According to thedresswizard, the French period which ended tragically in 1867, was reworked in its sentimental, patriotic, partisan, even military sides, with careful, minute and participatory dramatization: by Juan A. Mateos (died in 1914), who was a faithful and wise narrator for the his eyewitness testimony (El Cerro de las campanas), to Alfonso Mexico Maldonado (born in 1849), moralizing descriptor, supported by a juridical and social experience (Nobles y plebeyos); by Mexico Sánchez Mármol (1839-1912), an artist rich in human content and moved by popular sympathies, who investigated with pictorial agility the nationalist, worker and rural aspects of the same story, incorporated into the framework of a moral conflict (Antón Pérez), to V. Riva Palacios (1832-1896), the general who, after having faced the invaders with a host of strong, also fighting against hunger, indigence and the most desolate desperation, dictated the heroic story with a pathos that makes you forget the author’s military mentality (Calvario y Tabor, 1868). It is a gradation of moods and reworked historical-passionate visions, which reach the extreme limit of pure and superficial fiction with Mexico Domínguez and J. Rivera y Río or of straightforward and popular documentation with H. Frías (born in 1870) and L. González Obregón (born in 1865), writer of biographical and anecdotal interests; up to become a real historiography, in the philological and constructive sensibility, especially with J. Garcia Icazbalceta (1825-1894), scholar and polygrapher of solid preparation and wide-ranging, and with A. Chavero (1841-1906), who having studied the kingdom of the Aztecs and investigated the entire antiquity of Mexico, he drew from it with happy artistic intuition some drama of romantic taste (Quetzalcoatl, 1878; Xochitl, etc.). But the historical-narrative genre, which by now was becoming exhausted in the curiosity or in the abstract stylization of eras, figures and ideals, had to renew itself by returning once again to the book of customs and character (Angel E. Campo: 1868-1908 ; C. Rodríguez Beltrán, etc.), and above all orienting oneself towards the great naturalistic source, which forced us to look at the physical and moral face of man, the shadows and distresses of his life, the bottlenecks and prejudices of social reality, the anomalies of the spirit and the whim of nature, with a style more adherent to things and closer to spoken language and scripted action: among all – both those more properly naturalists, such as J. López Portillo (1850-1923), and those still romantic, bourgeois and sentimental, such as R. Delgado (1853-1914),
However, the one who best represents the literary period of the nineteenth century that is advancing, with its passionate and melodramatic values, in which the historical re-enactment is colored by legend and distance, is José Peón y Contreras (1843-1907), a very fertile inventor of amorous adventures immersed in an idyllic colonial atmosphere, with those motifs and tendencies that were pure heritage of romanticism and more directly acted on the popular soul. More than his stories in prose or verse (Romances dramaticos, 1880; Pequeños dramas, 1887; Trovas Colombinas, 1891), his plays constitute his best work, which, in addition to their poetic value, also had great historical importance for the restoration of life and of the theatrical tradition. But in him lyricism is prevalent: in the moral and social relaxation, outside the struggle of the parties and in the recollection that followed the feverish anxiety of politics and revolt, poetry, an individual and entirely interior expression, returned to contemplate the tender aspects and light, the brief and melancholy emotions, the small and mysterious moments of the most fragile sentimental reality. More than the songbook by Juan de Dios Peza (1852-1910), too distracted by the prosaic variety of its content, which oscillates between didactic interests and a certain delicate attention to childhood life, and more than the inspiration of Manuel J. Othón (1858 -1906), which merges the voices of nature and the indefinite resonances of its spirit in a unitary vision and with happy simultaneity of perception, interests the personality of Mexico Gutiérrez Náiera (1859-1895), the poet of the most exquisite and refined sensitivity, which Rubén Darío and the modernists recognized their own aristocratic nature and their own fiery yet light manner, mysterious yet transparent, “composite” and yet straightforward. Of his generation and his disciples are the other poets, not a few and all strongly marked by their strong personality, such as the luxuriant and sensual S. Díaz Mirón (1853-1928), the classical and Parnassian E. González Martínez (born in 1871), Alfonso Reyes (born in 1889), playwright writer of daring conceptions, and above all Amado Nervo (1870-1919), the most complex and most original poet, with an iridescent human transparency, internally agitated and continually anxious for light, with a mystical and pantheistic spirituality, always fervent with new and more divine ascents and nevertheless anxious for rest and abandonment, purified from every residue of that sensuality and that softness that are typical of “modernism”, and wrapped in a modest and confident delicacy. With him the literature of Mexico went beyond the borders of America and appeared on the threshold of universal poetry. purified from any residue of that sensuality and softness that are typical of “modernism”, and wrapped in a modest and confident delicacy. With him the literature of Mexico went beyond the borders of America and appeared on the threshold of universal poetry. purified from any residue of that sensuality and softness that are typical of “modernism”, and wrapped in a modest and confident delicacy. With him the literature of Mexico went beyond the borders of America and appeared on the threshold of universal poetry.
