information:classification, linguistic:paraphrasing, structural:expansion, linguistic:voice_change, information:filtering
Modernism

Modernists, in general, use a subjective language. Martí's stylistic creed is part of the necessity to de-codify the logic rigor and the linguistic construction and to eliminate the intellectual, abstract and systematic expression. There is the deliberate intention and awareness to expand the expressive system of the language. The style changes the form of thinking. Without falling into unilateralism, Martí values the expression because language is an impression and a feeling through the form. Modernism mostly searches for visions and realities, the expression takes in the impressions, the state of mind, without reflection and without concept. This is the law of subjectivity. We can see this in works of Martí, one of the first modernists, who conceives the literary task like an invisible unity, an expressive totality, considering the style like "a form of the content" (forma del contenido).

The difference that Martí established between prose and poetry are conceptual. Poetry, as he believes, is a language of the permanent subjective: the intuition and the vision. The prose is an instrument and a method of spreading the ideas, and has the goal of elevating, encouraging and animating these ideas rather than having the expression of tearing up the heart, complaining and moaning. The prose is a service to his people.

Martí produces a system of specific signs "an ideological code" (código ideológico). These symbols claim their moral value and construct signs of ethic conduct. Martí's modernism was a spiritual attitude that was reflected on the language. All his writing defines his moral world. One could also say that his ideological and spiritual sphere is fortified in his writing.

The difference between Martí and other modernist initiators such as Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Julián del Casal, and José Asunción Silva (and the similarity between him and Manuel González Prada) lies in the profound and transcendent value that he gave to literature, converting prose into an article or the work of a journalist. This hard work was important in giving literature authentic and independent value and distancing it from mere formal amusement. Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Rubén Darío, Miguel de Unamuno and José Enrique Rodó saved the Martínian articles, which will have an endless value in the writings of the American continent.

Apart from Martínian articles, essay writing and literature starts to authorize itself as an alternative and privileged way to talk about politics. Literature starts to apply itself the only hermeneutics able to resolve the enigmas of a Latin American identity.