Poems by Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera

Of religious temperament and romantic sensitivity, the Poems of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera are related to the romantic-symbolist conception of poetry for their rejection of realism and positivism and their defense of the usefulness of beauty itself, freed from morality and humanist and social concern.
Nájera dedicated his life to journalism. Under pseudonyms, such as The Duke Job, he also published an extensive prose work of great importance to modernism. In it his chronicles stand out, to which he infused a light and pleasant style of great expressive personality. He also wrote numerous short stories and short stories. He also did literary and theatrical criticism.
Nájera felt he was heir to the idea of art for art’s sake, propagated in France by Théophile Gautier, whom he admired so much. His readings of Musset, among others, and those of the Italian Leopardi, help to understand the double aspect, romantic and parnassist, that marks his poetry.
He wrote mainly love poems through which he made clear his fervent taste for the classical with a Frenchified touch. His poetic purpose lies, in his own words, in “expressing French thoughts in Spanish verses”.
In 1894 Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera founded, together with Carlos Díaz Dufóo, the Revista Azul that became a privileged reference of modernism in Mexico.