The Sullen and Arbitrary León De Greiff

Abstract

This article develops the conception of how León de Greiff’s poetry, among many other characteristics, sometimes contradictory, is defined by its dissonance and obscurity. Heir to symbolism and modernism, his poetry is not always distinguished by the rumor of a certain euphonic vein of modernist poetry, and his fragmented world will be resolved in the creation of a language that suffices itself to supplant reality, fleeing from the vulgarity of a time that is uncomfortable for him. De Greiff always sought to flee from the mournful world of pseudo-romantic sentimentalism, so common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Colombia, and developed “contrasting” motifs, in the manner of a musical fugue. Poetry that pretends to be music is a constant in León de Greiff’s poetry. Whimsy or humor will be the path that leads him to write original poetry, dissonant in its penetration into a world of tensions never resolved, and that will define his language and his vision of reality.