Salvador Díaz Mirón (December 14, 1853 – June 12, 1928) was a Mexican poet. He was born in the port city of Veracruz. His early verse, written in a passionate, romantic style, was influenced by Lord Byron and Victor Hugo. His later verse was more classical in mode. His poem, A Gloria, was influential. His 1901 volume Lascas ("Chips from a Stone") established Diaz Mirón as a precursor of modernismo.Columbia Encyclopedia: Salvador Díaz Mirón He worked as a journalist and teacher.
As a politician, he was an opposition congressman in the 1880s, during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz. He later became supporter of Díaz, and in the 1900s he was again federal congressman.Piccato, Pablo. “La Invención Del Poeta Como Héroe, Genio O Criminal: Salvador Díaz Mirón Después De Lascas.” Revista de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, vol. 33, no. 66, Dec. 2007, pp. 13–28. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.2307/25485827.
In the 1890s, he was incarcerated for 4 years for a murder.
As a poet, he celebrated the centennial of the Mexican War of Independence. Díaz Mirón delivered the main speech at the dedication ceremony of the Angel of Independence monument, which was attended by President Porfirio Díaz and foreign dignitaries. The monument itself, also known as El Ángel, was erected to commemorate the start of the war in 1810.
Díaz Mirón was director of the Díaz aligned newspaper El Imparcial. In 1914, he resigned and went into exile in Spain and then Havana, Cuba.Aguirre, Nancy Alexandra, "Porfirismo during the Mexican Revolution: Exile and the Politics of Representation, 1910–1920" (2012). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 1773. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/1773
In 1919 the president Venustiano Carranza allowed him to return to Mexico. He was elected a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua in 1922.
Díaz Mirón died in Veracruz on June 12, 1928. His remains are interred at the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City.
Work The Mexican Parnassus (1886) Poetry (New York, 1895) Poems (Paris, 1900) Flakes (Xalapa, 1901 with several reprints) Poems (1918) Complete Poems (UNAM, with notes of Antonio Castro Leal, 1941) Collection of poems (UNAM 1953) Prosas (1954)
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