Biography of Virgilio Dávila | Puerto Rican poet.

(Virgilio Dávila Cabrera; TOA Baja, 1869 - Bayamón, 1943) Puerto Rican poet. Son of a teacher, studied at the College of the Jesuits of Santurce primary and secondary in the Civil Institute of the same locality.

He studied teaching and in 1890 founded a school of basic and higher education in Bayamon, which exercised the profession of teaching until the end of the 19th century. He was Mayor of the city of Bayamón and co-founder in 1909, along with owner Colon, of the weekly Chantecler. His son José Antonio Dávila (1898-1941) was also a distinguished lyric writer.

In 1903 it was released his first book of poems, called fatherland, a set of lyrical portraits of outstanding personalities of the art and the Puerto Rican culture, as José de Diego, Federico Degetau and Lola Rodríguez de Tió, of the landscape of the island and Romantic exaltation of love. In 1904 was one of the writers who put Lyric to Braulio owner Colon singing school .

His second work, living and loving (1912), already warns the modernist influence exerted by Rubén Dario poetry, especially as regards the forms, and the continuity in the native theme (the jibarito, watercolor...). Aromas of the land published in 1916 and the following year village before, perhaps his two works most known and impregnated of local customs, but at the same time fully modernist language and formal appearance. In 1928 he published a book for my grandchildren, which has showed its ability to write poetry addressed to the child reader.

Virgilio Dávila is considered one of the main representatives of the current literary modernist in its country, but also "drank" romanticism of Victor Hugo and Mexican Salvador Díaz Mirón. In any case, Davila always maintained its own style based on simplicity, showed in his poems a deep sensitivity for native culture and introduced the jíbaro element in the form of folkloric paintings depicting landscapes and characters from Puerto Rico.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas