appeared, and June 23, 1888, when "Palomas blancas" or "White Doves" was published.
The Title
In modernism, the color blue and the white swan were the symbols of the movement. In its first edition, the work began with a prologue by Darío's Chilean friend Eduardo de la Barra, with an epigraph by Victor Hugo, a poet highly admired by Darío, that said "L'art c'est l'azur". In a note on the second edition of the book, in 1890, the author explained that this excerpt distoria de mis libros (1913), negated this relation. According to the explanation in this work, the color blue was for "el color del ensueño, el color del arte, un color helénico y homérico, color oceánico y firmamental," translated to "the color of a dream, of art, a Hellenic and Homeric color, an oceanic and firmament color."