Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, un surrealista a medias

Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, a Semi-Surrealist. This work aims to establish similarities between surrealist poetry and the poetry of the Peruvian poet Emilio Adolfo Westphalen. The first part of the text is aiming to outline main characteristics of avant-garde literature in Peru between the years 1920 and 1930 and the process of implantation of a surrealist movement born in Europe. The mentioned process of implantation was hard and complex, especially, because it clashed with the local political system and partial renunciation of the previous movements such as Modernism, Symbolism, and Romanticism. Also, French surrealism had to face literary Peruvian critics who were not ready for the arrival of something new. Consequently, Emilio Adolfo Westphalen expressed his discontent over the fossilized literary critic and his poet friends in his correspondence and essays. Westphalen was not only interested in the surrealism of others, but he was also interested in surrealism for his poetry. Our study is based particularly on the following sources: the essays of Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, the surrealist theory included in the Manifestoes of Surrealism, and the critical works by Mirko Lauer, Américo Ferrari, etc.

Martinique: Snake Charmer (A. Breton, 1948): the Failure of Disorientation

This article focuses on the texts collected in 1948 by André Breton in Martinique: Snake Charmer, presented as a rejection of the travel narrative. Complied from varied material, the work is marked by its fragmentation in terms of structure, genre and type of writing. Arriving on the island with a profound feeling of failure in terms of disorientation, Breton sought to show during his stopover in Martinique that a "re-orientation" was possible thanks to surrealist poetry, as well as a re-conquest of freedom, which is heard resonating with the generic fragmentation of his work.

Asedios a la poesía surrealista de José María de la Rosa. El caso de “Vértice de Sombra” = Norrowing down José María de la Rosa’s surrealist poetry. The example of “Vértice de Sombra”

<p class="Pa15">José María de la Rosa es uno de los más genuinos representantes de la estética surrealista que se abrió paso durante el periodo prebélico en Canarias. Junto a Agustín Espinosa, Pedro García Cabrera, Do­mingo López Torres y Emeterio Gutiérrez Albelo formó parte del núcleo surrealista de <em>Gaceta de Arte</em>, y fue autor de algunos de los poemarios que con mayor fervor abrazaron el credo bretoniano. <em>Vértice de sombra </em>es, sin duda, la mejor muestra de esta personalísima adhesión, y en este artículo intentaremos desentrañar las principales claves que, a partir de esta <em>plaquette</em>, lo sitúan como uno de los miembros más singulares dentro del grupo surrealista canario.</p><p class="Pa15">José María de la Rosa is one of the most genuine representatives of the surreal aesthetic that made its way during the pre—war period in the Canaries. Together with Agustín Espinosa, Pedro García Cabre­ra, Domingo López Torres and Emeterio Gutiérrez Albelo he was part of the <em>Gaceta de Arte</em>’s surrealist circle , and he was the author of some of the collection of poems that most eargly embraced the Breto­nian creed. <em>Vértice de sombra </em>is undoubtedly the best example of this his very personal adherence , and in this article we aim at unrevealing the main key elements from this plaquette which place him as one of the most unique members within the surrealistic Canarian group.</p>

Atmosphere of societal anxiety and representations of the body: The image of man in surrealist works of Vítězslav Nezval in the 20th century interwar period in Bohemia

Aim: The interwar period in Czechoslovakia was a time of societal anxiety. The aim of this paper is to find the central themes of societal fear, as reflected in the surrealist works of Vítězslav Nezval, a czech poet. The analysis will be based primarily on the lyric poetry from the collections: Žena v množném čísle [Woman in Plural] (1936) and Absolutní hrobař [Absolute Gravedigger] (1937). Methods: The analysis is based on the Josef Vojdovík’s anthropo-phenomenological method of exploring the surrealist perceptions of the body, which is based on vertical and horizontal anthropological dimensions and phenomenological conceptions of fears. Results: Surrealist poetry and other literary works contain images of the body that are changed by fear: deformations, metamorphoses, fragmentarisations, hybridisations, expressing the body as a collage, a mosaic, an amalgam, a phantom, a grotesque, an inlay, and as lifelessness. It undergoes multiple metamorphoses, not only within its own form, but also with regard to the categories of life and lifelessness. Conclusions: The analysis leads to the conclusion, that V. Nezval’s works show a clear tendency to portray the body as an object which undergoes a metamorphosis. The body is balanced on the edge between living and dead, organic and inorganic, it is determined by time and space. It is often shown along the narrowing-widening relation, in stupor, petrification, reduced to a flat surface or miniaturised.