Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Modern Times; Or, Re-Reading the Progressive Era
- Chapter 1 Culture and Anarchy: Time, Narrative and the Haymarket Affair
- Chapter 2 ‘Pure Feelings, Noble Aspirations and Generous Ideas’: Yellow Journalism, the Cuban War of Independence and crónica modernista
- Chapter 3 Manacled to Identity: Fugitive Aesthetics in Stephen Crane’s Pluralistic Universe
- Chapter 4 Getting Some of the Way with Undine Spragg: Cosmopolitanism, Ethnography and War Work in the Novels of Edith Wharton
- Coda: James Huneker, A Decadent Among Modernists
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - ‘Pure Feelings, Noble Aspirations and Generous Ideas’: Yellow Journalism, the Cuban War of Independence and crónica modernista
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- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Modern Times; Or, Re-Reading the Progressive Era
- Chapter 1 Culture and Anarchy: Time, Narrative and the Haymarket Affair
- Chapter 2 ‘Pure Feelings, Noble Aspirations and Generous Ideas’: Yellow Journalism, the Cuban War of Independence and crónica modernista
- Chapter 3 Manacled to Identity: Fugitive Aesthetics in Stephen Crane’s Pluralistic Universe
- Chapter 4 Getting Some of the Way with Undine Spragg: Cosmopolitanism, Ethnography and War Work in the Novels of Edith Wharton
- Coda: James Huneker, A Decadent Among Modernists
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We learn with poignant sorrow of the death in battle of José Martí, the well-known leader of the Cuban revolutionists. We knew him long and well, and esteemed him profoundly. For a protracted period, beginning twenty odd years ago, he was employed as a contributor to THE SUN, writing on subjects and questions of the fine arts. In these things his learning was solid and extensive, and his ideas and conclusions were original and brilliant. He was a man of genius, of imagination, of hope, and of courage, one of those descendants of the Spanish race whose American birth and instincts seem to have added to the revolutionary tincture which all modern Spaniards inherit. His heart was warm and affectionate, his opinions ardent and aspiring, and he died as such a man might wish to die, battling for liberty and democracy. Of such heroes there are not too many in the world, and his warlike grave testifies that, even in a positive and material age, there are spirits that can give all for their principles without thinking of any selfish return for themselves.
Honor to the memory of José Martí, and peace to his manly and generous soul.
On Thursday 23 May 1895, The New York Sun newspaper carried the above obituary for the journalist, modernist poet and leader of Partido Revolucionario Cubano, José Martí, who had been killed in the Battle of Boca de Dos Rios against Spanish imperial forces on the preceding Sunday. The obituary is interesting both for its subject and for its approach. No other major, mainstream, New York-based, English-language newspaper carried such a sentimental or laudatory account of the controversial writer in the days immediately after his death. Many referred to him solely as ‘the insurgent leader’, focused on the sensational manner of his death or reported the event in relation to ‘the great importance to the Spanish authorities of the papers found upon his body’. Martí died after ordering his men to charge a heavily fortified Spanish position in direct violation of an order from the military leader of the insurrectionists General Máximo Gómez. In fact, Martí's presence in Cuba was controversial in itself. Few of the insurrectionists felt that this scholar-poet and orator could contribute much to the war effort on the ground and would better serve the cause of independence by continuing to agitate and write in the USA.
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- Exoteric ModernismsProgressive Era Realism and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life, pp. 104 - 141Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2023