Manuel Maples Arce

Manuel Maples Arce (Papantla, Veracruz, México 1898 - 1981) was a Mexican poet, writer, art critic, lawyer and diplomat, especially known as the founder of the Stridentism movement.

The leader of the first Mexican avant-garde movement

After the first Stridentist manifesto, Comprimido estridentista, launched in 1921 in the n°1 of the broadsheet Actual, he published in 1922 his first avant-gardist book of poetry, Andamios interiores (Poemas radiograficos), that Jorge Luis Borges criticized the same year ; in 1924, Urbe (Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos), which English version, made by John Dos Passos, was edited in 1929 in New York (this edition is maybe the first poetry book of a Mexican, and the first of the Spanish language avant-garde, translated into English) ; in 1927, Poemas interdictos, his ultimate book of poetry for a long time, until the last one, Memorial de la sangre published in 1947.

During his stridentist period (from 1921 to 1927, first in Mexico City, then in Xalapa), he was responsible for the magazines Actual (3 issues in 1921 and 1922) and Irradiador (3 issues in 1923), followed by Horizonte (1926-1927) directed by his colleague German List Arzubide.

Around Maples Arce, poets as German List Arzubide, Salvador Gallardo and Kyn Taniya (Luis Quintanilla's pen name), novelist as Arqueles Vela, and artists as Fermin Revueltas, the French native Jean Charlot, German Cueto, Leopoldo Méndez, Ramon Alva de la Canal, among others, can be referred to as the most important members of the Stridentist movement, which maintained good relations with the Mexican Muralism of Diego Rivera.

Posterity

After the scandalous life of the Stridentist group, for a long time Maples Arce was relatively despised by Mexican criticism as a poet, and very few specialists were interested in the study of Stridentist art and litterature, which are now better known.

So it was an almost completely forgotten writer that the young Roberto Bolaño interviewed in 1976. He is curiously referred to as a former avant-gardist poet in the well-known novel Los detectives salvajes (1998), by the Chilian writer, in which he appears as a character.

Bibliography

Spanish editions

• Las semillas del tiempo : obra poética, 1919-1980 [1981], foreword by Rubén Bonifaz Nuño, Xalapa, Universidad Veracruzana, 2013.

Translations

English

• Metropolis [Urbe], translated by John Dos Passos, New York, The T. S. Book Company, 1929, [35]p.; now in Jed Rasula and Tim Conley (org.), Burning City : Poems of Metropolitan Modernity, Notre Dame, Action Books, 2012.
• City, Bolshevik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos [Urbe], bilingual edition, new translation, notes and afterword by Brandon Holmquest, New York, Ugly Duckling Presse, « Lost Literature Series », 2010, 30 p.

Other languages

• Poèmes interdits, french translation by Edmond Vandercammen, Brussels, Cahiers du Journal des Poètes, 1936, 68 p.
• Stridentisme ! Poésie et Manifeste (1921-1927) , bilingual and illustrated edition, organization, french translation, notes and afterword by Antoine Chareyre, Paris, Le Temps des Cerises, "Commun'art", 2013 [Comprimido estridentista, Andamios interiores, Urbe, Poemas interdictos].

Critical references

• Monahan, Kenneth Charles. Manuel Maples Arce and Estridentismo (Doctorate Thesis), Northwestern University, 1972.
• Schneider, Luis Mario. El estridentismo o una literatura de la estrategia, México: Conaculta, 1997.