Lugones, Argüello Leopoldo

Born June 13, 1874, in Villa María del Río Seco, province of Córdoba; died Feb. 19, 1938, in Buenos Aires. Argentine poet and journalist.

In Lugones’ early collection of poetry Mountains of Gold (1897) social protest is combined with anarchic individualism. The collections Twilights in the Garden (1905) and Sentimental Lunar Almanac (1909) contain a complicated system of elaborate metaphors. The collections Odes to the Century (1910), The Book of Landscapes (1917), and Poems of the Ancestral Estate (1928) are imbued with love for Argentina and its natural beauty. The lyrical poetry in the collections Romancero (1924) and the Romances of Rio Seco (1938) are close in spirit to folk art. Using the forms of national and classical Spanish and Argentine poetry, Lugones developed new rhyme schemes and meters and created an original system of strophes. In Lugones’ work decadent tendencies are interwoven with patriotic motifs and the search for a national form. Lugones influenced the development of poetry in Latin America. He wrote a biography of D. F. Sarmiento (The Story of Sarmiento, 1911), and other prose works.