Moderniste Pythagorean Literature: the Symbolist Inspiration

QE ZEN, Modernista Pythagorean Literature: The Symbolist Inspiration Theodore W. Jensen cu world has been underlined in brilliant studies by Hollander and Heninger, has only recently begun to receive deserved attention as a most important phenomenon of Spanish American modernismo.* Much remains to be clarified, especially concerning the peculiar nature of modernista between modernista Pythagoreanism and French Pythagoreanism and its sources and influences. This study will focus attention It appears that, like modernismo, symbolism is an elusive term, giving rise on the relationship symbolism. to numerous polemics and disagreements. Yet most scholars probably would agree that the idea of “correspondences” is an important characteristic. This writer proposes that these correspondences are the source of all symbolist Most writers point to Swedenborg’s “doctrine of correspondences,” used manifestations. By “correspondences” in the symbolist sense, we are referring to the poetic gift of externalizing the internal ineffable by a “magical” manipulation of Word, accomplished by the poet-seer's mystic perception ol cosmic correspondences (called by Baudelaire the Universal Analogy). by him to interpret his dreams, as the symbolists’ source. Yet this dactrine is traceable to Plotinus and the Neoplatonists.3 And in truth, the originator of the doctrine of correspondences in Western thought was Pythagoras. He taught that the universe was composed of contesting opposite forces, embraced and unified by a divine cosmic harmony. Called “Kosmos” by Pythagoras, the first to use that term,’ this harmonious universe was determined by him to be peopled by beings who are themselves each a “kosmos" in miniature, “organisms which reproduce the structural principles of the mucrocosm.”S From this idea of interactions between micro and macrocosm stems the theory of correspondences, which became the basis for most theories of the occult, and eventually for both the occult and poetic-oriented symbolist correspondences. Let us recall the frst two stanzas of Baudelaire’s sonnet “Correspondances,” often cited as a type of symbolist manifesto; Laissent parfois sortis de confuses paroles; La Nature est un temple of de vivants piliers L'homme y passe à travers des fordis de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

John Comme de longs échos que de loin se confondent Senior, in effect, suggests that the entire basis of symbolist literature is occult.!® 1 believe that this view is correct because the theory of Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme fa clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent. correspondences implying that actions in the microcosm may influence the macrocosm, and vice versa—is occult, be it manifested as Pythagorean metaphysics, voodoo, or symbolist verbal illumination. Pythagoras as the first [Nature is a temple where living pillars Let sometimes emerge confused words; philosopher, the Haitian witch doctor, and the symbolist voyant all have that Man crosses it through forests of symbols Which watch him with intimate eyes. in common. In symbolist literature, there were three major applications of Like those deep echoes that meet from afar modernistas: verbal mystification-illumination; poetic musicalization; and a the theory of correspondences which most attracted the Spanish American In a dark and profound harmony, As vast as night and clarity, So perfumes, colours, tones answer each other. | § The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (circa 388 B.C.) by the Pythagorean Lysis, reprinted and interpreted by Antoine Fabre d’Olivet as Les vers dorés de Pythagore expliques (1813), state that Pythagoras discovered his philosophy while gazing at the heavens one night, near a temple: The base columns, architrave and triangular pediment suddenly represented, in his eyes, the triple nature of man and the universe, of the microcosn and the crowned by the divine unity, self a trinity. The Kastitus, macrocosm flirtation with the occult. The symbolist voyant and the vare modernista pursued a technique of verbal mystification-illumination. By their use of symbol in the manipulation of word, they strived to convey to the reader a glimpse of their cosmic vision/poetic vision which otherwise might never be experienced. While Anna Balakian!? may today make distinctions between the romantic concept of correspondences and a less-mystical symbolist variety, between the differing styles of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud; and between allegory and symbolism; modernista writers seem not to have done so. Influenced by Symons, and later by Remy de Gourmont,!® they perceived a mystical core controlled and penctrated by God, formed “the sacred Quaternion, the source of Nature, whose cause is eternal "7 ‘Could Baudelaire have been thinking of the Golden Verses when he wrote “Correspondances?” It cannot be proved. But there is ample reason to expect that he and later symbolists were quite familiar with the figure of Pythagoras. A perusal of book jacket advertisements of the era reveals that there were a multitude of writings extant concerning Pythagoras. What is more, Helena Blavatsky's [sis Unveiled was unveiled in 1875, and that widely read and highly influential tome is replete with Pythagorean doctrine.8 The French spiritualist, leader, Edouard Schuré, published another vital Pythagorean source in 1889, Les Grands Initiés. Even before these works appeared, great French authors were manifesting interest in the “first philosopher.” The occult aspect of Victor Hugo’s Hellenism was represented by the figure and ideas of Pythagoras.” Gérard de Nerval described as a Py thagorean-inspired symbolist by Arthur Symons!" — revealed his familiarity with the Golden in symbolist correspondences. The Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz presents this description of modernista poetry: “El universo es un sistema de correspondencias ... En toda la poesia modernista resuena un eco de los ‘Vers dorés "19 [Its universe is a system of correspondences. ... In all modernista poetry resounds an echo from the “Vers dorés"]. Then, in his first narrative reference to Pythagorean doctrine, the Nicaraguan leader of the modernista movement -Rubén Dario shows definitively the modernista linkage of correspondences and Pythagoras: Los astros del cielo están en relación con nuestros destinos. Nuestras alınas están influidas por fa música pitagórica: hay en nuestro ser una parte que nus viene de la altura luminosa, Pues bien, asf como los celestes astros están en continuo movimiento y si lo suspendiesen cesarfa el orden en la máquina del universo-, nuestra naturaleza nos impulsa también a no permanecer fijos en 20 un solo punto. ... Necesario nos es la traslación attributed to Pythagoras, “Tout est sensible” | All things live]. Louis Ménard, [The stars in the heavens are related to our destinies. Our souls are influenced by Pythagorean music: There is in our being a part that comes to us from the luminous heights. Well then, just as the celestial stars are in continual movement—and if they were to stop it, order in the machine of the universe would cesse-our nature impels us also not to remain fixed in one place. a Movement is necessary for us. | Verses in his well-known sonnet “Vers Dorés,” wherein he quotes a statement Parnassian precursor whom Arturo Marasso terms “the father of Symbolism,” TT wrote poems like “Le Rishi,” “L’Athléte,” and “Pantheon,” which refer to metempsychosis, Pythagorean harmony, and the music of the spheres.!? Ménard was an advocate of Pythagorean metempsychosis, and his ine laphysics were drawn to a great degree from Pythagorean sources. LT Anil, returning finally to Baudelaire, he gives forth a rather “decadent’ image of the harmony of the spheres in “Une Charogne” and touches on metemphychosis in “La vie anterieure”;!4 and Les Fleurs du Mal has been associated, at least in part, with Pythagorean number symbolism, !5 Having established at least some historicity and credence for Baudelaire’s perhaps having a “Correspondances,” Pythagorean Pythagorean let us model examine in mind when this most interesting concept as it relates ta the symbolists. he composed and most Even when the modernistas used the synesthesia lauded in Baudelaire’s “Correspondances,” the sensory juxtapositions could be viewed as un inevitable part of perceiving the unity of all in the divine Monad. The Argentine modernista, Leopoldo Lugones, offers a superb example of this Pythagorean basis for the use of synesthesia in his short story “La metamúsica” (1898) [Metamusic|, wherein a musician-inventor creates a device which translates music into colors and then reproduces geometrically the structure of the cosmos, Says the musician: El universo es música... . Pitágoras tenía razón, y desde Timeo hasta Kepler, todos los pensadores han presentido esta armonía. Eratóstenes llegó a determinar la escala celeste, los tonos y semitonos entre astro y astro. ¡Yo

creo tener algo mejor; pues habiendo dado con las notas fundamentales de la música de las esferas, reproduzco en colores geometricamente combinados, el exquema del Cosmos!21 1/3 celestial unity you presuppose will cause to sprout in you diverse worlds, and upon echoing your dispersed numbers, pythagorize in your constellations. Listen to the divine rhetoric of the airborne bird and divine the noctumal [The universe ts music. Pythagoras was right, and from Timacus to Kepler, all thinkers have had a presentiment of this harmony. Eratosthenes managed to determine the celestial scale, the tones und semi-tones between one star and unother. I belleve I have something better since, having run inte the fundamental notes ol the music of the spheres, | reproduce, in peometrically combined colors, the scheme of the Cosmos!] geometric emanation; kill tacitum indifference and link pearl after crystaline pearl where truth tips her um. ] Pitagorizar in both cases is meaningless to the non-initiate. Yet is suggests not when the musician, during a demonstration of his machine, declares: “Lo que only the idea of imotempsychosis in Norvo's usage, but the associated ideas of harmony, rhythm and movement towards perfection, towards eventual incorporation in the divine Monad, from the most concrete and earthbound form (ice) to the least earthbound form which ascends (vapor). The same idea of movement towards perfection is inherent in Darío's usage also: poetic and metuphysical perfection. This type of lesser correspondence, that between estás metaphor It is difficult in this context not to think of the decadent writer Huysmans in A Rebours where des Esseintes, by the use of his orgue à bouche tries to transform musical sounds into tastes. A further link to Pythagoras is forged escuchando es una armonía en la cual entran las notas especificas de cada planeta del sistema” (p. 90) [What you are listening to is a harmony in which enter the specific notes of each planet of the system]. The use of metaphor keys o: symbols appealed also to the romantic sensibilities of the modernista poets, Only the “initiate” might perceive the deeper meanings of some hermetic verse. This more mundane use of symbol and secret meaning, was characteristic of Pythagoras and Pythagoreans; and symbollst technique lent itself to that purpose also, although the association by a with Pythagoras probably came via Nerval and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.” Nerval wrote “Tout est sensible” [All things live]; Victor Hugo wrote “Vents, ondes, flammes;/ Arbres, roseaux, tout vit. Tout est plein d’ämes”26 often can still create à real communication between poet and reader that [Winds, waves, flames, trees, reeds, all live. All is full of souls]. And Dario transcends the everyday potential of the written word. An example of thisis wrote: when both Rubén Dario and his close friend the Mexican modernista Amado Nervo used the neologism “pitagorizar” [*pythagorize"] in their poetry. Nervo uses it in “EI agua multiforme” from La hermana agua (1901) [Sister Water]. cada hoja de cada arbol canta un propio cantar y hay un alma en cada una de las gotas del mar; el vate, el sacerdote, suele oir el acento desconocido. . . .27 [Each leaf of each tree sings its own song, and there is a soul in each one of Hoy soy torrente inquieto y ayer fut agua tranquila, huy soy, en vaso esférico, redonda; ayer apenas, the drops in the sea; the seer, the priest, is accustomed to hearing the unknown accent. . . .| ine mostraba cilindrica en las antoras plenas, y ast pitagorizo mi ser, hora tras hora: There is no reason to question the seriousness of these poetic statements, hielo, corriente, niebla, vapor. ...22 | Today I am an anxious torrent and yesterday | was calm water; Today lam, in a spherical glass, round; yesterday | showed myself cylindrical in full urns, and so | pythagorize my vapor... being, hour after hour: ice, running water, mist, .} It is unveiled the same year by Dario in his poem “Ama tu ritmo” (1901) [Love Your Rhythm], which Marasso called a “Pythagorean initiation’: then words become more active partners of the poet, rather than tools. Besides being perhaps an anticipation of surrealism, this idea is not even so foreign to certain modern French structuralists (Lacan, Benveniste) in their theories about the relationship of language and subjectivity; and Boon es written a book on Lévi-Strauss in the literary atmosphere of symbolism.”29 In spite of recent proclamations to the contrary, the metaphysical cannot be separated from symbolist correspondences nor from modernista correspondences. That metaphysical base is Pythagorean; and the modernistas perceived it as such. Lugones, in his openly Pythagorean collection Las fuerzas extrañas (1906) [Strange Forces], even tries to provide scientific Ama tu ritino, y ritina tus acciones bajo su ley, así como tus versos, eres un universo de universos y tu alma una fuente de canciones. La celeste unidad que presupones hara brotar en ti mundos diversos, support for the Pythagorean idea that all things live, which he uses to present an explanation for occult forces: y al resonar tus números dispersos pitagoriza en tus constelaciones. Escucha la retórica divina La sensibilidad es la radivactividad de la materia ... toda materia posee sensibilidad. . .. La vida de los cristales ha demostrado ya hasta la evidencia que la sensibilidad no es una propriedad exclusiva de la materia llamada orgänica.... FI pensamiento es una torma de la energia.... Cada pensamiento es una individualidad.... Si el pensamiento es la energía del pajaro del aire y la nocturna irradiación geométrica adivina; mata la inditerencia taciturna y engarza perla y perla enstalina primordial, todas las fuerzas (energía manifestada) son pensamiento, es decir, en donde la verdad vuelca su urna 24 [Love your rhythm, and rhythm your actions under its law, as well as your Verses, you are a universe of universes and your soul a fount of songs, As Senior points out, “when Gérard de NervalA {quoting Pythagoras] . .. says that everything is alive, he means it, literally.”-° If that is the poet's belief, The seres inteligentes. [Sensibility is radioactivity of matter ... all matter has sensibility. . . . The life

at crystals has even demonstrated already the evidence that sensibility ts not ego] knew through personal experience, since he had never turned to it without an exclusive property of organic matter... . Thought is a form of energy. - . - leaving soothed by its bath of lights and magical correspondences.| 174 Each thought ts an individual... 1 thought ts primordial energy, all forces (manifested encigy) are thought, that is to say, intelligent beings.| Paul Verlaine in “Art Poétique” (1874) [Poetic Art] unveiled a new musical preoccupation of the symbolists with his poetic statement “De la musique avant toute chose” [Music before everything}. Music-like verse could evoke correspondences or sensations just as had the visual symbols of Baudelaire. From that point on the poet would attempt to adopt the properties of music to poetry. In order to musicalize their verse, symbolists consciously or not -were drawn towards a sympathy with some Pythagorean beliefs. The modernistas took to this idea with enthusiasm, but —typically they again interpreted it as Pythagorean in nature. For example, we have already noted that Schulman has identified Pythagorean music in the poetry of the early modernista from Cuba, José Marti. Leopoldo Lugones wrote an essay entitled “La armonía pitagórica” (1936) [Pyihagorean Harmony) which makes reference to “la noción musical de la aritmética pitagórica”?! [the musical notion of Pythagorean arithmetic], Worthy of note is the linking here of Wagner and Pythagoras. Dario viewed Wagner as the renovator of the Pythagorean idea that music creates a bridge between man and the cosmos. Modernistas, as well as symbolists, admired “le dieu Richard Wagner”?® {the god Richard Wagner]. Previously we have touched upon the inherent occult significance of Pythagorean correspondences. While the figure of Pythagoras seems not to be a frequent one in symbolist literature, the presence of the father of Western occultism is undeniable in symbolist esoterica. Indeed, Pythagoras is reputed to have been the originator of the term “esoteric."37 Senior, in his study of symbolists and the occult, portrays Western occultism as being essentially platonic?® and describes Eliphas Lévi as “the single greatest occult influence on Symbolism.”?? A close scrutiny of Lévi's occult symbolism reveals it as Pythagorean in nature. This is understandable, given Lévi's deep attraction to Pythagorean doctrines while studying at the theological college of Saint-Sulpice (which we recall as a major locus in Huysmans' novel Là-bas): discusses the idea of correspondences between number and music (rhythm), and brings to mind his story “La metamusica,” wherein he states that the universe is music. José Vasconcelos also wrote an essay, “Pitagoras (una Twice daily each seminarist had to make his “examination of conscience” which was based on maxims and precepts contained in the Golden Verses of Pytharoras, one of those non-Christian works which, like the Meditations of teoría del ritmo)” (191932 [Pythagoras (A Theory of Rhythm)|, in which and wisdom they contained. Whether or not Constant [Lévi] had at that time read Fabre d'Olivet's esoteric interpretation of the verses, they certainly must he stressed the idea of correspondences between number and music, expressed as rhythm. And we have seen already in “Ama tu ritmo” that Dario expressed it poetically. He even viewed Isadora Duncan as one who 175 Marcus Aurelius, had been taken up by Christians for the universal morality have made a deep impression on him,40 revelarin al mundo sus bellezas ienotas. Lévis choice of which passage to translate from The Golden Verses shows him being attracted at an early age to the magical facet of Pythagoreanism. That Pythagoras continued to interest him later is evident in his Histoire de la magie (1860) [History of Magic], wherein he devotes a chapter to the "Mathematical Magic of Pythagoras” and quotes from his early extract from Platón oyó a los orbes su concierto ideal, Saint-Sulpice4 danced to the rhythm of Pythagorean music.33 Amado Nervo reveals his Pythagorean musical vision in “Música” (1916) [Music]: Sólo las claves, sólo las puutas y las notas, y Beethoven, a veces, lo escucho en el mutismo Symbolist writers carried on a flirtation with the occult. That term is nocturne, Todo es música. los astros, el abismo, las almas... ¡Y Dios mismo chosen to point out that some, like Mallarmé who wrote an essay on magic and had occultist friends 4? seemed not to embrace occultism with the fervor es un Dios musical!34 beauties. Plato heard the ideal concert of the spheres. and Beethoven, al times, of others, like Huysmans (who once accused the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita of murdering the Abbé Boullan by black magic), or the less-known decadent, listened to it in the nocturnal quiet, All ty music: stars, abyss, souls... And “Sar” Joséphin Péladan.43 [Only the keys, the rules, and the notes will reveal to the world their unknown God hinselt ts a musical God! | this The modernistas also were drawn to the occult sciences. As previously noted, Dario, Nervo and Lugones were theosophists. Dario and Lugones were correspondence between music and poetry, and its linkage with Pythagoras, in also Masons, Lugones even advancing to the 33rd Degree.44 Darío, at least, Jus antobiographica) novelisue fragment, El oro de Mallorca (1913) [The Gold of Mallorca] : spiritualism and mesmerism, and “sought the company of mediums.”#6 But it was Ruben Dario Pitigoras y Wagner tenían razón. who pethaps best communicated La Musica en su inmenso concepto le abraza todo, lo material y lo espiritual, y por ese los griegos comprendían también en ese vocablo a la excelsa Poesia, a la Creadora. Y que el arte era de trascendencia consoladora y suprema sabia por experiencia propia, pues jamás había recurrido a él sin salir aliviado de su bano de luces y de correspondencias mágicas 35 [Pythagoras and Wagner were right. Music in ars immense concept embraces every thing, material and spittual, and consequently the Greeks comprehended also in that word Sublime and Creative Poetry. And that art was of a consoling and supreme importance he | Benjamin Itaspés, a musician and Dario’s alter was familiar with Rosicrucian Jiterature.4> Nervo and Dario read books on Lugones also attended spiritualist meetings and, along with Dario, apparently did believe in supernatural forces; he is reputed to have studied the occult sciences from the time he was an adolescent.47 But the modernistas were not drawn into the Satanism and black magic which fascinated some decadents. Their occultism was limited, rather, to a search for supernatural truths to explain the inexplicable - a cerebral exercise and a spiritual one. They perused what the black arts had to offer; they were never ones to overlook any possible source of inspiration. But, unlike

Huysmans, they were repelled by the negativism of black magic. Rather than serving as models for the modernistas, the decadent symbolists functioned to point the way towards occultism in general, and thus indirectly towards Pythagorean esoterica. The Pythagorean nature of much modernista occultism is seen in works such as Amado Nervo's well-known occult novel, El donador de almas (1899)48 [The Donor of Souls], or in his story “Diálogos pitagoricos: La próxima encarnación” (1912) [Pythagorean Dialogs: The Next Incarnation |, which connects Pythagoreanism with spiritualism and the well-known occult 177 3 Cyriel O. Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic (New York: Bookman Associates, 1952), p. 179. 4 W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. 37. 5 Ibid., p. 38. 6 Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire, trans. Geoffrey Wagner (New York: Grove Press, 1974), p. 23. 7 Edouard Schuré, citing Fabre d'Olivet's The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, in a sé Initiates, trans. Gloria Rasberry (West Nyack, N.Y.: St. George Books, 1961), p- 18. 8 Theosophists claim that their order was founded in the third century A.D. by figure Allan Kardec. Lugones, in “Un fenómeno inexplicable” (1898) [An Inexplicable Phenomenon], narrates a tale of an Englishman whose studies of occult sciences lead him to attempt to separate his astral spirit from his body during a somnambulistic trance. He fails and in the process loses his “unidad de ser” the initiator of the Neoplatonist school, Ammonias Saccas, and that the Neo-Pythagoreans Porphry, Plotinus, and lamblichus were indeed theosophists (H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy [Pasadena: Theosophical Univ. Press, 1946], p. 3). 9 Pierre Albouy, La création mythologique chez Victor Hugo (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1963), pp. 79-83. junity of being], creating a split personality. He nervously contesses that his 10 Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (New York: Dutton and “other” has ape-like characteristics. When the narrator traces on a wall the optline of the Englishman's shadow, it is disclosed to have the shape of an Co., 1958), pp. 17-19. Published in 1889, this book was widely read in Europe and Latin America and, in spite of subsequent criticisms, was undoubtedly quite influential. 1 Murusso, p. 28. ape. This reflects a belief Lugones thought originated with Pythagoras that prior to death a spiritual double may appear. The double assumes a form 12 Louis Ménard, Réveries d'un Paien Mystique (Paris: Georges Crès et Cie., 1911), which best reflects the inner nature of the man in this life, and which may be pp. 144, 145 and 206. Pythagoreanism was a part of the episteme of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century France. Even though the symbolists rarely used his name, it is highly unlikely that they were unaware of the Pythagorean Chapter VII (“Philosophie mystique”). +? the form he assumes in the next incarnation base of much of their literature. A direct Pythagorean influence ts not proved. Yet the symbolist techniques admired and imitated by the modernistas were interpreted Pythagorically by them and served as a further inspiration for modernista literary Neo-Pythagoreanism.>" 13 Henri Peyre, Louis Ménard (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1932), p. 303 and 14 Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes (Yours: Librairie Gallimard, 1958), pp. 1057 and p. 93. 15 John Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 93. 16 The basic metaphysical assumptions of symbolism are occult.... The following chapters attempt to demonstrate that the chief Symbolist poets were to some extent occultists, that insofar as their work contains philosophy it is occult philosophy, and, more important, that the purpose of their poetry in a sense the communication and evocation of occult experience” (Senior, pp. xvi and 46). Eastern Montana College » 17 The Symbolist Movement: A Critical Appraisal (New York: Random House, 1967). 18 Gourmont called Verlaine and Mallarmé Parnassians and Baudelairians, and NOTES l Join Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry 1500-1700 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961) and S. K. Heninger, Jr., Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1974). 2 Brief bul important statements may be found in: Enrique Anderson Imbert, La originalidad de Ruben Dario (Buenos Aues: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1967), Arturo Marasso, Ruben Dario y su creación poética (Buenos Aires: Editorial Kapelusz, 1954); Alan S$. Trueblood, “Ruben Darío: The Sea and the Jungle,” Comparative Literature Snalies, 4 (1967), 425-456. Studies more specifically realted to Py thagoreanism and modernismo include: Erika Lorenz, Rubén Dario bajo el divino imperio de la música (Managua: Academia Nicaraguense de la Lengua, 1960), Raymond Skynne, Rubén Dario and the Pythagorean Tradition (Gamesville: Univ of Florida Press, 1975); Ricardo Gullon, “Prtagorismo y modernismo,” Estudios críticos sobre el modernismo, ed. W Castillo (Madrid: Gredos, 1968), 358-383; Ivan Schulman, “Modernismo, revolución y pitagorismo en Marti,” Casa de las Américas (July- Aug. wrote: “All the present literature and especially that which is called symbolistic, is Baudelairian, not doubtless by its external technique, but by its internal and spiritual technique, by the sense of mystery, by the anxious care to hear what things say, by the desire to harmonize from soul to soul, with the obscure thought diffused in the night of the world . .." (The Book of Masks trans. Jack Lewis [New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1967], p. 59). 19 El caracol y la sirena," Diez estudios sobre Rubén Dario, ed. Juan Loveiuck (Santiago de Chile: Zig-Zag, 1967), p. 254, 20 È) hombre de oro in Cuentos (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1965), p. 23. Note that “traslación,” besides implying movement though space, also suggests a change of condition and, like the English word translation, intimates transmigration of the soul. 21 Leopoldo Lugones, Las fuerzas extrañas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul, 1962), p. 90. 22 Obras completas, ed. Francisco González Guerrero and Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (Madrid: Aguilar, 1951), II, 1359. 23 Marasso, p. 157. 24 Poesias completas, ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (Madrid: Aguilar, 1967), p. 1972), 45-55, Theodore Jensen, “El pitagorismo en Las fuerzas extrañas de Lugones,” Fantasía y Realismo Máxico en Iberoamérica, Memoria del XVI Congreso Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ., 1975), 299-307, and “Christian-Py thagorean Duslism in Nervo's El donador de almas,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 3 No, 3 (1981) in preparation. 25 In Isis Unveiled (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877), 1, 212, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky discusses man's relationshin with the Universe in terms similar to some used in

“Ama tu ritmo.” Besides the astral soul, she disucsses the “divine spirit” which ts an “infinitesimal say,” one of “countless radiations proceeding from the Highest Cause.” She points out that Plato's works are written enigmatically because they contain hidden Pythagorean secrets, which only initiates might perceive (1, 287); that Neo-Py thayoreans like Plotinus were “clairvoyant-seers” (11, 591), even that Jesus learned to speak in parables and use metaphors from the “Pythagorean Essenes,” in sentences which were “purely Py thagereanTM (11, 143). The three great modernistas, Dario, Nervo snd Lugones, were all theosophists (Anderson Imbert, p. 52; Miguel Lermon, Contribuciòn a la bibliografia de Leopoldo Satre,” according to MarieJoséphe Faurie, Le 47 Antonio Pagés Larraya, “Lugones,” Afenea, 45 (1968), 126; Lugones (hijo), Mi padre, p. 267; Lugones (hijo), “Introduccién,” Cuentos fatales (Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul, 1967), p. 20. 48 jensen, “Christian-Py thagorean Dualism in Nervo's El donador de almas.” 49 Schuré, pp. 118-119, attributes this to a teaching of Pythagoras. Blavatsky, /sis Modernisme Patinks, in The Enneads, trans. Stephan MacKenna (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), Lecciones y conferencias de Teosofia {Guatemala City: Imprenta Galindo, 1967], p. 7). “Le 46 John E. Englekirk, Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature (New York: Instituto de las Espafias, 1934), p. 248; Enrique Anderson Imbert, “Rubén Darfo and the Fantastic Element in Literature,” in Rubén Darfo Centennial Studies, ed. Gonzälez-Gerth and Schade (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1970), p. 101. Madriz, Lugones [Buenos Aires: Ediciones Mari, 1969], p. 196; Alicia Barrios de 26 In 179 Hispano-Americain et ses sources françaises (Paris: Centre de Recherches de l'Institut d'Etudes Hispaniques, 1966), p. 35. 27 “Coloquio de los centauros” (1896), in Poesias completas, p. 643. 28 Senior, p. 42. 29 James Boon, From Symbolism to Structuralism (New York: Harper and Row, 1572). 30 Op. eit.. pp. 17482, The explanation in its entirety is quite dense and consequently has been abbreviated considerably here. 31 La Noción, 12 Apr. 1936, sec. 2, pp. I and 3. 32 Obras completos (Mexico: Libreros Mexicanos Unidos, 1959), Ill, 10-86. Unvetled, II, 328, discusses it also. It can at least be traced back to the Neo-Pythagorean p- 186. 50; would like to express my appreciation to my colleague in French, Dr. William Plank, for serving as a sounding board for my ideas concerning French symbolism. Theodore W. Jensen, Assistant Professor of Spanish at Eastern Montana College, has published “El pitagorismo en Las fuerzas extrañas de Lugones,” in Otros mundos, otros fuegos: Fantasia y realismo mágico en Iberoamérica (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ., Laun American Studies Center, 1975). He has articles forthcoming in the Kentucky Romance Quarterly and Forum for Modern Language Studies (St. Andrews, Scotland). 33 Raymond Skyrme discusses the modernistas' concept of a musically structured universe, which Darío tried to translate into poetic form, in “The Pythagorean Vision of Rubén Dario in ‘La tortuga de oro,'” Comparative Literature Studies, 11 (1974), 23748. 34 Obras completas, 41, 1723. 35 la Nación, 7 Dec. 1913. Reprinted by Allen W. Phillips in “El oro de Mallorca: Textos desconocidos y breve comentario sobre la novela autobiográfica de Dario,” Revista Iberoamericana, 33 (1967), 449492. We'll not dwell further on Darío, since other manifestations of his musical Pythagoreanism are well documented by Skyrme and Lorenz. 36 “Hommage,” in Stéphane Mallarmé: Poems (New York: New Directions, 1951), » 153, See Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1954), p. har. for a discussion of the symbolists and Wagner. 37 Schuré, p. 310. Pythagoras’ occult manifestations may be studied in C. J. De Vogel, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum and Co., 1966), E. R. Dodds, [he Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959): Theodor Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (London: John Murray, 1964), Vincent F. Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (New York. Cooper Square, 1969); Alister Cameron, The Pythagorean Background of the Theory of Recollection (Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta, 1938); D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute, Univ. of London, 1958). 38 Senior, p. 21. 39 ibid. p. 36. 40 Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider and Co., 1972), p. 79. 4 Ibid., p_ 80. 42 Senior, p. 135. 43 Sec “The Magical Quest of J. K. Huysmans,” and “The Heirs of Eliphas Levi,” in Mcintosh, Ria 157-194. Balzac, Hugo, Nerval and Rimbaud are also linked with the occult in “Writers and the Occult,” pp. 195-205. 44 Charles D. Watland, La formación literaria de Rubén Dario (Managua: Publicaciones del Centenario, 1966), p. 45; Leopoldo Lugones (hijo), Mi padre (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Centurión, 1949), p. 124. 45 Marasso, p. 299. A vignette by Julio Ruelas, dated 1903. Reproduced from Revista Moderna de México, 12, No. 1 (Sept. 1907), 54.