Hugo J. Verani

Las vanguardias literarias en Hispanoamérica: manifiestos, proclamas y otros escritos.

Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1995. Coleccion Tierra Firme. Third edition. 9681647742 284 pages.

Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.25” x 8.25”, displays light shelfwear. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and bright.

“The disruptive work of the artistic coteries of the early twentieth century—as has been established—was crucial to the development of Hispanic American culture, which drew from them the dynamism and the impulse toward rupture that keep it alive to this day. Yet, until now, the full collection of manifestos, theoretical texts, and action programs produced by these avant-garde movements—once seen as definitive evidence of the fragility of that historical moment—had never been readily available. The diligent researcher Hugo J. Verano has recovered documents of immense critical value: broadsides, journalistic articles, short-lived magazines, and books from obscure or chance editions. Four major continental journals—"Contemporáneos", "Revista de Avance", "Amauta", and "Martín Fierro"—provided this insurgency with sophisticated and intelligent leadership. Theorists of the stature of Jorge Cuesta and José Carlos Mariátegui sought to carve out a place for these new schools within the social landscape. Vicente Huidobro—the progenitor of the ‘centrifugal’ impulse in the Americas—held a significance in European literature comparable to that of Apollinaire, Tzara, or Breton. Poets such as Vallejo and Neruda, who forged their own individual avant-garde paths, took part in this masquerade with either skepticism or indifference. The seed of scandal bore fruit in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. The dizzying process of fragmentation gave rise to a host of new groups: "agoristas", "euforistas", "atalayistas", and "minoristas". The same hour struck everywhere: a widespread, universal discontent yielded, across various lands, results of comparable quality.”