Unamuno and Baudelaire: Two poets facing modern passion.

Abstract

When referring to modernity, it would be impossible to say that something is anti-modern without simultaneously mentioning the modern. That is, one cannot criticize something while being disconnected from that which belongs to it. In this sense, Unamuno and Baudelaire, openly declared anti-modern writers, are at the same time profoundly modern, and even more so from their resistance to that era. This contemporary notion that in a certain time and space makes them aware not only of the lights, beauty, and logos of their time, also allows them to see the dark side behind that seemingly incandescent illumination. Baudelaire and Unamuno are not anti-modern from a past frontier that resists change and the future, but rather they are capable of perceiving the shadows that arise among all the lights of their time. Unamuno and Baudelaire oppose, from the poetic frontier, a resistance to modernity and its claim of legitimizing rationality or instrumentalized reason. They do so by opposing a poetic, sensitive, and heartfelt resistance to the whirlpool of the modernizing arm and its scientistic pretension. Therefore, the main intention of this work is to present an approach to the epistemic confluences between Baudelaire and Unamuno when both analyze modernity.