José Emilio Pacheco: lector y antólogo del modernismo

José Emilio Pacheco (1939-2014) devoted part of his essay production to reconstruct the past of letters and, in particular, was interested in the Modernist movement. From two anthological texts: Anthology of Modernism [1884-1921] (1970) and Modernist Poetry. A General Anthology (1982), and a selection of journalistic notes that he published in the Mexican magazine Proceso, Pacheco aimed at broadening the spectrum of Modernist figures and avoiding to keep to a single figure, such as that of the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío. This article reconstructs the dialogues and reciprocities that José Emilio Pacheco traces with the literary tradition of Modernism and that are sustained, on the one hand, in connections between poets, as it is the case of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and José Martí and, on the other hand, in the recovering of poets less well-known by literary criticism, such as Salvador Díaz Mirón.