Rubén Gallo, estridentismo

Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos

Maples Arce, Marinetti and Khlebnikov: The Mexican Estridentistas in Dialogue with Italianand Russian FuturismsAuthor(s): RUBÉN GALLOSource: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Invierno 2007), pp. 309-324Published by: Revista Canadiense de Estudios HispánicosStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27764115 .

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RUB?N GALLO

Maples Arce, Marinetti and Khlebnikov: The Mexican Estridentistas in Dialogue with Italian and Russian Futurisms En este art?culo se examina la relaci?n de la vanguardia mexicana con los futu ristas europeos. Se ha hablado mucho de la relaci?n de los poetas estridentistas mexicanos con otros movimientos de vanguardia europeos como el futurismo o el

simultane?smo, pero se han escrito pocos an?lisis detallados. Me propongo demos trar aqu? qu? ideas y qu? conceptos del futurismo italiano tomaron los estriden tistas. Mi lectura se enfoca en la relaci?n de Manuel Maples Arce - el padre del movimiento - con los textos de F.T. Marinetti, el fundador del movimiento fu turista en Italia. Demuestro que Marinetti fue la influencia m?s importante en el

manifiesto y en la po?tica de Maples Arce. Basado en estos descubrimientos, pro pongo una relectura del estridentismo dentro del canon mexicano: no como un movimiento fallido (Paz, Monsiv?is), sino como una implantaci?n de un modelo

for?neo, aunque con importantes diferencias: la originalidad de los estridentistas estuvo en sus manifiestos y no en su obra po?tica.

On of the most original among the groups who sought to propagate the Futurist revolution around the world was the short-lived Estridentista movement which

erupted on to the Mexican literary scene in 1921 with a bombastic manifesto

plastered overnight on the walls throughout Mexico City and composed by a

group of poets and painters in their early twenties who pledged their allegiance to both Futurist aesthetics and the politics of the Mexican Revolution. Although from the beginning the Estridentistas presented themselves as followers of the

Futurists, there have been almost no critical studies seeking to elucidate the

relationship between the two movements. In this article, I discuss specific as

pects of Italian and Russian Futurism that were incorporated into the Estriden tista program, although I shall show that despite the fact that the Mexican poets adapted many of F.T. Marinetti's ideas about poetry, their movement was

actually quite different from Italian Futurism in terms of both politics and aesthetics.

As we shall see, much insight can be gained by comparing the central ten ets of Estridentismo to the theories developed a decade earlier by Italian and Russian Futurists. Such a comparative analysis will help us resolve questions

REVISTA CANADIENSE DE ESTUDIOS HISP?NICOS 31.2 (INVIERNO 2007)



310

that have gone unanswered since the early years of the movement. Can Estri

dentismo, as indeed many of the movement's fiercest critics have argued, be dismissed as simply a derivative movement that merely repeated the theories,

technological obsession, and poetic experiments introduced by earlier avant

garde movements? Did the Mexican group produce any original contributions to avant-garde poetics? How familiar were the Estridentistas with the innova tions of the Futurists, Ultraists, Creationists, and other international groups?

The Estridentista group was launched by Manuel Maples Arce in 1921, and it included a number of writers in their early twenties: Luis Quint anilla (who

signed his works using the Orientalist pseudonym "Kyn Taniya"), Germ?n List Arzubide (who eventually published a history of the movement), the Guatema lan-born Arqueles Vela, and Salvador Gallardo. A number of artists (Germ?n Cueto, Ram?n Alva de la Canal, Jean Chariot, and Leopoldo M?ndez) also col laborated with the group, producing dozens of woodcuts, drawings and prints to illustrate the pages of the movement's books and journals.

Perhaps because of the brevity of its existence - by 1927 the Estridentistas had dispersed, and most of them had given up writing to take jobs in the Mexi can government

- the movement has received scant critical attention. The

group, moreover, left behind a very small body of work consisting of a few

manifestos, a dozen collections of poetry, a novel, and two journals, Irradiador and Horizonte. After the group disbanded Estridentista writings were mostly forgotten, and they were practically impossible to find until the literary critic Luis Mario Schneider collected the group's manifestos and poems in his 1970

anthology El estridentismo o una literatura de la estrategia. The most original an intriguing text written by the Estridentistas was "Ac

tual No. i," the founding manifesto of the movement, which was plastered on walls and lampposts throughout Mexico City in 1921. The manifesto was in

spired by Marinetti's "Founding Manifesto of Futurism" (1909) and among the

myriad movements and writers mentioned in "Actual No. 1" the Italian Futur ists occupy a privileged position. The Estridentista manifesto opens by an

nouncing a series of "subversive illuminations" inspired, among others, by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.1 The extent of Marinetti's influence on the Mexi can movement has not been satisfactorily traced, although

- as we shall see - it was quite extensive.

Estridentismo, the very name of the Mexican movement, comes from the

word "strident" - a term denoting a harsh or shrill noise. The same word was cherished by the Italian Futurists and it appears in a number of Marinetti's po ems and manifestos - a crucial fact that has not been noted by critics dealing with Estridentismo. "? l'Automobile de course" (1905) one of Marinetti's early poems written in French, uses the adjective "strident" to exalt the high-pitched sounds of a racing car: "Dieu v?h?ment d'une race d'acier / automobile ivre

d'espace / qui pi?tine d'angoisse, le mors aux dents stridents" (Marinetti, Scriti



311

346). The word "strident" appears again, although here in Italian, in Zang Tumb-Tumb (1914), a poem whose very title is cacophonous and strident: "1 m.

piu in alto oscillazione striiidente d'un trave aperto a forbice sotto il co?olar della sabbia." For Marinetti, stridency (or "noise-making," as he also called it) was one of the central tenets of Italian Futurism. In his "Manifesto t?cnico della letteratura futurista" (1912), he explains the need to introduce into literature "elemneti che furono finora trascurati ... Ii rumore" (Marinetti, Teor?a 45), and in a later manifesto he praised Futurism for having invented "the art of noise."2

In addition to the name of the movement, other elements in Maples Arces first manifesto appear to be inspired directly by Marinetti's texts: the Mexican

poet's irreverent and passionate tone, his relentless attacks on the literary estab

lishment, and the refreshing spontaneity of his language. Several passages in

Maples Arce's text correspond almost word for word to the Italian poet's ex hortations. The fifth paragraph of Maples Arce's manifesto, for example, urges readers to reject

- in literature, but also in life - all that is antiquated, hack

neyed, retrograde, clich?. "?Chopin a la silla el?ctrica!" (Schneider 269) de mands the manifesto, turning Frederic Chopin, the 19th-century composer of

piano nocturnes and polonaises, into the embodiment of the pass? sensibility that the poet despised.3 The phrase became the battle cry of Estridentismo, rep resenting the movement's hatred again the dead weight of the past.

"?Chopin a la silla el?ctrica!" echoes Marinetti's second manifesto, pub lished in April 1909, which bore the combative title "Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna" (Marinetti, Teor?a 13). Moonlight

- that staple of Romantic poetry that had inspired endless dreamy compositions like Beethoven's "Moonlight sonata" - was to the Futurists what Chopin was to the Estridentistas. For the Futurists,

moonlight was a stale literary convention that represented the oppressive weight of the past, and thus the second Futurist manifesto includes a passage in which Marinetti exclaims: "Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna"; and in a later text, Marinetti expounded: "Al chiaro di luna nost?lgico, sentimentale o lussurioso, noi opponiamo infine l'eroismo ingiusto e crudele che domina la febbre con

quistatrice dei motori" (Marinetti, Teor?a 262). Marinetti used moonlight as a

symbol of a hackneyed, old-fashioned aesthetic; Maples Arce would use Chopin to denigrate the same values.

The Mexican Estridentistas also followed Marinetti's passionate rejection of the dominant literary traditions. Maples Arce directs much of his combative

energy against the legacy of Modernismo, the Symbolist-inspired literary movement that had flourished in the nineteenth century and was still the

prevalent model in Mexican letters in the 1920s. Marinetti had rallied against the virtual monopoly held by Symbolism over Italian literature; Maples Arce would do the same against Modernismo. Estridentismo, like Italian Futurism, was a movement of renewal whose first step was to condemn the stultified ar tistic models that had stagnated in on-going tradition.



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Starting with the first manifesto of Futurism, Marinetti fiercely denounced his literary predecessors, who were still under the influence of Symbolist aesthetics. "La nostra generazione," he wrote in 1909, "[?] stanca de adorare il

passato, nauseata dal pedantismo accademico" (Marinetti, Teor?a 24). The poet

later called a section of Guerra, sola igiene del mondo [1915] "Noi rinneghiamo i nostri maestri simbolisti ultimi amanti della luna" (Marinetti, Teor?a 259) and in it he explained the differences between Futurists and their symbolist precur sors. He directed especially scathing attacks against Gabriele D'Annunzio -

"fratello minore dei grandi simbolisti francesi, nost?lgico come questi" (Teor?a 261) whom he accused of propagating a literature tainted by "i quattro veleni intelletuali che noi vogliamo assolutamente abolir?" (Teor?a 261). Number two on this list of poisons was "II sentimentalismo rom?ntico grondante di chiaro di luna" (Teor?a 261).

Maples Arce's manifestos urged an equally vehement rebellion against the

legacy of Modernistas (and even the Post-modernistas of the movement's early twentieth-century followers). Modernismo was a thing of the past, and the past

was the province of the dead: "Hay que rebelarse contra el mandato de los muertos ... s?lo los esp?ritus acad?micos siguen confeccionando sus ollas podri das con materiales manidos" (Schneider 278). One such "academic spirit" was

Enrique Gonz?lez Mart?nez, one of Mexico's most established Post-modernistas in the decade of the 1920s. Gonz?lez Mart?nez was Maples Arce's D'Annunzio, and in true Marinettian spirit the founder of Estridentismo blames the old fashioned poet for the staleness of Mexican letters:

Excito a todos los poetas, pintores y escultores j?venes de M?xico, a los que a?n no han

sido maleados por el oro prebendarlo de los sinecurismos gobiernistas ... a todos los que

no han ido a lamer los platos en los festines culinarios de Enrique Gonz?lez Mart?nez pa ra hacer arte (!) con el estilicidio de sus menstruaciones intelectuales ... a todos esos, los

excito en nombre de la vanguardia actualista de M?xico, para que vengan a batirse, a

nuestro lado en las luc?feras filas de la "d?couverte," en donde, creo con Lasso de la Vega: "Estamos lejos del esp?ritu de la bestia." (Schneider 273)

If Futurism declared war on Symbolism, Estridentismo waged a battle against Modernismo. Maples Arce deploys a series of war images

- "battles," "ranks" -

in his indictment of Gonz?lez Mart?nez. And the young poet justifies his literary battle with reasons that echo Marinetti's complaints against Symbolism: he chastises Gonz?lez Mart?nez, whom he takes as a representative of the entire

Modernista enterprise, for killing the soul of poetry and for burying literature in a pile of antiquated clich?s. Maples Arce closes "Actual No. 1" by "demanding the heads" of Modernista poets, whom he dismisses as "ruise?ores escol?sticos

que hicieron de la poes?a un simple cancaneo repsoniano subido a los barrotes de una silla" (Schneider 274).



313

Germ?n List Arzubide, another Estridentista, chose a different earlier poet as his D'Annunzio: Rub?n Dar?o, the Nicaraguan-born Francophile Symbolist whose influence dominated Latin American poetry until well into the twentieth

century. In El movimiento estridentista (1926), his personal history of the movement, List Arzubide was even more explicit than Maples Arce, and he excoriated "la Am?rica cuadriculada del rubendarismo" (Movimiento 79-80). Similarly, most other avant-garde movements in Latin America would focus their avant-garde rage on a poet or poetic movement that represented nine

teenth-century aesthetics. Thus in "Ultra?smo" (1921), Jorge Luis Borges argued that "La belleza rubeniana es ya una cosa madurada y colmada, semejante a la belleza de un lienzo antiguo" (quoted in Schwarz 104).

As a final point, another interest that the Estridentistas shared with the Italian Futurists must be mentioned: the obsession with modern technology.

Marinetti famously proclaimed a speeding racecar to be more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace (Marinetti, Teor?a 10). The Estridentistas voiced their en

thusiasm for modern machines in equally bombastic terms. From the start, love of modern technology was one of the most prominent themes in Estridentista

writings. In "Actual No. 1," Maples Arce calls on young writers to murder the

past -

"?Muera el cura Hidalgo!" "?Chopin a la silla el?ctrica!" - and focus on

the achievements of the modern era. The manifesto argues that "Es necesario exaltar en todos los tonos estridentes de nuestro diapas?n propagandista, la belleza actualista de las m?quinas, de los puentes g?mnicos reciamente extendi dos sobre las vertientes por m?sculos de acero, el humo de las f?bricas, las emo

ciones cubistas de los grandes transatl?nticos con humeantes chimeneas de rojo y negro" (Schneider 269). After the publication of their first manifesto, the Estridentistas spent most of the decade of the 1920s putting into practice the document's injunctions: they wrote poems teeming with images of modern urban life; they composed novels dominated by automobiles, telephones, tele

graphs, radios and electric currents; they painted industrial landscapes dotted with smokestacks and skyscrapers.

Despite these numerous similarities between Marinetti and Maples Arce in

the use of manifestos, the use of irreverent and denunciatory language, and the call for poetic renewal, there are also important differences between the poetic projects of the Italian Futurists and the Estridentistas. The first, and most ap parent, concerns the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Closely allied with Fascism - Marinetti dedicated two of his books to Mussolini - Italian Fu turism was an ultra-nationalist movement that preached the superiority of the Latin race and called for the destruction of Italy's enemies, including Austria

and Turkey, through military force. Marinetti had a long romance with Fas

cism: in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I, he and other Futurists

called on their government to fight, and they burned Austrian flags in front of the Piazza Duomo in Milan; in 1924, Marinetti published "Futurismo e fas



314

cismo," a work dedicated "al mi? caro e grande amico Benito Mussolini," a

dedication that reappeared in a later work ("Marinetti e il Futurismo" [1929]); and in 1928 Marinetti founded a "Futurist Political Party" showing close alle

giance to 77 Duce. As Cinzia Sartini Blum has correctly assessed, Marinetti's

project was characterized by "an incongruity between innovative aesthetics and

reactionary politics" (2). Italian Futurism is a perfect example of what Jeffrey Herf has called "reactionary modernism" - a paradoxical synthesis of extremely traditionalist political values with a forward-looking revolutionary aesthetics

(Herfi). If the Italian Futurists veered right, the Estridentistas gravitated towards the

left. The Mexican poets saw their literary project as an extension of the Revolu tion that had shaken the country from 191 o to 1920. In "El Movimiento Estri dentista en 1922," Maples Arce lamented the fact that before the emergence of

Estridentismo, Mexican literature had remained untouched by the sweeping political reforms ushered in by the Mexican Revolution. In other countries that had lived through revolutionary uprising, like Russia and Germany, poets had been quick to create a new literary movement inspired by political events: "Pero los intelectuales mexicanos permanecieron impasibles" ("Movimiento" 25)

wrote Maples Arce, before arguing that his movement sought to remedy this situation by creating a new literature and a new revolution that was not only aesthetic but also political:

Pero las inquietudes pos-revolucionarias, las explosiones sindicalistas y las manifesta

ciones tumultuosas, fueron un estimulo para nuestros deseos iconoclastas y una reve

laci?n para nuestras agitaciones interiores. Nosotros [Estridentistas] tambi?n pod?amos sublebarnos [sic]. Nosotros tambi?n pod?amos rebelarnos. ("Movimiento" 25)

In Maples Arces view, Estridentismo> constituted an aesthetic revolution that would be to literature what the Mexican Revolution was to politics.

The Estridentistas were too young to have taken part in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917 (Maples Arce was born in 1900; List Arzubide in 1899) but they were extremely close to Heriberto Jara, a Revolutionary general who in

the 1920s served as governor of Veracruz and appointed the young poets to key posts in his cabinet.4 Inspired by the political and social reforms instituted by the Revolutionary governments that ruled the country in the 1920s, the Estri dentistas sought to extend the momentum of the Mexican Revolution to the realm of literature by orchestrating what Julia Kristeva has called, albeit in a different context, a "revolution of poetic language" (1), channeling the spirit of rebellion and renewal that dominated post-Revolutionary Mexico into a radical transformation of literature.

I quote in what follows some examples of the Estridentistas desire to create a Revolutionary literature. Maples Arce dedicated his Urbe: superpoema bol



315

chevique en cinco cantos (1924) "to the Mexican workers," a group he praised in

politically charged verse:

Y ahora, los burgueses ladrones, se echar?n a temblar

por los caudales

que robaron al pueblo

pero alguien ocult? bajo sus sue?os

el pentagrama espiritual del explosivo. (Schneider 429)

In this poem the revolutionary spirit resides in its theme and not in its style or

literary technique; it is perhaps worth noting that there is nothing revolutionary in Maples Arce's use of language, and no subversion of syntax or experimenta tion with typography. Another example of this desire to create a Revolutionary literature may be found in List Arzubide's Plebe (1925), a poem dedicated to the Flores Mag?n brothers, who were famous union activists in the wake of the Revolution. Though at times these poems seem closer to socialist realism than to Futurism, they nevertheless constituted a major innovation in their break from an extremely conservative Mexican literary tradition, and their passionate revolutionary energy was admired by contemporary readers. John Dos Passos, who visited Mexico in the 1920s, was so taken by the energy of Maples Arces Urbe that he translated it into English and published it in New York, as Me

tropolis, in 1929. As Octavio Paz has pointed out in "Antev?spera" (103), the Estridentistas embrace of revolutionary politics remains the group's most

original accomplishment. The relationship between nationalism and aesthetics constitutes another

crucial difference between the Estridentistas and the Italian Futurists. Marinetti and his disciples considered ultranationalism - a fervent and bellicose love for the recently unified Italy

- as an integral part of the Futurist aesthetic project (see, for example, the texts collected in "Guerra, sola igiene del mondo" [1915]). The Futurists renounced all that was traditional as antiquated in favor of the

modern, and thus they rejected the ancient, feudal-style allegiance to regions and provinces in favor of a pan-Italian nationalism. In the early years of the

century, the majority of Italian citizens still spoke a regional dialect and felt more attached to their village or region than to the abstract concept of a unified

Italy. Futurist ultra-nationalism can thus be seen as a novel posture, since it

privileged the modern nation over the old allegiance to the particular region. Likewise, a literature that would sing the praises of the entire Italian nation - as

opposed to glorifying Tuscan villages, Umbrian Hills, or Neapolitan palaces -

was a radically new experiment. The Estridentistas, on the other hand, forcefully rejected nationalist content

in literature. Their politics were nationalist - Maples Arce and his disciples

proudly and repeatedly asserted their allegiance to the Mexican Revolution -



316

but their aesthetic was internationalist. They blamed intellectual regionalism for the pathetic state of Mexican letters and they believed that the only sustainable

literary practice would be one characterized by a dialogue with the international

avant-garde. In "Actual No. i" Maples Arce dismisses nationalist writers with as

much passion as he attacks the Modernistas: invoking caricatures of Mexican

culture, he complains about "las eflorescencias lamentables y mef?ticas de nuestro medio nacionalista con hedores de pulquer?a y rescoldos de fritanga" (Schneider 274). In another section of the manifesto, he calls on poets and read ers to embrace the internationalist spirit of modern times: "Cosmopoli tic?monos. Ya no es posible tenerse en cap?tulos convencionales de arte na

cional ... Las ?nicas fronteras posibles en el arte, son las propias infranqueables de nuestra emoci?n marginalista" (Schneider 272).

Maples Arce sees nationalism - those "cap?tulos convencionales de arte na

cional" - as antiquated and as empty as Modernismo. Unlike the reactionary Modernistas, Maples Arce understood very well that technology (the elevators,

skyscrapers, and train engines that he associated with modernity in his mani

festo) was a cosmopolitan invention, incompatible with nationalist sentiment. The spirit of the modern era was international, and progress tended to erase the mark of national traits, in machines as well as in people ("tienden a borrarse los

perfiles y los caracteres raciales" [Schneider 272]). In his view, avant-garde art went beyond the limits of national boundaries.5

In addition to the discrepancies in political affiliation and nationalist sen

timent, there is a third and more crucial difference that sets the Estridentistas

apart from the Italian Futurists: their vision of language and poetic creation. Marinetti devoted a great part of his work - as well as a considerable number of manifestos - to expounding and perfecting a theory of poetic language. Not satisfied with urging his followers to rebel against the past, Marinetti gave de tailed, technical instructions on how to bring about such a rebellion in Futurist

poems. In contrast, Maples Arce devoted considerably less time and effort to

linguistic and poetic concerns, and he offers only scattered comments in pass ing on the act of writing. Despite all their bombastic claims, his manifestos never offered concise instructions on how to write Estridentista poetry.

Marinetti devoted an entire manifesto ("Manifesto t?cnico della letterattura futurista" [1912]) to giving step-by-step instructions on how to construct Fu turist poems. In order to break with the past and explore uncharted territory,

Marinetti explained (Teoria 42), Futurist literature must follow a few technical rules, designed to destroy traditional syntax: verbs should only be used in the infinitive; adjectives, adverbs, and punctuation must be abolished and replaced by experimental typography and mathematical signs; nouns should be paired in doubles to form new images ("uomo-torpediniera, donna-golfo, folla-risacca,

piazza-imbuto, porta-rubinetto" [Teoria 41] are some examples given by the

poet); the use of the first person was prohibited; and the new literature gave



317

prominence to three elements neglected until then: noise, weight, and odors. By following these simple strategies, writers might finally break free from the bonds of dead tradition, and - to use an expression dear to Marinetti - "set words free" by giving birth to parole in libert?: "lo inizio," the poet wrote, "una rivoluzione tipogr?fica diretta contro la bestiale e nauseante concezione del libro di versi passatista e dannunziana" (Teoria 67).

Throughout his life, Marinetti not only worked and reworked his poetic

theory, but also diligently applied its principles to his own creations. There is a

clear continuity between the theories presented in Futurist manifestos and po etic texts. We need only glance at the pages of Zang Tumb Tumb (1914), Mari netti's first book-length poem, to find the strategies outlined in the "Technical Manifesto" rigorously applied to poetic composition. The poem lacks tradi tional syntax, relying instead on typographical experiments and mathematical notation to emphasize certain words; all verbs are in the infinitive; first-person pronouns are absent from the text; and the poem is definitely "noisy," since it

opens with the onomatopoeic departure of a train: "treno treno treno treno

tren tron tron tron [ponte di ferro: tatatluuun-tlin] ssssssiii ssiissii ssiisssssi

iii" (Marinetti, Zang n.p.). Nothing of the sort is to be found in Maples Arce's work. His manifestos

passionately denounce the literary establishment, but they fail to outline a the

ory for the creation of Estridentista poems. Aside from his call to write about

machines and new technological developments, Maples Arce has little to say about the technical aspect of writing. When he does discuss poetic creation, his

vague comments lack the focused pragmatism that characterizes Marinettian

poetic theories. Although the Mexican poet dedicates an entire section of "Ac

tual No. 1" to artistic creation, his observations remain vague and he never of

fers concrete examples of how to apply them to poetry. Consider the following

injunction in "Actual":

XI. Fijar las delimitaciones est?ticas. Hacer arte, con elementos propios y cong?nitos

fecundados en su propio ambiente. No reintegrar valores, sino crearlos totalmente, y as?

mismo, destruir todas esas teor?as equivocadamente modernas, falsas ... Hacer poes?a pu

ra, suprimiendo todo elemento extra?o y desnaturalizado (descripci?n, an?cdota, pers

pectiva). (Schneider 272)

This is the only section in Maples Arce's manifesto which tells poets how to

write the new kind of literature, but the precepts outlined are abstract and gen eral. What are the "aesthetic limits" to be "fixed"? What are the "values" to be

"created"? How should the poet "denaturalize" his writing? Maples Arce's ideas

about poetic creation are difficult to apply to poetic practice. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Estridentista poems do not always live

up to the radical break with the past advocated in the manifestos. Maples Arce's



318

poems, for example, are inconsistent, both in their subject matter as well as in the technical aspects of their composition: some, like Urbe, show a clear affinity with avant-garde concerns, but many others, like those grouped in Poemas in terdictos (1927) with titles like "Spring," "Harbor," "Farewell," "Voyage," and

"Saudade," have more in common with the Modernista legacy of romantic im

agery than with Futurist aesthetics. Even the most radical Estridentista creations, like Urbe, never achieve the

revolutionary renovation of poetic language found in Marinetti's texts. The

Estridentistas, for the most part, retained rhyme (one of the poetic conventions most despised by Marinetti, who championed free verse), used a fairly tradi tional syntax in their compositions, and they rarely experimented with typogra phy. Indeed, one of Maples Arce's fellow Estridentistas, Arqueles Vela, accused the founder of the movement of writing poetry that did not conform to the

movement's theories: "La teor?a de Maples Arce sobre la poes?a es irrefutable; pero su poes?a no corresponde a sus conceptos" (Vela 323), and even Maples Arce himself acknowledged that his poetry was closer to the aesthetics of Mo dernismo than he had first admitted. In his memoirs he wrote: "Ciertamente, no comenc? rompiendo por completo con el modernismo y el postmodernismo: conserv? la m?trica de los heptas?labos, endecas?labos y alejandrinos, pero va riando en m?sica, y, sobre todo, dando a las im?genes sentido vital, potencia po?tica" (Soberana 125).

The Estridentistas1 lack of a coherent poetic theory explains, in part, the movement's untimely demise. Without a clear poetic program, the group's re bellious energy exhausted itself in a few manifestos. Since there were no ideas to

try out, the poets wrote very little after the publication of their bombastic

opening statements. The group left behind less than a dozen collections of po etry, a tiny legacy, especially when compared to the thousands of pages that make up Marinetti's collected writings. Octavio Paz ("Siete" 64) was right to have judged Estridentismo as an energetic but ultimately infertile and "aborted"

experiment and his sumation of Maples Arce and his movement was succinct: "el hombre fue poco afortunado y el movimiento dur? poco" (Paz, Poes?a 17).

From our examination of both the similarities as well as the differences between Italian Futurism and Estridentismo we have attained a much clearer

image of how the Mexican movement related to avant-garde concerns. This becomes even clearer by expanding the context of our inquiry and asking how the Mexican group compared to the other Futurism: Russian Futurism.

Several critics have pointed out - though so far no one has analyzed in

depth - the similarities between the Mexican and the Russian movement. Oc

tavio Paz has gone as far as to suggest that the Estridentistas, in their ambition to achieve a synthesis of political and poetic revolution, were directly influenced

by Soviet experiments: "los estridentistas profesaron ideas radicales en pol?tica y unieron, influidos sin duda por el futurismo ruso, la revoluci?n est?tica a la



319

revoluci?n social" ("Antev?spera" 103). Paz's perception of a direct influence is

entirely logical, for in terms of politics, the Estridentistas seem to have much more in common with the Russian Futurists than with the Italian group. Like the Russians, the Mexican poets had lived through a long and bloody civil war; like the Russians, the Estridentistas had had their intellectual awakening in a

new, post-revolutionary country whose first years of existence were marked by a great optimism and boundless hope for the future; like the Russians, the Mexicans celebrated the Italian Futurists' aesthetic achievements while rejecting their belligerent politics; and like their Soviet counterparts, the Estridentistas considered their poetic creations as an extension of their revolutionary politics.

Paz's theory of a direct Russian influence on the Mexican group is at first

sight confirmed by Maples Arce's repeated references to Russian avant-garde artists and writers. Indeed, the "avant-garde yellow pages" ("directorio de van

guardia") published at the end of "Actual No. 1" includes a long list of Russian intellectuals: "Steremberg (Com, de B.A. de Moscou). Mme. Lunacharsky [sic].

Erhenbourg. Taline. Konchalowsky. Machkoff. Mme Ekster. Wlle Monate. Marewna. Larionow. Gondiarowa. Belova. Sontine" (Schneider 275). Besides

listing the Russian names cited above, in 1922 Maples Arce in his article "El movimiento estridentista," pointed to the Russian avant-garde as a model for what needed to be done in Mexico: "En Rusia, los poetas y pintores del supre matismo afirmaron dolorosamente la inquietud de movimiento bolchevique. Lo mismo se hizo en el grupo de noviembre en Alemania" (25). These are direct references but there are many other elements in the works of the Estridentistas that recall the Russian Futurist aesthetic: the titles of certain poems (Maples Arce's Urbe: superpoema bolchevique en cinco cantos), the constructivist-style design of books and journals (see, for example, the cover illustration which Ram?n Alva de la Canal designed for Germ?n List Arzubide's El viajero en el

v?rtice" [1926]), and the Mexican poets' direct participation in their country's

post-revolutionary politics.

Nevertheless, we must ask now just how well did the Estridentistas know

the Russian Futurists? As we shall see, not as well as might first appear. If we

examine Maples Arce's "avant-garde yellow pages" in detail, we find a number of surprises. First of all, Maples Arce does not mention Vladimir Mayakovski, the most important Russian Futurist poet whose poems and theoretical texts

had much in common with the Estridentista project. Secondly, Maples Arce's list of Russian names is riddled with misspellings and typographical errors. One

example will suffice for comment here: Anatoly Lunatcharsky, the Soviet

Commissioner of Culture, a man, is mistakenly identified as "Mme. Lunachar

sky," a woman. Such errors and omissions suggest that Maples Arce was not

familiar with the Russian names he was citing. Again, various French words

embedded in the list (like the phrase "Com. De B.A. de Moscou," an abbrevia tion for "Comit? des Beaux Arts de Moscou") further suggest that Maples Arce



320

might even have been copying the list of Russian writers and artists, whose

work he did not know,from a French publication. Maples Arces unfamiliarity with the most important creations of Russian Futurism thus implies that the

supposedly striking parallels between the Mexican and the Russian avant-garde movements were merely coincidental, and similar to the aesthetic convergences

touted between the Russian and the Italian Futurists which were the result of

pure chance rather than direct influence.6

Despite the rather superficial political and aesthetic affinities between the Estridentistas and the Russian Futurists, there were also crucial differences be tween the two movements, especially in their theories of language. Like their Italian counterparts, the Russian Futurists devoted much of their work to de

vising a new poetic theory that would free literature from the weight of the past. The Russians, however, went much farther than Marinetti: they believed that

language, weighed down by centuries of everyday usage and clich?d conven

tions, was doomed and essentially unredeemable. If Marinetti destroyed tradi tional syntax, the Russian Futurists discarded their entire mother tongue alto

gether in favor of a new set of words that could only be used to write poetry. Thus, the poet Velimir Khlebnikov invented Zaum, a new language designed especially for writing poetry. Markov has described zaum as "what is generally considered [Russian] futurism's most radical creation ... the so-called transra

tional language" (19). Zaum consisted entirely of invented words, which had no

meaning beyond the nuances and texture of their sounds, which sometimes included vague Slavic resonances. We can see the workings of this mysterious "language" in Khlebnikov's "Dyr bul schyl," the most famous zaum poem:

Dyr bul schyl Ubeshshchur

Skum

Vy so bu R L ?z. (44)

Markov offers the following "reading" of the text:

The poem begins with energetic monosyllables, some of which slightly resemble Russian

or Ukranian words, followed by a three-syllable word of shaggy appearance. The next

word looks like a fragment of some word, and the two final lines are occupied with sylla bles and just plain letters, respectively, the poem ending in a queer, non-Russian sound

ing syllable. (44)

In fact the poem does not "mean" anything beyond its strange guttural music, and this rejection of signification constitutes a frontal attack on traditional liter

ary language. The conventions of poetic composition are trampled, torn to



321

shreds, and finally discarded by zaum poets, who felt free to invent not only an

original style but also a brand-new set of words. If we now return to Maples Arce, we see that his poetic creations, and even

his irreverent manifestos, pale in comparison to the boldness of Russian Futur ist poetic experimentation. Even Urbe, Maples Arce's most revolutionary crea

tion, appears as a completely traditional poem when set against the linguistic fireworks of zaum. Consider the opening verses of the Mexican "super Bolshe vik poem":

He aqu? mi poema

brutal

y mult?nime

a la nueva ciudad.

Oh ciudad toda tensa

de cables y de esfuerzos

sonora toda

de motores y de alas. (Schneider 429)

With their quaint internal rhyme and parallelisms, these lines are in fact closer to the aesthetics of Latin-American Modernismo than they are to any Futurist

work.

Nonetheless, one last coincidence between the Russian movement and the

project of the Estridentistas does deserve our attention, namely, that the Mexi can and the Russian avant-gardes were the only two literary movements to em

brace the nascent field of commercial advertisement. Two Russian Futurists,

Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, collaborated with visual artists to create posters and newspaper ads for various state-owned companies. Proud to form part of a new country full of hope and idealism, the Futurists avidly promoted, with po etic jingles and zaum-]ike slogans, the products and services of the state, in

cluding the state-owned airlines and postal services, as well as more mundane

products like biscuits, matches, and cooking oil (see, for example, the many advertisements designed by Mayakovsky and Rodchenko reproduced by Dab

rowski in the catalogue Aleksandr Rodchenko published in conjunction with the exhibition of the artist's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York).

Likewise, in post-Revolutionary Mexico the Estridentista poets and paint ers collaborated in a number of ad campaigns. If, unlike the Russians, they did not promote state-owned companies but rather products and services that they associated with modernity, there is an uncanny coincidence in that the most

famous ad campaign designed by the Estridentistas promoted an industry which had also been publicized by the Russian Futurists: radio broadcasting, or, as it was known in Mexico at the time, "TSH," short for "telefon?a sin hilos," or

wireless telephony.



322

In the early 1920s, both Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovski had worked for ROSTA, the central soviet broadcasting station. Mayakovski made over two thousand drawings and several hundred posters with propagandistic slogans and jingles for the agency (Kern 264). In Mexico, the Estridentistas de

signed a similar avant-garde advertisement in 1923: a promotional poster for "Radio" cigarettes made by "El Buen Tono," a cigar factory that also owned one of Mexico's first radio stations. The cigarette ad, which appeared on the back cover of every issue of Irradiador, evokes the aesthetic of Russian Constructivist and Futurist compositions: fragments of phrases ("El Buen Tono," "Elegantes," "Los mejores cigarros") in circular patterns evoking stylized radio waves. Ironi

cally, it was an advertisement and not poetry that allowed the Estridentistas to

experiment with a revolution of language: the fragmentation, dispersal, and

simultaneity in this cigarette ad is much more radical than anything to be found in the group's creative texts.7

The Estridentistas shared the spirit of Italian Futurism, especially Mari netti's irreverent dismissal of the past and his attempt to create a new literature in tune with the modern era, but their project lacked the coherence of the Ital ian or Russian movements. Perhaps the most original contribution of the group is to be found in its manifestos, those bombastic writings filled with revolution

ary energy. Thus, in texts like "Actual No. 1" we find a radically new style in a forceful prose whose intent is to bring about a literary renewal.

In the end, however, the Estridentistas were unable to translate their rebel lious energy into a coherent literary program. Unlike Marinetti, who wrote

painstakingly technical instructions on how to create Futurists texts, neither

Maples Arce nor his fellow poets ever explained how to write Estridentista texts. Instead, the poetry actually written by Maples Arce and his fellow poets was

much closer to the nineteenth-century poetic models they rejected in their manifestos than to the avant-garde experiments they claimed to advocate, and even the most radical texts, like Maples Arce's Urbe, appear extremely tradi tional when we compare them to the wild language of Zang Tumb Tumb or Zaum. Although the Estridentistas were the first avant-garde group to disturb Mexican letters in the twentieth century, they were bold when writing mani festos but extremely shy when experimenting with poetry. Perhaps this is why their work has been all but forgotten and why critics still consider their poetry a failed project.

Princeton Un iversity

NOTAS

i The opening paragraph of "Actual No. i" reads: "Hoja de vanguardia / Comprimido Estridentista de Manuel Maples Arce / Iluminaciones subversivas de Ren?e Dunan,



323

F.T. Marinetti, Guillermo de Torre, Lasso de la Vega, Salvat Papasseit, etc?tera y

algunas cristalizaciones marginales" (Schneider 267). 2 See the manifesto inti?ed "Distruzione d?lia sintassi / Imaginazione senza fili /

Parole in liberta" (1913). The manifesto closes with the ominous phrase "Ecco alcuni

degli elementi della... nostra arte dei rumori" (Marinetti, Teor?a 60). "Arte dei

rumor i" was the title of a 1913 text by another Futurist poet, Luigi Russolo, who saw

noise as the ultimate symbol of modern life and wrote: "colTinvenzione delle

macchine, nacque il Rumore. Oggi il Rumore trionfa e domina sovrano sulla

sensibilit? degli uomini... GODIAMO MOLTO PI? NEL COMBINARE IDEALMENTE DEI RUMORI DE TRAM DIMOTORIA SCOPPIO, DI CAROZZE E DI FOLLE VOCIANTI, CHE NEL RUDIRE, PER ESEMPIO, L"EROICA' O LA 'PASTORALE'" (Marinetti, I manifesto 123-27).

3 "Perpetuemos nuestro crimen en el melancolismo trasnochado de los 'Nocturnos,'

y proclamemos sincr?nicamente la aristocracia de la gasolina," wrote Maples Arce

in "Actual No. 1" (Schneider 270).

4 This curious fact has led Jorge Schwartz to affirm that "el estridentismo pas? a la

historia siendo el ?nico movimiento de vanguardia en Am?rica Latina que cont?

con apoyo militar" (161).

5 We should add that Marinetti was much more consistent in embracing nationalism

than Maples Arce in rejecting it. Although Maples Arce's manifestos attack nation

alist literature, the Estridentistas championed the work of Mariano Azuela (they

published the first edition of Los de abajo in Mexico), a writer obsessed with na

tionalist themes, while several Estridentista works were sprinkled with nationalist

clich?s as in, for example, the second manifesto which ends with a Mexicanist ral

lying cry ("Viva el mole de Guajolote," and Germ?n List Arzubide's dedication, al

beit with a certain irony, "a Huitzilopoxtli, manager del movimiento Estridentista"

to El movimien to estridentista in 1926).

6 Vladimir Markov remarks that "in its origins the Russian [futurist] group was quite

independent of the Italians. In 1909 not one of the snodk people had even heard of

[Italian] futurism: no one could dream that three years later they would call

themselves futurists "

(382).

7 For a discussion of radio and Estridentismo, see the chapter "Radio" (Gallo).

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Documents

Rubén Gallo, estridentismo