Abstract
The article focuses on the genre of short story in Hispanoamerican literature in the period called modernism (at the turn of te 20th century). The Nicaraguan Rubén Darío cultivated different types of this genre, but the two most important sorts are the stories with fantastic elements and the ones about the artist and his role in the modern society.
His vision is quite gloomy and it reflects the ambiguous reation with natural sciences and the material progress. In the story "The blue bird" the blue color symbolizes the art, the dreams and the beauty; the protagonist is a poor and idealistic poet who does not want to abandon his art, and because of the impossibility to make it, he chooses death.