Call for papers

2024-07-25

The First Surrealist Manifesto in the Spanish-speaking world, 100 years after its publication 

On the occasion of the century of the First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924, the digital publication Forma. Revista d'estudis comparatius. Art, literatura, pensament associated with the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, calls on the scientific community to contribute to the monographic issue described below. 

A hundred years ago, surrealism was formally born with the publication of its First Manifesto. The group of poets and artists led by André Breton, which included Louis Aragon, Max Ernst, Pierre Mabille, André Masson, Francis Picabia, Pierre Reverdy, and Phillipe Soupault, among others, had come together in 1922 as an offshoot of French Dadaism. They aimed to make a constructive proposal in contrast to Dada's destruction. While safeguarding an iconoclastic spirit by questioning Western rationality, they championed freedom, love, and poetry, and explored artistically the revolutionary concepts of psychoanalysis and Marxism. In essence, they projected themselves as a “mysticism of revolt”, as expressed by the Argentinean poet Aldo Pellegrini. October 1924 was a crucial month: the Manifesto that articulated the poetic forged in the last years was brought to light; Louis Aragon published Une vague de rêves, which features the group's brief and intense experience in experimenting with differents methods to access the unconscious; the first issue of the Surréalisme magazine, edited by Yvan Goll, was also released. From that onwards, with the manifesto as its banner, surrealism spread to different parts of the world and achieved international prominence, maintaining its relevance throughout most of the 20th century and even continuing in some contemporary poetics. 

    The movement was disseminated in various ways throughout the Hispanic-American context. Primarily through translations, but also through the active participation of several Spanish and Latin American artists and writers, either in Paris or as correspondents in their countries, until they became central figures. Furthermore, the travels of André Breton, Antonin Artaud, Benjamin Péret, and Wolfang Paalen to Mexico fostered fruitful cultural exchanges for surrealist poetics in the continent, which also favored the re-evaluation of previous Latin American symbolic production. Thus, the importation of surrealism into Latin America catalyzed much of the renewal of literature and art, not merely replicating the proposal but combining it with indigenous elements and influencing the continent's unique artistic expressions. Its influence extended even to the Latin American Boom and, more recently, to the poetics of Roberto Bolaño, among other cases. 

    In commemoration of the centenary of this seminal document for modern literature and art, we invite submissions that examine and reflect on the impact of the Surrealist movement on Spanish and Hispanic American culture. Furthermore, submissions are encouraged to examine the ways in which the movement contributed to the formation of a multicultural action that transcended national boundaries, and the diverse methods through which its poetics was adopted, becoming a platform for the re-evaluation and renewal of local productions.

Overview and main themes 

This monographic issue seeks to bring together works that analyse the role of surrealism in Spanish and Latin American Art and Literature, with the aim of highlighting the repercussions of its importation, from the publication of the First Surrealist Manifesto to the present day. To this end, there will be accepted articles that address both individual and collective works, magazines and groups, artistic practices, comparative and multidisciplinary studies, among others. We will also consider proposals that study the influence or effects of the Manifesto and the movement's ideas on avant-garde and later literature; or the sociability that this poetics generated in different geographies. We welcome papers from different disciplines, such as Literature; Art History; Sociology; Comparative Studies; Visual and Film Studies; Philosophy, or those that present a cross-disciplinary approach. The following are some thematic axes that guide possible approaches:

1. The Importation of Surrealism into Spanish and Latin American Literature  

The importation of foreign poetics is often a determining factor in the modernisation and even in the shaping of national literary systems and the institutions that compose it. In the case of Surrealism, its ideas stimulated creativity and promoted the renewal of local literary and artistic productions. Moreover, the synergy of its proposal silently seeped into diverse individual poetics, which generated a less promoted and more partial, but no less relevant renewal in the evolution of our literatures. We propose to take the notion of literary importation, because its approach allows us to dwell on the active elaboration, the interpretations, the intervention of cultural mediators and disseminators, the way in which concepts are defined, etc., and thus enables to account for the modes of appropriation of surrealism. Translation is one of the most frequent forms of importing literature, although editions, commentaries and individual re-elaborations are also part of the phenomenon, as well as any action to disseminate, interpret or appropriate the poetics.

2. Surrealist groups and magazines 

In many cases, the importation of surrealism into Spanish and Hispanic American cultures took place through groups, which brought together its followers but also had the function of providing collective support and legitimizing practices that were not yet accepted as literary and artistic due to their rupture and innovation. In turn, the organ of joint poetics has been, in general, the magazines, normally directed by an editorial group. On other occasions, broader cultural publications were the echo chamber for the dissemination of Surrealism, either with texts by French authors or in their local version. Works that analyse this type of sociability and cultural production linked to Surrealism are welcome.

3. Surrealism in the Spanish and Hispanic American visual arts and cinema 

Since Breton published Le surréalisme et la peinture (1928), in which he formalised surrealist poetics for the visual arts and recognised the power of graphic automatism to break down mimesis, interdisciplinary reflection and interaction between poets and artists in other fields, which was already frequent, became imperative. The alignment of prominent Spanish and Hispanic American artists with Surrealism contributed to a voluminous body of striking images, which further defined the trend. Likewise, cinematographic experimentation was a milestone for its development, with the outstanding contributions of Luis Buñuel. We believe that studies that account for and analyse expressions of surrealism in the HIspanic American visual arts, as well as in film, will be a great contribution to expanding knowledge and thinking about the extent of its propagation.
 

Reception of papers  

Forma accepts contributions in Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese, which will be subject to a double-blind peer-review process. Submissions will be received at revista.forma@upf.edu until 15 November 2024 at 12am CET. The issue is scheduled for publication in February 2025. For more information, please visit our ‘Author guidelines’ and ‘Editorial policy’ pages.

Coordinators: Luciana Del Gizzo and Marta Serrano