Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- FOREWORD
- FOREWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
- PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 INDEPENDENCE AND LITERARY EMANCIPATION
- 2 LITERATURE AND NATIONALISM
- 3 LITERATURE AND AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
- 4 TO CHANGE SOCIETY
- 5 MODERNISM
- 6 THE REDISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD
- 7 REGIONALISM IN THE NOVEL AND SHORT STORY
- 8 REALISM AND THE NOVEL: ITS APPLICATION TO SOCIAL PROTEST AND INDIANIST WRITING
- 9 THE AVANT-GARDE IN POETRY
- 10 THEATRE
- 11 MODERN FICTION
- CONCLUSION
- NOTES
- READING LISTS
- INDEX OF AUTHORS
9 - THE AVANT-GARDE IN POETRY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- FOREWORD
- FOREWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
- PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 INDEPENDENCE AND LITERARY EMANCIPATION
- 2 LITERATURE AND NATIONALISM
- 3 LITERATURE AND AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
- 4 TO CHANGE SOCIETY
- 5 MODERNISM
- 6 THE REDISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD
- 7 REGIONALISM IN THE NOVEL AND SHORT STORY
- 8 REALISM AND THE NOVEL: ITS APPLICATION TO SOCIAL PROTEST AND INDIANIST WRITING
- 9 THE AVANT-GARDE IN POETRY
- 10 THEATRE
- 11 MODERN FICTION
- CONCLUSION
- NOTES
- READING LISTS
- INDEX OF AUTHORS
Summary
THE BACKGROUND
In 1909, the Modernist poet Leopoldo Lugones published a volume of poems called Lunario sentimental [Sentimental Lunarium] in which he used free verse (still rare in Spanish), parody, comic metaphor and contemporary references to trams and policemen. The now tired Modernist idiom was abandoned, to be replaced by startling images and grotesque descriptions like the following lines on a chorus of cats:
Mayando una melopea insana
Con ayes de parto y de gresca,
Gatos a la valeriana
Deslizan por mi barbacana
El suspicaz silencio de sus patas de yesca.
‘Yesca’ is tinder which strikes a spark and starts a fire in the same way that the cat's claws can suddenly spark and become deadly weapons. The image is unusual, accurate and slightly comic. In the preface to this collection, Lugones had stressed the importance of investing these new images:
… hallar imágeries nuevas y hermosas, expresándolas con claridad y concisión es enriquecer el idioma, renovándolo a la vez…El idioma es un bien social, y hasta el elemento más sólido de las nacionalidades.
While Lugones anticipates in these lines many of the theories of the avant-garde of the '20s, he was by no means an isolated experimenter. Even before 1920, poets were relatively unaffected by the didacticism and the realism of the novel. Under the influence of the French symbolists, they began to reject the view that poetry was a direct expression of feeling and to write poems that were like artefacts.
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- Chapter
- Information
- An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature , pp. 256 - 302Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995