Understanding Avant-Garde Literature: Movements and Authors
Avant-Garde Literature
New Art: Avant-garde literature is a form of expression that aims to break the formal and aesthetic mold of previous artistic trends.
Avant-Garde: These are artistic movements that sought to radically break with all previous aesthetic canons, provoking reflection on the artwork.
Current Cutting-Edge Movements
Futurism
The First Futurist Manifesto was published by the Italian poet Marinetti. Its favorite subjects are technical advances of the moment, the urban world, innovative technology, and machines.
Cubism
Cubism had an impact on the plastic arts, but it is also reflected in literature, especially in so-called calligrams: poems whose verses are related to the visual forms adopted by its content. The most prominent author of calligrams was Guillaume Apollinaire.
Dadaism
Tristan Tzara published the “Dada Manifesto” in 1918. Their goals were provocation and defiance, and their way of expression was the absurd and the most incoherent. It was the radical forefront and the origin of surrealism.
Creationism
Creationism was started by the poet Vicente Huidobro. It considered that the work of art should not represent reality or imitate it, but should be an independent reality itself.
Avant-Gardes in Spain
The Noucentists or the Generation of ’14
They were a group of writers formed with the influence and approaches of the poets of ’98, which, in turn, laid the foundations of artistic renewal that was to occur in Spain in the 20s. They raised the need to create a pure art.
Authors: Gabriel Miró, Ramon Perez de Ayala, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Ramon Gomez de la Serna.
Ramon Gomez de la Serna
His work is very extensive and varied: he wrote novels, plays, essays, and more. He did not simply express theories about art again, but totally avant-garde works that he wrote and believed in renovation. He created a literary genre, the Greguería.
The Greguerías
Greguerías are short phrases that, through metaphors, similes, and puns, present a humorous, critical, or curious concept.
Ultraism
Ultraism was a Spanish avant-garde stream that brought the most outstanding characteristics of the different European movements. Its creations had futuristic elements, such as the theme of machines, or Cubist elements, like visual poems. It is characterized by inference and the juxtaposition of images with no signs of punctuation. Guillermo Torre promoted this trend.
Surrealism
Surrealism is a trend that aims to release the artist’s unconscious, allowing thoughts and emotions to flow without any repression. André Breton was a key figure.
It is characterized by:
- The use of dream images.
- Free verse, usually of long extension.
- The use of language that seeks suggestion and symbol.
- Freedom of expression, hence the shocking metaphors and images.
Generation of ’27
Authors: Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego, Dámaso Alonso, Pedro Salinas, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre.
Features of the Poetry of ’27:
- Mixing tradition and avant-garde elements. The poets recover traditional lyricism. The influence of the classical poet Garcilaso is fundamental.
- Influence of pure poetry. They feel great admiration for Juan Ramon Jimenez for his pure poetry.
- Each poet has his own style.
Authors:
Jorge Guillén
He is the author who best represents pure poetry. His poetry revolves around three titles which represent three stages of his poetic evolution:
- Cántico is an optimistic book, a hymn to life.
- Clamor, a book that presents society as unjust and violent.
- Homenaje offers a less idyllic vision than the first, but more hopeful than the second.
Gerardo Diego
He has two different trends:
- Avant-garde works: There are books such as Imagen or Manual de espumas. Features: uses free verse, often the juxtaposition of ideas and sentences regardless of logic, appeals to a certain visual intention. There are ludic poems.
- Works of traditional orientation: books such as Versos humanos or La verdad verdadera. Their themes are traditional, religious, and loving, and their metric is traditional, like the sonnet.
Pedro Salinas
He evolves in three stages:
- 20s: His work is characterized by the influence of pure poetry and the presence of avant-garde elements. Books: Presagios, Seguro azar.
- 30s: He writes books on the subject of love, and La voz a ti debida stands out.
- Stage of exile: The books he wrote after ’39 bear the stamp of war and exile. Their tone is pain, stress, and the viewer.