Traits of Herrera Y Reissig's Work
Associated with Herrera y Reissig's fame as a poet are notions of delirium, automatic writing, and autobiographical outpourings, due in part to the intensely personal and anguished tone of much of his production.[47] However, the fact that Herrera y Reissig, like Lugones, was a master stylist in control of a wide array of poetic forms, belies the notions of automatism. In addition recent studies of his revision process, along with existing variants of his poems, confirm the meticulousness of his constructions. Two brief studies by Idea Vilariño, Uruguayan poet and critic, synthesize some of the dominant thematic characteristics of Herrera y Reissig's poetry and briefly categorize his favored techniques.[48] Vilariño notes the poet's spiritual parentage to Baudelaire, his use of "el horror como elemento estético" ("horror as an aesthetic element"), as well as the thematic and stylistic parallels between Herrera y Reissig's Los parques abandonados and Paul Valéry's Le Jeune parc. Despite Herrera y Reissig's obvious derivations from other writers, Vilariño stresses his variations of received models and notes one of his most important traits, his brevity in adaptation and his inclination toward the theatrical. Strange epithets, pervasive obscurity, ambiguity, the inversion of traditional masculine and feminine roles, a striking use of "prohibited" words, and a "preocupación
fonética" ("phonetic preocupation") are other marks of Herrera y Reissig's poetry. Such a list of characteristics points to the works of later poets who will make ambiguity, condensation, and unexpected insertion of the "prohibited" into hallmarks of twentieth-century poetry.
Most critics have noted two divisions in Herrera y Reissig's verse. The first is a tendency toward the hermetic, culteranista poetry of decadent themes, including Los parques abandonados, Los maitines de la noche, and Sonetos de Asia, among others. The second tendency favors the pastoral theme and impressionistic style, as is found in the alexandrine sonnets of Los éxtasis de la montaña and in the endecasyllables of Los parques abandonados .[49] As will be seen in the following study of selected poems, however, the innovative techniques of Herrera y Reissig are as much present in the more traditional pastoral poetry as in the experimental poems. An important tendency of this second category is an almost photographic realism that disturbs the traditional contours of impressionistic poetry. In this regard, Clara Silva, a Uruguayan poet and critic, has stressed the exotic motivation of much of Herrera y Reissig's production, while noting at the same time the unsettling "exactitud de sus elementos descriptivos del ambiente y su carácter" ("exactitude of his elements describing ambience and its character") in Los éxtasis de la montaña.[50]