A Estridentista New Year's Message

From Beautiful Eccentrics

On December 31, 1921, exactly one hundred years ago to the day,  in the city of Puebla, Mexico, the poet Manuel Maples Arce published the manifesto of Estridentismo as some kind of new year’s message. A multi-disciplinary avant-garde movement that included visual arts and literature, Estridentismo embraced the modern urban cosmopolitan life, rejected intellectual elitism, and shared various concerns with Futurism, Dadaism and Ultraism, among others.  

On this centennial moment of the movement’s birth I share an informal translation of a poem by Maples Arce from his 1922 book Andamios interiores: poemas radiográficos (Internal Scaffolds: Radiographic Poems), also turning a century old next year.

In many respects, Estridentismo was a beautifully eccentric movement, and I felt remembering it could serve as inspiration for all of us to think revolutionary and forward-looking thoughts for 2022. In the meantime, thank you all for reading Beautiful Eccentrics over these last 52 weeks.

As the Estridentismo manifesto says: “Apagaremos el sol de un sombrerazo. Feliz año nuevo. ¡Viva el mole de guajolote!” (“We will turn off the sun with the blow of a hat. Happy new year. Long live turkey mole!”)

(original Spanish version below)

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On the margins of rain, amidst insomniac coffee shops,

the profiles are asleep onto deaf plates

and it is now when everything coincides clock-wise:

my nostalgic heart burning in the shadow.

after the vulgar astonishment of the paper

in which one can only hear the smoke from the pipes

livid attitudes flourish in intervals

retroforwardly from the conic umbrellas.

I deduce from the rain that this is not definitive.

¿Who is at the driver’s wheel? There is a short-circuit.

The plot is a complicated office fire,

and some ladies

literally theorists

have turned periphrastic, now in B-flat,

with tactile abandon over sandpaper.

The flourishing

electric stars explode.

But beyond all this, in the syntaxicide

of a few paragraphs ripped apart by farewells:

oh, their yellow flesh!

My retroactive fingers!

                        (Over there in the automatic piano

                        night is falling).

And in the same slope of romantic interior

I interrupt myself before car headlights, meanwhile,

—rhomboidal bohemians— my heart rains onto itself;

the evening in the windows rattles like a train,

and my pain shipwrecks definitively,

in the literature of all “yesterdays.”

–Manuel Maples Arce

Andamios Interiores, 1922

—

Al margen de la lluvia en los cafés insomnes,

los perfiles se duermen en las láminas sordas.

Y es ahora que todo coincide en los relojes:

mi corazón nostálgico ardiéndose en la sombra.

Después de los vulgares asombros del periódico

en que sólo se oye el humo de las pipas,

florecen a intervalos las actitudes lívidas

retropróximamente de los paraguas cónicos.

Deduzco de la lluvia que esto es definitivo.

¿ Quién está en el manubrio ? Hay un corto circuito.

 La trama es complicado siniestro de oficina,

y algunas señoritas,

 literalmente teóricas,

 se han vuelto perifrásticas, ahora en re bemol,

 con abandonos táctiles sobre el papel de lija.

Explotan las estrellas

eléctricas en flor.

Pero más que todo esto, en el sintaxicidio

 de unos cuantos renglones desgarrados de adioses:

¡ Oh su carne amarilla !

¡ Mis dedos retroactivos !

(En el piano automático

Se va haciendo de noche).

Y en el mismo declive del interior romántico,

me interrumpo en un faro de automóvil, en tanto,

—bohemios romboidales— mi corazón se llueve;

la tarde en las vidrieras traquetea como un tren,

y mi dolor naufraga, definitivamente,

en la literatura de todos los "ayer".