The Vanguardia and Its Implications

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The Vanguardia and its implications

Hugo / . Verani
T h e term Vanguardia [Avant-Garde] is collectively applied to a diverse

range of literary movements - such as Creacionismo, Ultraísmo
[Ultraism], Estridentismo, and numerous other -ismos — w h i c h appeared
in Latin A m e r i c a between approximately 1 9 1 6 and 1935. A n y attempt to
establish a c h r o n o l o g y of a literary p h e n o m e n o n is problematic and
debatable. W h i l e in European literature it is more or less agreed that the
manifesto of Futurism in 1909 and the second surrealist manifesto in 1930
can be considered the beginning and ending documents of the A v a n t -
G a r d e , in Latin A m e r i c a there is no similar consensus. I suggest, h o w e v e r ,
that w e can discern a turning point, a change of direction around the dates
I have proposed. Prior to the publication of Vicente H u i d o b r o ' s El espejo
de agua (1916), there were only influential precursors and isolated
anticipations within the dying rumbles of Modernismo; and by the time
Pablo N e r u d a published his second Residencia en la tierra (1935),
[Residence on Earth], the A v a n t - G a r d e had fulfilled its historic purpose.
Afterwards, there w a s a displacement of sensibility, a notable decrease in
the experimental m o o d and a sharp increase in the social role of the
author; particularly, there w a s a consolidation of the literary achieve
ments of the period. In other w o r d s , around 1935 the A v a n t - G a r d e
became the dominant mode and Latin A m e r i c a n literature m o v e d into
different aesthetic and historical concerns, in rhythm with the rapidly
changing w o r l d .
Distinctly European in origin, the different movements of the A v a n t -
G a r d e stimulated frenzied cultural activity in Latin A m e r i c a , and evolved
from a belligerent and derivative first phase into a wide variety of
manifestations, conditioned by the traditions of the societies in w h i c h
they appeared and central to the development of Latin A m e r i c a n letters.
T h e predominant signs of the succession of short-lived tendencies, trends,
and movements are the experimental, innovative character of the poetry
and fiction, and the conscious opposition to the o u t m o d e d literary codes
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of the preceding time (Modernismo in poetry and Regionalismo [Region

alism] in narrative). A s Peter Burger observed in the Theory of the Avant-
Garde, "it is no longer the h a r m o n y of the individual parts that constitutes
the w h o l e ; it is the contradictory relationships of heterogeneous ele
m e n t s . " Indeed, the distinguishing features of the A v a n t - G a r d e dispute
the traditional functions of literature: the Vanguardist discards not only
the h a r m o n y of the individual parts, the organic and stylistic unity, but all
views of literature as description, mimesis, or expression of feelings, in
favor of an absolute freedom of invention, w h i c h led to broadening of the
thematic material and the development of startling innovations in
language and structure. Literature w a s conceived as a construction of the
mind, an act of creation free from the controls imposed by traditional
forms and external reality.
A reflexive awareness distinguishes the A v a n t - G a r d e , that is, the
conviction that an effort to radically change literature in modern culture
demands an activist role, especially the adoption of an explicitly critical
stand t o w a r d the dominant values of the times. T h e Vanguardists were
not involved in any kind of systematic theoretical thinking, but, rather,
felt the urgent need to formulate c o m b a t i v e , irreverent, and iconoclastic
documents to develop new means of harnessing the attention of the
public. Since Futurism, most movements of the first t w o decades of our
century shared, despite their diversity and contradictory premises, a
c o m m o n bond: a radical rejection of the literature of the past and a
commitment to disrupt the continuity of traditional values and ideas. In
this respect, critics tend to agree in defining the A v a n t - G a r d e in p a r a d o x i
cal terms, as a manifestation of an "aesthetics of o p p o s i t i o n " (Yuri
L o t m a n ) , of " o p p o s i t i o n and rupture" (Eugene Ionesco), a "tradition of
rupture" ( O c t a v i o Paz), or a "tradition of the n e w " (Harold R o s e m b e r g ) ,
implying a n e w departure and a complete break from aesthetic
conventions.
T h i s cult of the new ( " M a k e it n e w ! " w a s Ezra Pound's challenge)
echoed in y o u n g artists everywhere, spreading and fragmenting into
numerous trans-national movements, under different labels. In the 1920s,
in particular, Latin A m e r i c a n intellectuals were actively transgressing the
literary canon, and the manifesto became a fitting emblem of their
activity, a w a y of self-affirmation and deliberate subversion of conven
tional writing and bourgeois respectability. Manifestos, proclamations,
public performances, open letters, polemics, and the little magazine
became a trademark of the period, often more interesting than the literary
w o r k s produced, as maintained by G u i l l e r m o de T o r r e , one of the
participants in Spanish Ultraism and first historian of the international
A v a n t - G a r d e . T o write about literature became the equivalent to m a k i n g
it, and many scholars (Adrian M a r i n o , Burger, Marjorie Perloff) agree
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C A M B R I D G E H I S T O R Y OF L A T I N A M E R I C A N LITERATURE
that the manifestos were 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 g a 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 art" (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 1916 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 humorously 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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merits in Latin A m e r i c a as well. For instance, Marinetti's much quoted

battlecry " a roaring motorcar . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of
S a m o t h r a c e , " becomes, in the manifesto of Martin Fierro in Argentina,
" a g o o d Hispano-Suiza [automobile] is a W O R K O F A R T much more
perfect than a Louis X V sedan chair"; and so on. T h e y were strident blasts
designed to ridicule w o r n - o u t notions and affront respectable public
opinion and g o o d taste.
Manifestos and proclamations became an art form in themselves, a
model for polemical p r o v o c a t i o n and tendentious writing, w h o s e major
strategy w a s a radical disruption of the prevailing notions of literature.
Behind the various labels there w a s a unifying experience, namely, self-
p r o m o t i o n in an unmistakable language (belligerent, dissident, and
dogmatic), predisposed to hyperbole and categorical defiance, aimed at
persuading the reader to join the movement. T h e manifestos varied
greatly in type, but most used a journalistic layout and publicity slogans to
demythify prestigious literary idioms with mischievously irreverent wit.
O n e of the manifestos of the Estridentistas cried out, for instance: " V i v a el
mole de g u a j o l o t e " ["Long live the spicy turkey s t e w " ] , set off from the
text. Furthermore, the manifestos dismantled established notions of
literature w i t h expressive typography, syntactical indeterminacy, neolo
gisms, colloquialisms, incoherence, and collages of incompatible
thoughts in unexpected contexts.
T h e A v a n t - G a r d e w a s a g r o u p manifestation, but paradoxically their
proclamations, written in the first person plural, exalted individualism
and the uniqueness of the writers' doctrines and craft. T h e y were
collaborative ventures (with the exception of H u i d o b r o ' s crusades), in
w h i c h the author diluted his individuality in a collective identity and, at
the same time, presented himself as a prophetic visionary and as the leader
of a group w i t h wide-ranging programs and international connections.
T h e Avant-Gardists shared a c o m m o n objective: to turn the text into a
public event as a w a y to establish a space for critical debate to challenge
the dominant sensibility and to emphasize their privileged activity.
Virtually all of the movements were p r o m o t e d by periodicals, often
ephemeral, but a l w a y s a barometer of novelties and aesthetic activity.
T h e y functioned as organs for a specific literary current, w h o s e primary
purpose w a s to publish the proclamations announcing the foundation of a
n e w movement and examples of its w o r k , usually poetry. Such periodicals
were particularly celebrated for creating an environment conducive to
experimental writing and for enabling local writers to read contemporary
foreign literature and become acquainted w i t h the leading painters of the
times. H o w e v e r , many of the most respected reviews were not attached to
any particular tendency. In fact, the four most influential ones cultivated
an uninterrupted flow of c o m m u n i c a t i o n w i t h the newest developments in
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contemporary artistic trends. T w o were primarily literary forums: Martin

Fierro in Buenos Aires and Contemporáneos in M e x i c o ; t w o others were
pluralistic journals, largely literary, w h i c h responded to the social
concerns of the 1920s: Amauta, in L i m a , reflected the sensibility and
Socialist agenda of its director, José C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i , and Revista de
Avance, in H a v a n a , sponsored by a brilliant g r o u p of intellectuals -
foremost a m o n g them, Alejo Carpentier - flourished in a state of cultural
eclecticism.
In Latin A m e r i c a , the Vanguardia included a remarkable constellation
of poets w h o m o v e d b e y o n d established conventions t o w a r d radical
linguistic and formal experimentation, a w a r e of the inadequacy of
traditional artistic means of c o m m u n i c a t i o n to reflect the c o m p l e x ,
disjointed, and changeable w o r l d of the twentieth century. T h e emergence
of V a n g u a r d i s m is closely linked to the whimsical H u i d o b r o , the consum
mate tactician of avant-garde attitudes. N o poet of his generation w r o t e
more extensively on the process of poetic creation and O l i v e r i o G i r o n d o
w a s the only other writer to p r o l o n g an avant-garde stance as a deeply
rooted artistic c o m m i t m e n t well into the 1930s and beyond. H u i d o b r o ' s
movement, Creacionismo, w a s not only the first but also the most
carefully elaborated avant-garde tendency in Latin A m e r i c a . In "Non
serviam" (1914), H u i d o b r o ' s earliest manifesto, he outlines his poetic
credo, the need to invent new w o r l d s , independent from that of N a t u r e .
A r t must cease imitating the demands of the external w o r l d : "Non
serviam. I will not be y o u r slave, M o t h e r N a t u r e . I will be y o u r M a s t e r . "
In 1 9 1 6 , H u i d o b r o traveled to Europe and became a participant in the
cubist movement, co-founding w i t h Pierre Reverdy the journal Nord-
Sud, (Paris, 1 9 1 7 ) , publishing several b o o k s of poetry in French, and
strengthening his passion for polemics, sustained to the very end of his life.
H u i d o b r o ' s constant theorizing culminates w i t h Manifestes, a reformula
tion of the principles of C u b i s m , w h i c h by then had run its course. Written
in French and marked by aggressive defensiveness, it w a s an answer to
A n d r e Breton's Manif estes du surrealisme (1924). O n e of the texts.
" C r e a c i o n i s m o , " contains his main aesthetic tenets: humanize objects
and m a k e them intimate by disregarding the conventional idea of space;
make the vague become precise, the abstract concrete and the concrete
abstract; change the accepted value of the customary associations of
elements.
A l o n g w i t h many other A v a n t - G a r d i s t s , H u i d o b r o emphasized the
juxtaposition of disparate realities, and the incessant shifting of unrelated
images to create an effect of multiplicity and simultaneity. H e banned
descriptiveness, ornamental and superfluous adjectives, disregarded the
conventions of rationality, syntax, and structural coherence, building up a
mental construct w i t h o u t any attempt to portray anything external to the
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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 new,
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 k e 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 vanguard 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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La sombra es un pedazo que se aleja

Camino de otras playas
En mi memoria un ruiseñor se queja
Ruiseñor de las batallas

Que canta sobre las balas
HASTA C U A N D O S A N G R A R A N LA VIDA
La misma luna herida

N o tiene sino un ala
El corazón hizo su nido

En medio del vacío
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 SOBRE L A S G O L O N D R I N A S
[The shadow is a fragment that departs

En route to other shores
In my memory a nightingale complains
Nightingale of battles
That sings above all the bullets
H O W L O N G WILL T H E Y BLEED LIFE
T h e moon itself is wounded

It has only one wing
T h e heart built its nest

In the middle of the void
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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multiple metaphors to bring together opposite or unrelated ideas, w i t h o u t

explaining their connection, takes on the character of a deliberately
fabricated object, forcing the reader to seek aesthetic pleasure in the
discovery of unexpected correlations amidst the seemingly chaotic c o m b i
nations of w o r d s .
H u i d o b r o placed great emphasis on cerebral craftmanship. His most
important b o o k , Altazor, is a c o m p l e x but profoundly unified spiritual
adventure into oblivion, a remarkable summation of his achievement as a
poet. It represents a synthesis of creacionista aesthetics and metaphysical
concerns, a powerful meditation on the relativity of h u m a n values,
conveying an anguished sense of non-being, infused w i t h an apocalyptic
tone. In Altazor, H u i d o b r o pushed to the limit the need to revitalize
language, to experiment beyond c o m m o n verbal and logical connections,
transcending the limits of poetic discourse. Written in seven cantos,
discontinuous as is modern life, it interweaves a great variety of style,
tone, themes, and unrelated stimuli. It combines lyric poetry and narrative
stream of consciousness, sprinkled with passages of playful h u m o r and
anguished desolation. T h e speaker portrays himself as an "anti-poet,"
plunging through space t o w a r d Earth in a parachute on a journey w h i c h is
perceived as a fall into the abyss of existence. M o d e r n society is seen as
disintegrating into fragments, reduced to ruins by a crisis of values and by
the First W o r l d W a r (the p o e m w a s in progress as early as 1919). In the
final canto, the efficacy of poetry itself is questioned: H u i d o b r o delibera
tely interrupts the process of denotation reducing poetry to a combination
of sounds generating their o w n significations. T h e progressive disinte
gration of conventional language parallels the shipwreck of humanity,
lucidly reflecting the decay of human consciousness in a hostile and
ominous w o r l d .
Ultraísmo and Estridentismo emerged almost simultaneously as self-
conscious and combative groups, bent on launching playful attacks upon
the bourgeois establishment. Ultraísmo began in Buenos Aires in
D e c e m b e r of 1921 w i t h the distribution of Prisma, a leaflet written by
Borges and his literary friends, heralding their aims and introducing their
poetry. In a similar vein, and in the same month, the Estridentistas
papered the walls of buildings in M e x i c o City w i t h their poster, " A c t u a l , "
signed by M a p l e s A r c e and endorsed by a " D i r e c t o r i o de V a n g u a r d i a , "
with 200 signatures. Prisma and " A c t u a l " became the opening salvos of
rebellious y o u n g writers devoted to a radical break with existing norms,
d r a w i n g attention to their attempts to erode provincialism and introduce
new literary forms in the t w o largest Spanish A m e r i c a n cities. In spite of
the claims of originality of the main writers of these movements, there is
little doubt that their activities were firmly rooted in the European avant-
garde tendencies of the previous decades, eclectically b o r r o w i n g from
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diverse -isms (Futurism, C u b i s m , D a d a i s m , Expressionism). T h e exalta

tion of metaphor to fuse different areas of experience in order to achieve
an elusive and hermetic expression, challenging the reader's imagination,
w a s one of the basic premises of the A v a n t - G a r d e . H u i d o b r o ' s belief that
the image is the clasp that unites disparate realities, w h o s e p o w e r resides
in the effect of revelation, is reiterated and complemented by Borges and
M a p l e s A r c e . Borges states that the metaphor excited the Ultraistas
"because of its algebraic w a y of bringing distances together," while
M a p l e s A r c e remarked that the Estridentistas attempted to "relate or
merge disparate terms so that they produced surprise or e x p e c t a t i o n "
(Quiroz in Siempre!, M a y 1 2 , 1 9 7 1 ) .
In his manifesto, " U l t r a í s m o , " of 1 9 2 1 , Borges provided the definitive
ultraist p r o g r a m . Four points sum up the fundamental precepts of the
movement: (1) reduction of poetry to its primordial element: the meta
phor; (2) elimination of connectives and superfluous adjectives; (3)
abolition of ornaments, confessions, circumstantial detail, preaching, and
affected vagueness; (4) synthesis of t w o or more images into one to
broaden the p o w e r of suggestion of language. T h e s e precepts illustrate
very well that the ultraist p o e m should contain a series of unconnected
metaphors abruptly juxtaposed, w i t h o u t apparent discernible connec
tion, to e x p a n d the expressiveness of language, thus leaving more latitude
for the reader's imagination.
In Buenos Aires, the short-lived Prisma - published for only t w o issues -
w a s replaced by t w o other journals as the forums through w h i c h the new
sensibility flowed: Proa and, particularly, the widely read Martín Fierro,
the most h u m o r o u s and satirical avant-garde review. T h e latter's famous
manifesto expressed clearly the strategy and implications of the Argenti
nian A v a n t - G a r d e : irreverence, aggressiveness, playfulness, and caustic
irony, as an attack u p o n the old conventions and a w a y to ferment activity
and to p r o m p t a shift in sensibility. Martín Fierro became the center of
aesthetic debate in Argentina, indispensable for the development of the
environment that modern literature required and for the stimulation of
experimental writers. A prime e x a m p l e of avant-garde writing is Veinte
poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía, by G i r o n d o , one of the editors of the
journal and the author of its unsigned manifesto; it excels in its emphasis
on visual images arranged in a cubist tableau to bring together conflicting
m o o d s , causing an incongruous and h u m o r o u s effect. G i r o n d o also
initiates an anti-literary stance, as he himself stated in an open letter to an
association of sectarian comrades: " O n e finds rhythms descending a
staircase, p o e m s t h r o w n in the middle of the street, poems collected as one
gathers cigarette butts on the s i d e w a l k . " Later b o o k s , Calcomanías and
Espantapájaros (Al alcance de todos), demonstrate that the avant-garde
spirit w a s not a transitional development, but an intrinsic component of
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his poetics. T h e exploration of the dissonance of language reaches its most

startling dimension in En la masmédula, a very late b o o k .
Undeniably, Borges is the creative genius a m o n g the promoters of
Ultraísmo, but in the 19x0s he shared the spotlight w i t h a generation
increasingly sensitive to the possibilities of breaking w i t h tradition. T h e
w o r k s of G i r o n d o , of course, and of R i c a r d o M o l i n a r i , L e o p o l d o
M a r e c h a l , N o r a h L a n g e , Eduardo G o n z á l e z L a n u z a (author of Prismas, a
b o o k called by Borges " e x e m p l a r y of Ultraísmo, archetypical of a
generation"), remain n o t e w o r t h y standards of avant-garde poetry, as is
the narrative of M a c e d o n i o Fernández and R o b e r t o A r l t , to be discussed
later. Borges defined and exalted Ultraísmo, but his contribution to the
movement is primarily limited to the use of startling images in his early
poetry, published in Spanish periodicals and largely uncollected by him.
In contrast to his theoretical writings, his o w n poetic practice is not
prompted by exterior stimuli, but, rather, by an "essential reality," as he
called his motivation for writing. In Fervor de Buenos Aires, his first b o o k ,
and in Luna de enfrente, his cult of the metaphor is instrumental in
transmuting the objective reality of the city into an emotionally charged
inner situation, into suggestive recollections of personal feelings, thus
diluting and in fact undermining ultraist rules. Borges quickly moves
a w a y from Ultraism's aesthetic restrictions - the craving for novelty and
metaphorical discovery - into self-reflexive, ironic and metaphysical
projections, into imaginative dimensions of time, a practice progressively
dominant in his writing.
W h e n M e x i c o began to emerge from the cultural sterility brought on by
the R e v o l u t i o n , José Juan T a b l a d a emerged as a transitional vanguard
figure. In Un día. . ., he introduced the Japanese haiku - a brief p o e m ,
usually three verses long, portraying the fusion of conflicting forces into a
unique image, w h o s e underlying unity is often difficult to perceive. A
classic example
Trozos de barro
por la senda en penumbra
saltan los sapos
[Chunks of mud
along the twilight path
toads hop]
In Li-Po y otros poemas, he envisioned quite different artistic possibilities.

H e introduced space as an expressive factor of poems and created lyrical
ideograms, similar in essence and form to H u i d o b r o ' s calligrams. H o w
ever, T a b l a d a , w h o spent thirty years in exile, in relative obscurity,
primarily in N e w Y o r k C i t y , exerted little impact upon his contemporar
ies in M e x i c o .
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W i t h the Estridentistas, h o w e v e r , cultural life in M e x i c o underwent a

radical upheaval. A s the name suggests, the m o v e m e n t intended to
p r o v o k e and it stridently extended buffoonery and hysterics to their
limits, attaining its initial impetus in a vehement repudiation of prevailing
values, norms, and principles: historical tradition and national heroes,
reactionary ideologies, religion, morals, and - naturally - the literature of
the past. T h e m o v e m e n t ' s principal adherents - the poet M a p l e s A r c e , the
chronicler G e r m á n List A r z u b i d e , the novelist Arqueles V e l a and the
painter R a m ó n A l v a de la C a n a l - celebrate the great inventions o f
modern life, emanating from the dynamics of technological industries
(aeroplanes, the cinema, the p h o n o g r a p h , automobiles, etc.), bringing to
their w o r k the d y n a m i s m of the industrialized w o r l d and modern mass
culture. T h e kind of c o s m o p o l i t a n poetry preferred by M a p l e s A r c e , in
Andamios interiores and Poemas interdictos, represents a variation of the
radical explorations of the Creacionistas and Ultraistas. Fragmentation,
displacement, simultaneity, and juxtaposition of u n c o m m o n images,
w i t h o u t transitions and disregarding the conventions of logic and syntax,
were dominant once again. Every avant-garde artist claims originality
above all, but there is no doubt that Estridentismo w a s an eclectic
m o v e m e n t intertwined w i t h similar Latin A m e r i c a n tendencies of the
period, w i t h o u t significantly different contributions.
T h e defining feature of the Estridentistas w a s , not surprisingly in post-
revolutionary M e x i c o , a desire to achieve for literature a sense of
solidarity w i t h the underprivileged masses, a political activism unlike any
other in the early 1920s. A l o n g s i d e the muralist painters (José Clemente
O r o z c o , D i e g o Rivera, and D a v i d Alfaro Siqueiros), they bear witness to
the intense social consciousness of the age. Literature and painting
became w e a p o n s at the service of social, political, and ideological causes,
acquiring in M e x i c o a distinctive period quality. Urbe (1924), by M a p l e s
A r c e , translated into English by John D o s Passos as Metropolis (1929), is a
tribute to the w o r k e r s in a mechanized and alienating city, a glorification
of the masses and of socialist revolution.
Like most avant-garde movements, Estridentismo w a s short-lived.
H o w e v e r , it radically altered aesthetic traditions and its rebellion left a
ferment later to be exploited by more gifted writers. A l m o s t simulta
neously w i t h the break-up of Estridentismo in 1927, w e witness in
M e x i c o a great upsurge of intellectual activity. T h e w o r k s of a n e w g r o u p
of writers, centered around a series of journals, primarily Ulises and
Contemporáneos, gradually developed into the country's high point in
modern poetry. Its members included the most active y o u n g writers of the
moment: X a v i e r Villaurrutia, C a r l o s Pellicer, José G o r o s t i z a , Jaime
T o r r e s Bodet, Salvador N o v o , Gilberto O w e n , Jorge Cuesta, and Ber
nardo O r t i z de M o n t e l l a n o . T h e primary g o a l of these Contemporáneos
124
w a s to link up M e x i c a n letters w i t h the main currents of contemporary

European and A m e r i c a n art and literature. O n the one hand, they m o v e d
a w a y from nationalism and social commitment t o w a r d universalism and
aestheticism; on the other, they abandoned the unlimited freedom to
experiment of the Estridentistas, replacing it w i t h an introspective
approach to literature, with a convergence of spontaneity and controlled
lucidity, effectively taking advantage of the gains of the A v a n t - G a r d e .
Nocturnos and Nostalgia de la muerte, by Villaurrutia, reveal an
exploration of the dark w o r l d of the subconscious, a passionate pursuit of
a Surreal nature, unmatched in M e x i c o in his time; and Muerte sin fin
[Death Without End] by G o r o s t i z a , written at the end of the period, in
1939, represents the culmination of a poetic generation. It is a book-length
p o e m about the discovery of consciousness and its fall into oblivion, and
the p a r a d o x i c a l , endless cycle of living and dying. Muerte sin fin reflects
G o r o s t i z a ' s idea of poetry w h i c h is stated in the prologue to Poesía. T h e r e
he proposes poetry to be an investigation of fundamentals - love, life,
death, and G o d - w h i c h is also meant to undermine language, m a k i n g it
more transparent. Such intense reflexion is far removed from the spirit of
the A v a n t - G a r d e , but the p o e m " w o u l d not have been w r i t t e n , " as José
Emilio Pacheco has said, " h a d it not been for the radical experiences of the
1920s" ( " N o t a sobre la otra v a n g u a r d i a " ) .
F r o m 1921 o n w a r d s , most other countries, in addition to M e x i c o , had
some influential individual or g r o u p programmatically calling for an
abrupt break w i t h tradition, founding movements, issuing manifestos,
publishing journals, polemicizing, etc. Naturally, different cultural,
social, political, and historical situations determined an uneven develop
ment of the A v a n t - G a r d e throughout the continent. W h i l e the earliest and
most sophisticated manifestations flourished in the main centers of urban
culture (Buenos Aires, L i m a , Santiago, M e x i c o City), groups in other
countries played an important role in the development of the national
literatures and they deserve a brief account in the present context. For
instance, a steady stream of -isms enlivened the cultural life of Puerto
R i c o : Diepalismo (1921; so labeled for the initial letters of the names of the
founders, José I. de Diego Padró and Luis Palés M a t o s ) , Euforismo (1929),
Noísmo (1925), Atalayismo (1929). A lasting ingredient of this activity is
the discovery of the ethnic roots of the C a r i b b e a n and popular rhythms,
w h i c h please the senses, mainly through the negrista [Afro-Antillean]
poetry of Palés M a t o s , the first n o t e w o r t h y poet to popularize the genre.
In Uruguay, a fertile symbiosis of N a t i v i s m and Ultraism became the
dominant aesthetic trend in the early 1920s, producing a moderate avant-
garde tendency. Agua del tiempo, by Fernán Silva V a l d é s , enjoyed sudden,
but fleeting fame. Ultraísmo w a s less widespread than in Argentina, but,
unexpectedly, a late flowering left at least one b o o k w o r t h y of notice: El
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hombre que se comió un autobús, by Alfredo M a r i o Ferreiro, the c o -

editor of Cartel, the most distinctive avant-garde magazine in the country.
Other trends, such as Postumismo (1921; in the D o m i n i c a n Republic,
p r o m o t e d by D o m i n g o M o r e n o Jiménez), an Ecuadorian variant of
D a d a i s m (led by H u g o M a y o , also in 1921), and the coteries publicized by
the reviews Flechas in Peru, and Los Nuevos in C o l o m b i a , a m o n g other
peripheral manifestations, w e r e all symptomatic of activist attitudes
prevailing at the times. T h e y had similar aspirations and provided a
stimulating climate for the evolution of poetry in their countries, but
suffered from inevitable ephemerality and faded a w a y . Suenan timbres by
Luis Vidales is perhaps the first consciously avant-garde b o o k in
Colombia.
T h e Peruvian A l b e r t o H i d a l g o , an early follower of Futurism, pro
moted Simplismo, a tributary tendency based on ultraist precepts, while
living in Buenos Aires in 1922. H e also experimented w i t h typography,
particularly the use of blank space, and attempted to reduce poetry to a
string of metaphors, a characteristic shared by practically all the early
Vanguardists. H e reiterated that "joining together the greatest number of
metaphors in the least possible number of w o r d s , should be the aspiration
of every p o e t " . A l t h o u g h H i d a l g o enjoyed w i d e recognition, in the end his
lasting achievement m a y well be the fervor of his public activities and
avant-garde w a y of life, a display that still d r a w s much interest today.
A t the center of any account of Latin A m e r i c a n poetry is César Vallejo,
w h o w r o t e the finest e x a m p l e of the early A v a n t - G a r d e , while transcend
ing the limitations of the moverrient. Trilce is a major literary achieve
ment, a hermetic and baffling b o o k - like the title itself - that makes
challenging demands on the reader. It w a s a b o o k b o u n d to have a
profound impact on Latin AmericanXliterary production; it appeared,
coincidentally, in the same year as Ulysses and The Waste Land, w h o s e
effect on their respective cultures is c o m p a r a b l e . Vallejo's vision stands
poles apart from the perspective of the cosmopolitan H u i d o b r o - while
H u i d o b r o writes poetry as an intellectual g a m e , a calculated, elitist and
playful end-product, Vallejo, on the other hand, considers poetry as a
process of self-discovery, entailing the acceptance of suffering and grief,
and as a tool to reach out t o w a r d h u m a n solidarity. Vallejo lived
tormented by the arbitrary cruelty of the w o r l d , profoundly anguished by
social injustices and a metaphysical agony. Starkly direct verses from an
early p o e m , " E s p e r g e s i a " [ " E x p l a n a t i o n " ] , from Los heraldos negros,
sum up the sense of helplessness and fatality, the agonizing dimension of
his poetry:
Y o nací un día
que Dios estuvo enfermo,
grave.
126
[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
127
and graphic design (phrases written vertically or in reverse, blank space,

capitals), he distorted language by creating neologisms, he used colloqui
alisms, archaisms and violently incongruous images, he used disjointed
syntax by changing the grammatical function of w o r d s (made verbs from
nouns and adverbs, nouns from prepositions and adverbs, etc.), and he
developed a highly elliptic style by suppressing connectives, with no
concern for coherent representation. Vallejo's disconcerting break w i t h
linguistic and syntactic norms represents an attempt to destroy hierar
chies and to develop a poetic language capable of expressing his inner
vision, forcing the reader to find unity in the intense underlying emotion.
A l t h o u g h his poetry differs greatly from the frivolous and playful image of
the A v a n t - G a r d e , Vallejo emerged as an unprecedented innovator w h o
carried the tendencies of the new sensibility (ruptures of continuity,
dissonance, and incongruity) to their utmost limits.
Vallejo w a s a puzzling and remarkably contradictory man: he
denounced — but did not renounce — poetic experimentation and inven
tion. T h e posture he adopted in journalistic pieces - for instance, in
"Poesia n u e v a " (1926) and " C o n t r a el secreto profesional" (1927) -
reveals both his resistance to innovation and his hostility t o w a r d his o w n
generation. H e had nothing but contempt for his contemporaries, w h o m
he accused of being incapable of writing poetry concerned w i t h "genuine
human inspiration." H e seemed distressed by the apparently imitative
impulse of Latin A m e r i c a n poets, finding that they resembled a "simian
nightmare," and g o i n g as far as to belittle Borges, N e r u d a , and M a p l e s
A r c e and to accuse them of plagiarizing the techniques of European
writers. Vallejo w a s concerned w i t h cultural authenticity and it is clear
that he despised the Euro-centered cosmopolitanism of the Latin A m e r i
can Vanguardia for its failure to develop a mode of expression indigenous
to the continent. H e further emphasized his antagonism to all innovative
coteries, w i t h o u t exception, in his disdainful articles on Surrealism
(especially in " A u t o p s i a del Surrealismo" ["Autopsy of Surrealism"]), a
movement that, he felt, did not make a single constructive contribution.
A l t h o u g h he repudiated Surrealism as a doctrine, his affinity w i t h the
Surrealists' quest for the lost dimension of language, by breaking d o w n
rational barriers and disrupting consciousness, is clearly perceivable in his
poetry.
O f great significance w a s the appearance of a remarkable anthology of
the new poetry, Indice de la nueva poesia americana, edited by three of the
most prominent names of the era: H i d a l g o , H u i d o b r o , and Borges. T h e y
clamored for the formation of " a n e w sensibility" and each provided a
prologue-manifesto p r o m o t i n g his o w n ideas for poetic reformation. T h e
anthology underlines the continental nature of the avant-garde process
and the compilers' awareness of the emerging poetry throughout Latin
128
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 autochthonous 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
129
social protest, but it w a s also a forum for the various experimental A v a n t -

Gardists of the late 1920s in Peru. T h e magazine promoted, for instance,
the w o r k of C a r l o s O q u e n d o de A m a t , author of a dadaist b o o k , Cinco
metros de poemas, printed on a page, as a folded-up poster, exactly five
meters long, as promised in the title, and of M a r t í n A d á n , w h o w r o t e
" a n t i s o n e t o s , " and a b o v e all the novel La casa de cartón; it also
particularly w e l c o m e d the French surrealist m o v e m e n t and its early
Peruvian followers, such as Emilio A d o l f o Westphalen and César M o r o ,
w h o w r o t e most of his poetry in French, while living in Paris from 1925 to
1933, where he w a s the only Latin A m e r i c a n writer to participate in the
surrealist movement. C o n t r a r y to Vallejo's sweeping rejection of Surreal-
ism as a mere "recipe to write p o e m s , " M a r i á t e g u i considered the
movement, in " E l grupo suprarrealista" ["The Surrealist G r o u p " ] (1926),
" n o t a simple literary p h e n o m e n o n , but a c o m p l e x spiritual p h e n o m e n o n .
N o t an artistic fashion, but a protest of the spirit," and he clearly deduced
its historical relevance to contemporary literature and art.
Revista de Avance w a s an equally significant focus of aesthetic debate,
closely linked to the historical development of C u b a , but open to a cross-
fertilization of ideas, w i t h no partisan attachment to a specific creative
current. L i k e Amauta, it combined cosmopolitanism and nationalism,
w i t h o u t being at the vanguard of social change. In Latin A m e r i c a , only
Contemporáneos w a s c o m p a r a b l y alert to the new artistic manifes-
tations, w h i c h were studied within its covers w i t h perspicacity by Jorge
M a ñ a c h , M a r t í C a s a n o v a s , Juan M a r i n e l l o , Félix Lizaso, and others; in
addition, European authors and artists were regularly featured and the
Latin A m e r i c a n experimental writers of those years were customarily
reviewed. Its eclecticism w a s typical of the evolving sense and function of
the A v a n t - G a r d e in the late 1920s, of the prevailing tendency of m o v e -
ments to be less theoretical, self-conscious, and radical, and to be
primarily interested in developing a national cultural identity.
Insurgent movements appeared late in C u b a and experimental activity
lacked the aggressiveness of the early 1920s. Nevertheless, one of the most
extreme trends in " p u r e " vanguard poetry, the celebrated jitanjafora, w a s
formulated by M a r i a n o Brull in Poemas en menguante. It is an example of
delightful virtuosity: sweeping aside all semantic barriers, he produced a
type of verse w i t h a pleasing and rhythmic musical effect, attained by
alliteration, o n o m a t o p e i a , and repetition. N e w w o r d s were invented
based purely on sound, devoid of any meaningful context. It w a s a display
of consummate artistry, playful and gratuitous, appealing " t o the senses
and to fantasy," as A l f o n s o R e y e s remarked in his definitive study on the
jitanj afora.
T h e mixed cultural heritage of the C a r i b b e a n became a fertile field for
literary experimentation. Afro-Antillean poetry, initiated in Puerto R i c o ,
130
as I have noted, w e n t on to achieve greater prominence in C u b a ,

particularly w i t h N i c o l á s Guillen, w h o transformed a superficial genre
into a literary achievement and an affirmation of the cultural ancestry of
black Caribbeans. F r o m his earliest b o o k s , Motivos de son and Sóngoro
Cosongo, written in the Spanish of black C u b a n s , he undermined classic
notions of poetry w i t h an unexpected artistic turn. In a bold m o v e , he
presented collective themes in a popular musical beat, the son, an
o n o m a t o p o e i c , alliterative, and incantatory ritual chant. T h e adaptation
of the sensual and percussive rhythms of the son as a means of poetic
expression became his trademark. W i t h the next b o o k , West Indies Ltd.,
his poetry g r e w more overtly political and the seductive h a r m o n y of his
verse gave w a y to an increasing concern w i t h racial prejudice and
economic injustice. It is important to remember that popular and
referential art w a s irreconcilable w i t h the premises of the A v a n t - G a r d e ,
w h i c h rejected any concrete historial dimension. Guillen, writing near the
end of the movement, departs from mainstream Latin A m e r i c a n V a n -
guardism and initiates a displacement t o w a r d literature as social protest,
as an expression of the ideals of a radicalism implicit in the term A v a n t -
G a r d e (originally a military metaphor, " a d v a n c e - g u a r d " ) and explicit in
many European movements w h i c h combined aesthetic innovation w i t h
social radicalism (notably Futurism, D a d a i s m , Surrealism, Expression
ism, etc.). T h e question of the relationship of revolutionary art to social
revolution is crucial w h e n reading Guillen. Clearly, his poetry belongs to
the sociopolitical A v a n t - G a r d e , of a type w h i c h "stresses not only the idea
of the interdependency of art and society, but also the doctrine of art as an
instrument of social action and reform," as observed by R e n a t o Poggioli
in The Theory of the Avant-Garde.
A r o u n d 1928, new coteries of writers were also appearing in other
countries, particularly in Venezuela and N i c a r a g u a . Centered around t w o
journals, Elite (1925-1932) and Válvula (1928), aesthetic debate prolifer
ated in Venezuela and subjected its literature to radical revision. In this
respect, the pioneer efforts of A r t u r o Uslar Pietri and Julio G a r m e n d i a , in
narrative, and José A n t o n i o R a m o s Sucre, in poetry, display an unmistak
able commitment to revitalizing literature. In La torre de timón (1925)
R a m o s Sucre's prose p o e m s still remain close to Symbolism, but the
conversational syntax, oneiric and irrational images approach surrealist
practices.
In N i c a r a g u a , w e find the only deliberate programmatic grouping in
Central A m e r i c a , re-enacting iconoclastic patterns reminiscent of the
movements of the early 1920s. José C o r o n e l Urtecho prepared the w a y
w i t h the publication in 1927 of " O d a a R u b é n D a r í o , " the earliest
example of the o n g o i n g effort to break w i t h inherited traditions, a
rejection of the greatest heritage in Latin A m e r i c a n poetry, that of D a r í o .
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A s a consequence, other y o u n g writers, especially Joaquin Pasos and

Pablo A n t o n i o C u a d r a joined him in deliberately unsettling the familiar
literary categories. T h e y resurrected the distinctive features of the early
A v a n t - G a r d e : they founded a g r o u p in 1 9 3 1 , under the title Vanguardia,
and even an " A n t i - A c a d e m i a N i c a r a g ü e n s e " to rally followers, launch
manifestos, display outrage in public, etc., until it ran its course in 1933.
T h i s ferment of activity led to the development of a cultural renovation of
prime importance, profoundly rooted in the vernacular dimensions of the
country, while assimilating the distinctive character of the times. Poemas
nicaragüenses by C u a d r a remains a first-rate e x a m p l e of literary skill.
W h e n studying the Vanguardia, it is c o m m o n practice to reduce prose
fiction to marginal footnotes in the history of Latin A m e r i c a n letters.
F r o m our present literary vantage point, the c o m i n g of age around 1 9 2 6 -
1928 of an avant-garde narrative merits consideration in the larger
context of twentieth-century literature. W h i l e the poets enjoyed w i d e
spread recognition and even acclaim, the prose writers were (and are)
neglected and little-read. T h e y were not involved - as were the poets - in
self-promotional tactics to convert the reading public, nor were they
active participants in the various literary movements. Often they were
dismissed as whimsical and self-indulgent writers, w o r k i n g in the rarefied
air of lyrical and self-reflexive exercises in technique.
Y e t , there were genuine literary innovators in the 1920s, w h o s e
influence on contemporary narrative remains largely ignored. Foremost
a m o n g them are Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay), M a c e d o n i o Fernández
(Argentina), R o b e r t o A r k (Argentina), M a r t í n A d á n (Peru), and Pablo
Palacio (Ecuador), all of w h o m have recently received enthusiastic critical
support. T h e y share w i t h other significant writers, namely Julio G a r m e n -
dia (Venezuela), Arqueles V e l a ( G u a t e m a l a - M e x i c o ) , José Félix Fuen-
m a y o r ( C o l o m b i a ) , and the Chilean and M e x i c a n poets turned novelists
(Huidobro, N e r u d a , and the Contemporáneos), a mode of writing
characterized by indeterminacy and the dissolution of the traditional
narrative categories. T h e y detached themselves from the regionalista
tradition, the mimetic and realistic representation of rural life then
prevailing in the continent, abandoning the rendering of a coherent and
definable experience. Rather, they emphasized introspection, reverie,
discontinuity, a free-flowing inventive process, conversational syntax,
and fragmentary and unstructured ordering of literary events.
In the 1920s, w e witness the g r o w t h of fictional strategies that have
shaped twentieth-century narrative practices: self-reflexive texts, metafic-
tion, lyrical novels, parodie narrative, the non-fiction novel, the open-
ended and unfinished w o r k , all radical challenges to the reader's logical
habits of mind and briefly noted here.
Hernández and Fernández - or rather, Felisberto and M a c e d o n i o as
132
they are customarily called - are exemplary paradigms of the Vanguardia.

Both write unclassifiable w o r k s and display a compulsion t o w a r d self-
reflexiveness and experimentation w i t h the p o w e r s of imagination.
M a c e d o n i o is the foremost practitioner of the text about nothing in
particular. In Papeles de recienvenido he cannot tell a story w i t h o u t
digressions, self-questionings, and capricious juxtapositions of chapters,
leaving the text in a visibly incoherent and inconclusive form. T h e b o o k is
a heterogeneous miscellany of unconnected fragments, loosely tied
together by the misadventures of a recienvenido [newcomer] to the
literary w o r l d . M a c e d o n i o encourages active participation on the part of
readers, constantly d r a w i n g upon their inventive capacity and shaking
them out of their passive reading habits.
Likewise, Felisberto's fragmentary stories deviate from the conventions
of the well-elaborated and structured artistic w h o l e , developing a truly
original modality of writing, prompting ítalo C a l v i n o to claim that
Felisberto " d o e s not resemble anyone. N o n e of the Europeans and none of
the Latin A m e r i c a n s . " H e manipulates the reflexive dimension of van-
guard fiction and deliberately flaunts the mechanisms of textual produc-
tion. Even in his formative years - Fulano de tal, Libro sin tapas, La cara
de Ana, etc. - a narrator a w a r e of the hypothetical nature of his point of
view captures the incoherence of mental experiences, the unusual and
disturbing relationships between characters and objects. H e effaces the
limits between determinate and indeterminate elements and juxtaposes
the attributes of the abstract and the concrete, of matter and spirit, lifting
situations from their habitual function to create enigmatic and irreducible
correspondences. Felisberto builds his stories exploiting to the utmost an
animistic m o d e of perception, a procedure peculiar to the A v a n t - G a r d e ,
and a process of defamiliarization characteristic of the uncanny or
neo-fantastic.
In a similar w a y , the principles of dissociation, discontinuity, and
disjunction are distinguishing features of the narrative of writers such as
A d á n , Palacio, and G a r m e n d i a . La casa de cartón by A d á n , perhaps the
best novel of the period, Un hombre muerto a puntapiés and Débora, by
Palacio, the latter being the first Latin A m e r i c a n metafiction, and
G a r m e n d i a ' s imaginative short stories, collected in La tienda de muñecos,
exemplify the displacement of storytelling by self-reflexive disruptions of
narrative structure and by a discontinuous, fragmented, and contextually
dissonant fictional discourse.
In the 1920s, it w a s fashionable for poets to attempt to write fictional
texts. El habitante y su esperanza, by N e r u d a , introduces new patterns of
perception and expression perfected in his poetry, as w e shall see later;
H u i d o b r o ' s narrative -Mío Cid Campeador, Cagliostro, etc. - negates by
means of p a r o d y the textual strategies of the realistic novel. M e a n w h i l e in
133
M e x i c o , El café de nadie, by the Estridentista V e l a , shares a m o o d of

introspection and subjectivity w i t h a long series of novels written by the
Contemporáneos - most notably, T o r r e s Bodet's Margarita de niebla,
O w e n ' s Novela como nube, N o v o ' s El joven (1928), and Villaurrutia's
Dama de corazones (1928). In lyrical fiction, the evanescence of exper
ience is e v o k e d through images and figures, and action is substituted
by the modulations of m e m o r y and by a flowing series of sensory
perceptions. Return Ticket by N o v o merits special mention; written as a
travel diary, it is a superb e x a m p l e of a non-fiction novel in Latin
America.
A t first glance, to include Arlt as an avant-garde writer may be
considered an aberration. In El juguete rabioso and L o s siete locos [The
Seven Madmen], he documents social injustices, class hostilities, deviant
behavior, and the conflicts of marginality in the mean city streets. His
portrayals of the l o w e r middle class appear to cling to standard norms of
storytelling. Y e t , his rejection of elitism, gentility, and all forms of
"literary" effects is a revisionary impulse. Arlt disconcerts the reader w i t h
expressionistic distortions of reality, and, a b o v e all, w i t h the blunt
authenticity of his colloquial and harsh language, repudiating any n o r m
that stifles the direct rendering of urban life.
T h e great creative period of the A v a n t - G a r d e comes to an end in 1935,
w i t h N e r u d a ' s publication o f his second Residencia en la tierra. Like
Vallejo, N e r u d a never w a s associated w i t h any of the movements that
sprang up all over the continent, nor did he m a k e any strident proclama
tion of modernity; both poets spurned the frivolous traits of the -isms, but
internalized the innovative techniques inherent to the various movements.
W i t h the printing - at age twenty - of his second and most popular b o o k ,
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada [Twenty Love Poems
and a Song of Despair], a melancholic farewell to lost love, it w a s clear
that a major poetic voice had emerged. Immediately, h o w e v e r , he
radically severed his dependency on traditional poetics and N e o - R o m a n -
ticism and sought n e w w a y s of relating experiences and perceptions.
Responding to n e w stimuli for change w a s N e r u d a ' s fundamental creative
propensity; he could be intensely intimate or militantly political; he w a s
able to express the simplicity of elemental things or the c o m p l e x i t y of
metaphysical despair, to be a chronicler of history, an epic voice of the
N e w W o r l d or a conversational anti-poet - in short, to be a l w a y s in the
vanguard of innovation.
Tentativa del hombre infinito, a nocturnal flight into the subconscious
and the oneiric in search of "superior m a n , " paralleling A n d r e Breton's
belief that a "superior reality" can be achieved through the free use of
verbal associations, as well as the p o e m s that N e r u d a began printing in
journals on July of 1925 ( " G a l o p e m u e r t o " is apparently the first) and
134
later collected in Residencia en la tierra, mark a turn t o w a r d a surrealist

mode. Surrealism w a s then becoming increasingly dominant and " p o w e r
fully contributed to shape the sensibility of our a g e , " as O c t a v i o Paz
remarked in 1954. N e r u d a shatters the usual manner of portraying reality
by transforming external correspondences and personal experiences into
a dreamlike poetic construction. T h e art of N e r u d a lies in blending
disjointed, illogical, and discontinuous images of a disintegrating w o r l d
into a new w h o l e , apparently chaotic, but responding to a deep unity of
vision and imagination. T h e surrealist manner of free association of
images, plunging into the subconscious and the oneiric, free from the
controls of reason, becomes a familiar trait of his poetry. N e r u d a ' s
extreme introspection and anguished desolation find an appropriate
expression in a modality that a l l o w s him to liberate the mind from
objective representation and rhetorical confinements.
In Residencia en la tierra, the incessant disintegration of the universe,
sensorially experienced, asserts the omnipresence of the eroding effect of
time. " E s t o y solo entre materias desvencijadas" ["I am alone a m o n g
b r o k e n - d o w n substances"] w e read in " D é b i l del a l b a , " [ " W e a k from
D a w n " ] and the irrepressible decay of things wearing a w a y and turning to
dust becomes an obsessive trait. A s a result, his poems overflow with the
corroded, the disjointed, the fragmented, the putrid, the wasted, reflecting
dusty dreams, withered incentives, and the debasement of humanity in a
bleak and crumbling w o r l d . T h e most striking feature of this bewildering
mixture of heterogeneous elements is the b r e a k d o w n of traditional poetic
" g o o d taste" and a de-hierarchization of literature. N e r u d a clarifies the
underlying premise in his manifesto " S o b r e una poesía sin p u r e z a " [ " O n
an Impure P o e t r y " ] , published in 1935 in Caballo verde para la poesía, the
journal that he brought out in M a d r i d . A key paragraph reads: " A poetry
as impure as a suit of clothes, as a b o d y , w i t h food stains and shameful
attitudes, w i t h wrinkles, observations, dreams, vigils, prophecies,
declarations of love and hate, beasts, jolts, idylls, political beliefs, denials,
doubts, affirmations, and t a x e s . " W i t h o u t deliberately excluding any
thing to broaden to an extreme the d o m a i n of his poetry, he wilfully gives
a literary place to the ordinary, endorsing as a poetic the demythologizing
of the aesthetic function of the w o r k of art.
Central to avant-garde writing is the dissolution of traditional form,
the exploration of its limits and possibilities. Consider " G a l o p e m u e r t o , "
the opening p o e m of Residencia en la tierra, w h i c h illustrates N e r u d a ' s
poetic process and sets the tone of the entire b o o k . T h e first stanza reads:
C o m o cenizas, como mares poblándose,
en la sumergida lentitud, en lo informe,
o como se oyen desde el alto de los caminos
cruzar las campanadas en cruz,
135
teniendo ese sonido ya aparte del metal,

confuso, pesando, haciéndose polvo
en el mismo molino de las formas demasiado lejos,
o recordadas o no vistas,
y el perfume de las ciruelas que rodando a tierra
se pudren en el tiempo, infinitamente verdes.
[Like ashes, like seas being populated,
in the submerged slowness, in their formlessness,
or as they are heard from the height of the roads
the tolling bells crossing,
having that sound already separated from the metal,
confused, weighty, turning into dust
in the same mill of forms to far away,
or remembered or not seen,
and the perfume of plums that, rolling to the ground,
rot in time, infinitely green.]
T h e p o e m begins with a simile w i t h o u t a referent, followed by an
uninterrupted flow of incongruous and enigmatic images, around an
undetermined subject, chaotically e v o k i n g the unfolding of an unformed
and hermetic experience. T h e p o e m is an arresting example of N e r u d a ' s
p a r a d o x i c a l fusion of disparate elements brought into disquieting n e w
relationships. H e passionately recalls the dynamic and opposite tension in
the endless process of renewal and attempts a synthesis through p a r a d o x ,
accumulating indiscriminate combinations of images d r a w n from natural
forces, such as the fire and water (ashes and seas) of the first line and the
plums rotting on the ground, yet infinitely green, of the last one. T h e p o e m
does not develop syntactically t o w a r d a close, but juxtaposes incomplete
and a-syntactical sentences (the stanza is a single open-ended phrase), a
form-free flux of sensory impressions that liberates the imagination and
disturbs the reader's expectations. T h i s flood of associations and ideas is
predominant in the entire p o e m . Residencia en la tierra represents a
significant b r e a k d o w n of established poetic structures: it features a
radically different poetic modality, a disjointed, dissonant, and prosaic
verse, flowing i n w a r d , self-reflexively, thus instituting a n e w diction in
Latin A m e r i c a n poetry.
Residencia en la tierra is N e r u d a ' s finest contribution to the literature of
the A v a n t - G a r d e ; but a year after he published the second v o l u m e in 1935,
while living in M a d r i d as a C o n s u l , there w a s a drastic change in history,
and, as a result, in his social consciousness. In 1936, Fascism w a s taking
over Europe and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil W a r deeply affected
him, and equally outraged Vallejo in Paris. Filled w i t h moral indignation,
both embraced a popular cause for social justice. Prime examples are, of
course, N e r u d a ' s España en el corazón (1937) and Vallejo's posthumous
136
España, aparta de mí este cáliz (1939), w h i c h stand at the crossroads of

historical periods. Significantly, in a little-read article, " A p u n t e s para un
estudio," Vallejo invented a new -ism to apply to N e r u d a and himself:
Verdadismo, m a k i n g an appeal for recognition of the need for human
values, along the lines emphasized in the name, " t r u t h i s m , " and opposed
to poetry as an intellectual exercise. By then, in the N e w W o r l d , Guillen
had written España: poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza (1937)
and had evolved t o w a r d poetry as social commitment, H u i d o b r o w a s
practically silent, Borges w a s already writing ludic self-reflexive artifices
and the militant groups had disbanded; in short, the historical A v a n t -
G a r d e w a s explicitly displaced by a period of consolidation and n e w
departures. Nevertheless, their legacy of radical experimentation fore-
s h a d o w s later developments in Latin A m e r i c a n literature, and each
successive generation found in their w o r k an artistic paradigm and a
challenge to their o w n creative ventures.
T h e A v a n t - G a r d e has long been integrated into the mainstream of
contemporary literature. In effect, a characteristic strategy associated
w i t h the Vanguardists, their self-conscious explorations of the nature,
function, possibilities, and limits of the creative act, provides a dominant
focus for the aesthetic sensibilities of the postmodern age. If one considers
that truly great writers such as Borges, N e r u d a , Vallejo, H u i d o b r o ,
Guillen, and Felisberto Hernández, to name but a few, are directly
connected w i t h the premises of the A v a n t - G a r d e , the m o v e m e n t assumes
far-reaching implications. A s a consequence, it seems justified to claim
that the Vanguardia represents a turning point in Latin A m e r i c a n poetry
and - arguably - narrative of the twentieth century. By creating n e w
modes of expression and insisting on iconoclastic innovation, the V a n -
guardists altered the practice of writing and rendered possible the creative
and critical receptivity to self-reflexive experimentalism that still rever-
berates in the diverse neo-avant-garde movements of our time. In
retrospect, w i t h o u t the aesthetic activism of the Vanguardists in the 1920s
there w o u l d be no modern literature in Latin A m e r i c a .
137

The Vanguardia and Its Implications

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[ 3 ]

The Vanguardia and its implications

T h e term Vanguardia [Avant-Garde] is collectively applied to a diverse

of the preceding time (Modernismo in poetry and Regionalismo [Region­

merits in Latin A m e r i c a as well. For instance, Marinetti's much quoted

contemporary artistic trends. T w o were primarily literary forums: Martin

La sombra es un pedazo que se aleja

En mi memoria un ruiseñor se queja

Ruiseñor de las batallas

La misma luna herida

El corazón hizo su nido

[The shadow is a fragment that departs

In my memory a nightingale complains

H O W L O N G WILL T H E Y BLEED LIFE

T h e moon itself is wounded

T h e heart built its nest

multiple metaphors to bring together opposite or unrelated ideas, w i t h o u t

diverse -isms (Futurism, C u b i s m , D a d a i s m , Expressionism). T h e exalta­

his poetics. T h e exploration of the dissonance of language reaches its most

In Li-Po y otros poemas, he envisioned quite different artistic possibilities.

W i t h the Estridentistas, h o w e v e r , cultural life in M e x i c o underwent a

w a s to link up M e x i c a n letters w i t h the main currents of contemporary

hombre que se comió un autobús, by Alfredo M a r i o Ferreiro, the c o -

and graphic design (phrases written vertically or in reverse, blank space,

social protest, but it w a s also a forum for the various experimental A v a n t -

as I have noted, w e n t on to achieve greater prominence in C u b a ,

A s a consequence, other y o u n g writers, especially Joaquin Pasos and

they are customarily called - are exemplary paradigms of the Vanguardia.

M e x i c o , El café de nadie, by the Estridentista V e l a , shares a m o o d of

later collected in Residencia en la tierra, mark a turn t o w a r d a surrealist

teniendo ese sonido ya aparte del metal,

España, aparta de mí este cáliz (1939), w h i c h stand at the crossroads of

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of the preceding time (Modernismo in poetry and Regionalismo [Region

diverse -isms (Futurism, C u b i s m , D a d a i s m , Expressionism). T h e exalta