Verani - The Vanguardia and Its Implications
Verani - The Vanguardia and Its Implications
Verani - The Vanguardia and Its Implications
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that the manifestos wer e the m o v e m e n t s ' distinctive and preferred means
of expression. T o remain on a conceptual level as a deliberate performa-
tive stance w a s such a widespread practice, that Johan H u i z i n ga contemp -
tuously remarked, in In the Shadow of Tomorrow: "It is a pre-eminently
modern p h e n o m e n o n that art begins w i t h proclaiming a m o v e m e n t w h i c h
it christens w i t h an -ism, and only then attempts to m a k e the correspond-
ing w o r k of a r t" (p. 182). In rapid succession, groups committed to
experimental literature appeared almost simultaneously throughout the
continent, as a result of a revolt of y o u t h against the art of the dominant
culture and of the inadequacies of the established literary idiom to convey
a dramatically changed social and cultural situation. A new historical
context - the technological urban society - brought a sense of urgency and
a need to invent innovative forms to correspond to the new experiences of
a transformed w o r l d - in short, a radical change in artistic expression. By
1 9 1 6 , the year R u b e n D a r i o died, Modernismo had settled comfortably
into aestheticism and had exhausted its inventive spirit.
Historically, the emergence around 191 6 of a n e w sensibility unchained
the imagination and opened the w a y to n e w explorations of the limits of
the writer's creative latitude. T h e manifesto w a s the primary project of
the n e w movements; it epitomized a spirit of unrestricted freedom and an
erosion of generic distinctions. Its aggressive, polemical, and iconoclastic
style w a s a strategy to p r o v o k e a predictable scandal and shock the
reader's complacency , while demanding the devotions of a cult. T h e
typographical presentation and a format d r a w n from advertising posters
w a s an effective practice to arrest the attention of the public. Consider the
format of " A c t u a l N o 1, " the first manifesto of the M e x i c a n Estridentis-
tas. It combines vertical printing, different typefaces, headings, numbered
lists, blank spaces, illustrations, capital letters, idiosyncratic spellings,
neologisms, and advertising slogans. It disrupts readerly expectations in a
w a y reminiscent of the futurist manifestos. In fact, p r o v o c a t i o n of the
audience by comically absurd m o c k e r y of the cultural myths of society is
rooted in the futurist movement, founded by F. T . Marinetti in 1909. His
flair for highlighting his ideas h u m o r o u s ly and aggressively is taken up by
M a n u e l M a p l e s A r c e and the Estridentistas. Marinetti's amusing plays on
w o r d s , such as " G i o g o n d a acqua purgativa italiana" [ " G i o c o n d a Italian
purgative w a t e r " ] turn up in M a p l e s A r c e as " j C h o p i n a la silla electrical"
[ " C h o p i n to the electric chair!"]. Furthermore, both movements, Estri-
dentismo and Futurism, p r o v o k e the bourgeois establishment by ridicul-
ing age-old beliefs and the official order w i t h great crudity and in
scatological terms. T h e popularity of these publications rested almost
exclusively on scandal, buffoonery, dissidence, and jocular and attention-
grabbing dictums. T h e Futurist's contempt for w h a t w a s considered
w o r t h y (museums, libraries, classical art) w a s taken up by other m o v e -
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literary texture. For H u i d o b r o a " c r e a t e d " p o e m w a s " a p o e m in w h i c h
each constituent part, and the complete w h o l e , s h o w s something n e w,
independent from the external w o r l d , detached from any other reality
except its o w n " ("El c r e a c i o n i s m o , " in Verani, Las vanguardias literarias
en Hispanoamérica, 228). T h e unmistakable identity of his poetry comes
from the distinct fusion of apparently unrelated materials and his ability to
discover the hidden relations a m o n g discordant ideas, the hidden thread
w h i c h unites the separate realities, and, consequently, his p o w e r to
stimulate the inner w o r k i n g s of the mind.
H u i d o b r o began experimenting w i t h the visual representation of
poetry as early as 1 9 1 3 . His development of the calligram, the graphic
arrangement of w o r d s to e v o ke the image described, such as in " L a capilla
a l d e a n a , " from Canciones en la noche (1913), printed so that the outline
delineates a chapel, is parallel to G u i l l a u m e Apollinaire's famous models.
H o w e v e r , his first notable e x a m p l e of Creacionismo is his manifesto in
verse form, " A r t e p o é t i c a , " w h i c h is included in El espejo de agua. In this
p o e m , H u i d o b r o proclaims his faith in the self-sufficiency of art and
begins his search for a n e w poetic expression. N a t u r e is granted n e w
meanings, as highlighted by t w o famous lines:
Por qué cantáis la rosa, ¡oh Poetas!
Hacedla florecer en el poema
[Why do you sing the rose, oh Poets!
M a k e it blossom in the poem]
In the early stages of the movement, H u i d o b r o shifted t o w a r d a poetry
cut off from c o m m o n experience. H e attempted to replace the depiction of
a coherent and definable portrayal of reality and the exploration of a
subjective process w i t h the invention of an a u t o n o m o u s entity, w i t h a
minimum of correspondences to the external w o r l d . H e depended heavily
on the free play of the imagination, on a fragmented and discontinuous
form, and on the use of space to forge an effect of simultaneity.
In 1918 H u i d o b r o published t w o b o o k s crucially important to the
development of vanguar d poetry in the Hispanic w o r l d . T h e radically
revolutionary poems of Ecuatorial and especially of Poemas árticos
[Arctic Poems] gave birth to the literary A v a n t - G a r d e in Latin A m e r i c a
and, at the same time, played a major role in the creation of Spanish
Ultraísmo, transplanted to Buenos Aires by Jorge Luis Borges u p o n his
return to Argentina in 1 9 2 1 . T h e s e b o o k s display the innovative formal
aspects of his w o r k , w h i c h recur w i t h increasing dexterity throughout his
poetry, culminating in Altazor, his masterpiece. T h e juxtaposition of
unrelated items destroys the associative p o w e r of the language and reveals
a new kind of poetic expression, stripped of all its customary associations.
" S o m b r a " [ S h a d o w ] , from Poemas árticos, is a characteristic example:
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HASTA C U A N D O S A N G R A R A N LA VIDA
Sin embargo
Al borde del mundo florecen las encinas
Y L A P R I M A V E R A V I E N E SOBR E L A S G O L O N D R I N A S
Nightingale of battles
That sings above all the bullets
Nonetheless
At the edge of the world the oaks bloom
A N D SPRING C O M E S A B O V E T H E S W A L L O W S ]
Poetry becomes visual: typography replaces syntax as a w a y of establish-
ing relationships between w o r d s . C a p i t a l letters, absence of punctuation,
displaced margins, multiple patterns on the page, and blank spaces are
used to achieve a visual effect. L i k e the Cubists, H u i d o b r o exploits the
collage, the juxtaposition of disparate elements freed from accepted logic
to create a truly n e w aesthetic experience. His conscious effort to develop
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[I was born on a day
when G o d was sick,
critically.]
Spiritual desolation looms over the path of Vallejo's poetry: the death
of his mother, the break-up of his h o m e and family circle, lost love,
misery, and unjust imprisonment were early ordeals that confirmed in him
the futility of life. In 1923, the year after publishing Trilce, he left Peru,
never to return, and lived equally precarious years of deprivation and
illness in Paris, until his death in 1938, as if besieged by a tragic destiny. A
line from a posthumous p o e m , "Identidad y altura," collected in Poemas
humanos [Human Poems], captures succinctly the rage w h i c h permeates
his writing: " Q u i e r o escribir, pero me sale e s p u m a " ["I w a n t to write, but
w h a t comes out is f o a m " ] . Haunting, disturbing images acquire a
dramatic intensity and an authenticity seldom attained in literature. A l l
avant-garde writers rise to the challenge to innovate, but while other poets
were satisfied by merely rejecting traditional poetic idiom (verse lines,
rhyme, strophe, conventional syntax, referential language, logical
thought), and by finding a special language to heighten their modernity,
Vallejo challenged the validity of high culture w i t h a frontal attack on all
forms of elitism. His essential achievement as a poet resides in the creation
of a personal language, aimed at undermining the limitations of modes of
communication, to reveal the deepest emotions of primary existence. T h i s
is a crucial difference: Vallejo is not simply an experimenter w i t h imagery
or form, w h o searches for superficially impressive pyrotechnical effects,
but rather a poet w h o seeks to revivify language in order to open
unexplored states of consciousness. T h e obscurity w h i c h is characteristic
of his poetry is the result of his pursuit of an inner vision, w h i c h does not
conform to the usual organization of experience. Consequently, to break
d o w n conventionalized responses, he ventured into irrationality, incoher-
ence, and incongruity, w h i c h render his w o r k arbitrary and incomprehen-
sible for the c o m m o n reader. H e epitomizes the type of writer Irving
H o w e had in mind w h e n he stated, in Literary Modernism, that "the
avant-garde abandons the useful fiction of the ' c o m m o n reader,' it
demands instead the devotions of a c u l t . "
Vallejo's V a n g u a r d i s m is still the subject of disagreement between
scholars w h o cannot concur on the nature of his contribution, if any, to
the advent of the movement. T h e fact that he disassociated himself from
all the tendencies, appears to give some validity to the claims of those w h o
negate his place in the Vanguardia. Furthermore, he never followed the
precepts of any movement, rejecting them all. Nonetheless, he certainly
w r o t e radically n e w and enduring avant-garde p o e m s . Trilce s h o w s that
the literary procedures associated w i t h the V a n g u a r d became an essential
factor of his poetry: he adapted the expressive possibilities of typography
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A m e r i c a . A s might be expected, the poetry of the editors' countries w a s
over-represented (sixteen poets each for Argentina and Chile, and four-
teen for Peru, as compared to six for M e x i c o , out of a total of s i x t y - t w o
poets included), but there is little doubt that the b o o k is a watershed w h i c h
stands as a testimony to y o u n g writers enthusiastically pursuing poetic
innovation. It enables the reader to assess the mutual influences a m o n g the
various movements and trends, often bitter rivals in their artistic goals,
but undeniably similar in their actual results. A l t h o u g h a sharp line of
demarcation between the first and second stages of the Vanguardia is not
to be found, this anthology signaled a turning point.
T h e first phase of the Latin A m e r i c a n A v a n t - G a r d e w a s practically over
by 1927. T h e virulence and scandalous behavior of the pioneering-/sras
w a s progressively being replaced by eclectic movements and influential
journals, w h i c h contributed greatly t o w a r d generating an intense cultural
a w a k e n i n g in the continent. Amauta in Peru, Revista de Avance in C u b a ,
and Contemporáneos in M e x i c o appeared at exactly the right moment ,
w h e n art as shock value and as incendiary outburst had completed its
cycle and the consolidation of the A v a n t - G a r d e w a s beginning to take on
the attributes of an institutional alternative. T h e s e journals w e l c o m e d
diverse tendencies in art and literature instead of being forums for the
p r o m o t i o n of their o w n programs .
Mariátegui w a s an advocate of ideologically committed art and of
furthering the sociopolitical role of literature, thus renewing the connec-
tions between politics and literary-artistic movements established by the
European precedents, from Futurism to Surrealism. His political convic-
tions - he w a s a professed M a r x i s t - made Amauta one of the few
magazines anchored to a firm ideological base. H e intended to name it
" V a n g u a r d i a , " but opted to incorporate the indigenous allusion in its title
(the name means " w i s e m a n " or " c o u r t c o u n s e l o r " in Q u e c h u a ) , so that it
could become a voice for the revindication of the autochthonou s cultures.
Mariátegui's essays on literature stressed the question of the subordina-
tion of art to the social revolution and denounced the dissolution of
bourgeois culture. T h e art of the Vanguardia, he suggested, w a s a
s y m p t o m of the crisis of a civilization, the "end of an e p o c h , " as he often
stated. His main goal w a s to s h o w literature and politics to be dialectically
connected, to associate all domains of cultural and civil life. In " A r t e ,
revolución, decadencia, " (1926), he sums up his idea that art is not a
diversion or an intellectual g a m e , independent from society: " N o aes-
thetics can reduce artistic creation to a question of technique. N e w
techniques must correspond to a new spirit. If not, the only thing that
changes is the ornamental cover, the decoration. A n d formal conquests
are not enough to satisfy an artistic r e v o l u t i o n ."
Amauta maintained strong ties w i t h Indigenismo and the literature of
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