Parnassian poetics and symbolism in “Retratos antiguos” of Antonio de Zayas

Abstract

In the field of the modernist renovation of the end of the century, the poet Antonio de Zayas (1871-1945) published both of the most representative books of poems of the Spanish Parnassianism: Joyeles bizantinos and Retratos antiguos both of them published in 1902. This work focuses on the investigation of Retratos antiguos, unique galery of ecphrastic sonnets about European picture of the Renaissance, Barroque and from the eighteenth century. We aim to demonstrate how, in one hand, the poetic languaje of Antonio de Zayas enquires into implicit poetic works of the Parnassianism in the evocative speech of the ecphrasis and, in another hand, how the presence of a symbolist sensitivity is integrated en an eminently parnassian lyric.