The modernist life of the “self”: the archive in some autobiographical writings by Rubén Darío

Abstract

Based on a series of autobiographical texts by Rubén Darío, this essay aims at reflecting on the notion of archive as it intersects with the problems inherent to the “writings of the self.” My analysis focuses on the autobiographical impulse of the late Darío, who, faced with the first global crisis of the twentieth century –that is, the first Great War–, revisits his writings in the chronicles known as Historia de mis libros (1913). These texts can be read as an archive, that is, as the product of cataloguing his own works according to multiple criteria, which are not necessarily harmonious. The position from which this archive is constituted is that of an authorial subject who declares to have a panoramic view of his work and who can, therefore, control it. However, the cracks in the cohesion of this archive run through the texts and emerged for decades in critical approaches. In this context, I seek to reposition Darío’s autobiographies as an avant-garde narrative that can be foreseen in the aesthetic and political project of Los Raros (1896-1905), a demystification of the great cultural monuments of the 19th century.