1968...Fragmentos de una lucha para los indignados de hoy (Spanish Edition)

El acto de leer: Oxford Univer- ticos del siglo XX. Lo bello y lo siniestro. This paper will explore the argument that Bradbury, in F, displays evidence of engaging critically with thoughts that have since led to identifying Acknowledgement environmental issues post Ray Bradbury, who refers to his work as the to project environmentalist thinking. In , Bradbury published Fahrenheit , a 2. All subsequent references to the book will be as F Innate Human connection with nature: When Montag arrives home to find his wife Mildred has overdosed and is uncons- and the term also has endless cious, he rings what he believes to be doctors, and two unofficial, labour men arrive, who perform a connections with natural procedure described in the following manner: It drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil.

Reference to the past can either be demonised or idealised and in this instant. Bradbury suggests the consensus was to hold a humble perspective towards nature, due to the previous movement of pastoral literatu- re. Matter is the term used to denote the substance that all physical objects objects consist. Bodily fluids are vital to life and therefore only significantly different in age, but also by mind- symbolises the importance of Mildred preserving set.

At this point, the natural blood, with artificial blood, creating tension readers are offered an insight into what he saw, or between the natural and artificial, i. A conscious human such as trees are the bearer of life, actively part of connection to nature the ecosystem in which they live and produce the oxygen that they breathe. F may ning overtly expresses her affiliation to nature. The potentially be aiming at the importance of the diffe- oxygen Mildred and Montag breathe is a product rence between humans seeing objects in nature and of the trees that are associated and acknowledged truly understanding their worth in their local and only by Clarisse in the text.

Clarisse takes the time larger ecosystem. This is further suggested by the the country. He is also being chased by the mechani- grass in the morning. Fear of te- flowers, it could be a possible displacement techni- chnology is embodied by the mechanical hound and que to convey how the meaning of nature has been a longing for a return to nature is realised when Montag arrives at the river. He finally has an ex- 4. Fire Water is one of the classic four elements, as Brad- The ambivalent nature of bury engages and portrays the importance of liquid fire and its positive and matter for human existence.

Another popular ele- ment used in the text is Fire. The am- in the text bivalent nature of fire and its positive and negative aspects are explored in the text, yet its underlying importance is its relationship and effect on the su- rrounding atmosphere. The captain of the Firemen is called Beatty who throughout the text constructs what he perceives to be rationale reasons for the use of fire.

All subsequent references will be used as ESA. Scientists say friction of molecules [ This message by its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and Bradbury could be analysed today in light of the consequences. Whilst this point of view offers the poten- body. The dichotomy between his role as a Fireman. This is an example of Brad- books and trees bury highlighting the ignorance of those who choose to participate in destroying and manipulating natu- The ending provides a new dawn and a hopeful fu- re for unnecessary human purposes.

With the constant apocalyptic message bur- Therefore, the draining of green matter from hu- ning through the narrative, the narrator states: Beatty controls and And on either side of the river was there a tree manipulates energy through burning books, fire of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and is a slave to the machine, and the energy he pro- yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of duces is lavishly wasted.

This contrasts with the the tree were for the healing of the nations. It is this point in the Book of Revelation warming! This realisation of environment. The moon ference to the fact nature is measured numerically, there and light of the moon caused by what? By it is a science, a process which is not infinite. The- the sun, of course. And what lights the sun? Its re is an inherent symbolic opposition between the own fire.

And the sun goes on day after day, bur- books, which represent culture, information, and ning and burning So if he burnt artefacts, and trees, which are organic, natural, not things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, subject to history. However, Bradbury does create exam- ples of engaging with ecological thinking by having nature function in the background through the na- rrative and at the end at the forefront, even more so by his intricate relationships between the cha- racters and their versions of nature.

After all, natu- re is the original product of the material book, and it is reasonable to suggest that through material culture the book is distanced from its origins. The books that are burnt are made from trees, meaning the cycle of burning the page and the trees is inter- connected. It appears to be the consumerist society depicted in the book which represses both nature and culture. Bradbury adopts a humanist stance, as opposed to a fundamentalist environmentalism that argues for man vs. It could therefore be asserted that the underlying message is not about the loss of information and knowledge.

Ran- dom House Publishing. Man- chester University Press. Time-travel may be fictionally thematic chapter within the SF field. Once fictionally accredited and accepted so that both the part and the whole may find their due to the conventions of reading and fictional il- intended sequence and coherence. Coleridge speaks about 3, the tion was that SF is essentially a literature of the chronomotion becomes the necessary condition of 1. Its abstract in English has been published in last issue time paradoxes. Biographia Literaria , 2. Science fiction reaches irreversible, and above all thus the critical threshold where the human limit is overwhelmed.

This appears to be reduced then to subordination to the notion of time- lessness, which only the human mind can conceive. The overwhelming of the human being as every- where in science fiction and of the human mind This appears to be reduced 4. This is the Romanian edition used for the Romanian book, of which this essay is an abstract. This havoc of logic, this causal confusion, science fiction.

Put to this or hypothesis of chronomotion the move along test, the human brain meets and has to face its in- time, the travel through time gives rise to, in the superable limit, recognizing it by virtue of the fact coherent but inherently a priori way with which that the brain tried to overcome it, and thus —and the human mind conceives and perceives time and only thus— the human mind becomes aware of be- its attributes, organically and inextricably correla- ing limited at all. If cal fallacy that because two events occurred in succession, this ontological pillar collapses or is undermined, the former event caused the latter event.

It is often shortened to sim- mental distress signal. It is reality finds itself menaced and overwhelmed. Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence tematically and paradigmatically in science fiction. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection. From Attacking Faulty Reasoning by T.

In addressing a post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument, it is important to recognize that correlation does not equal causation. Magical thinking is a form of post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, in which superstitions are formed Put to this test, the human based on seeing patterns in a series of coincidences.

Sometimes good things brain meets and has to face its happen to me when I wear them. An example is the following state- ment: An- thus —and only thus— the other example is the observation that, in the past years, the average global temperature has been growing at the same human mind becomes aware rate the number of pirates has been falling. This is why time paradoxes in science fiction are so fre- quently revisited, so attractive and seductive, so thrilling and compelling, even at the risk of stray- ing into sensationalism and byzantinism, into pur- poseless sleight-of-hand and over-elaborate record for the sake of record only at times in an almost sporting manner , into ostentatious showiness and gratuitous bravado, examples of which are easily found.

Worn out and discredited by excess as they may sometimes seem, time paradoxes in science fic- tion preserve their ultimate essence unaltered: Ion Hobana Editor , Viitorul? Edited by ; Gollancz, London, ; cf. Contributing editor Brian Sta- dra E. The father paradox Thus, complexional nature or corporeality an im- 3. The grandfather paradox or the paradox of aginary one, of course is naturally implied, to dif- the murderous grandson ferent degrees.

The paradox of the self-addressed letter is merely an indifferent mechanism, while a twin 9. This is even more true when brothers or sis- The time-reversal paradox ters are replaced by lovers or spouses, as it often happens: Hacker and Gordon B. An Annotated Bibliography of ably belong. A revised and more 2. Cercetare more recent bonus in the volume: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

All structures of the time loop variety are internally contradictory in a causal sense. Hoisington and Darko Suvin, in: A Collection of Critical Essays. Stanislaw the time-loop even more closely, by reducing the Lem, Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy. There- , , pp. At the same time, it pushes to paradox and converts the an extreme degree and aporetically limits the very hypothesis of vulnerable time underlying both uchro- minimal time-loop into a nia and chronoplastia, i. In order to produce the fictional infringement of this principle. In these latter cases, the grandfather para- principle of time; more precisely, dox is finally resolved by combining it with another fictional solution subtly adjusted to science fiction: The paradox of the vulnerable time.

The an- be gathered and enlisted under this heading of swer is simple: But how can this vulnerability of time, by its own Astrophysical nature, be a source of paradoxicality? Of course, the Journal, No. Principiul antropic cosmologic The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, , translated by Walter Radu Since they are obvi- als and virtual realities, multiple ous, they are not given any special pasts, alternate histories, and so on. That way, the emphasis in this book, however to following brief anthropic principle of time is pushed into a self- overview might be useful. As it is fully the case in contradiction, self-contravention and self-collision, utopia, the propensity towards sociology and ethics, it is turned against itself forced to dissolve itself, towards parable, allegory, satire, etc.

It is a true vocation tial which is necessary to generate sense of wonder, indeed, a natural and legitimate tropism in this i.

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It to be, than I was feeling and believing to know I has been used in social science to understand the processes am? Je est is imperative to national identities, where practices of admit- tance and segregation can form and sustain boundaries and un autre? It often involves the George Izambard, dated May 13, The whole passage The idea of the other was first philosophically conceived by reads: Once present in the text —even to a small But this rediscovered comfort under the shelter of extent, transiently and fleetingly— the sense of the real and sure time umbrella is merely an illu- wonder renders the whole work more powerful and sory refuge: Inextricably caught in this aporia, the or absence of the real history as contrasting back- anthropic time collides with itself and dissolves ground, i.

In order to turn certainties. Napoleon became top laureates of alternate his- Thereby, the paradox of the vulnerable time pro- tory: Portraying a fictional entire literary field , this vast SF genre, a high Hitler as triumphant may be regarded as a scan- aesthetic potential, an inexhaustible source for dalous and revolting position, but exactly these the sense of wonder.

Beside the intentional factor —time surgery is Zur weitern usually more premeditated and calculated e. The paradox of the invulnerable time, though appearing in a lesser amount of works, logically and conceptually counterbalances the more extensive paradox of the vulnerable time. The concept of the invulnerability of time invulnerability of time is is closely related to several other lines of thought, which presume either a multi-causal effect as in closely related to several J. In addition to their bewildering and intellectu- ally stunning effect, the two symmetrical para- doxes —that of vulnerable and that of invulnerable time— organically complete each other to finally give rise to a deeper underlying thought.

Though seemingly accidental, apparently due to the imper- fection and feeble fidelity of time, the existence of a metastable time that is generally easy to unset- tle is, on the contrary, inherent in time itself. The disturbances and fractures in history caused by the metastability of time are endogenous and endemic, even necessary in their own way, and are therefore provided as such in the prime and ultimate project.

In order to achieve stability, time must first or in above-mentioned The Overlords of War. In narratively displayed, is the story-telling itself. The rest is paradox. At most times, it 6. However, the paradox per- Allan Poe, E. Dostoevsky, sists even as it is exposed to the reader for a brief Oscar Wilde, Jean Giraudoux, etc. Taking over the ancient motif, SF remakes and reshapes it in new ways: The same story may be told from alternate Travelling in the past, the identity objects. In doing so, the titular fore- not recognize at all and cannot remember to have warns and saves the double from an array of deadly ever met as in A.

A reciprocal change of roles is also narrative blockage: Thus the sa, because the amnesia alternatively strikes the self-addressed letter is often used as a facilitating recognized one and the recognizer. This reversal of device, rather than a paradox proper. The paradox of authorless works. On the demonstrated by Anthony other hand, Bob Wilson takes a number of books by different authors with him into the far future; but Burgess. Yet time —see above. However, it actually does exist, since we, the readers, are reading it.

This is the paradox of the In the case of this authorless work. The paradox of the missent parcels. This, too, serves dressed parcel: Along these, time is perceived as flow- such a long time , or is accidentally misplaced or ing in a straight line, a causality is therefore laid has a misspelling of the name and address of the out linearly, not circularly as in most time para- sender or of the addressee who usually are dwell- doxes: The thread of uchronia , but the risk is usually avoided and the time still has two ends, those are not yet knotted in stakes are limited to a piquant flavor of unusual or a time-loop, we have a line and not a circle, but we quaint curiosity.

Time reversal is not only spectacular in terms of If however, by defy- ing nature, the symptoms of entropy are imagined to be reversible e. As it often happens, the visual splendor of time reversal pro- vides plenty in addition to its logical thrill. And just how far this plenty is from being exhausted is illus- trated by briefly listing the titles discussed in this respect: Selected and introduced by Cornel Robu, Est modus in rebus! Biographia Literaria , edited with his Aesthetical Essays by J. Shawcross, London, Oxford University Press, 1st edition, , 2 vols. Edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls.

Science-Fiction Studies, I, No. While I might criticism. In the previous sentences, the story tells us permeated Spanish literature of the time Porras that humankind wanted to blow themselves up, to , To that end, I have will suicide them! I have also kept most of the punctuation of these stories, the reader and syntax of the original text, changing it only should keep in mind that their when it prevented clear understanding, despite changes or differences between both languages intention is not necessarily concerning correct grammar conventions.

It implies that while the subject matter of each story is dark or menacing, they are not meant to be taken too se- riously. I same as with many contemporary sf narratives, have picked the ones that offer interesting or im- that is, their purpose is neither science nor, strict- portant information that aids in the understanding ly, entertainment. Fabra was a dedicated journalist of the text. It is not unlikely that their fantastic stories are pri- marily intended as social, political and historical commentary and criticism instead of being inten- tionally comical, entertaining or even prescriptive in terms of actual foresight into the future.

All forms of government had been tried, and there a species more worthy of pity. Humanity sought its own perfection, dismissing the Enormous mines, whose ovens imprisoned explo- aid of religious beliefs, and falling victim to its own sive materials, superior to dynamite, stretched across weakness. Thanks to the terror table throughout time. The hundredth century dawned, and Teitan the Proud Such immense power, that no mortal ever had, did personification of the God-State was king of the not satiate, however, the hydroptic thirst for ambition Earth, who had at his service the strangest and most of that ruler, without rival, without emulous, without extraordinary inventions conceived by the genius of rebellious subjects, before whom the whole of human- science and perfected by the tireless activity of indus- ity lay mutely prostrate.

He wanted something more; and tired of this thought, Immense webs of telegraphic and telephonic wires brow downcast, arms crossed, frowning grimly and fir- and subterranean and submarine cables crossed in all ing glares through his eyes, he paced with long strides directions, and the universal Monarch reigned over across the throne room of his palace at Teitanopolis.

I do not modify the names of the mechanical apparatuses in order to maintain the spirit espionage. Later he writes aerostats, Because the roofs and walls of the buildings and which might make us think that it could be a printing error in the pavements in the streets and roads were covered the edition. On the decorations of the bases, caps, panels, the apparent course of the sun, and reflecting its rays, cornices and plinth, abounded the emerald, the ruby, warmed the landscape during the hardships of winter the diamond and other precious stones, forming an in order to turn it into gentle spring.

On the ample vaults, whose audacity de- But the most admirable thing of those artistic fic- nounced the presence of light yet hardy aluminium, tions was that, thanks to the ingenious mechanism of pictorial art refined the most adorned enchantments the cinematograph, all the figures were presented to of fiction.

Suddenly, unable to space. All that exists upon the globe and in its ecutioners; and the enormous and huddled crowd, on hidden depths is mine: My power is so great, that all that exists upon As though the artist, after presenting the apothe- the world we inhabit exists by my approval. I have osis of animal strength, had proposed to make one of in my hand the destruction of the human race… nay! All men bow at my feet and worship hydraulic achievements destined to utilise the move- me; but, what good is their servile submission, to dis- ment of the waves of the Ocean as motor; aluminium cover their actions and know their words, even those Eiffel towers a thousand metres high with insulating pronounced in the bosom of the home and in dreams, for the walls are my confidants, if I lack the means to 2.

And he placed ion of the external manifestations if my prying action the aluminium helmet on himself. It is not enough for device to produce? Punishment on the part corresponding to the crown, and from a ought to reach even the intention of the coward and small trumpet, like that of the phonographs with which impotent that hides in the recesses of his mind.

Have he judged, a shrill and vibrant voice emerged saying: I would be king. I have been able to discover the device; but it is still Suddenly, throwing down the helmet and giving it so imperfect, that I dare ask that His Cosmic Majesty an electric whipping which shattered it, he exclaimed: And turning to Niketes, he added: Go and work without rest, for tomorrow night I want to test your new invention myself.

Thanks to the device of my invention, these external 4 Translator note: Born in Blanes Catalonia , he dedicated a great part of his work to journalism, even though he also published works of historical and political disclo- sure. His most interesting narratives are found in his three short story collections: Fabra must be regarded as one of the pioneers of Spanish science fiction.

Although the twenty-six stories included in the aforementioned collections are not exclusively science fiction or of a scientific expectation, they are the ones which most draw our attention today. A descrip- tion of a Martian civilisation is not absent in such a precursor to modern science fiction En el planeta Marte [On Planet Mars] 6. However, throughout all the narratives, a nineteenth century bitterness is quite evident, and more than stories of expectation they would need to be classed as traditionalist exam- ples of science fiction.

Fabra, moreover, assigns an openly ideological fi- nality to the story. This tone characterises not only his own body of work but that of nearly every science fiction writer of the period: Wesleyan University Press, , pp. It had even grown tired of circling the same million French copies and copies of the sun.

This final weariness had been discovered by a lyr- Spanish translation were sold; certainly not in the Pen- ic poet of the genre of the desperate who, not know- insula, but in America, where booksellers continued ing what else to invent, invented that: The poet was French, as it only could be, and the most ancient metropolis.

A quoi cians siding with what was already universally called bon cette sottise eternelle? Science discussed in Academies, Congresses and The Spanish translator of this book said: What good comes would be possible after separating the Earth from the of this eternal foolishness? The sun, that bourgeois, Sun and letting her run free across the vacuum till it rams me with his annoying platitudes. He believes hooked up with another system; 2nd, whether there he does us a great favour by remaining planted there, was a way, given how much the physical sciences had functioning as furnace to this great economic kitch- advanced, of breaking the yoke of Phoebus and allow- en called the planetary system.

The planets are pots ing themselves to fall into infinity. Let us turn off the sun, let us winnow the ashes and the majority of the Governments were still in it up from the hearth. The great ennui of meridian light has to their necks and were in no position to grant such inspired this little book.

He is the faithful things. In Spain, where there also were Government expression of a noble pride that despises unsolicited and specialists, several armchair politicians8 who of- favours, flatteries of the luminal rays that appear to fered to break all solar ties at once were sent to prison. Person who invents foolish plans or projects, in order to case, I have chosen the latter.

You want the Earth to be sepa- bis, born in Mozambique, emporium of science at that rated from the Sun, for it to run away from the day, to time, modern Athens, Judas Adambis took charge of turn into the wandering star, to which the blackness the matter and wrote a Universal Letter, whose first of darkness is forever reserved, as Saint Jude the apos- edition sold by a quantity of millions.

Thus says doctor Judas Adambis: But it will not be you, mor- nificent, sublime…; but it is no more than poetry.

Let tals, who give the signals for the extermination. Ah, us speak plainly, gentlemen. What is it that is desired? Yes, you fear he from whom punish- To break an ominous yoke, like advanced politicians ment descends; you fear that the sun might be the cup of bitter skin14 tell us. Can not the earth be called of fire that the angel might pour upon the earth; you free and independent, while it lives subjected to the fear scorching with the heat, and you die blaspheming impalpable chain that ties it to the sun and the moon and without repenting, as is foretold Revelations, 16, in circles around the tyrannical star, like the monkey 9.

Vainly, vainly you want to escape the sun, because that, mounted upon a dog and with a string around the it is written that this wretched Babylon will be burned neck, draws circumferences around its ragged owner? It is not this. There is something Wise men and philosophers said nothing to The Har- more here. I will not deny that this dependence on mony, which they never even read. The satirical news- the sun humiliates us; yes, our pride suffers with such papers took on the task of answering the Babylonian subjection.

But that is the least of our concerns. Instead of translating directly from Cla- Actually, this quote comes from one hand, earlier in the text, the narrator quotes the book of Revelations 9: Jude from the Bible, which seems to imply that the charac- ence in the text. On the other Abaddon or Abadon is the image of death.

I believe that this ambivalent double reference was Politicians of progressive or very advanced ideas. There vinced of this, that this must give on an explosion. But, was a time, the wise can tell of it, which was happy for how to explode? This was the question. Individual suicide solved nothing; suicides were referring to the historical cycles to which their limited frequent; yet happy births even more so. The popu- science could reach, were good proof that the process lation was growing eagerly, and that was achieving was constant.

The thing was to find a medium bored men. This is the unbearable turning, here is the by which to achieve the universal suicide. Science and inter- out it he would not reveal his secret or commence the national relations allow us today to achieve this intent. Does humanity accept it? Others, no less II backward, talked about the minority representation.

In earlier centuries some Parisian writers was excellent, and that at least, while he, poet, lived had agreed that they, some ten or twelve, were the and sung, the desire to die was proof of bad taste. Learned, knowledgeable of some branch of art. His Life of Jesus was widely read. Because of always defended the republican cause.

Biography & Autobiography

Universal suicide made him executioner of the world, tyrant of agony, was put to vote in all the legislative assemblies of the was going to destroy all of mankind, make it burst in world, and in all of them it was approved by the major- one mere second, with nothing more than the press of ity.

But, what was done with the minorities? A writer of Without paying attention to the cries and protests the times said that it was impossible for the universal of the minority, everything that was necessary for the suicide to be achieved from the moment that an op- last hour of wretched humanity was made available to posed minority existed.

The murder, as far as concerns that minority. In what tor Adambis in another pamphlet, whose copyright dress, in what position, which day and at what time sold for a hundred million pesetas, the minorities will must humanity explode? It was approved that dress should be of strict eti- Absurd, it might be said, No, it is not absurd.

The mi- quette among the high classes, and traditional dress norities will not commit suicide, inasmuch as individu- among the rest. Besides, it was improper. In a universal Assembly, which elegant. The first of the year was appointed, giv- in order to select its members had terrible unrest, en it is new year, new life. Is Surrealism dehumanized, when it enters the human domain of dreams, of blurry subconscious drives, of spiritual and nervous underlying factors?

What strikes as the best about being human? Then what led to his expulsion from the Communist Party in ? Revolutionary artists thus need to acquire first a mastery of form. From a technical point of view, they have much to learn from avant- artists. Such learning is as necessary to their art as is industrial technology for the proletariat to be able to build up Socialism [ He supported such techniques as expressed political, social, and economic factors, showing and describing real men living in a concrete society.

Cayetano was born in and died in He knew about Europe. His clear revolutionary, leftist leaning turned his critique of artists and techniques into a criticism of the society as a whole. While his political beliefs were clear, we should bear in mind that encapsulating this critic inside his leftist ideas something that many have done would mean depriving him from his greatest effort: However, he never ceased to support and defend the avant gardes.

It should be made clear that these questionings to the Communist Party, these controversies among member intellectuals and artists were not distinctive of Latin America, but were also observed in Europe. Still, his departure from the CP did not hinder either his political commitment or his defense of art and culture. Before going into whatever aesthetic analysis, we would like to define the word and its meaning. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy.

Many think that its object of study is the essence and beauty of things. The discipline examines motives and emotions within the philosophy of art. Several authors have established a difference between aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Marxism states that both art and aesthetics belong in the superstructure; therefore, they will be determined by socio-historic factors. Above all, it will be determined by the economic structure of the society acting as a base for its existence.

Art, ten, reflects the social reality in which it evolves. It is an ideological component and, is used by the dominant classes to justify the structure. At this point, the aesthetic attitude is not opposed to the praxis; the disinterested contemplation of art will give way to a search for something useful. In the case under discussion, the aesthetic end is revolutionary action. He often embarked on dialogues on an equal footing with the reader, but he also resorted to lexical items that pertained to his specific field, a fact that obscures comprehension of his texts.

We are confronted with poetic language: This is how he succeeded in opening a door for the reader to penetrate the essence of the work and the place where it was being exhibited. These works recurrently show a positive bias in defense of certain aesthetics. He criticizes the society in general and the bourgeoisie in particular, as this class prevents artists from expressing themselves freely. In his publications, the aesthetic questionings that were characteristic of the times appear as a constant problematic.

So as to comprehend what we mean by the statements above, we shall make use of three points to support our analysis: However, how does he view art? Without detriment to its intrinsic value, art can be the language of thought, or some artistic emotion, or just a human thought. He placed special importance on the use of colors, impasto, shades and, above all, the methods used to construct an image; i. For example, when he spoke of cubism, he laid particular emphasis on the following: He expected artists to know the methods that allowed creation and to know what they should do to avoid amateurism: Such learning is as necessary to their art as is industrial technology for the proletariat to be able to build up Socialism A young artist first learns and then becomes an avant garde artist, because through his art he will engineer a re-.

This is the spirit of the artist and, as he himself tells us in his writings, it is the revolutionary spirit as well. Vitebsk, the small Russian village where he was born, and Paris, the universal capital of cultivated life [ Rather than mimetic, such a representation depicted constant movement and chaos.

Futurism was the first avant- movement that decided to reflect the reality of capitalist society and of technological progress. Its importance lies in the fact that it explicitly broke with the past and with the Academia: Following this structure, he spoke of everything related to the artist and the times.

It is inevitable to find a criticism of society: Bombs and grenades explode in the hearts of the cities of art, uprooting innocent poplars, destroying the placid serenity of the fields, blacken the land with the blood of women and children. No doubt, these outrageous events touch the finest sensibilities and the kindest hearts are filled with desperate anxiety.

The gunpowderladen wind that rises from the battlefields and the angry roar that rises from a thick forest made of the incensed clenched fists of a fiercely attacked people climb to the so far insensitive towers. Art takes the floor and intervenes in the war. An art that made it possible to teach and fight for a cause. In the Contra magazine, he posed his aesthetic quest in a clearer, more understandable manner:. Perhaps the inclusion of the Arturo magazine in the aesthetic discussion is an essential element.

Arturo was the seat of a group of poets, painters, and sculptors. Like all other publications mentioned in previous sections, it supported renovated stances that allowed the evolution of the art movement, of the Nonfigurative in this case. Arturo would insist on concept, in an attempt to define it as an aesthetic method. We may say that this magazine was a true avant garde movement, because it was constituted as and by a group, it made several declarations of principles, and repeatedly offered theoretical justifications.

One cannot but notice its constant participation in various aesthetic debates that sought to secure the language of abstract art in the Argentinean field of art. The group imposed presentation rather than representation of the work. Like any other avant- movement, Arturo was the starting point for promising ulterior practices. At the aesthetic level, it supported concrete art, characterized by the geometrization of space, harmony, balance, form, and color marking the rhythm of the work, and the invention of an irregular frame.

He endorsed the aesthetic change initiated by the young, who would show both the change and the evolution needed in the art field. The traditional would be present through the techniques, while the new features would burst in hand in hand with the avant-. Arturo published only one issue, a fact that draws attention to its repercussion. It attacked Primitivism, Symbolism, and Naturalism.

The group introduced the first exhibitions of concrete art. Where did this meeting point with the Communist Party arise? In , this weekly published several pieces by members of the group. In September of the same year, their political affiliation was also published. The dominant ideology of the Grupo Concreto was clearly stated in the following text: It denies the fictions that humiliate and render man sterile whatever the field.

The Inventionist Manifesto finally cast an illuminating beam on their stance. If this were the case would mean remaining on the surface of the issue. What aesthetics or aesthetic model did each of them advance? A purely Communist aesthetics? As has already been said, the former stance imposed its aesthetics on the artist, while the latter did not agree to place impositions on art.

He sought pure art, the kind that reflected society as it was. We should bear in mind that, because of his aesthetic ideas, the Communist Party accused Leon Trotsky of fostering anarchism. Ghioldi demanded that art be capable of transporting the spectator to the revolution that society claimed for. He wanted an art that could account for the here and now, that could attest to those times, and show the feelings and struggles inherent to that society.

After his expulsion, he had had a few chances of publishing his writings in other magazines, though not as a permanent contributor. It would probably be right to say that expulsion from the Party marked a radical turning point for his life as a writer. His later work mostly dealt with theoretical aspects of art. Among the many ideas he posed, Ortega y Gasset wrote: Thus, they learn their mission, which consists in keeping their numbers low while fighting the many. The masses are against the new art, and will always be. He never abandoned his revolutionary stance as a critic, a journalist, a man of letters, and whatever else he was.

It is important not to lose sight of the aesthetic concepts upheld by our subject of study, for this conditioned his artistic and political activity. As one reads on, it becomes ever so clear that politics and aesthetics are the two axes around which his whole life revolved. There is perfect correspondence between the aesthetics that he advocates and the politics that he advances.

From Critique to Theory: Four years later, he devoted his time to theoretical work and to writing introductory pieces for art exhibitions. However, is this what our critic meant to do or was he forced to? It might be thought that he broached the theory of art first and the history of art later because this allowed him to continue publishing his ideas.

His theoretical studies covered Argentinean art from the 19th Century to his own times. He produced a large number of introductory texts for catalogues. On Spilimbergo, he wrote: Pursuing the quest that began with his critical works, his books continued to posit aesthetic and technical issues.

His theoretical works should not be examined separately from his critiques. His last writings show a similar structure to the one of his critiques: It should also be mentioned that he never entirely abandoned poetry. For example, in , he published several poems and short stories in Correo Literario. The quest for commitment in art was still crucial. His posthumous work, published in , is of great importance for the purpose of analysis. The book offers a historical view of the arts in Argentina, including different pictorial, literary, and critical movements.

To fulfill his purpose, he chose such works as suited the ideas he wanted to develop; i. It could be said that he made these works speak his ideas. Among other things, the book speaks didactically of composition, drawing, the use of color, surface, and impasto. It thus provides the reader with the necessary tools to examine art.

The prologue warns us that this is a book for the general public to appropriate the tools that will enable readers to appreciate art. Among other things, he wrote: It has been written for those who lack the indispensable knowledge but still would like [ His books bring us closer to his critical works. He writes in the first person and takes a participative attitude toward immersion and the turn of the epoch. His theoretical works do not include texts that might shed light on his work as an art critic.

No method is found. It is also striking that none of these works deal exclusively with aesthetics, a subject that he developed, posited, and brought into question in his critical pieces. In his theoretical writings, his prologues to catalogues, and his critiques pursue a constant, clear quest. All his writings are a means to shorten the distance between art and the general public.

He advocated and fostered an art of struggle which, at the same time, reflected reality and aided the reading of history. Such an art should serve as a reference for future generations in diverse aesthetic quests for the sake of the revolutionary cause. In brief, an art that showed reality without subjecting itself to it.

Different Critiques, Different Policies: He was first a poet, a cultivated man who entered the arts from a different perspective. He then became a critic, an ideologist, and a theorist. He posited that art criticism should not be a matter for experts only but for the people at large: This is what he took and highlighted from Atalaya and his writings. He knew too much, his independent judgement was dangerous, and his critical instinct and self-confident sensibility drove him to imprudently jump years ahead of others in the discovery of artistic values.

That is why he was so close to the young. Few have enjoyed his enthusiasm, lit by a flame that would never burn out. He devoted night and day to studying.

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His marveled gaze at the parade of art, populated by books and paintings, was indeed unmatched. Exclusivity of forms and ideas. A critic should inform, educate, and address the reader correctly. He should bring art closer to the public, only the public must be the people at large. He should work for an art free of elites, and this is the reason why he should write: It is the first time that he explicitly mentions what a critic should be like for his writings to be what he means: In this context, we should not restrict the meaning of art to the visual arts, but include letters and others as well.

The interesting thing is that, considering his own political leanings; his aesthetic arguments do not walk the same paths. While it is true that Trotsky was dubbed an anarchist because of the kind of art that he advocated, we should know —we should understand —that aesthetic matters and what is demanded from art are not one and the same thing. The differences may diametrically oppose each other.

This was coherent with their respective militancies, which in turn conditioned their critiques. These are only a few examples of his stark criticism. Both men took advantage of artists and spaces as platforms to air their beliefs, and even used those in whom they were not interested if this gave them the opportunity to present their ideas.

Atalaya sought to be known through his writings. His closeness to the field of art granted him access to a number of social actors with whom he could discuss politics based on arts. He completely agreed to become a mass leader, not as an individual, but through a group that might make his voice heard. This anarchist theorist regarded art as an experience, and confronted art received to art created. He tended to see a creative artist in each individual. The fact that it was bent on destroying everything that separated art from life was indeed significant.

The anarchist entrusted art with a political and social mission —not that this was the only one. Art was to evolve freely, without any constraints. This reflects the fruitful pluralism of the different literary trends. It extolled the power of creation. It differed from anarchism in its behavior and in the ways it protected artists and art, and it demanded something different from the different actors.

In the Marxist notion, art was not regarded as a mere mirror held up to reality. Marxists were well aware that, to a greater or a lesser degree, each artist stood for a distortion of a pure or a mixed class. Both critics used works of artists that served them to put forward their ideas, whether about art or politics. If we do not see this clearly, we may be led to confusion.

To each of them, avant- and revolutions will part ways. Both selected a time span: Their critiques located and articulated the process and development of the arts in direct relation to the social context. The praise of the spirit was crucial to the writings of both, but they pursued different ends. Their attitudes were coherent with their political leanings. Since they upheld different ideologies, an overview of their beliefs offers us a clear notion of the reason why revolution and avant- were considered from different perspectives.

To Atalaya, an artist mediates between nature and art. An artist, in fact, will propose an art that can effectively communicate ideas and spiritual content. On the other hand, our subject of study posited that an artist mediates between reality and revolution as he exposes his spirit in his creations. In this regard, they also based their conclusions on artists and works that lent themselves to strengthen their aesthetic and political arguments. It is to be noticed that the word gained power through the image. These men made images speak in favor of their ideas and respond to what they wanted to transmit.

Ever since the very beginning, Atalaya was extremely harsh on art critics. For example, he wrote: The other was an approach to the theory of art. However, Atalaya wrote reflexive pieces in which he delved further into issues he had developed before. He also wrote new pieces, though these were published after his death. So far, the points of contact between both critics show that the two of them were attached to literature, both were active members of political parties and worked as journalists, their writings proved their social commitment, and both were immersed in theoretical and reflexive developments.

In addition, both quoted foreign critics, such as Baudelaire. The anarchist critic said in one of his publications: Baudelaire, a Romantic believed to have initiated the so-called modern critique, produced several pieces of this kind. He himself declared about critique: The latter sort, under pretext of explaining every element, remains detached from feeling; it neither loves nor hates [ It is also possible to sense how this manner of critique also makes use of some aesthetic features applied to artists and the arts.

The former also referred to drawing in similar terms: The three critics we have been discussing have a number of things in common, but we should not forget that they came from different places, so they worked in different ways too. It should be noted that the artists chosen to illustrate this work did not result from a random selection. Their presence here is justified by the fact that their publications supported some given movement. Thus, these artists are here because they express their inherent conflicts and thoughts regarding the problems of the times that they broached and in which they lived.

Nevertheless, he has not been much studied this far. He abided by his ideals and convictions to the end of his life. The art that he advocated was young, revolutionary, spirited, and avant gardist. These were the aesthetic postulates that defined his path.

His life could be summarized as the life of a militant. The publication of his writings, poems, art criticism, and theory earned him a space in which to deploy and reveal his ideology. His ideas about politics and aesthetics remained the same from his first to his last publications. It is amazing that no contradictions ever tainted his beliefs. Even after his expulsion from the Party, his principles did not waver. His inclusion in the media not only enabled him to enter the art milieu but also to closely approach different actors and draw on their artistic and ideological notions.

Above all other things, I want to highlight the freshness of his renovated youth. We have by now crossed the threshold of the static garden with its songs and dreams. We are now in the vast world of deeds and battles. Our songs can no longer be soft, drowsy contemplations. They must turn into anthems, or banners, or marches.

An analysis of the publications to which he contributed allows us to follow his evolution. Contra and Unidad endowed his critiques with significant political content. His publications clearly expressed leftist thought, in a distinctly anti-establishment attitude. In addition to his Communist affiliation, his work in these magazines tinged his critique with a revolutionary hue that reflected Party activism.

Becoming a member of the Communist Party was a decisive factor to both his life and career. It was the turning point in his writing. In spite of his political commitment and his active participation in the Party —let us remember that he was an Argentinean correspondent in the Spanish Civil war —the Party turned its back on him.

His expulsion set the guidelines for his future publications. His political beliefs were as firm as ever: Understanding his expulsion is a necessary step to understand his political, aesthetic, artistic, and social commitment. Despite being forced to remain outside the Party, he did not seek new ideals, continued to find artists who might reflect his cause, and persisted in advocating the avant-. We may think of three pillars to represent his ideology: Art is the creature of a youthful and revolutionary spirit and of a fertile human soul capable of giving its best.

Such an art generates heroic, revolutionary feelings. It is at the service of society insofar as it tells that the artist stepped down from the pedestal on which he had been placed, that the artist will show and generously give his ability, creating the conditions for the public to understand what is read from the works. When this is the case, the public will not only be reflected in such art, but also appropriate it.

It is unnecessary to detail its purpose and composition, for they can be found in the daily press, but I would like to pass some remarks on the subject. However, it will not silence applause on this occasion: Every artist harbors the possibility of lasting fulfillment. So that it can develop to the full, it requires a favorable environment from an amiable, understanding, cultivated society; a society that is sensitive to manifestations of beauty.

Deep down, every artist knows the meaning of a timely handshake and the encouragement offered by an intelligent comment. The greatest incentive for those noble spirits beating with the noble, transcendental thirst for survival in whose virtue art blossoms is the feeling that their work does not fall into oblivion or indifference. These societies always have the necessary words in stock, and hold out their hands to artists, friendly hands that help them through sincere applause. Such an attitude should neither surprise nor discourage us.

Some people resemble concave or convex mirrors that distort images. It is clear to us that the upper classes are who they are because of their circumstances of birth and aristocratic spirit. If they truly aspire to fulfill their reason of being, they need our contribution as we need theirs. Thus, creator and observer complement each other in harmony, as we in fact create for the public.

The feeling that we are in front of a most significant deed is justified by the following announcements: There will be lectures and auditions by and about. Literary awards and book publications have been planned. There will be concerts, recitals, and other equally important activities.

All of this deserves a hearty round of applause. So far, our artists and young writers have worked in the clutches of anonymity, or crushed by the indifference of a country that chose to ignore their existence. Through meetings between artists and poets, the Florida Street palace will relive the amiable times when the arts thrived, and the days of yore when the elegant spirit of witty men and with cultivated women conversed in the salons of Buenos Aires.

Nothing could be farther from pomp, from pretentious verbiage, from stylistic haughtiness than the naked, stark prose of this serene Franciscan, who administers a rare erudition acquired with Benedictine patience. The public at large knew little or nothing about him. He did nothing to make his name known. Undazzled by the glare of the substantial daily circulation of the great newspapers, he opted for the anonymous pages of avant garde publications, those scorned revolutionary pages in whose small format words come to life to the beat of disinterested fervor, the heroic, exclusive vocation of forms and ideas.

This is the reason why his originals, drafted in the coarse yellowish paper of the editorial department, only appealed to the newspapers run by the young and the revolutionary workers, to the newspapers that were excommunicated by the unreasonable good sense of those who lack understanding.

His quiet, peaceful life met the parable of his destiny under the propitious omens of poverty, patience, faith, and friendliness. Whoever might think that he felt unhappy at the anonymity and poverty of his life would be wrong. Nothing would be farther from his spiritual decorum. Like any other man, he had his share of grief. However, it was emotional grief, and he kept it to himself. Life could not inflict any other sort of pain to somebody who loved things on which time slides by without withering them. Atalaya was a believer.

All in all, why should he have cared about poverty, about being unknown to the public at large, about the closed doors of the tycoons of journalism, if he was tightly held in the arms —a moving image now seen in perspective —of the unwavering friendship of a chosen few? What did it matter, if he enjoyed true friendship, the treasure of the poor? Gawky and dowdy, coarse and hesitant in his speech, humble in his appearance of a poor proletariat journalist, few like him concealed such a wealth of gentleness, such an aware, demanding sensibility, such tenderness, a clearer innocence and a more generous, lucid thought.

Literature and propaganda99 Perhaps it is necessary to pose the problem once more and reopen the discussion. Thirsty revolutionary writers insist on the untenable notion that art and propaganda are incompatible. It is said —in fact, I myself have said it —that the doctrine imposes an inhibiting restraint on the ludic level of the interplay between fantasy and sensibility that art is made of. The argument is false. It does not stand the test of sophism. It is necessary to underscore that it is false. Today, amid the dangers of our uncertain, hard times, it is necessary to point out that a counterrevolutionary spirit inhabits such an argument.

Which of these turn-of-the-century aesthetes, these pale greenhouse flowers, these evanescent prisoners of the ivory tower, has conceived of invalidating the Catholic literature of the likes of Claudel, Mauriac, Bloy, Maritain, Bernanos, Cocteau? Nevertheless, their literature confessedly and openly serves a doctrine whose tyranny admits no transgressions of the dogma.

This magnificent writer feared that the dominant ideological background and the polemic preoccupation might undermine the artistic value of his novel. In addition, he was right to think so, but not in the sense that would please unblemished aesthetes. The novel did not suffer.

Yet it might have suffered, not because the author adopted a political stance, but because of the pettiness of that particular political stance. In spite of this, the novel succeeded, and it deserves to have a place next to The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot. What do the refined aesthetes say to this? Can good, true literature, the literature written by good writers, step down into the agitated world of the political struggles in which the noblest aspirations and the pettiest ambitions are debated?

They will answer as they have answered before: Their argument could not be more naive. The only possible explanation for such nonsense is the fact that they forget that a masterpiece is always an exception in its own rights. Educated in bourgeois classrooms and readings, the offspring of a bourgeois society that turned art into a vile, refined, and decadent turn-of-the-century form of entertainment, or else into an expression of intellectual meekness, at a certain point we came to believe in the impossibility of putting art at the disposal of some political or religious human aspiration.

The rhetorical assertion of aesthetic origin that art and propaganda move in different, exclusive spheres, may have been true in the past. Does Paul Valery, that quintessential bourgeois writer, not agree those literature sways between entertainment, teaching, propaganda, preaching, and exercising oneself as the others become excited? By no means can art, the revelation of what is best and worst in man, not lend its powerful voice to the dominant preoccupation of our times.

The French Surrealists, the strongest, most interesting group of contemporary artists, have understood so well the doom of present art that they have named their magazine Surrealism at the Service of the Revolution. Do those works not realize the possibility of art and propaganda that the bourgeois rhetoric finds incomprehensible?

What cannot be combined between poetry and Communism? Peoples and races that have suffered and struggled for their consolidation, salvation, and liberty have had their literature, made by poets and writers who extolled their virtues, their shared aspirations, their sorrows, and their national hopes. Think of all the peoples in history. Think of old Jewish literature and of incipient black literature, of Claude Mc Kay, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Contee Cullen, the colored poets in whose novels and poems the sorrows and anger of their hapless race moans and rages.

Have the dreams, hopes, and sorrows of these peoples not been the most striking beauty features that have inspired their literature? If so, why should the international proletariat, larger than any known race, not have their own literature? The only ones who do not admit this possibility are the enemies of justice, but justice, shaking with impatience, is waiting for its time to come in the passion of the young, whose mere existence dignifies the world. Consequently, the city worked a miracle: Pre-war, war, Revolution not the September Revolution , and post-Revolution scenes filmed from real life alternate with shots of people and places consecrated by the painful historic period that began in the bloody days of In brief, the film is no pamphlet but graphic, almost live information of a cinematic journey across historical events about which there is never sufficient, eloquent, or satisfactory documentation for those who aspire to comprehend it.

They have chosen to shut down the projector rather than allow the truthful information provided by the camera. They have closed their eyes in zoological stubbornness as a response to the transmission of facts achieved by the wonders of technology. To put it in the words of the Gospels, they have adopted the stance of those who have eyes but will not see and those who have ears but will not hear.

In short, they have reacted to bleeding reality by adopting the method of struggle inherent to the class that wields political and economic power. The censorship of a strictly documentary, communicative, informational film is something to think about. It may be viewed as either a symbol or a symptom. The bourgeoisie have closed their eyes to the catastrophic reality around them. Starvation in the city and the countryside alike, unemployment and war, impending or unleashed, have not succeeded in persuading the bourgeoisie that the world is unable to stand one more day of Capitalist injustice and chaos.

They do not hesitate at the time of choosing between the fall of Capitalism and the loss of the so-called democratic liberties that they always regarded as inalienable. That is why they are surrendering to fascism, the last hope of Capitalism. Fascism attacks the effects of contemporary unrest rather than its causes.

It does not even brush on what should be turned inside out, the foundations of the social edifice, but focuses on the consequences of their crumbly state of repair. It is a desperate effort at underpinning a factory that is tumbling to pieces. Thus, it is easy to predict the fate of Fascism.

The call to celebrate its victory in Italy, Germany, and perhaps Austria will soon be followed by its resounding collapse.

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The un Contra, la revista de los franco-tiradores, Year I, 2, May, For the sake of human honor, a policy of open eyes will replace the policy of closed eyes. Man is moving toward the natural gravitation of the best, and this will ensure triumph. In the meantime, perhaps it is not entirely wrong of the bourgeoisie to veto and censor films and books that record the truths of the world. Truth, indeed, is always revolutionary. But it would be wise to bear in mind that these truths that the bourgeois intend to stop raising fictitious dams has already conquered the best bastions, lies at the heart of the working masses, and beats in bourgeois moral and economic bankruptcy as well as in the clear will of a world that desires to organize itself under the rule of justice, something that is nowadays an alien entity.

The Young and the Revolution If we abide by the evidence provided by literature, movies, and plays in an attempt to get to the bottom of the causes of political unrest, one conclusion overrides all others: Even if this is not their aim, literature, plays, and movies keep expressing the most formidable condemnation ever addressed to a society. The leitmotiv is none other than the conviction that contemporary political institutions are broke. In the foundational economic field, the evidence of bankruptcy is even more conclusive.

No one who thinks earnestly can deny that the bankruptcy is real. This is the first item in the distressing problem posed by the world to those who worry about its lot. Still, the most visible manifestations of our rejection of the society in which we live does not appear as a cold-minded, intellectual conclusion or as the outcome of a lifeless logic construct. Rather, it is a feeling of deep antipathy, of disgust about a society whose moral resources have rotted away and whose political and economic mechanisms, with their hateful tangle of constitutions, codes, and laws, performs the inadmissible function of sustaining the preeminence of a social class whose only merit to enjoy such privilege lies in its capacity to appropriate and keep the goods of the land against all justice and under one single law: Should we be surprised that a social organization that behaves in such a way be hateful to most men, particularly to the young?

In principle, we do not imagine that the young connive with a world that they have neither chosen nor constructed. Should we be surprised that most young people in every country agree to reject the present state of the society, of its institutions, its hypocritical morality, and its ruthless capitalist materialism? Should we be surprised that the young, even if their view of the world may differ widely, coincide in their will to Contra, la revista de los franco-tiradores, Year I, 3, July, It is also found in the banners raised by groups whose ideology boasts of having overcome Communist and fascist materialism.

In France, the spiritualist sectors of Esprit, Combat, Reaction, and Orbe Nouveau speak of the Revolution, declare that it is immediately necessary, and have even systematized the philosophy of indispensable violence. However, -and this should be said right away — their Revolution does not have the typical features that point to obvious dangerousness. The Security Guards will not bludgeon them. In spite of the inanity of their Revolution, of the metaphysical vagueness of the chimera they call revolution, the attitude of spiritualist groups entails a categorical rejection of the liberal capitalist society.

Moreover, it shows that it is no longer possible to justify in the name of any principle. At least in this regard, they coincide with the extreme parties and finally understand that, far from being a fearful ghost, the Revolution is the only hope to save the world, the only possibility of cleansing it from moral, political, and social corruption and from the base materialism of merchants, all of which compose the organization and the framework of the bourgeois society.

Bourgeois democracy, Capitalism, Morality, and Liberty have become obsolete. Their institutions serve foregone needs. The new needs require a new Order. According to Philippe Lamour, the world is in a state of disgruntled revolution. Mature young people have understood this self-evident reality. Thus, they have embraced the cause of the proletariat, whose realistic ideology offers a solution to every problem. Others half-heartedly admit that there is a problem. They acknowledge that our society is broke, but do not risk stepping outside the safe ground of their spiritualist revolution.

Yet other young sectors, lacking in the most basic political common sense but driven by the primitive sportive aggressiveness typical of young animals, don a black shirt or a brown shirt, therefore serving the Capitalism that they pretend to reject, serving the great manufacturers, money lenders, and unscrupulous international merchants whose infamous interests they relentlessly defend. Last but not least, other young people, who do not deny the bankruptcy and congenital infamy of the bourgeois society, find that they can only contribute to its extermination by devoting themselves, in a matchless heroic attitude, to essential stylistic innovations and bold subversions that lethally endanger the unfair rule of current philosophy and rhetoric.

Our country certainly boasts of such daring revolutionaries. Should art be at the service of social problems? Borges evades the question, opting for going off at a tangent loaded with uncompromising humor. Is it possible to show leniency at such an attitude?

Borges, a most influential writer among us, has committed a sin of frivolity. The question was posed in honesty and good faith. In honesty and good faith, then, he should have made an answer. Borges may have thought that both the questions and those who posed it insignificant.

In truth, the question defines a serious, most important concern of a large number of people who are worried about the destiny of the world and who aspire to exert some influence in the accomplishment of its destiny. In addition, this is definitely not insignificant, no matter how high someone may glide in the sky of concerns. It intentionally scorns and diminishes the scope of the problem. As ridiculous as art at the service of Reuter Soap or of the striped trousers worn by the swaggerers in a comic sketch. However, it is another matter. Borges cannot pretend not to know the difference.

This phenomenon becomes a reality in the revolutionary feeling and ideology. When Borges was asked whether art should be at the service of social problems, Contra meant to ask—and he could not have failed to understand it thus —whether he agreed that revolutionary thought and ideology possessed the human dignity to engender a form of art. Borges —a man who, like me, lives in the year —must have noticed that one type of society is collapsing while another struggles to rise from its ruins Borges. He must also be aware that the conflict for which so much blood has been shed, and we have not seen the end of it yet, has appeared within a minority with no respectable rights to the well being they enjoy, while there is a majority unjustly forced to toil and suffering.

The struggle is between these two groups, and it is bound to end either with the victory of the humiliated or with their prolonged slavery. This struggle has changed the character of the world. Its market at Contra, la revista de los franco-tiradores, Year I, 4, August, The lordship of bourgeois pettiness is now threatened, in the name of justice, by purifying, dignifying danger.

An unprecedented storm is cleansing the face of the earth from the economic edifice raised by the sick mentality of lawyers. Collective and private life is being shaken to the roots. An unprecedented Revolution has begun. The Masses and the Forces are speaking. In a world thus transformed by the action of a universal feeling of justice, are there no elements to do art?

Moreover, once these elements have been put to use, can the artist remain strictly impartial, rigorously objective, icily isolated in the face of problems that so deeply affect every life? Whether one gazes upon the world through the eyes of a common person or the eyes of an artist, impartiality is impossible. It is inevitable to take sides.



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One is in favor of the Revolution or one is against it. Art as purism is one way in which the counterrevolutionary spirit reacts. We have seen an instructive experience i this sense. With no exceptions, Pre-revolution Russian art-as-purists ranked with the white generals or, mostly, fled their country, and acted as enemy snipers.

He who does not put his intelligence, his art —i. There are no happy mediums. As long as one half of the world is launching an attack on the other half, there is neither possibility nor justification for impartiality. Borges will certainly not honor us by believing that the above is a product of our fertile imagination. He will not say that these are more or less literary whimsical fantasies. That these are real facts is confirmed day after day through an accumulation of revolutionary martyrdoms and, in Russia, confirmation of the struggle can be found in the indispensable annihilation of the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, we believe that we are living an extraordinarily beautiful moment, since the rule of passion has superceded the rule of appetites. Even if the Revolution did not succeed in saving the world, the storm that sweeps away corruption to enthrone heroism would amply justify the effort. Religious, poetic fervor roams the world today. He who cannot see it lacks an important human and artistic sense. The aiape salon [ An accurate remark, indeed. The paintings exhibited at the AIAPE Salon sharply contrasted with the blandness and lack of direction that were observed at the National salons.

Our artists have a purpose and definitely know what they want. Many still have much to learn about technique, but on the other hand, they have something to teach to many impeccable technicians. I am talking about a lesson of civil and technical courage, of decision, energy, youth, and human solidarity. Our artists know what world they want to depict and how they want to depict it.

They have clear hopes and a strong will to transmit to other men… Their art is what art should be: The strength and optimism that pervaded the AIAPE Salon lead me to think that we are moving toward revolutionary art; that is to say, a type of art able to cope with new contents together with the new forms of expression required by such contents.

This learning is as necessary to their art as is industrial technology for the proletariat to build the edifice of Socialism. From a technical point of view, the road to art is marked by the teachings of the pictorial tradition, including cubism and subsequent trends and, from the point of view of content, by the drama of our contemporary reality. A few years ago, we would not have adopted such a grave, serious tone during a homage dinner for a poet. However, times have changed. I feel bound to say that our life was never unworthy. Our eyes always focused on a goal that was worth achieving.

We did not walk the path of unrest. Neither did we smile on stark injustice. At most, our song, like our youth, was carefree. We gave our full attention to its music, to the charms of the road and to the joy of living and breathing under a benevolent sky and on an obliging earth. We need not regret much, then. If anything, we could lament having played when it was time to play and having pointlessly dreamed and toiled during that part of life that is reserved to songs and dreams. Still, we may well be proud of one thing. We may be proud of having awoken.

We may be proud of having awoken in time. With eyes and ears closed, we walked a merry path. We stepped on misfortune without seeing it was there, and although we were part of it, we nevertheless crossed the wood of clamors raised by this hapless world. There are two stages of youth: The other is awake. And I say that he who does not open his eyes in time grows old. The magic spring of eternal youth lies inside us.

It consists in opening our eyes and ears in time. Like Gide, the adolescent octogenarian. Immersion in life, being in touch with the rest of mankind, abandoning scornful, sterile isolation, fraternity, the dissolvement of the self at the grieving human table, all return man his enthusiasm, hope, and strength.

Atalaya has also proved that, far from preventing consecration to mankind, consecration to beauty is the most beautiful parable for the flight of song when it hovers, above all dangers, in the wings of love for the oppressed, driven by an obstinate will for justice. Paris, the capital of beauty, always sensitive to loveliness, awaits the heavy weight of the many who walk in mourning [ In compact groups of people, silent and expectant, Paris stifles its emotion at the corners, peeps out with devotion, [ Amid the two silent lines, moving and moved, writers, artists, and workers walk in silence [ Near the grave of Henri Boarbusse [ There we left her, under a multicolored blanket of spring flowers.

Born in Roumania, she lived her radiant, industrious youth in Paris and died in Bruneta, Spain, enveloped in a hard atmosphere of heroism, hope, and love of liberty. She was beautiful, very young, and very brave. Three times beautiful, then. Paris has understood her. Paris, sensitive to charm and smiles, even when they glow amid iron and fire.

When Raquel Forner made her entrance in our artistic life she exhibited her first works in , young people were dominated by contempt for the story, for the theme. Rather than contempt, it was downright rejection. We should not condemn their attitude. It was an understandable and justified reaction to the excesses of gender painting, that style that intended to arouse the senses in ways that were alien to painting. Yet, artists would not understand. It was imperative to return to the path of the eternal values in visual arts.

The jungle of discursive banality had covered this path. With its preoccupation about the visual and chromatic aspects of objects in the simulation of reflected, actual light, Impressionism had won the first battle. Cubism —stark, ascetic painting reduced to incorruptible nakedness —marked the peak of the offensive. On the debris of an outdated style, Cubism raised its solid walls and opened perspectives that allowed for breathing space. Again, young art possessed a clean, effective tool to start new undertakings.

Raquel Forner, however, lived and studied in Argentina and abroad. She attended their exhibitions and closely followed the hectic work done in the laboratories of modern art. She was not a mere spectator, but an enthusiastic participant. From that moment until four or five years ago, her large images and her beautiful compositions aim only at solving problems posed by form and color.

Naturally, a harmonious, underlying poetic sense can be perceived in her paintings. In those times, her discourse achieved merry, melodious, fortunate brightness and transparency. Yet by that time the tide of events that was beginning to tear at and shake the world rose to its highest levels.

Those were the days when the Spanish people were besieged, checked, and crushed by the international conspiracy of active and passive forces that sought to destroy human dignity and happiness. Bombs and grenades mercilessly exploded in the heart Ars magazine, April-May, Naturally, the fearful outbreak reached the nobler sensibilities and strew anguish in the kinder hearts. The smoke of gunpowder that rose from the battlefields and the angry, clenchfisted clamor of a people balefully attacked reached the towers that had so far remained insensitive.

Art spoke out and intervened. While in Paris Pablo Picasso screamed his tears in the colossal Guernica, in Buenos Aires, in the quiet halls of the Muller Art Gallery, a woman —Raquel Forner— formulated, in a series of drawings and oil paintings, the hardest, the most bleakly beautiful, human, and artistic statement ever made in Argentina against a temporarily triumphant injustice.

It cannot but be regarded as a major event in the latest history of our visual arts. She was a genuine artist of indubitable worth, an artist who, through the categorical discourse of her works, reinforced a truth with suggestive outcomes. Art can have a deliberate content. Regardless of its intrinsic value, art can serve to as a language expressing a thought or an artistic emotion, either of which are no more and no less than human.

In fact, this was not the first time that such a statement was made in our country. All these works reinforce the principle of possibility of a rich kind of art filled with transcendental meaningfulness.

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At the heart of these works, there lie a distinct sociopolitical thought and an emotion of deep human significance. Through the exhibition of her works, Raquel Forner reasserted such a principle. As she confided to me in the course of an interview, pure painting and pure art had had their inescapable reason of being. Still, the subject matter —the story, as artists tend to call it, had stifled the visual. Painting overcame its sickly condition through Impressionism and Cubism. Now it was prepared to become, once more, a language. In the said interview, she told me, regarding this issue, that the literary —the anectdotic came first.

Behnd it, perhaps not even there [ Impressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism have fulfilled their cleansing mission. They have returned to the realm of the visual arts. We may, again, use painting as a means to express such dreams and ideas that prompt our concern. Of course, this does not entail neglecting visual values, casting aside the recovery or return to the visual art achieved by modern art.

The grief oozed by the peoples that had. Her exhibition was the artistic materialization of her feelings on the subject. How did she come to express and reveal it? If Raquel Forner had limited her manners of expression to those to which she considered to be a rigorously realist notion of art, she might not have made a point of her dramatic eloquence. The war atmosphere in the cities, fields, and desperate people because of iron and fire cannot be expressed by the same devises through the tools provided by the national Anthem.

The distorted underlying feature, born under heart-wrenching noises lay nearer is closer to an anguishing dream and of nightmares than to more or less placid everyday life. In order to convey the unreality in the real, Raquel Forner has resorted to the wealth of memories with which certain new art schools reveal the world of dreams.

The mutilated corpse of a child lies on the laps of a mother. Nevertheless, the child is in fact a doll. A cold, uncanny light streams down on a real landscape. Victory is a painful, torn, bullet-ridden plaster cast more painful than a human being might against a sky background of scattered cataclysms and executions. This is a firm first step toward the kind of art we dream of. The shapes he chooses are approximative. Something similar happens with the colors of his human figures.

The color of the faces and skin has no representational or quality value. Because of their form and color, his human figures look like dolls made of non-human materials. The faces are a case in point. Soldi depicts them in such a way that he creates the illusion of artificial life. His singers, dancers, acrobats, and actors have been stopped in the middle of some movement, as if they were dolls or dummies.

We can still enjoy the experience, of course. We are watching dolls. Figures of some other unknown material. Yet they impress as being alive, animated with some kind of strange human life, often deeply moving. Soldi will tell this story: He worked in Italian opera theaters. Ever since I can remember, I frequented the shadowy world behind the stage. My first visual impressions, my first memories, are singers, actors, and dancers in bright, colorful costumes, moving or twisting in theatrical poses.

Much poetry and painting is nothing but a creation or a recreation of the things that dazzled the artist as a child and are now gone. Much of the emotion and tenderness in existing works sit on nostalgia for the innocent paradises of childhood. Would his beautiful automatons suddenly appear to our eyes as stark Surrealist figures?

A naked electric bulb hung from ceiling over the singers That was a warm light