Molinari, Ricardo E. (1898–1996)

Ricardo E. Molinari (b. 20 May 1898; d. 31 July 1996), Argentine poet. Born in Buenos Aires, Molinari began writing poetry in the 1920s, making him a contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges and the postwar ultraístas who sought to initiate a vanguard movement against neoclassicist monumental poetry by implanting in Argentina a movement that would be both culturally nationalistic and internationalistically modernist. While Borges's ironic postmodernism avant la lettre quickly led him to abandon such a project, Molinari went on to establish himself as a major voice in Argentine poetry, for poetry as an objective art in which national cultural material is always a constant, as is especially to be noted in the key collection Mundos de la madrugada (1943). Molinari's poetry can be studied as virtually an academic showcase of the modernist lyric, with its utilization of complex metaphors, a hermetic style, the romantic nostalgia of the lone poetic voice, and the image of poetry as privileged expression. In 1968 he was nominated to the Argentine Academy of Letters. In 1984, the Konex Academy awarded him a Merit Diploma for his poetry, and also presented him with the Platinum Konex Award.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Julio Arístides, Ricardo E. Molinari o la agonía del ser en el tiempo (1965).

Günter Lorenz, Diálogo con América Latina (1972), pp. 91-108.

Angélica Beatriz Lacunza, La dimensión temporal en algunos poemas de Ricardo E. Molinari (1973).

Marta Scrimaglio, Literatura argentina de vanguardia, 1920–1930 (1974), pp. 244-257.

Thorpe Running, Borges' Ultraist Movement and Its Poets (1981), pp. 123-127.

Emilio Sosa López, "Tres poetas argentinos modernos: Molinari, Molina y Girri," in Sur, no. 348 (1981): 81-88.

Additional Bibliography

Cincotta, Héctor Dante. El tiempo y la naturaleza en la obra de Ricardo E. Molinari. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1992.

González Gandiaga, Nora. Poesía y estilo en las odas de Ricardo E. Molinari. Santa Fe, Argentina: Universidad Nacional del Litoral, 1983.

Herrera, Ricardo H. La ilusión de las formas: Escritos sobre Banchs, Molinari, Mastronardi, Wilcock, y Madariaga. Buenos Aires: El Imaginero, 1988.

                                          David William Foster