1
This is supplied in abundance by Victor Pérez Petit in Rodó. Su vida - su obra (Montevideo, 1937). See also Lauxar (Osvaldo Crispo Acosta), Rubén Darío y J. E. Rodó (Montevideo, 1945).
2
See in general: Ventura García Calderón, Semblanzas de América (Madrid, 1921), pp. 7-26; Andrés González-Blanco, Escritores representativos de América (Madrid, 1917),pp. 1-78; Gonzalo Zaldumbide, José Enrique Rodó (Madrid, 1919), and Mario Benedetti, Genio y figura de José Enrique Rodó (Buenos Aires, 1966).
3
See his review of Ariel in Los Lunes del Imparcial (Madrid), 23 April 1900; included as a prologue in the second and several subsequent editions of Ariel.
4
L'idée moderne du droit (Paris: Hachette, 1878), Book 5, v (p. 844).
5
The thematic and stylistic similarity between this work and Ariel has led critics to argue that they both spring from a single uncompleted work in epistolary form to which Rodó made repeated reference in 1898; Ariel is mentioned more than once in Motivos de Proteo. For a succinct and illuminating account of Rodó's philosophical position, see Arturo Ardao, La filosofía en el Uruguay en el siglo XX (México, 1956),pp. 25-44. At Montevideo University, under Alfredo Vásquez Acevedo, Rodó imbibed as a student the principles of Positivism, then dominant throughout Latin America. But after about 1895 he began, with his contemporary, Carlos Vaz Ferreira, to move away from utilitarian interpretations of Spencer's evolutionary philosophy and endeavoured to infuse a measure of «ideal optimism» into them, while remaining true to Positivist principies. See also the second half of Rodó's own essay Rumbos nuevos (1910).
6
Rubén Darío (1899), Obras completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1957), p. 187. For a detailed study of Rodó's relationship with the modernista Herrera and other members of the so-called «Generación del 900», see Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Rodó en el novecientos (Montevideo: Número, 1950), especially the appendix.
7
«Rodó», The Philosophy of Conflict (London, 1919), p. 236.
8
See Jean Franco's forthcoming book, Culture and Society in Modern Latin America (Praeger-Pall Mall, 1967). For Axel's castle see Edmund Wilson's book of that name, the title being taken from the Symbolist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's play Axel (1890).
9
See p. 41 below.
10
This incident is reported by Emir Rodríguez Monegal in his edition of Rodó's Obras completas (Madrid, 1957), p. 194.