Ariel is a long essay by the Uruguayan critic Jose Enrique Rodo (1871 1917). It is an attempt to formulate a characteristic Latin American spirit; it emphasizes spiritual values as against exclusively materialist progress. When it was first published in 1900 it provoked a wide response from the youth of Latin America to whom it was addressed, and brought immediate fame to its author. It remains his best and most important work. This edition contains the Spanish text of Ariel, with a long introduction, based on extensive research in the Rodo Archives, which gives us the background essential to...