Carlos Pellicer And The Contemporaries

It is worth remembering that the Revolution of 1910 caused a return to the roots, to our most telluric, as it has been used. In other words, and that among its various repercussions, art in general echoes the rediscovery of what is truly Mexican; and it is here, in such areas - specifically in painting and in literature - where one of the fiercest battles takes place: the one that takes place. among those who, dazed by the exaltation of the local, condemn all openness to the outside, and the consequent opponents of such a limiting vision, this is, those who understand that isolation within the framework of the national, does nothing but nullify all possibility of, said with a traditional word: universalization.
At the end of the Mexican revolution, spirits were divided and the ideological currents had a single view, "progress", within this coming and going of ideals for achieve, a group of Mexican intellectuals stood out, who began to develop a feeling found with the government system after the great revolution of the twentieth century.

This confusion of identities resulted in young people beginning to question that system and with this a literary movement began that develops parallel to the Stridentism, but of greater scope and with a deeper meaning, is that of the group of “Contemporaries”, a group named after the magazine that these young people published between 1928 and 1931. The directors of Contemporáneos –Jaime Torres Bodet, Bernardo Ortiz de Motellano and Bernardo Gastélum- managed to attract the best pens of the time, and, therefore, the magazine represents a whole literary period in the development of Mexican literature contemporary. The main animators of the group, in addition to Torres Bodet and Ortiz de Montellano, were José Gorostiza, Xavier Villaurrutia, Salvador Novo, Gilberto Owen, Jorge Cuesta and Enrique González Rojo. Carlos Pellicer and Elías Nandino, although they were not part of the group, belong to the same generation.
The contemporaries were trained in the classrooms of the Faculty of Higher Studies of the University National, where the spiritual horizon was still saturated by the memory of the Athenaeum of Mexico. The teachers who attract young writers are, among others, Antonio Caso who organized activities aimed at countering Porfirian positivism, creating a new environment cultural with the contribution of modern philosophical and literary guidelines, also shared his reaction against positivism and his adherence to the new currents anti-intellectualists. Enrique González Martínez. The influence of other Atheneists - Alfonso Reyes, José Vasconcelos, Pedro Henríquez Ureña - was perhaps less significant than that of Caso and González Martínez. These influences, more than in the literary work, are felt in the intellectual development of these young people. It should not be forgotten that the "Contemporaries" reject the staunch Mexicanism that characterizes their poetry.
The first literary manifestations of the new group of poets, which in time had to be called "Contemporaries", are the magazines Gladios (1916), Pegaso (1917) and San-Ev-Ank (1918), all of them still published under the wing of established poets. Pellicer appears in the first, and Torres Bodet in the second. In these youth magazines, as well as in Modern Mexico (1920-1923) and Falange (1922-1923) - published under the philosophical influence of Vasconcelos and the literary work of González Martínez and López Velarde, young and new poets still do not manifest their brilliant independence intellectual; although it is true that by 1918 they had already organized a second Youth Athenaeum, so called to pay tribute to the Atheneists. Soon, however, the new generation detaches itself from its intellectual tutors and forms a homogeneous group, aware of the new aesthetic and literary concerns.
Carlos Pellicer (1899-1977) Mexican poet of Tabasco origin, one of the most prominent poets of the Contemporary Group. she rediscovered the beauty of the world;... "the sun that burns on the plants of the tropics, the sea that reaches the beach for the first time". His words want to reorder creation and... "in that endearing tropic the elements are reconciled: earth, air, water and fire allow you to see raw the greatness and beauty of God". In attention to that chromatic light, the sculptural forms and the dynamic energy of the tropical landscape of Mexico, this is how he began his career as a writer. Carlos Pellicer is distinguished by his essential elements of aesthetics among the group of writers contemporaries, for their verbalism, for their subjective musical intensity, for their sensitivity and their poetry mysticism. Magical and in continuous metamorphosis, his poetry is not preaching or reasoning, it is rather an eternal song. Carlos Pellicer is the genuine poet who teaches us to look at the world with different eyes. His work, a whole plurality of genres, is resolved in a luminous metaphor in an endless praise to the world.
Carlos Pellicer mastered the theme, tone and skills of Rubendarian modernism at the age of fifteen and publishes to the Twenty-two Colors in the Sea and Other Poems (1921) which is already one of the fundamental titles of Mexican poetry modern. Also at the age of twenty-two he published his first book, Avidez (1921), he studied at the National Preparatory School and in Colombia, where he was sent by the government of Don Venustiano Carranza. He co-founder of the magazine San-Ev-Ank (1918) and of a new youth conference (1919). This was where a criterion began to form and the post-war period showed him a complete and different vision of Mexico that he expected. In August 1921, together with Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Xavier Guerrero among others, he founded the Grupo Solidario del Movimiento Obrero. He contributed to the magazines Falange (1922-23), Ulises (1927-28) and Contemporáneos (1928-31). He was a professor of modern poetry at UNAM and director of the Department of Fine Arts. He organized the Frida Kahlo, La Venta, and Anahuacalli museums.
Historically speaking, the group of these intellectuals lived their childhood within a context of repression and by the time it broke out revolution are full of this discontent, this lack of progress, this lack of identity between what they are and what they aspire to achieve. to be. During the period of the Mexican revolution, anarchism was a significant force in other parts of the world, for example in the Russian revolution and later in Spain in 1936. So it should come as no surprise that anarchism was a significant force in the Mexican revolution as well. These ideas permeated the turbulent events in Mexico, through a variety of individuals, groups, and organizations.
Anarchism is an ideology that fights for a world without the need for states. Anarchists envision a society where workers would manage themselves and the means of production were controlled by those who produced - directly, opposed to capitalist or party managers communist. Politically, anarchists fight for a decentralized system where power is based on the smallest possible unit, either the individual or the community. From there, coordination on a larger scale is achieved through confederation and the use of a delegative system. Never in such a system would one person rule another - hence the name: Anarchism.
Ricardo Flores Magón, whose remains rest in the Rotunda of Illustrious Men in Mexico City, was an outspoken supporter of anarchism. His confusingly named political organization, the Mexican Liberal Party, was able to influence a large portion of the Mexican revolutionaries. His followers even attempted an armed rebellion in Baja California, to create an anarchist society. In urban centers, the Anarcho-syndicalist union, La Casa del Obrero Mundial, played a very important role during the period 1912-1916. In the south, though not overtly anarchist, the Zapatistas supported views that were largely reminiscent of the ideals of anarchism. The Mexican revolution would not have been the same without these influences.
By the time the revolution breaks out, those young people with progressive ideals are witnesses of the confrontations between the armies of Don Porfirio Díaz and the insurgents, who believe that progress has a very different path, but are willing to risk what they are in order to be what they need to achieve. to be..
It is worth remembering that the Revolution of 1910 caused a return to the roots, to our most telluric, as it has been used. In other words, and that among its various repercussions, art in general echoes the rediscovery of what is truly Mexican; and it is here, in such areas specifically in painting and literature, where one of the fiercest battles occurs: the one between those who, blinded by the exaltation of the local, condemn all openness to the outside, and the consequent opponents of such a limiting vision, that is, who understand that isolation within the framework of the national, does nothing but nullify all possibility of, said with a traditional word: universalization.
At the triumph of the revolution, he continued with his studies, which led him to the formation of a criterion with which would begin to question this progress which seems to have stopped or rather was fragmented. One of the characters that had an important influence on him was José Vasconcelos, of whom he was private secretary, during this time he had the opportunity to directly help the system with a completely new vision and different.
The "Contemporaries" are little or nothing interested in the social problems that the nation tries to solve on the battlefield or in the parliamentary chambers. Nor do they try, as the Atheneists did, to impose a new intellectual discipline on the youth; his concern is personal, his interest is the creation of the work of art, or the criticism of that work; that is their horizon, which they seldom abandon.
The precociousness of Contemporáneos is more than a biographical episode; arises from the particular intellectual and mental disposition of each writer, but by becoming a collective precocity it exceeds personal stories causing an identity so particular that anyone can feel what these writers capture in the paper. Perhaps part of that explanation is that the revolution drove adult writers, which were compromised with any of the defeated factions or fled out of terror to the violence. This was essential so that a new ideological current could rise and modify this culture and at the same time be a counterculture for the system itself. On the other hand, the climate unfit for intellectual and academic life that prevailed in the country, and mainly in the Mexico City, channeled an entire generation (that of the Seven Wise Men), prior to that of Contemporary. Thus, the young people who were in their twenties when Obregón came to power saw themselves as masters and lords of the national culture: the great old and linked writers. the porfirismo were dejected and discredited, and a whole generation, the intermediate between the Athenaeum of Youth and Contemporaries, had not existed for the literature. That is why the group of contemporaries took control, giving a different approach to the idea of ​​progress that I know had and with it forging an identity with these experiences and everyday situations, highlighting the beauty that they perceived within all this chaos. Something similar happened in Paris during the First World War: when boys over eighteen were called up, they were relieved by his brothers of fourteen, fifteen or sixteen, who lived at those ages adventures and situations that otherwise they would only have known much later. A novel by Raymond Radiguet, Le Diable au Corps, shows how the sudden absence of the youth population of eighteen to thirty years, turns a fourteen-year-old boy into a precocious and highly skilled heartthrob of a complete love story adulterer. That is, everything was for the young: prestige, fame, respect, positions, publications, because the revolution had swept away "older brothers" who could occupy and rank them. In this way, the twenties were a precinct for youth in Mexican culture.
Mexican society demanded of its young people better equipped and prepared for a quick presence in the form of modern Mexican culture; it gave them a heroic "mission". There would be all kinds of horizons for them and I asked them for all kinds of collaborations (unlike later times in Mexican life, in which the boys, although at thirty years of age, they still see themselves as ignored, oppressed in a frozen hierarchy, reduced to a leadership of perpetual sons of family). Therefore, the social demand provoked a personal demand: nobody was too young for any feat, for any wisdom.
The myth of a beautiful and brilliant youth, heroic and all-powerful, active, totally free and creative, is not, of course, restricted to Mexico. In fact, it was one of the universal impulses of the beginning of the century, with which it was sought to awaken from the tedious, "decadent" and more or less suicidal fin de siècle. The liberal humanist ideal of the adult man (such as being noble, progressive and productive), deteriorated as the 19th century progressed, and it ceased to be the model that art aspired to impose. The American critic Van Wyck Brooks points out how the humor of Mark Twain already represents in literature and in the history of the United States a bankruptcy of the optimistic literature of the Founding Fathers, replacing the Man of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, etc.
The Contemporaries took for themselves this ideal, this excessive myth. The term youth represented for contemporaries an emotional and moral value equivalent to what, in later decades, terms such as declassified, committed, outsider, beatnik, etc. would have. A heterodox term that is itself an action-behavior program.
In general, the ideas of the Contemporaries as a whole do not comprise a "work" in the sense of a calculated and expressly constructed totality. Quite the contrary: it is made of fragments, of journalistic notes, of comments and quick interviews, of controversies and private pages of correspondence and newspaper. It would seem a miscellany, a drawer of diverse, with no other importance than to decorate with anecdotes and peripheral data the central importance of its authors as poets. However, this critical work has value in itself; This patchwork, a formless and detached collection of various prose, constitutes a critical, coherent body (without being unitary) and solid: by far the largest body of cultural criticism produced in Mexico during the first half of this century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carlos Pellicer, "Grecia", Brief anthology, p. 6 (original publication: Gladios, México, February 1916, year I, No. 2, p. 130) (Dated in Mexico, 1914)
Xavier Villaurrutia, "Variety", in Works, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1966, 2nd. Edition, p. 911.
"Variety", Works, p. 608.
Ríos Gascón, narrator. Author of the novel Your image in the wind (Aldus, 1995)
Contemporaries in the labyrinth of criticism Rafael Olea Franco and Anthony Stanton Colegio de México 1994