Nervo, Amado (1870–1919)

Amado Nervo (b. 27 August 1870; d. 24 May 1919), Mexican writer. Born in Tepic, Nayarit, Nervo excelled as a student at the Colegio de San Luis Gonzaga in Jacona, Michoacán. In 1886 he began seminary in Zamora, Michoacán, but soon abandoned this path in order to help support his family. He moved to Mexico City in 1894 where he launched his literary and journalistic career. Nervo began his literary career writing in a romantic style with naturalist tendencies, but he soon fell under the influence of the modernista movement at the turn of the century. In this vein, he coedited the important cultural journal Revista Moderna (Modern Review [1898–1911]) with Jesús Valenzuela. He traveled internationally as a journalist. He was an associate of the Nicaraguan modernista poet Rubén Darío in Paris. After 1905, Nervo worked as a member of the diplomatic service. Although extremely popular at the turn of the century, Nervo's poetry and narrative have been disparaged by subsequent generations because of its overly sentimental and anti-intellectual characteristics. Nervo's first novel, El bachiller (The Student, 1895), attracted much attention because of its sexual theme. In 1898 he published his first important collections of poetry, Perlas negras (Black Pearls) and Místicas (Mystical Poems). Although the Mexican Revolution interrupted diplomatic services in 1914 and left Nervo in a financially difficult position in Madrid, in 1918 the Mexican government recalled him from Spain and then sent him to Argentina and Uruguay on a diplomatic mission. He died in Montevideo.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuel Durán, Genio y figura de Amado Nervo (1968).

Almudena Mejías Alonso, "Amado Nervo," in Historia de la Literatura Hispanoamericana. Vol. 2, Del neoclasicismo al modernismo, edited by Luis Iñigo Madrigal (1987), pp. 647-654.

Frank Dauster, "Amado Nervo," in Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria Isabel Abreu, vol. 1 (1989), pp. 425-429.

Additional Bibliography

Urbina, Luis G., Miguel González Lomelía, and Lourdes C. Pacheco Ladrón de Guevara. Visiones críticas de Amado Nervo. Nayarit: Gobierno del Estado, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Consejo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes de Nayarit, 2004.

                                      Danny J. Anderson