Development of Surrealism in Latin America

 Surrealism in Latin American Literature  maps the transatlantic networkof intellectual exchange that brought surrealism “across the pond” to Latin Amer-ica.organizing premise of this critical cartography may be inferred from thebook’s subtitle: “Searching for Breton’s Ghost.”According to Melanie Nicholson,surrealism—as an actitud vital or attitude—enjoyed a rich “afterlife” in Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Chile long after the historical movement’s initial impetus hadfloundered and its founders had passed. Across this region, the movement’s aes-thetic practices and political ideals were transformed and reinvigorated in unexpect-ed ways. Demonstrating that a “genuinely distinctive” Latin American surrealismemerged, Nicholson proves surrealism played a significant role in the developmentof Latin American literature . 

Yet, despite the movement’s importance to theregion’s literary, artistic and cultural history, some scholars have minimized surre-alism’s impact, going as far as to suggest that, aside from a few minor poets, themovement failed to gain a footing in Latin America. Analyzing Latin American po-ets’ interest in the ideas and activities of surrealism, Nicholson demonstrates pre-cisely how a proliferation of critiques, homages and reappraisals of the movement206Sección Bibliográfica emerged. 

Whether against or in favor of surrealism’s tenets, this interchange ulti-mately enriched continental surrealism’s orthodoxy and, throughout Latin America,spurned a more complex iteration of the movement’s primary doctrines.Given the flurry of publications and retrospectives that in the last threeyears alone have sought to trace the legacy of surrealism to Latin America, Nich-olson’s incisive study is a necessary and timely one that undoes current trends thatcenter on surrealism’s impact on the visual arts. For example, e Getty Institute’srecent publications

Surrealism In Latin America: Vivísimo Muerto (2012) andFare-well to Surrealism: e Dyn Circle in Mexico(2012) are two contributions that reg-ister US interest in Latin American Surrealism. is attention was furthered by themassively successful cross-border retrospective organized by the Los Angeles Coun-ty Museum of Art (LACMA) and Mexico’sInstituto de Bellas Artes(INBA) titledIn Wonderland: e Surrealist Adventure of Women Artists in Mexico and the UnitedStates(2012). 

A similar phenomenon is taking place in Latin America. Last yearMexico’sMuseo Nacional de Arte(MUNAL) exhibited the monumentalSurrealis-mo: Vasos Comunicantes (2012), a retrospective of the movement through an inter-nationalist lens that emphasized the presence of European Surrealists in Mexico. While in Chile, theMuseo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) opened the year withPapeles Surrealistas. Dibujos y pinturas del surrealismo en las Colecciones del MNBA(2013). 

Accompanying most of these exhibitions were a slew of conferences dedi-cated to correcting the record and asserting that indeed surrealism had no nation-ality, boundaries or limits and that in its extensive history, Latin America playeda central role. Yet, the focus of these efforts has been primarily on the visual arts,lending only minimal attention to literature. In fact, though many of these exhibitshave acknowledged the importance of poets like César Moro and Octavio Paz inspreading surrealism, these figures have only been treated as conduits for the visualarts’ larger connection to the movement. 

Furthermore, though some recent criticalmonographs have centered on a specific author’s relationship to surrealism, no over-arching study has yet to account for the movement’s reception and transformationacross Latin American literature. Nicholson’s book successfully fills this void.In charting surrealism’s reception, Nicholson divides her study into twochronological divisions: an early period of “assimilation” of French surrealism(1928-50) and a later era of “creative adaptation” (1950-80) (34). e initial pe-riod was characterized by two opposing tendencies. First, an enthusiastic embrace of André Breton’s ideals and, second, an outright rejection of his philosophy. Explor-ing self through language while celebrating surrealism’s spirit of revolt against bour-geois values, Latin American avant-garde poets welcomed surrealism’s commitmentto liberty and playful exploration with form. Examples of Latin American enthusi-asm for surrealism can be drawn from literary journals including the Argentine Que  (1928/30), the Chilean ,Mandragora (1938-43) and the Peruvian Amauta (1926-30). ese journals informed readers of French surrealism’s main tenets and alsoprovided a space for poets to  essay some of the movement’s practices.

 Still, leadingintellectuals who were primarily concerned with fostering a proper Latin Americantradition eschewed the movement’s ludic experimentation. One of the movement’smost fervid critics was César Vallejo; he immediately warned artists and authorsthat the movement was a walking “corpse.” For Vallejo, who embraced socialismand experienced the political anxieties of the 1930s, surrealism proved to be “inef-fectual as a vehicle for political revolution” (100). According to Nicholson, Breton’s ideals were perhaps most fervently re- jected in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. Involved in national reconstruction through-out the 1920s and early 1930s, few artists or poets paid attention to the move-ment. ough poets such as Xavier Villaurrutia and Jorge Cuesta took stock of themovement and even adapted some of its practices, generally, Mexican intellectualsignored surrealism. Nevertheless, Mexico still played an important role in the move-ment’s history as many surrealists visited the country, often seeking refuge. Surreal-ist exiles and pilgrims, including Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Wolfgang Paalenand Leonora Carington, considered Mexico their home. Although the movementdid not have an immediate impact on the post revolutionary cultural field, surreal-ism left an indelible mark on Mexico, coming to fruition in the work of OctavioPaz.e second half of this study offers brilliant close readings of Olga Orozco, Alejandra Pizarnik, Nicanor Parra, Gonzalo Rojas and Octavio Paz. Nicholson ex-plains that, offering alternatives for facing contemporary society, surrealism becamea form of “new humanism.” During this later period, Latin American Surrealism“exceeded” earlier appropriations of the movement in originality and literary qual-ity. Moving away from some of the surrealist practices yet embracing its general phi-losophy, Latin American surrealists reimagined Breton’s poetics and ideals in theirown ways. Nicholson cites key examples and presents clear and incisive interpreta-tions of the many important poets that created their own surrealism. is section isbrilliant in its scope and offers some of the book’s most fascinating moments.Notwithstanding the impressive scope of this survey, a few missed oppor-tunities should be noted. ough Nicholson acknowledges the many sites wheresurrealism emerged, her study privileges a few key countries while overlookingsurrealism’s reach into Central America, the Caribbean and Brazil. Furthermore,though its focus is on Spanish-speaking Latin America, one is left to wonder whatfrancophone surrealists in the region contributed to surrealism’s legacy. A case inpoint is Haiti, where, by many accounts, Breton’s visit and lectures contributed tothe intellectual opposition of the 1940s. Additionally, Nicholson largely bypassesthe Caribbean, providing only preliminary remarks on the Martinican poet AiméCésaire, an important figure whose surrealist connections deserved more attention.Finally, Luis Cardoza y Aragón’s importance to surrealism in Mexico and Central America is never addressed and the one appearance the poet makes in this historyis only to erroneously signal his rejection of the movement. Cardoza y Aragón wasamong the very few Latin American poets that André Breton met in Paris and per-haps the earliest to register surrealism in his poetry. e Guatemalan did not rejectsurrealism at large, but rather the political opportunism that characterized the Mex-ican Surrealist exhibit of 1940. In fact, Cardoza y Aragón repeatedly declared him-self more surrealist than surrealism and wrote several essays about André Breton.Of course, it is impossible for any history of surrealism in Latin America to coverevery facet, but attention to these cases would strengthen Nicholson’sperhaps complicate her interpretation of surrealism in Mexico. Yet, these are onlyminor and debatable gripes about an otherwise fast-moving, anecdote-rich and im-pressive study.

Surrealism in Latin American Literature masterfully pieces the disparateLatin American literary magazines, manifestos, essays and poems that, through-out the twentieth century, engaged with the movement. Building on a vast archiveof scholarship that in the past has focused on individual authors or national lit-eratures, Nicholson’s fine effort places—into loose chronological order—the varioussurrealist poets that populated the continent into one coherent, comprehensive andsuggestive study. In doing so, she proves that surrealism was just as vital to literatureas it was to the visual arts and that indeed this actitud vital was far from being the“corpse” that some critics have preferred to see. us in scope, breadth and insight, Surrealism in Latin American Literature is already the most important history of themovement in Latin America.