La intensa y sostenida actividad de José Asunción Silva (Bogotá, 1865-1896) como periodista (reportero, cronista, crítico, editorialista, publicista) es uno de los aspectos menos conocidos y estudiados de su obra, pese a que abarca múltiples facetas que resultan indispensables para obtener la verdadera biografía intelectual del autor, para desentrañar abundantes datos que constituyen el “laboratorio” de su gran obra poética y narrativa y para asistir al proceso por el que Silva ocupa un lugar protagonista, y no exento de polémicas, en la construcción del Modernismo hispanoamericano.
The intense and sustained activity of José Asunción Silva (Bogotá, 1865-1896) as a journalist (reporter, chronicler, critic, editorialist, and publicist) is one of the aspects of his works which has been least known and studied, in spite of the fact that his many-faceted journalistic activity is indispensable to draw his true intellectual biography, to dig up information about the “laboratory” of his great poetic and narrative oeuvre, and to understand the process whereby Silva came to occupy a leading, though not uncontroversial, place in the construction of Hispano-American Modernism. Key words: