THE POET FLORIANO MARTINS IN SEARCH OF THE SURREALISM

ALFREDO FRESSIA
WAGE THE COUNTRY, SUPPLEMENT THE CULTURAL COUNTRY, MONTEVIDÉU, URUGUAY, 2002

Cenizas del Sol, de Floriano Martins y Edgar Zúñiga.
Ediciones Andrómeda. San José de Costa Rica, 2001. 91 págs.
Extravio de Noites/ Extravío de Noches, de Floriano Martins.
Ed. Poetas de Orpheu. Caxias do Sul, 2001. 28 págs.
O Começo da Busca. O Surrealismo na Poesia da América Latina,
de Floriano Martins. Ed. Escrituras, San Pablo, 2001. 288 págs.

A honest balance of all that the Brazilian Modernism bequeathed should include, in red and in the one it should, that species of endemic nationalism that the literary history of the Brazil travels in the XX century, the paradoxical anthropophagy executed by an Indian rousseauniano, according to the image of the critical Franklin of Oliveira that impedes until today the flowing dialogue with the rest of the Continent. It only is not linguistic insularity, no matter how much this spite, but of certain Brazilian vocation for the monologue, authoritarian, while other Latin American cultures look for the dialogue. The reaction to that cultural provincianismo doesn't usually go beyond the academic environment, in particular the effort of the departments of Spanish of the universities, and it hardly ever arises from the artistic manifestations, from the cultural activity as creation.
The poet Floriano Martins (Strength, 1957) it belongs to the few artists that even register in that reaction that implies a search, almost become obstinate, of the continental context, as way of to understand and to evaluate the culture of their country better. Of Angel Branch it was murmured that he/she didn't sleep. Of Martins one could suspect that he/she has made a pact with the solar gods of the time in their doubtful native Ceará, and that of that pact the versatility of its work arises, from its work as translator of Spanish (it is responsible, for example, of the arduous version to the Portuguese of Crime to dance Goatherd's Infant chachachá, or that of the Poems of love of García Lorca, both in 1998), its ensayística (The heart of the infinite. Three Brazilian poets, Toledo, Spain, 1993, to mention one, "interlingüístico"). AND also their classes, encounters, performances in Panama or Costa Rica or Mexico, their dialogues with Latin American, published poets some in internet, others in the splendid conquered Writing, of 1998, where they appeared the Uruguayan Amanda Berenguer and Circe Maia, their articles instigators, so many rebellious times in front of the establishment of the cultural journalism, in Brazilian newspapers, Portuguese, Latin Americans, of Argentina to Mexico. And all this without forgetting the solid poetic work that he/she comes building (that includes pieces in Spanish language), and that it gathered, partly, in their Alma em chamas 1998.
In 2001, the poems appeared of Ashy of the sun, in trilingual version (Spanish, Portuguese, English) in Andromeda, a luxurious Costa Rican edition, presented in counterpoint with the images of the sculptures of Edgar Zúñiga, one of the biggest plastic artists in Costa Rica. The book closes with two interviews, the one carried out by Martins to Zúñiga and the inverse one. It is thirteen poems in prose of 1991 (published then in River of Janeiro) whose English version, in charge of Margaret Jull Costa, it had figured in The myth of the world (The Dedalus Book of Surrealism), London, 1994, and that the current Costa Rican edition reproduces. The Spanish version was in charge of the Uruguayan poet Saúl Ibargoyen and of the Mexican Benjamin Valdivia.
From the title, suggested by a passage of Arcane 17, of Breton André, the text registers in the surrealist slope that signa great part of the work of Martins, a reluctant poetry to the " ismos ", but that he/she finds in the automatic writing a way, powerful in its case, of reaction in front of the bureaucratic and residual parnasianismo of certain Brazilian poetry.
The year 2001 also marked the appearance of Extravío de Noches/Misleading of Nights, eleven poems without holding, some in prose, presented by Ed. of Orpheu of Caxias do Sul, Big River, in bilingual form, Portuguese and Spanish. It is a paradoxical erotic poetry where the body appears mediated by mirrors, pictures, pages (the pages of your body"), to the point that the true thematic reason of the poemario is the memory, dinner of ghosts, the memory / serving its best plates."
The most significant work in Martins in 2001, appeared at the end of the year, he/she is however in OR começo gives search. Or Surrealismo na poetry gives Latin America, in Ed. You notarize, of San Pablo. It is the first anthology of poetry surrealist Latin American, preceded of an introductory rehearsal and continued by five articles and interviews. They exist local anthologies without a doubt, besides the Anthology of the Latin American surrealist poetry, Mexico, 1974, of the Rumanian Stefan Baciu and the Anthology of the surrealist poetry (in Spanish language) of Ángel Relative, 1985, or experiences like the Anthology of the surrealist poetry of French language, Buenos Aires, 1961, of Aldo Pellegrini. But it lacks in them, in particular in that of Baciu, " Latin American ", the presence of the Brazilian poets. Martins comes to fill that literally continental hole now.
For their invoice, Martins discards the thesis of Baciu of a " parasurrealismo ", that is to say, it incorporates the group of poets whose work includes a surrealist slope, but that they don't assume, or they don't always assume the precepts of the movement. Discarded the demand of fidelity to the strict surrealist method of creation, Martins is authorized to include, for example, the work of Octavio Peace during those ' 50, and if it excludes a work like that of Olga Orozco, is merely for an unavoidable editorial negotiation of space and representativeness. On the other hand, the author rejects the idea of bound Surrealismo at the same time historical, as a more " ismo " among the alluvium of the modern vanguards, a periodización that could propitiate certain idea of " backwardness " diacrónico, in the Continent, regarding the Parisian movement of 1924.
In 1974 Octavio Peace it gathered articles and conferences on the surrealismo in their book The search of the beginning that implied a delimitation of root historicista to the surrealist action". Martins prefers the beginning of the search" that gives title to its volume, knowingly that the surrealismo is not made intrinsically historical but counterpoint angle to the poetry constructivista that also crosses the continental poetry. "All the modernity", Martins says, even in its changes beauticians or cientificistas, it suffered the impact of an eruption onírica or he/she obtained the information of an animist fervor at least, be in the hidden stomach of its own cultural womb or wakened up by identification with other cultures". AND one would add: all the modernity, less the Uruguayan.
There is not, indeed, an only Uruguayan among the twelve poets, largely cultured, of this anthology. The" (almost) nonexistent Uruguayan surrealism of which the poet speaks to Eduardo Pricks with thorns (Of the jungla of Lautréamont to Forest Márquez", Have Ibero-American, 1992) it shines, literally registered, for his absence. And that lack is without a doubt in the base of certain national smaller tone of the lyrical one that crosses the century XX abandoned, conformed many times in front of the constructivismo positivista and bourgeois.
Martins privileged each poet's solid representation, and not the number of authors. They appear here: Aldo Pellegrini (Argentina, 1903-1973), the poet that disclosed from the What a magazine, of 1928, and the automatism worked; César Moro (Peru, 1903-1956), the Limean of French language that refused their maternal language, sometimes even in their private life, but it returned to her in Mexico, perhaps moved by the love of a man; Enrique Molina (Argentina, 1910-1996), the heterodox and passionate surrealist; Emilio Adolfo Westphalen (Peru, 1911-2001), partner of Moorish even in their provocations against Vicente Huidobro; Octavio Paz (Mexico, 1914-1998); Enrique Gómez-Correa (Chile, 1915-1995), poet of the group Mandrágora, of the night and the magic of the black poem"; Juan Sánchez Peláez (Venezuela, 1922), propeller of the surrealism in their country; Ludwig Zeller (Chile, 1927), creator of the House of the Moon, pursued in their country, resident later in Canada and nowadays in Mexico; Juan Calzadilla (Venezuela, 1931), a pillar of the mythical magazine The roof of the whale in the Caracas of those ' 60; Roberto Piva (Brazil, 1937) and Sérgio Lima (Brazil, 1939), the two poets of Portuguese language that, next to Claudio Willer, registers in a surrealist slope that at the same time rejects the programmatic principles of the movement; and Raúl Henao (Colombia, 1944) who intends to connect intoxication and sobriety, dream and vigil.
Without a doubt, as all anthology, also made by a poet, the group he/she reveals and it puts twice as much in abyss game between the representativeness and the aesthetics of the antologista. To enlarge the access perspectives to the continental surrealismo, Martins closes the volume with four interviews driven by him same in the last years (to Roberto Piva, to Ángel Relative, to Francisco Madariaga and to Sérgio Lima) and an article on Enrique's aesthetics Molina. For vocation, the book cares in the whole Continent, but maybe more among us, and exactly for the inverse reason, for the lack of that irrational vocation and onírica in the positive, Cartesian Uruguay.