[Excerpts. Full Text of print]
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A time seems to stop being our own yielded a somewhat uncritical worship of novelty. The logic in those societies that lived provided an immediate identity between new and good. In recent decades philosophy has begun to wonder what was particularly intense the basis of that belief disproportionate in "the new", and found that this rationale was twofold: first, was the process of industrialization and the omnipresence of the logic commercial, on the other hand, was Christian eschatology and Messianism. The uncritical acceptance of the novelty and value was founded on these two groups of phenomena.
The evolution of poetry in the historical arc of the front (circa 1920-1970) acquires a new meaning to be framed in this overview of the evolution of Western societies. One can understand the aesthetic avant-garde proposals without understanding the philosophical ideas of the avant-political: both are held in theological presuppositions that allow the opening of an eschatological horizon. The merger of aesthetic and political avant-garde art that has begun to emerge in the thirties explains theological foundation from which they share. [...]
1. The logic of the novelty and drama of the lead
[...]
The sketch I just did the evolution of these two poets [Apollinaire and Aragon] I find it significant for our present, it indicates the possibilities and limits in some ways poetry that originated in the nineteenth century and which today seems arc be completed. This conclusion-this-time final that takes place some decades ago may receive a return of the identical. The last twenty years have seen the last century appear successive figures of the same only slightly disguised.
The prefix 'neo' differential Nuance realizes that wanted to have those late-isms. A double imperative, the evolution of aesthetics of recent decades: first, who started writing at the time of the historical avant inherited the imperative of "unforeseen development", on the other hand, this constraint would force them to produce a break with a past that had managed to impose tradition of rupture. These men had the imperative to continue to be considered cutting edge. His drama was to have a duty to break that to which by tradition belonged. The prefix "neo" aware of this paradoxical situation: a neo-x-ist is to turn someone in the tradition of x-ism but has broken with the traditional x-ism. His break seems to be, most of the time it is a new (neo) x-ist, ie his differentiation of traditional x-ism is its novelty value, understood as mere temporal succession, and sometimes, radicalization of the same gestures, and being a non-traditional. This last is key: the tradition of breaking imposes a duty to be anti-traditional. This imperative is ultimately a conviction, because only the first antitraditionalism is possible to break with tradition, the second, if faithful to the precepts of antitraditionalism, must break with the antitraditionalism they belong to.
The paradox is evident and has attracted the attention of Octavio Paz, with whom I disagree on a key point pertains to the characterization of modernity. According to Paz, the currency would be all over, the deployment of a paradoxical tradition of rupture. In my opinion, if by "modern" we mean the period of the seventeenth century until the First World War, that characterization is inaccurate, since that time has proven to be comparatively more traditional than previous periods, for example, that which is the eleventh century the fourteenth. The split between romantic classics is tiny compared with the true revolution that meant the adoption of vernacular languages \u200b\u200bas literary languages. The range of topics introduced by the realism pales before developing the concept of love in the twelfth century, of which these realistic (Stendhal and Flaubert, for example) are direct heirs.
My characterization of the period does not imply a disregard of modernity. It would only be so if it considers that the novelty has some value in itself, and this is not my opinion. The concept of peace on a tradition of rupture applies perfectly to the period of World War I to the seventies. In those sixty years, the tradition of rupture enjoyed a tremendous vitality, which has gradually lost to our time. Until the seventies was still possible to be new without being, ipso facto ipso eoque, man. Then it would be impossible, and that failure led to those who came after input adopt the prefix 'neo', as the first and often only record to preserve the value of sixty years earlier helped to elevate as a supreme value of novelty. But this could not lead to the overcoming of the paradox in which had fallen by the acceptance of novelty value. Well, once accepted that the highest value is new-that it becomes universal criterion for it in trial-we have a judgmental and constructive failure is not factual but logically, there can not be overcome. Accept the new value as a itself, and therefore, as a criterion of opinion, are stripped of any criterion eo ipso judicative therefore considered novelty value destroys all other values, as the value becomes such only by virtue of being new. Thus, we can not say that a poem is perfect, well built, handsome, since neither the beauty nor the construction or perfection are new values. In any case, look for beauty, perfection, a building still unknown (ie, new), and here it falls into another paradox, because if these values \u200b\u200bare unknown they can not be used as a criterion for trial. Say, for instance, that a poem is beautiful involves an unknown beauty formulate a proposition that destroys itself, for, or what is called beauty, and are in the poem certain traits attributed to the concept of beauty, which preaches the beauty of the poem that does not fall or beyond our knowledge (not known) or outside the concept of beauty (not new) or know what is beauty (often said that the poem is beautiful), but not in the poem any feature corresponding to that concept, thus we are precluded from saying that it is beautiful, and if we mean well and everything is beautiful, but you know the kind of beauty to which they belong (strictly speaking, the species ), we fall back into a paradox, then, In short, our ignorance of the predicate that we want to attribute the object (the beauty) keeps us from being aware of what we are preaching.
In summary, the historical arc of modernism ended when it became impossible to carry out the acts of disruption that characterized the traditional avant-garde, from that time (circa 1970), the novelty was basically the repetition of gestures and previous proposals: in essence, these copies were identical to their models, the awareness of this identity, together with the imperative of development, led to new isms (who knew they were old) are themselves new (neo-x-isms), and seek themselves and its repetitions, usually unsuccessfully, some trait of novelty.
logic just outlined is the core of our culture drama that lives for thirty years. This logic of novelty is not confined to literature but to all spheres of society. The process that led to the development per se was considered not only a value but the highest value, has been neither own nor exclusive of literature and art, by contrast, literature and art imported that value other areas.
The market is an area in which novelty is entitled to the highest value. It is no coincidence that the novelty value has spread to all areas of company at the time when the market came to be constituted as such, ie in the period of the great European empires, which led to commercial disputes War. It is possible, therefore, to assume a causal link between the adoption of an aesthetic of the ephemeral ("culte de l'éphémère" is an expression of Aragon in Le paysan de Paris) with favorite objects are the goods in use, and extension European market and consolidation of global.
If the hypotheses that suggest they are true, seems to conclude that in adopting the innovation as a supreme value and as a criterion for, literature and art loses its autonomy. But this conclusion is inaccurate. The incorrectness of this conclusion lies in the belief that art and literature have ever been self-employment. The autonomy of art is a myth that has inherited the nineteenth century. The art is not a meaning-producing activity, but to reproduce. The artists adopt the values \u200b\u200band concepts of philosophy, religion, science, politics. No great poet (the statement can be extended to artists in general) has seen this as a drama, by contrast, tend to accept this ideology as a given substrate, in a natural way: that without which his work would be unintelligible. In our culture, different Christianities, with its diverse theologies and philosophies, provided a coordinate system to the First War and was broken. The soldiers departing to the front were in their backpacks either the Bible, Homer and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Karl Löwith has studied this point.) The eschatology of secular religions on the one hand, and on the other hand, market realities arising from the industrialization process that ended with relative unity of Christian Europe, and were gradually supplanted their values. [...]
3. The reality of the photos on my heart I read Caligramas
first clinic in Olivos. Being sick made me a link empathy with that poet whose most famous photos (the edition edited by JI Velazquez Chair brings plenty of photographic material) it had drawn, lying in his hospital bed. I was sixteen and religious fanaticism for almost everything that had anything to do with surrealism. The previous year had won a poetry contest whose prize was the Anthology of surreal poetry Aldo Pellegrini. Until then my models were the Juan Ramon Jimenez summer, Becquer, Rafael Obligado (I liked his poems against progress but Santos Vega), Almafuerte, Miguel Hernandez, the satirist Quevedo, Lope de Vega some (admired and envied his Don Juanism), the sonnets of Garcilaso. Above all, he had been unbeatable the presence of Ruben Dario. All Darius, stories, poems, impressions. In the magazine Caras Symphony in Grey had read more and I immediately sat down to write dodecasyllabic. My teacher was mandatory Oyuela Calixto, a book inherited from my grandfather. Around my fifteenth year, Darius was supplanted by Neruda. Imitated ad nauseam Twenty poems and the slinger enthusiastic. I had great difficulty understanding Heights of Machu Picchu and the man Tentative infinity. These books had a kind of poetry that did not fit anything I had read. Why were these verses verses and not prose?, I wondered. Why Neruda dispensed with the score, often of rhyme, meter, Elidia opening question mark? One thing was certain: Neruda fascinated me. Neruda was solar. Eneasílabo Estravagario taught me. In eneasílabos wrote a poem in which a man abandoned God and fell on his knees, cursing. This poem won that contest. At night, I slept with my prize treasure and tried to read it. Failed. I did not understand anything. Mentally counted the verses, none was measured. I felt complete, fanatically in accordance with the introduction of Pellegrini, I too was against society, reason, progress. He was, above all, against the school. But when he passed the introduction to the poems, could not understand. (The same thing happen to read Rimbaud and Apollinaire in editions of Chair: excellent introductions, unintelligible poems.) Until one day there was light. The remarkable pace made by Pellegrini made me fall in love with miraculous weapons Aimé Césaire and Desnos's poems. I understood what was the prey of these poems.
The fact is that, and turned to surrealism, shortly before falling ill he had wanted to know who was Apollinaire, whom he regarded (by Nadeau) the grandfather of the surrealist movement. And I bought the Chair issue precisely because of its introduction, hoping to understand something. Once again I failed. I was interested in what he said Apollinaire, and especially what Apollinaire Velazquez said he wanted to do, but I could not understand why Apollinaire was considered a great poet. Although recently turned to surrealism, my ears were trained in English poetry (ie, the only poetry which, ignorant of other languages, I could understand), and especially in the music of Rubén Darío, at the foot of tetrasyllabic Asunción Silva. What was wrong with me Apollinaire had happened to all foreign poets. I wanted to read poetry, but, disappointed, ended up reading prose. This was my perception, but the critics, who certainly knew more than I said otherwise. The certainty of the superiority of critics led me to abandon my mind and adopt theirs. I came to the conclusion that modern poetry was what I read in the translations. Just a decade later, when my knowledge of French had evolved enough to allow me to listen to the verses, I understand that my initial perception was correct and that, consequently, all the poetry he had written based on these models was not translated the product of my ignorance. I understood that Velasquez's edition is the best in English Caligramas study, but says nothing of the poetry of Apollinaire, that music is so readily apparent in the original.
Regardless of this first misunderstanding, there was a more important fact, which I think, like the previous one, is both a personal experience as an experience of several generations of Argentines. This is one of the marks of our culture. Apollinaire, the Surrealists, and, fundamentally, critics who commented and imported, had brought forth in me a contempt for those modes poetic subject of my first love. Neruda, Becquer, Hernandez had me excited. His verse had been effective in that boy between thirteen and fifteen years who read them. Suddenly, voices that were considered authoritative''I do''not only that it was all the past (which is partly true), but as the product of a corrupt society, corrupt themselves accordingly, should be destroyed. Breton's powerful voice cried delenda est litterature. And there was also Apollinaire, prophesying the new: the true poet was a wizard, a prophet who explores the depths of consciousness ("I profondeurs of conscience"), to write verses had to abandon all knowledge, open to be ignorant grace ("c'est le temps grâce of ardente"), and that Thus, deify ("l'homme is divinisera / plus pur plus vif et plus savant"). These topics are of Augustinian Patristic. When I deepened my study of medieval philosophy, I realized that the nineteenth-century poets and their heirs do not break with Christianity, but Catholicism rationalizing, political, institutional, and rediscover (Baudelaire is the most prominent of them) are primitive Christianity requires abandon reason, order, the kingdoms of this world, and open as ascetics modern life-giving grace. Leave knowing, leaving science to surrender to grace. It is often forgotten that modernity has not been a time less Christian than the Age Media, but, the Modern is, in most respects, an anti-Catholic period, thereby breaking the end of the Middle Ages is not Christianity, but the unity of the Church. Modern critics of the scholastics who have been seduced by the absurdities of pagan wisdom (especially Aristotle), Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz wants to build a knowledge that is genuinely Christian, but not necessarily Catholic. Apollinaire is in this line. This Augustinian end (consisting of the devaluation of nature that is sinful, in front of grace: "je me suis enfin detach / toutes choses naturelles / mais je ne peux mourir chest") is a the causes of informality. As in the early Christian hymns, what matters is the song itself, offering to God, and not its form. Devote time to formal work is sinful, because we linked to this world, which must be rejected, it is a sin comparable to that of female cosmetics.
The disproportionate (in the sense of hubris) longing for renewal that comes in a clear way, with Apollinaire and then inherit the vanguard, is on the one hand, direct heir of the Christian concept of baptismal renovatio and, other hand, is motivated by the expansion of market logic brought about by industrialization. Both causes are not contradictory but complementary. These positions aesthetics come into line with the revolutionary political beliefs, they also heirs of the Judeo-Christian millennialism, and, like the early Christians also demanded renovatio, ie natural man's death and the birth of new man. This explains the historical arc of the avant match the historical arc of millenarian revolutions.
[...] Regardless of the sad complaints of school (not normally more than one way to assert himself against the other), what remains, the only important thing is the search for beauty, goodness and truth. Love is the way that search. The challenge for each of us is to find what is the object worthy of love. [...]
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