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Hispanic Review.
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NESTOR PERLONGHER AND THE AVANT-
GARDE: PRIVILEGED INTERLOCUTORS AND
INHERITED TECHNIQUES.
Ben Bollig
Universityof Westminster
Introduction
*Elementsof this essay were written while the author was in receipt of an Arts and Humanities
ResearchBoard studentship, for which he is most grateful. Some of the researchcarried out in
Argentinawas made possible by funds from the King'sCollege London Small Grantfor Research
in the Humanities and the Universityof London CentralResearchFund.
1. See, for example, PerlongherProsa ... (14 [1989],97-loo [1991]),Sexo, Nuevo verso, Viagens,
Perlongherand Nigro, Friedembergand Samoilovich(32).
2. On the Europeanavant-gardes,see in particularBiirger;on the Latin American avant-gardes
see Verani, Salvador,Vich, Unruh; for a broad introduction to Latin American surrealism,see
Baciu.
Review(spring2005)
Hispanic 157
Copyrightc 2005Trusteesof theUniversity
of Pennsylvania
158 HISPANIC REVIEW Spring2005
Bajolas matas
En los pajonales
Sobrelos puentes
En los canales
Hay Cadiveres
(Poemas111)
The poem uses a slideshow effect to show the appearanceof dead bodies,
as Perlongher cuts between different pieces of evidence of violence. This
gains a flat, factual tone through the use of nursery rhyme-like five-syllable
lines and an abcb assonant/consonant rhyme scheme. The stanza borrows
clearlyfrom Girondo's poem "Desmemoria":
Primero:,entre corales?
Despubs: debajotierra?
Miascerca:&porlos campos?
Ayer:ysobrelos airboles?
iSon demasiadossiglos!
No puedo recordarlo.
(Persuasi6n 900)
Oh la Diosa Razn:
las muselinasde sus amigas:
las cabareteras
las cupleteras
las partiquinas
las trotacalles
las meretrices
las vitrioleras
las cabezasde murga
las rumberas(Poemas53)
Y de los replanteos
y recontradicciones
y reconsentimientossin o con sentimientocansado
y de los reprop6sitos
y de los reademanesy redidlogosid6nticamente
bostezables (179)
tion of the observer.The observed bodies are seen in parts and poses: "ente-
rizo de banlon" (a nylon one-piece suit), other fabrics such as velvet
("terciopelo"), parts of the body ("hombros," "almorranas,"piles), and
masses of bodies. At the same time the repetition of the second person object
pronoun ("te"), the rapid movement of description-faster and less unified
than that found in a collage, a slide show or a cubist image-and the absence
of any first-person presence, show the narrativeposition, the observer, in a
similar state of fragmentation.
Girondo, a clear presence in this poem, also employs this technique of
fragmentationin an attempt to portraydesire in the urban environment, but
with a key distinction, as we shall see, in the poem "Exvoto":
The poem reinstates desire where the law and social mores deny it; the
girls are too young to desire ("pechos sin madurar")but the social signifier
of this youth is itself a site of desire. The city--as social organizerand protag-
onist-is not only that which forbids illicit sexual conduct, as in the separa-
tion enforced by the "ramaje de hierro" of the balcony, but also a tool of
desire, in the sensuous touch afforded the railing by the young girls. The
mothers are both protectors and promoters: "para que" uncovers the pur-
pose of the evening promenade, while "eyaculen"suggests the sexual climax
that the courtship ritual postpones and commodifies. Thus the poem is both
an attack on suburban hypocrisy, but also an attempt to create the poem as
a space for the city as protagonist and sexuality as theme.
In "El sexo de las chicas" Perlongher talks of the "fragmentaci6nde los
cuerpos" (26) in poems such as "Exvoto." This is clear not only in the
poem's ending-the girls physicallycut parts from their bodies-but also in
162 HISPANICREVIEW spring2005
the portrayalof the body itself as parts, such as "pechos," "oido," and "nal-
gas" and its coverings, including "vestidos"and "corse."Furthermore,there
are no individual girls, just "las chicas" or "ellas."However, the fragmenta-
tion is different from that which takes place in Perlongher'swork, as high-
lighted by the US critic Jill Kuhnheim in her assessment of Girondo's work.
Perlongher'sessay overlooks possible critiques of the framing of sexuality in
Girondo's poetry by a relatively unchanging and innately male gaze-
observingthe fragmented"Chicasde flores"for example-whereby sexuality
becomes a technique that in fact stabilizes the male narrativeposition at the
expense of the observed female bodies. Perlongher's poem, on the other
hand, destabilizessuch a gaze in its portrayalof sexualityin the urban envi-
ronment.
Girondo represents a central interlocutor in Perlongher's dialogue with
the avant-garde,and provides key tools, in particularexperimentswith neol-
ogisms, half-words, and the fragmentationof the body. However, it is clear
that Perlongher'sproject goes further in its attack on the narrativeposition
and the often implicitly male gaze that stabilizes Girondo's poetry. In fact,
there is another element altogether in Perlongher'suse of Girondo's poetry.
In the essay quoted above, Perlongher suggests that in poems such as "Ex-
voto," "por un lado [ ... ] los cuerpos se despedazan.Por el otro, la sexuali-
dad misma aparece despedazada en todos los rincones del cuerpo social"
(27). Perlongher'sview of sexualityin Girondo as something spreadthrough-
out society closely follows Deleuze and Guattari'sstatements regardingdesire
in Anti-Oedipus:"Desire is present whenever something flows and runs, car-
rying along with it interested subjects-but also drunken and slumbering
subjects-towards lethal destinations" (105).As Perlongher'spiece continues
he begins to echo Deleuze and Guattari almost to the word. He talks of
persons in Veintepoemas being "todos los sexos" (27) where the Frenchmen
spoke of "n sexes" (Anti-Oedipus296). Furthermore,he discusses how Gi-
rondo's poems privilege "las formas, digamos, menores" (25), a term drawn
from Deleuze and Guattari's book on Kafka, Towardsa Minor Literature
(1975),to describe those forms of writing that destabilize a major language,
for example Kafka'suse of German with its hyper-politicized content and
Prague-Jewishinflection. Thus we can see Perlongher'sessay on Girondo not
only as popularizingthe poet he found as a genealogy for his own work, but
also as a means to diffuse, perhaps in a simplistic manner, the theories of
those writershe found useful for his own project of examining male prostitu-
tion in Sao Paulo.
Bollig NESTOR PERLONGHER AND THE AVANT-GARDE 163
Eternascriaturasde la tierra,
seguiremosandandodebajode las flores,
con ligerasestriasazulesen el hombro.
Y acaso reconozcannuestrosnietos por su pelo arbolado,
y su manerade decir:"Otofio."
("Tambi6nnosotros,"Obrapoetica12)
While Juan Gelman (b. 1930) may not seem as obvious a poetic interlocutor
for Perlongheras Molina or Girondo, the later poet was keen to identify the
Peronist writer as an important link between the avant-gardeand the "New
Verse" of which he formed part. Gelman and his "social poetry" are often
seen in opposition to Perlongher'swork, yet a comparison of key works can
reveal important connections and divergences,in particularin their relation-
ships to the avant-garde.
In an essay written for the Brazilian review Leia Livros, Perlongher at-
tempted to characterizethe " 'Nuevo verso' " [sic] from the River Plate re-
gion that was exemplified by the work of writers such as Le6nidas (b. 1927),
and Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940-1985), and Arturo Carrera(b.1948). These
writers not only contributed to the same journals as Perlongher (Sitio [Bue-
nos Aires, 1981-1987], and Xul [Buenos Aires, 1980-1996], in particular), but
are also of a younger generation than Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Mace-
donio Fernandez (1874-1952), Ernesto Saibato (b. 1911), and other respected
figures in Argentine letters at the beginning of the 1980s. Thus it is fair to
include Perlongher'sown work as part of the subject being assessed. Perlon-
gher identifies Gelman as an important forefatherfor these new poets:
Punto en el mar:
destello en cromo
(noctiluca)
Punto en el mar:
o noctiluca
o destellode cromo de oleaje,
denso,
de los muelles
inclita musarafia
incli
naci6n
(Poemas153)
mind: "mucho mis dramatica que la situacin del poeta que no puede ser
entendido me parece la del obrero, que antes tiene problemas mas urgentes"
(189). The role of the poet is then to communicate everyday reality, a role
that becomes even more vital during times of emergency-during a strike,
or after a coup, for example. Kuhnheim suggests that poesia social represents
a rupture in Argentine avant-garde poetry, whereby despite the initial ex-
change and accommodation that occurred between the politically-minded
Boedo group and the more abstract Florida group in the 1920s and 1930s,
and 1940s, such as the military coup
after the political upheavalsof the 1930os
led by GeneralUriburu 1930,and in particularafter the strugglesbetween
in
pro- and anti-Peronist groups in the 1950os and 196os,the gap between politi-
cally-engaged pragmaticpoetry-Gelman, for example-and more artistic
or
or metaphysicalpoetry-Alejandra Pizarnik, or Jorge Luis Borges-became
insurmountable.Thus we can see the importance of Gelman for Perlongher's
more political writing, as it offers a model of using avant-gardepoetics as a
means to expand the scope of the poem, in terms of subjects dealt with, its
political engagement, and the relationship with an implied and politically
sympatheticreadership.
However, there are key and revealingdifferencesto be found between Per-
longher's and Gelman'swork, as revealedin the former'spoem "El cadaver":
Y si ella
se empezaraa desvanecer,digamos
a deshacerse
que diredelpasillo,entonces?
Por que no?
entrecervatillosde ojospringosos,
y anhelantes
Yyo
por temora un olvido
a un hurto
intranscendente,
debonegarmea seguirsu cureia por lasplazas?
176 HISPANICREVIEW spring2oo5
Esedeseode no morir?
es cierto?
en lugarde quedarseahi
en esepasillo
entresusfaucesamarillasy halitosas
(Poemas42-45, italicsin original)
Much of the poem functions as a slide show, cutting from one image of the
town and its mine to another, between one line and the next. This technique
draws on the influence that film and photography had on the historical
avant-gardes, and allows Gelman to present the mine in flat and factual
terms. Thus the poem achieves the effect of documentary presentation.
Within this presentation, Gelman experimentswith the difficultiesof writing
for and about a perceived people. A movement down into a mineshaft-a
concentration on one point and a movement into the deep-and across the
walls of caves-not only physically out, but also into the environment of
work-questions the communicative ability of the lyric (the vertical axis)
and epic (the horizontal axis). The poem suggests that certain forms of writ-
ing are preferredto others. The poem itself is read, while the miners' writ-
ings, underground, are not, except in the context of this poem. Gelman's
poem then suggests the role of the poet as the conveyor of the everyday
realityof the worker, given that this realityis excluded from the lives of most
people-by distance ("encima de la tierra") or literacy ("Csepuede leer?").
178 HISPANIC REVIEW spring2005
The poet thus unites the two axes, the lyric and the epic. However, problem-
atically,the poem builds up to one graffitothat is less prosaic than the others:
"'Per6n es nuestra minica esperanza.'" Thus, the miners' writings and the
poet's presentation of the writings of the miners are firmly inscribed within
Peronism, in particulara personalist, populist and unionist Peronism from
the 196os and 1970s. Hence the poet's work is firmly circumscribedwithin
the project of organizing Peronist resistance to the various post- and anti-
Per6n governments, such as the Revoluci6nLibertadora(1955-1957)or the
Revoluci6n Argentina (1966-1973).
The possibilities of communication or intellectual leadership that Gel-
man's work suggests had largelybeen closed off by the time of Perlongher's
writing. Furthermore,Perlongher'swork comes after the massacreat Ezeize,
the rejection of the FLH by the Peronist Youth in the 1970sand the purge of
left-wing Peronists between 1973and 1976.Perlongher'spoetry emerges from
an era when the problem of organizing resistance had been supplanted by
the problem of the overwhelming nature of certain discourses: the proceso
dictatorship'sdiscourse of the medical cleansing of society and the discourse
of the transition to democracy, that full access to global market capitalism
would allow everyone to live in peace. Thus the politics that Perlongher
chooses to present, using the avant-gardeelements drawn from Gelman, is a
politics on the margins, in keeping with his focus on desire ratherthan party
politics.
materialism" (142). Despite his problems in gaining acceptance from the French Communist
Party, he committed the surrealiststo the revolution: "we shall prove ourselves fully capable of
doing our duty as revolutionaries" (142).
6. Commenting on the genesis of the Cabaret Voltaire, Tzara observed: "we proclaimed our
disgust [ ... ]. This war [WWI] was not our war [ ... .. Dada was born from an urgent moral
need, from an implacabledesire to attain a moral absolute, from the deep feeling that man, at the
centre of all creationsof the spirit, must affirmhis supremacyover notions emptied of all human
substance,over dead objects and ill-gotten gains [ ... ]. Honour, Country,Morality,Family,Art,
Religion, Liberty,Fraternity,I don't know what, all these notions had once answeredto human
needs, now nothing remained of them but a skeleton of conventions, they had been divested of
their initial content" (from "Introduction,"Poemssn). In 1929Tzara,like Vallejo,visited Russia.
In 1935he joined the FrenchCommunist Party.He was involved in the SpanishCivil War on the
side of the Republicans,and worked as secretaryof the Madrid Committee for the Defence of
Culture in 1937.
180 HISPANIC REVIEW spring2oo5
its claim to truth, art cannot simply deny the autonomousstatus and pre-
tend that it has a directeffect. (57)
The Neo-avant-gardes are easily subsumed into the market, with newness
becoming another brand or selling point. "The Neo-avant-garde, which
stages for a second time the avant-gardistbreak with tradition, becomes a
manifestation that is void of any sense and that permits the positing of any
meaning whatsoever"(61). What then could be the purpose or value of Per-
longher's re-use of avant-gardetechniques?
Firstly, it is important to stress the different context and genesis of Latin
American vanguard art to its European contemporary.In Latin America the
previous major artistic movement, Modernismo,emerged from struggles for
independence, in the case of Cuba, and over the direction that new nations
would take, in the case of Argentinaafter the fall of the dictator JuanManuel
de Rosas in 1852.One of the central figures of the first modernistageneration
was Jose Marti (1853-1895),the Cuban nationalist who combined Parnassian
aesthetics and poetics with patriotic themes, as in the poem "Dos patrias"
(1891).If Marti is often contrasted to Ruben Dario (1867-1916)in terms of
the Cuban's political commitment and the Nicaraguan'smore aesthetic con-
cerns, two aspects of Dario's work are obscured. Firstlythe Parnassiansplen-
dor in Prosasprofanas(1896) attackedthe utilitariandomination of the word
by science and what Dario perceived as mediocre values coming to dominate
society. Secondly, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Dario was writ-
ing poems such as "A Roosevelt" (from Cantos de vida y esperanza,1905), a
polemical address calling for Latin American solidarity-a directly political
poem.
In contrast to the situation in Europe, the Latin American vanguardsdid
not representan upsurge in literary-politicalactivities. In Argentina,the first
clear vanguardmanifestationoccurredwith the publication of Prisma, (1921-
1922) a newspaper initially stuck to trees and walls in Buenos Aires by Jorge
Luis Borgesand some friends.Prismawas the organ of young writerswanting
to breakwith tradition and norms in literature,influenced by new European
techniques in literature.They formed the group known as Ultraismo(1919-
1923). The aims of the group are summarized in Borges's manifesto of 1921:
reduction of poetry to the metaphor; elimination of surplus adjectives,and
connectives; abolition of all ornament, including preaching (and thus politi-
cal messages); and the synthesis of two or more images into one to broaden
the power of suggestion of language (Verani 122;Salvador36), as displayed
Bollig NESTOR PERLONGHER AND THE AVANT-GARDE 181
WorksCited