José Enrique Camilo Rodó Piñeyro (15 July 1871 – 1 May 1917) was a Uruguayan essayist. He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important Hispanic thinkers of that time,éEnriqueRodó Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) in Spain, José de la Riva-Agüero in Peru, and, most importantly, with Rubén Darío, the most influential Latin American poet to date, the founder of modernismo. As a result of his refined prose style and the modernista ideology he pushed, Rodó is today considered the preeminent theorist of the modernista school of literature.
Rodó is best known for his essay Ariel (1900), drawn from The Tempest, in which Ariel represents the positive, and Caliban represents the negative tendencies in human nature, and they debate the future course of history, in what Rodó intended to be a secular sermon to Latin American youth, championing the cause of the classical western tradition. What Rodó was afraid of was the debilitating effect of working individuals' limited existence doing the same work, over and over again, never having time to develop the spirit. Among Uruguayan youth, however, he is best known for Parque Rodó, the Montevideo park named after him.
For more than a century now, Ariel has been an extraordinarily influential and enduring essay in Latin American letters and culture due to a combination of specific cultural, literary, and political circumstances, as well as for its adherence to Classical values and its denunciation of utilitarianism and what Rodó called "nordomanía" (explained below).
Literary characteristics
Ariel belongs to the movement known as modernismo, characterized by its elegance, artistic prose, and worldly references and allusions. Even though it is an essay, its ideas are expressed through Prospero's narrative voice. Prospero, the teacher, and Ariel are references to the characters in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the use of their names is an example of modernismo's desire for cosmopolitism. In Ariel, Prospero's seminar includes both famous and lesser-known European authors. He makes frequent reference to Goethe, Gaston Deschamps, St. Francis of Assisi, Schiller, and Guyau. Prospero also focuses on locations such as Ancient Greece, and he emphasizes Hellenic beauty as the only ideal worthy of imitation. Rodó uses Ariel as a metaphor that symbolizes beauty, the spirit, and that which is good. The opposite of Ariel is the utilitarian, symbolized by Caliban, and he cites positivismo and nordomanía as two reasons why this movement has gained popularity. Ariel is structurally based on binary opposition, and the figures of Ariel and Caliban are diametrically opposed.
Classical culture
In Ariel, Rodó surveys the situation Latin America was facing at the end of the 19th century. He points out that utilitarianism relies on specialization and materialism, and that consequently, the wealth of our minds is affected. Such practice can and will affect the spirit. In order for Latin America to revive its spirit, Rodó proposed strict adherence to the aesthetic ideals of the Greek and the Roman cultures. He believed both of these embody a sense of beauty, and most important, both realms recognize the significance of devoting oneself to an activity of the mind. Art is then a form of learning that finds and enriches the spirit and negates utilitarianism.