Mariategui's Aesthetic Thought: A Critical Reading of the Avant-Gardes

Author(s): Vicky Unruh

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Latin American Research Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1989), pp. 45-69
Published by: The Latin American Studies Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503698 .
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MARIATEGUI'S
AESTHETIC
THOUGHT:
A CriticalReading of the Avant-Gardes*
VickyUnruh
Universityof Kansas

Jose Carlos Mariateguidevoted the most productive years of his

short life (1894-1930) to analyzing contemporary Peru. Because of this
emphasis, a substantial portion of the research conducted in the past
thirty years has addressed his political and social thought. More recent
investigations, however, have sought to document the significance of
his aesthetic ideas, an appropriatedevelopment in light of Mariaitegui's
extensive writings on literature and the visual arts. For example, the
periodical Amauta,which appeared under his editorship twenty-nine
times between September 1926 and March 1930, was primarilya magazine of the arts and intellectual life, notwithstanding its political agenda
and indigenistaorientation.1Also, Mariategui'sdetailed essay on Peruvian literature, "Elproceso de la literatura,"is the most extensive of the
Siete ensayosde interpretacion
de la realidadperuana(1928). In addition,
between 1924 and 1930, the widely read Lima weeklies Variedades
and
Mundialregularlypublished his criticalarticles on national and international topics, including a large number of pieces on literature and the
arts. Recent inquiries into Mariategui'sliterarythought have addressed
such issues as his modern concept of literary realism, the relationship
between his artistic concerns and a Marxism that has been repeatedly
characterizedas "open," and the role of aesthetic issues in his social
agenda for Peru.2This research has established Mariaitegui'simportance
in the arts, not as a creative writer (although he did write poetry, plays,
and short stories in his youth) but as one of LatinAmerica'sfirst practicing literarycritics.
*Supportfor this study came from two sources. Initial researchinto Mariategui'srole in
Peru'savant-gardeswas conducted in the summer of 1983in Lima with the support of a
TinkerFoundationgrant. Additional investigations, particularlyinto contemporarytheories of the avant-gardes,were carriedout in the spring of 1986under a resident fellowship
at the Center for Twentieth-CenturyStudies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Milwaukee.I
would like to thank LARRManaging Editor Sharon Kellum and one anonymous LARR
reviewerfor constructiveeditorialsuggestions.

45

LatinAmericanResearchReview
A salient feature of Mariaitegui'saesthetic criticismwas his close
attention to the positions and practices of the interwar avant-garde
movements in Europe and Latin America as well. He had originally
planned to call Amautaby the name Vanguardia,an orientation evident
in the journal's commitment to disseminating innovative intellectual
and aesthetic currents as well as in Mariategui'sfrequent references to
himself and his contemporariesas "hombresde la vanguardia."He also
commented extensively on expressionism, futurism, dada, surrealism,
and Latin American responses to these movements. In addition, Mariategui has often been characterizedas the prime mover of Peruvianvanguardism of the 1920s, particularlyin his role as editor of Amauta.3But
although scholars have noted the connections between his support of
aesthetic innovation and his social agenda for Peru, no in-depth investigation has been done on the relationship between his exegesis of the
avant-gardes and the development of his aesthetic thought. The purpose of the present study is to undertake this investigation.
Mariateguiwas an avowed Marxist, "convicto y confeso," and a
founder of Peruviansocialism. But in politics as well as art, he was also
a divergent thinker and a critical interpreter of contemporary movements who appropriated diverse ideological currents in forming his
own conception of Latin American history and life. For example, his
political thought was shaped not only by his readings of Marxbut also
by Bergsonian and Nietzschean antipositivist vitalism, Benedetto Croce's aesthetic idealism, Georges Sorel's theory of myths, and the concern with culturalissues characteristicof ItalianMarxistAntonio Gramsci. Mariategui'saesthetic tastes and sources were similarlydiverse. His
favorite artists and writers included Luigi Pirandello, Vladimir Mayakovsky, George Bernard Shaw, Waldo Frank, Panait Israti, Blaise Cendrars, George Grosz, and Cesar Vallejo, and he drew on a multitude of
contemporaryexperimentalmovements to form his own ideas about art
and his own program for Peru'sculturalrenewal.4The complex connections between Mariategui'saesthetic thought and social agenda were
both manifested in and shaped by his response to the postulates and
practicesof the avant-gardes.
MARIATEGUI AS OBSERVER AND PROMOTER OF THE AVANT-GARDES

The European avant-gardes of the period immediately before

and after WorldWarI, which Mariateguiobserved, analyzed, and publicized in Peru, undertook a serious critique of the prevailing technical
modes and social relationships that had shaped artisticproduction. On
the one hand, in rejecting mimetic conventions, avant-garde artists
sought a more "authentic"apprehension of life and a return to primary
experience unmediated by censors of reason. On the other hand, they
46

MARIATEGUIIS AESTHETIC THOUGHT

attacked the artist'sautonomy and distance from everyday life, a privileged status originating with romanticismand culminating in late-nineteenth-century aestheticism. Although it can be argued that the vanguardists created their own brand of elitism by producing highly
inaccessibleworks, they also promoted the model of a criticallyengaged
artist as an alternative to the self-involved poetemauditof the art-forart's-sake mode. In Theoryof the Avant-Garde,Peter Burger posits the
emergence of vanguardist discourse as a stage of self-criticism in art
history and a challenge to art's social status as a bourgeois institution.
"Whatis involved in these manifestations,"Burgerasserts, "is far more
than the liquidation of the category 'work' [of art]. It is the liquidation
of art that is split off from the praxis of life that is intended."5 The
centrality of engagement to the avant-garde project was underscored
not only by assaults on implied readers and spectators from the page
and the stage but also by the eventual conversion of many vanguardists
to ideologically diverse causes.
The fundamental economic and social transformationsthat took
place in Latin American life during the decades following WorldWarI
gave Latin American vanguardism its distinct character. In the 1920s
and early 1930s, self-consciously experimentalartisticventures arose in
almost every Latin American country and were designated by such
names as vanguardia,arte nuevo, espiritunuevo, and, in Brazil, modernismo.These activities were undertaken primarilyby groups but also by
individuals and were shaped in part by Europe'savant-gardesthrough
writers with transcontinental experience such as Vicente Huidobro,
Jorge Luis Borges, and Oswald de Andrade. These efforts, which were
often marked by indigenous cultural exigencies, were characterizedby
the affirmation of specific aesthetic positions, engagement in artistic
experiments through often ephemeral little magazines, manifestoes, or
manifesto-style creative texts, and occasionally serious interdisciplinary
investigations into language, history, folklore, and politics.6 Despite
their regional differences, these undertakings often reflected similar
agendas and generated paralleldebates about issues concerning modernity versus cultural authenticity. Out of this debate arose a criticalinquiry into the aesthetic values and social relationships shaping artistic
practicein Latin America.7Because of Mariaitegui'sfascination with the
European avant-gardes and his commitment to developing a program
for Peruvian culturalindependence, he became one of the more cogent
and imaginative architectsof that inquiry.
Mariaitegui'sinterest in the avant-gardesdates from his European
exile from December 1919 to March 1923. He had initiated his journalistic career at the age of fifteen with Lima's conservative La Prensabut
soon became involved in movements for aesthetic and social change.
During these years, he wrote poetry, plays, and short stories. In 1916
47

LatinAmericanResearchReview
he participatedin the aestheticist literarygroup that published the magazine Colonidaand sent poetry to this review. Edited by AbrahamValdelomar, Colonidawith its iconoclastictone and nationalist orientationprefigured Peru'sliteraryavant-gardesof the mid-1920s. Meanwhile, however, Mariategui'sintensified participationin Lima's radical university
reformmovement had begun to blur the lines between his aesthetic and
social concerns, and moving toward socialism, he distanced himself
from what he later called his life as a "decadent, Byzantine literary
savant."8In 1918 he left La Prensafor the more liberal El Tiempo,where
he wrote critiques of the national scene. He also founded two journals
of political commentary:the ephemeral Nuestraepoca(1918) and, with
Cesar Falcon, La Razon(1919), in which he supported Lima'semerging
labor movement and opposed the reformist dictatorship of Augusto
Leguia (1919-1930). As a result, shortly after the new president assumed power, he arranged for Mariaitegui'sEuropean sojourn as an
"informationagent" for Peru, an officially scripted exile.
Mariaitegui'sEuropeanexperience proved fundamental to the development of his political thought, particularlyhis emergent Marxism.
This sojourn also vastly enriched his knowledge of contemporaryartistic movements and exposed him to the postwar avant-gardes at their
peak.9 He arrived in Paris at the time when dada founders, dispersed
from their Zurich center, were regrouping there and in Berlin. In Paris,
dada leader TristanTzara'sencounters with Andre Breton and Phillippe
Souppault were paving the way for the merger into surrealism. Mariategui's most significant Paris contact, however, was Henri Barbusse,
founder of the leftist group Clarte,to which many surrealistswere later
drawn. This association kept Mariateguiin touch with developments in
Frenchsurrealismeven after he returned to Peru.
Mariategui spent most of his time in Europe in Italy, where he
was exposed to the visual avant-gardesat the 1920InternationalExposition in Venice of works by major painters and sculptors. He developed
a strong admiration for the theater and narrativeof Pirandello, an enthusiasm that survived the latter's conversion to fascism. Shortly after
Mariateguiarrivedin Rome, he read the majorfuturist manifestoes and
heard futurist founder F. T. Marinettispeak. At the TeatroSperimentale
degli Indipendenti, founded by former futurist Antonio Bragaglia in
1922, Mariateguiattended performancesof plays by major modern dramatists and of futurist sintesi (brief, stylized compositions) and heard
musical experiments by FrancescoBalillaPratella,author of the Technical
Manifestoof FuturistMusic.
In 1923Mariaiteguiarrivedin Berlin, then a center for literaryand
visual expressionism, for the Berlinphase of dada and for the emerging
experimental theater of Erwin Piscatorand BertoltBrecht. There Mariategui met HerwarthWalden, editor of Der Sturm,with whom he corre48

MARIATEGUITSAESTHETIC THOUGHT

sponded after his return to Peru and whose work he published in

Amauta.He also visited Walden'sprivate galleries of contemporaryart,
which he later called one of the world's most "complete museums of
modern culture."10At Berlin'sCafe Schoteldam, Mariateguibecame acquainted with the satiricalpaintings of George Grosz, an artist he continued to admire, and he also attended performances of expressionist
drama. Although he canceled a projected trip to the Soviet Union, Mariategui began to follow developments in Russian postrevolutionaryvisual arts, literature, and film during this time. 'He also became interested in the progressive culturalpolicies of Anatol Lunatcharsky,whom
he praised for keeping the USSR open to cubist, expressionist, and
futurist experiments. Mariategui later observed approvingly that nowhere did the arts of the avant-gardes receive greater official encouragement than in the Soviet Union of Lunatcharsky'sera (1:114).
Mariategui'sItalian chronicles appeared in Lima's El Tiempobetween 1920 and 1922, and a few of them addressed artistic topics such
as futurism. When he returned to Limain 1923, however, he undertook
a serious analysis of the European avant-gardes in various forums: in
his articles for Mundialand Variedades,
in the regular literarydiscussion
groups held in his home between 1924 and 1926, and in the pages of
Amautafrom 1926 to 1930. Mariaiteguipredicted in 1924 that the playful dimension of the new art, its cosmopolitan "pirouettes,"would not
take root in the New World, but he perceived a potential source for
Latin America's cultural development in vanguardism'scritical power
and creative spirit (11:19). For this reason, he actively encouraged and
supported every group, artist, and ephemeral magazine in Peru and
many throughout Spanish Americathat called themselves innovative or
avant-garde.In Peru most of these publications appeared between 1926
and 1930, coinciding with the life span of Amauta.Those published in
Lima were edited by friends or acquaintanceswhom Mariateguiknew
through political activities or the literarygatherings in his home.1"The
work of a small number of people, several of whom were involved in
forming Peru'semerging leftist parties, these magazines combined literary experiments in the vanguardist mode with Americanist, Peruvianist, or indigenista cultural politics.12Mariaiteguiencouraged these activities editorially in the pages of Amautaand also through personal
correspondence. He gave even stronger support to individual Peruvian
artists whose work was highly innovative or influenced by the literary
avant-gardes.13He also directed generally favorable attention toward
selected Hispanic vanguardists outside Peru, although he did not analyze their aesthetic positions with the same rigor to which he subjected
the European movements.14
Although Mariategui's support of self-designated vanguardist
artists and activities transcended ideological affiliations, his assessment
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LatinAmericanResearchReview
of the pertinence of the European avant-gardes to Latin America provided a focal point for his inquiry into the relationship of art to social
life. Unlike Marinetti, Breton, or Huidobro, Mariategui was neither a
"believer"in vanguardism nor a promoter of a specific aesthetic creed.
Rather,he viewed the avant-gardesas the most important aesthetic development of the postwar era. He wrote in 1924, "Los mas grandes
artistas contemporaneos son, sin duda, los artistas de vanguardia"
(6:63).He later submitted that because art was a barometerof the times,
the avant-gardesin their playful and iconoclasticmodes were the "quintessence" of the same declining bourgeois society whose artisticexpectations they sought to attack. But the attack on bourgeois art, Mariaitegui asserted, could be in intent as well as outcome either reactionary,
leading to an extreme aestheticist posture of art for art's sake or the
"decadence" of mere "formal conquests," or revolutionary, posing a
reconstructionof positive culturalvalues (6:18-22).
Mariateguibelieved that the avant-gardemovements were coherent, despite their internecine differences and chaotic dempnstrations:
"Elproceso del arte moderno es un proceso coherente, logico, organico,
bajo su apariencia desordenada y anarquica" (6:63). He also viewed
these movements as constructive and integrative: "El cubismo, el dadafsmo, el expresionismo, al mismo tiempo que acusan una crisis anuncian una reconstruccion"(6:19).Although each avant-gardetendency in
isolation might not present a specific new formula for art, each proin the elaborationof
vided a different "element,""value,"or "1principle"
an integrated whole (6:19). Although Mariateguioccasionally defended
the playful dimension of modern art and confessed personal delight in
savoring its offerings like "bonbons" (12:109), he perceived a serious
purpose in its experiments. "Aunquetengan todo el aire de cosas grotescas," he wrote, "se trata, en realidad, de cosas serias" (6:69). His
exegesis of vanguardism was therefore directed toward discerning its
coherent, constructive, and integrative elements as well as the substance of its criticalpotential and "revolutionaryspirit."In Mariategui's
view, these qualities had been announced by dada but had culminated
in surrealism. Through this analysis, he graduallydeveloped a concept
of an "authentic"or "comprehensive"vanguardism, which was epitomized in his mind by some of his favorite artists like Mayakovsky,
Grosz, and Vallejo.Their art constituted an original and eclectic synthesis of many vanguardist techniques, Mariategui suggested, and was
motivated by a unifying and constructivelycriticalworldview.15
Amauta'sfirst issue cast its own vanguardism in similarlyeclectic
terms: "Estudiaremostodos los grandes movimientos de renovacionpoliticos, filosoficos, artfsticos,literarios,cientificos. Todolo humano es
nuestro."'16Artistic material always made up a significant portion of
Amauta'sofferings-even after its commitment in 1928to more explicitly
50

MARIATEGUITSAESTHETIC THOUGHT

political ends. But a certain anti-aestheticism was implicit even in the

review's initial position, which placed art on an equal footing with
other intellectual activities as only one of several endeavors to be undertakenby Peru's"hombresnuevos." The title of Mariaitegui'sessay on
Peruvian literature, "El proceso de la literatura,"reveals a good deal
about his views on the artistic issues of his time. As he explained, he
was employing the word procesoin its forensic sense, thus affirming
that in his examination of Peruvian materials, and by extension in his
commentaries on the avant-gardes, he was placing literature, or art itself, under scrutiny and on trial. For Mariategui, that critical process
addressed three fundamental issues, which will be examined here: the
mimetic connection, or art's relationship to reality; divisions and connections between artists and their public and between high art and
popular culture;and the implicationsof vanguardismfor creatinga new
Peru.
MARIATEGUI S CRITICAL READING OF THE AVANT-GARDES

Art and Reality

One unifying thread in the internationalavant-gardeproject was
its attack on conventions of representation. Underlying visual and verbal experiments was a rejection of referential mimesis, an antipathy
toward narrative, and a loss of faith in the cognitive power and vitality
of Cartesian discourse. The avant-gardes' antimimetic stance was a
legacy of the romantictraditionand turn-of-the-centurysymbolism, but
it differed from these movements in conception and intent, if not always in results. For example, Chile's Vicente Huidobro, whose work
bridged the avant-gardesof the Old Worldand the New, affirmedin his
1914Non serviammanifesto that young poets should turn their backs on
both nature and literary tradition to create an autonomous world.17 At
this point, he was still writing within the aestheticist tradition of the
poete maudit. In contrast, futurists, dadaists, and surrealists alike affirmed that in rejecting representation, they were turning toward reality, not away from it. "Ilove nature but not its substitute,"wrote dada
artist Hans Arp in opposing the artisticpracticesof naturalism.'8
The denigration in Mariaitegui'swritings of the scientific and the
rationalin favor of the intuitive, the unconscious, and the metaphysical
can be traced in part to the diverse antipositivist, vitalist turn-of-thecentury philosophical currents that shaped his intellectual development, but this attitude also constitutes one of his strongest ties to the
avant-gardes. Rationalism, the foundation of the postwar bourgeois
world in decline, had served only to discredit the rationalist project
with its "paradojicaeficacia de conducir a la humanidad a la desconso51

LatinAmericanResearchReview
lada conviccion de que la Razon no puede darle ningun camino" (3:23).
Declaring that the era of Descartes had ended, Mariaiteguicelebrated
the demise of the "mediocrepositivist edifice" (3:26)and characterized
his own age as antirationalistand "shaken by the strong currentsof the
irrational and the unconscious" (7:39). Agreeing with the surrealists,
Mariateguiaffirmedthat reinstatingthe fictitious, the irrational,and the
fantastic would reintegrateart with life: "Elarte se nutre de la vida y la
vida se nutre del arte" (6:186). His vitalist declaration that art was a
symptom of the "plentitude of life" (6:186)was comparablein spirit to
Berlin dada founder RichardHulsenbeck's account of his simultaneous
poems as nothing more than a "hurrah for life!"19Mariategui also
praised the French surrealistsfor having paved the way for the "recovery of the superreal" (6:178)and suggested that the demise of artistic
realism had actually facilitated knowledge of reality and energized
man's relationship to the world. Once liberated from the "trammelof
verisimilitude," artists would be free to launch themselves into the
"conquest of new horizons" (6:24).
Internationalvanguardism blamed art's distortion of human experience not only on mimetic realismbut also on the institutionalization
of art itself, particularlyliterature.TristanTzaracharacterizedliterature
as "a note of human imbecility to aid future professors,"20while Breton
described it as "one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.",21
WalterBenjamin'slandmarkessay, "The Workof Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"posited that the work of art, having gradually
lost all claims to authenticity or uniqueness, had relinquished in the
modem era the remnants of its ritual or sacred function, its distance
from ordinary life or "aura."22But the avant-gardes' response to the
demise of the aura of art was actually equivocal. In reacting against
aestheticism, vanguardistsattackedart'sdistance from everyday life. As
alternativesto the concept of an organic work of art, their decontextualized "works"parodied art's techniques and questioned its status.23Yet
by setting the search for primaryexperience against the mediated quality of mimetic activity, they created a new myth of the authenticity and
originality of art, an aura of immediacy rather than of distance. This
quest for unmediated experience was manifested in denigrating the
verbal, particularlythe discursive, and favoring the visual, either directly by suppressing narrativein the visual arts or by emphasizing the
visual and synthetic aspects of verbal art. "No more words," proclaimed TristanTzara,24as the futurist sintesi, the multigeneric collage
form Merz of dada, and the unexpected surrealist metaphor all sought
the imminence of (in)sight.
Mariategui, who has been called the WalterBenjamin of Latin
Americanletters,25also recognized that the avant-gardeswere attacking
art as an institution. He observed that ultramodern aesthetic experi52

MARIATEGUIIS AESTHETIC THOUGHT

ments arose from a conception of art that was "absolutely diverse"

(6:64)and that the dada reaction against contemporaryart'sintellectualism contained the "germs of a new aesthetic" (6:43).But he was drawn
far more toward the avant-gardeimpulse to recreateart'saura through a
new idea of authenticity than toward the critique of aura implicit in
verbal gymnastics and decontextualized works. Mariaiteguirecognized
the critiqueof aestheticism implicit in the avant-gardes'iconoclasm and
the attack on rationalism underlying linguistic experiments. He also
valued visual and verbal satire, as in the work of George Grosz. Elsewhere Mariategui affirmed the inextricablerelationship between form
and content (2:309)and conceded the criticalpower of "pure nonsense"
in his review of the work of Peruvianwriter MartinAdan (11:155).Nevertheless, Mariategui'swritings on art revealed a fundamental prejudice
against self-reflexivity,and he suggested that contemporaryart'sobsession with form as an end in itself was ultimately a sign of sterility and
decadence. Asserting art's proximity to the authenticity of life, he preferred art in which devices were not laid bare and the illusion of organicity was maintained. This preference can be detected in his review
of Soviet writer G. Ognev's Diario de Kostia Riabtzev:"La literatura
decadente y 'deshumanizada' nos ha habituado tanto al ruido de su
tramoyaque esta obra en la que funcionan silenciosamente las ruedas y
las poleas del artificio nos llega con la naturalidad de un mensaje directo de la vida" (7:110-11).
A sustained dichotomy emerged in Mariategui'sown discourse
between art as distorting artifice and art as primary or "organic"engagement with life. This contrast is reminiscent of avant-garderhetoric
affirming that language served both to deform the more primary activity of thought and to mask what might be more directly experienced
without it. Similarly,Mariateguiargued for art that would capture the
"living essence" of reality (7:23) and praised works that contained the
"smallest possible dose of literature" (7:110). He censured writers
whom he regarded as mere "artisansof the word" (1:172)while praising those like Vallejowho synthesized elements from symbolism, expressionism, dada, and surrealismbut also used a language divested of
"all rhetoricalornament" (2:310, 316). In his critique of verbal artifice,
Mariateguicharacterizedvisual experience as more immediate than verbal. He perceived this predilection in the avant-gardes,and it also permeated his own writing. For example, his observations on the Italian
landscape linked visual experience with intensity and authenticity but
traditional literary verbiage with artificialityand deceit. He asserted
that in order to know Italy "naked and living," he wished to see it
"without literature"and without the "ambiguous and captious lens of
erudition"(3:77-78).In Mariategui'sopinion, the desire to see the world
differently was the motivation behind avant-garde innovations in the
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Latin American ResearchReview

visual arts (6:62), and he suggested that synthetic principles had enriched verbal art as well. For example, the dramaticwork of Pirandello
and the futurist sintesi had eliminated traditionally "literary" and
"wordy" theater and created a more faithful apprehension of reality
(3:71). Similarly, the best silent films were those that almost totally
eliminated the verbiage of captions and relied instead on the immediacy of the image, like Charlie Chaplin's TheCircus,a work that Mariategui awarded his highest praise. He also commended the interactionof
the visual and the verbal in the poetic art of PeruvianJose Maria Eguren, in the synthetic poems of Argentine ultraistaOliverio Girondo, and
in the overpowering of words by image in the cinematographic techniques of Cendrars'sL'Or(6:114).
It must be kept in mind, however, that in Mariategui'sworldview, restoring experiential immediacy to art and achieving a productive interaction between the real and the fictitious were desirable because of their implications for pragmatic and metaphysical human
needs. He affirmed humanity's need for a metaphysical conception of
life (3:24) and manifested his intellectual kinship with the surrealists
who sought in their pursuit of the marvelous an intensification of human experience. Accordingly, Mariateguisuggested that a new art, divested of the rationalizationsof realism and the pretensions of aestheticism, ought to satisfy "man'sneed for the infinite" (3:23)and encourage
the development of a myth that might serve as an ideal, "una gran
ficcion que pueda ser su mito y su estrella" (6:24-25). This Sorelian
concept of the contemporaryworld's need for a "greatfiction" to overcome postwar skepticism is fundamental to Mariategui'sidea of art.
Furthermore,because he viewed his own era as revolutionaryand quixotic, it was the activist impulse of this search for a new faith that linked
his artistic agenda with that of the vanguardists who saw poetry as a
"fabulous form of action."26Mariateguiwrote, "Lavida, mas que pensamiento, quiere ser hoy accion, esto es combate" (3:17). Thus the activity of art was inextricably intertwined with the conduct of human
affairs, and for this reason, Mariategui'sassessment of the avant-gardes
returned repeatedly to his conception of art's engagement with social
life.
TheArtist and the Public:Bridgingthe "GreatDivide"
Although the relationship of artists and intellectuals to the public
they were addressing was called into question by the European avantgardes, the tone of this inquiry was often equivocal. The avant-gardes'
ideal of the new artist attacked the academic spirit of intellectual life as
well as the often megalomaniacalaestheticism of the poete maudit, the
visionary artist who had "often seen God face to face."27But the new
54

MARIATEGUI S AESTHETIC THOUGHT

model of the criticallyengaged artist was as ambiguous as the avantgardes' attitude toward the public, which it simultaneously assaulted
with invectives and unintelligible works and courted in attempting to
forge a new alliance. Andreas Huyssens, a contemporary theorist of
internationalvanguardism, recently coined the term "the great divide"
to describe the "volatile"quality that has characterizedthe relationship
between high art and mass culture since the mid-nineteenth century,
and more specifically, to designate the kind of critical discourse that
distinguishes between the two.28The avant-gardes'critique of aestheticism unquestionably attacked such dichotomies, but their attempts to
bridge the great divide often exacerbated the breach. For example, although the futurists provoked riots at their serate(evening demonstrations), they declared that their objective was to instill a "currentof confidence" in the audience.29 "We spit on humanity," the dadaists declared,30yet Tzaralater envisioned a messianic, transformationalunion
between artists and their knowledgeable public: "the wisdom of crowds
... joined with the occasional madness of a few delicious beings."31
Although the surrealists inherited the mystical legacy of the poete
maudit, they called for an art "capable of facing the breadth of the
street"32and affirmed that "poetrymust be understood by everyone."
As an incisive reader of the avant-gardes, Mariateguioften perceived these contradictions. He shared the rejection of the aestheticist
artist and the disengaged intellectual, however, and he spoke disparagingly of the secessionist spirit of the "morbidart of turn-of-the-century
literatiin whom a worn-out epoch is in decline" (3:160).In its overestimation of art and its "fondness for reclusion," the aestheticist ivory
tower had removed art from effective social engagement. Despite the
fact that aestheticism persisted in some postwar art, Mariategui believed that the attack upon cultural conservativism was the most salubrious feature of the avant-gardes. As alternatives to the traditional
"hierophants"and "priests" of high art, modem movements like expressionism and dada had promoted artists as latter-day jesters and
minstrels in an attempt to level hierarchies between artist and public
(6:65). Mariategui also praised futurism for having contributed to the
demolition of "the tedium of the academic, the old, and the known,"
which had isolated artists and intellectuals from the mainstreamof Italian life (15:221). But he concluded that the movement's mistake was
reinstituting the "artocracy,"or what Marinetticalled "the proletariatof
the gifted men in power."
According to Mariategui, the most isolating feature of the aestheticist worldview was its overestimation of the individual poetic subject, whose intimate psychological upheavals had provided art with its
center and its shape. He sometimes classified such art as "decadent,"
although he admired the subjectivityof writers like Andre Gide, Marcel
55

LatinAmericanResearchReview
Proust, and Sergei Eissenin and suggested their work was a key to
understanding their times. Mariategui also admired Freud, whom he
credited with having articulatedin scientific discourse what poets had
intuited through their art, and he agreed with the surrealists that exploring the unconscious might transformhuman experience. His objection to psychologism concerned its obsession with the isolated "case"of
the individual artist, a cloistering, self-reflexive tendency in contemporary art that he characterizedas "morbid,""sickly,"a "voluptuous laxity," "neurosis,"or "lassitude."In Mariategui'sopinion, such exaggerated subjectivity contributed to overestimation of the artist and an inflated judgment of art's place in society (1:198) and absorbed creative
energy that might otherwise be directed toward a positive engagement
with life.
On the face of it, Mariategui'sreactionagainst subjectivityconstitutes an essential point of contact with the avant-gardes in that the
decentering of the individual consciousness was a significant element
of the avant-gardeattack on both turn-of-the-centuryaestheticism and
the romantic tradition. The Technical
Manifestoof Futurismand Literature
urged artists to "destroy the I in literature,"35and dada linked the cult
of the individual to the decline of Westerncivilization. Similarly,Berlin
dadaist Hans Arp declared that man was "no longer to be the measure
of all things,"36and the surrealistscampaigned against "the narcissistic
individual, the one who has ... eaten up the universe..."37 But in
Mariaitegui'sview, the avant-gardes'censure of subjectivism was prone
to "relapses"into aestheticism: "Es frecuente la presencia de relajos de
decadencia en el arte de vanguardia hasta cuando superando el subjetivismo, que a veces lo enferma, se propone metas realmente revolucionarias"(6:21).The possibility of such revolutionarygoals implicit in the
avant-gardeproject was precisely what sustained Mariaitegui'sinterest,
particularlythe potential role for a new breed of artists or intellectuals
in bringing about change in Latin America. He often grouped traditional artists and intellectuals into a single category, disdaining the "bacillus of skepticism" that both groups had recently suffered and their
status as malcontents in conflict with life and history (3:35). Yet even
while Mariaiteguiaimed his most acerbic barbs at intellectuals and artists, he highly esteemed them, particularlythose whose divergent aesthetics or ideology made them impossible to categorize. He often wrote
of the emergence in a modern revolutionary era of "new men" who
would assume a more engaged role in contemporary events while
maintaining a criticalstance.
In his search for models for these "new men," Mariategui was
intrigued by the avant-gardes'exploration of the relationship of art to
politics. He insisted that no great artist had been apolitical in his pas56

MARIATEGUIIS AESTHETIC THOUGHT

sions and that man's indivisible spirit inevitably brought moral, political, and religious issues to bear on aesthetic, intellectual, and critical
activity, just as it had in Mariategui'sown development. But in the
practicalworld, he affirmed, cultural life and politics often operated in
separate domains. The futurists' error had occurred not in exploiting
the political ideals of art but rather in imagining that a committee of
artists could create a political doctrine (15:222).Similarly,intellectualsas
intellectuals could not engage in formulating a doctrinal line, which
was the function of political parties; the proper role of intellectuals in
such ventures was to contribute elements of "criticism,investigation,
and debate" (7:46). Mariategui'smodel for engaged intellectual critique
was Henri Barbusse'speriodical Monde,which was similar in intent to
Amauta.Among artists of the avant-gardes, the surrealist followers of
Andre Breton (who had neither fallen into the futurist trap of submitting politics to the "rulesand the tastes of art"nor confined their activities to "pure artistic speculation") exemplified the desired balance between aesthetic ideals and political commitment (6:47). According to
Mariategui,this connection between intellectual or culturalactivity and
politics would naturally be strengthened in revolutionary periods. He
wrote of art'srelationship to the Mexican revolution, "Elpoder de creacion es uno solo" (12:85). But he also emphasized that revolution was
not merely a material enterprise: "La Revolucion .

. sera para los po-

bres no solo la conquista del pan, sino tambien la conquista de la belleza, del arte, del pensamiento y de todas las complacencias del espiritu"(1:172).But even in service of the revolution, art would necessarily
function within its own domain: "a la revolucion, los artistas y tecnicos
le son mas uitiles y preciosos cuando mas artistas y tecnicos se mantienen" (3:336).
Mariateguibelieved that during eras of great social upheaval like
his own, the true vanguardists or "new men" were those who not only
sharpened the critical tools of their own disciplines through contact
with the most innovative trends but also sought to overcome the distance those disciplines often imposed from ordinaryhuman affairs.The
best artistic vanguardists (like Grosz, Girondo, Vallejo, and Diego Rivera) were those who synthesized the technical virtuosity of a range of
avant-garde styles while staying in touch with everyday experience.
Intellectual vanguardists were those who could somehow expose the
fictive status of human myths and at the same time overcome their own
skepticism and mitigate oppositions between mind and heart, critique
and commitment. For Mariategui, these passionate rationalists and
faithful skeptics included such figures as Der Sturm'sWalden, Barbusse,
Waldo Frank,Jose Ingenieros, Miguel de Unamuno, and Pedro Henriquez Urefia. The political impact of art and intellectual activity was to
57

LatinAmericanResearchReview
be founded not on their practitioners'participationin politicalparties or
elaborations of political doctrine but on their capacity to keep in touch
through their work with ordinary life.
The need to be in touch with popular culture lay at the heart of
Mariaitegui'sconception of the new intellectual and artist. But it is important to note that he held qualified views about the abilityof the mass
public to comprehend artisticcreation or criteria,and his own discourse
(like that of the avant-gardes)sometimes reinforced the idea of a moderate, if not great, divide. He suggested that the "common taste" had
always rejected the work of great artists initially and that the general
public, which possessed essentially classical tastes, denied the status of
art to the radically different spirit of modern works (6:64). Mariategui
also rejected as illusion the underlying premise of the more politicized
avant-gardes that an empowered proletariatcould immediately create
its own art. He praised Lunatcharskyfor preserving the "artisticpatrimony" of prerevolutionaryaristocraticand bourgeois culture as well as
for his efforts to educate the general public about art, and he affirmed
that art was a symptom of the plentitude of a social order (1:113-14).
Progress had always been achieved by the imaginative few (3:45), and
transformationalepochs required a creative and engaged elite, a team
of "heroicand superior men" (3:52)charged with increasing the public's
cultural awareness and encouraging the development of its aesthetic
talents. Lunatcharsky,as both a cultural guardian of tradition and an
ardent promoter of the artisticavant-gardes,was an exemplary member
of such an elite, whose function was both educational and creative and
whose ability to effect change depended upon a healthy relationship
with "the people."
But in Mariaitegui'swritings, "the people" constituted a multiform entity, reflecting his mixed views on this subject. On the one
hand, he saw the "unlettered man" as a "nonreflexive"believer, one
generally ill-equipped to discern the relativity of his own truths and
under some circumstances prey to fascist demagoguery. On the other
hand, Mariategui often spoke enviously of the ordinary person's capacity for commitment and action:
El hombre iletrado no se preocupa de la relatividad de su mito. No le seria
dable siquiera comprenderla. Pero generalmente encuentra, mejor que el literato y que el filosofo, su propio camino. Puesto que debe actuar,act&ia.Puesto
que debe creer, cree. Puesto que debe combatir, combate. Nada sabe de la
relativainsignificanciade su esfuerzo en el tiempo y en el espacio. Su instinto lo
desvia de la duda esteril. No ambiciona mas que lo que puede y debe ambicionar todo hombre:cumplirbien su jornada (3:33).

The connection between artists or intellectuals and the ordinary

public, however, could neither be forged through the political agenda
of an assemblage of aesthetes (15:222)nor be founded on a naive return
58

MARIATEGUI'S AESTHETIC THOUGHT

to the mimetic recipe directing artists to "depict the people" (6:33).

France'spopulist literarymovement in the Zola tradition offered nothing for the revolutionary artist or critic: "Sobre la mesa de trabajodel
critico revolucionario ...

un libro de Joyce sera en todo instante un

documento mas valioso que el de cualquierneo-Zola" (6:35).Mariategui

nevertheless considered a healthy connection with ordinary people to
be the source for art's organicityand its link with life, as evidenced by
his frequent employment of organicist metaphors in characterizingthis
relationship: "Ninguna literaturapuede vivir y crecer sin raices en una
sociedad y en un pueblo vivientes" (6:159).The common sources were
to be found in the artist'sintuition of people's deeper concerns, in the
"awareness of humanity" or the "experience or emotion of the world"
(3:120). "El artista,"Mariategui wrote, "que no siente las agitaciones,
las inquietudes, las ansias de su pueblo y de su epoca, es un artista de
sensibilidad mediocre, de comprension anemica"(15:222).In these declarations, his wording favored the collective over the individual dimension of such constructs as "the people" or "humanity."While the work
of a poet might express the emotions of a single person, the spirit of the
revolutionaryepoch made the expression of shared pain more pertinent
than the isolated emotional "case."Mariaiteguiobserved that Cesar Vallejo "siente todo el dolor humano. Su pena no es personal" (2:313).
Mayakovsky'spoetry expressed a "multitudinous faith" comparable to
an epic narrative(1:176),while the greatness of Pirandello'swork rested
in part on its having appropriatedthe life of the street: "Lacalle, o sea
el vulgo; o sea, la muchedumbre. La calle, cauce proceloso de la vida,
del dolor, del placer, del bien y del mal" (6:29).
Mariategui'sbelief in the organicity of art and in the need for a
creative elite suggests that he saw a more privileged role for artistic
activity than did the more iconoclastic avant-gardes.Yethis support for
art that had descended from the ivory tower to the pains and pleasures
of the street manifested the more egalitarian dimension of the avantgarde phenomenon. In his view, art could best serve its "hedonisticand
liberating function" by incorporatingthe great divide's polarities. This
kind of art would be simultaneously "rigorouslyaristocraticand democratic," qualities he found in Chaplin's work. Mariaiteguiwrote that
"Chaplinalivia, con su sonrisa y su traza dolidas, la tristeza del mundo.
Y concurre a la miserable felicidad de los hombres, mas que ningunos
de sus estadistas, filosofos, industriales y artistas" (3:74). But even if
Chaplin'supheavals and antics might alleviate the sadness of the world,
Mariategui'sgoals were more focused and less global, although certainly no less challenging, and they ultimately brought him (and his
analyses of the avant-gardes)much closer to home.

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LatinAmericanResearchReview
Agenda:Creatinga New Peru
An IndigenousAvant-Garde
The bold objective of Mariategui'sintellectual and political project was to create a new Peru, and the materialand ideological terms of
this enterprise were, in his view, both autonomously discrete and inextricablylinked. Realizing this goal would require not only a new Peruvian economy and social structure but also a new idea of Peru and
peruanidad.Considering the subject matter of the other six essays in the
collection that includes "El proceso de la literatura"(economics, the
Indian, the land, public instruction, regionalism, and centralism), critics have understandably wondered what possible connection Mariategui might have perceived between the experiments of the avant-gardes
and the urgent materialneeds of Peru'sIndians, peasants, and workers.
Critic Gerardo Goloboff and others have correctly suggested that the
avant-gardes provided a necessary link between Mariategui's social
thought and his aesthetic ideas.38 This connection has been explored
here thus far by analyzing his criticalexegesis of avant-gardediscourse,
particularlyits call for a more vital relationship between art and reality
and for more engagement by artists or intellectuals in the tribulationsof
the ordinary public. To discern the relationship of these ideas to the
specifics of the Peruvian situation, however, it is necessary to understand that Mariateguiviewed the ideological dimension of the projectof
a new peruanidad as a creative, critical undertaking in the hands of
Peru's "new men"-its engaged artists and intellectuals. It was primarily these people that he was addressing (those he knew as well as
those he hoped would emerge) in the title of his column "Peruanicemos
al Peru,"which appeared in Mundialfrom 1925 to 1929.
In Mariaitegui'sopinion, the new peruanidad was to be created
out of the interaction of the international and the modern with the
autochthonous and the traditional. This stance earned him harsh criticism from some contemporaries,particularlyAPRA founder VictorRautl
Haya de la Torreand his followers. During an era of intense nationalist
rhetoric, Mariateguiwas insisting on the importance of European intellectual and aesthetic trends for developing Latin American art and
thought. "No hay salvacion para Indo-Americasin la ciencia y el pensamiento europeos u occidentales," he wrote in the preface to his Siete
ensayos(2:12). Mariaiteguirepeatedly affirmed that for the postwar generation, the European experience had provided the means for Latin
America'sself-understanding and the stimulus for its best forms of artistic expression, as exemplified in the works of Vallejo, Rivera, Girondo, Borges, Jose Sabogal, and RicardoGuiraldes. Furthermore,one major path by which American and Peruvianartists were discovering their
own worlds was through avant-garde experiments. Mariategui suggested that the accusation that vanguardismwas not Peruvianwas sim60

MARIATEGUITS AESTHETIC THOUGHT

ply a reactionaryresponse to its criticalspirit. He cautioned nevertheless that the ideas and techniques of the European avant-gardes must
be appropriatedselectively; they should neither be aped uncriticallynor
be naively pressed into the service of "superamericanist"demagoguery
by those "provinciallypersuaded" of the originality and cultural authenticity of their "most mediocre rhapsodies" of European "isms"
(12:75).
Mariategui'sconception of the relationshipbetween international
vanguardism and the creation of the new peruanidad was shaped by
his view of nationalism. The nation, he affirmed, was itself a variety of
fiction whose relationship to reality was not fixed: "una abstraccion,
una alegoria, un mito, que no corresponde a una realidad constante y
precisa, cientificamente determinable" (2:235). By extension, the concept of a national art or literature was still not "excessively concrete"
(2:235).It was neither something fixed waiting to be discovered by Peruvian artists nor an autonomous essence independent of historical
contingencies. Instead, the new peruanidad was a "labor of creation"
(2:254),a criticaland creative enterprise to be shaped by a healthy interaction with reality using tools selectively appropriated from the European avant-gardes. "Lomas peruano, lo mas nacional del Peru contemporaneo es el sentimiento de la nueva generacion" (11:72).Yet national
feeling ought to be a fundamental element of any "positive and authentic vanguardism"(11:72).
Creating the new peruanidad would first require a break with
the literarymodels of the immediate past, and the iconoclastic spirit of
international vanguardism could provide a model for this step. The
aestheticist concept of an autonomous artist was a fairly recent idea in
Peru and LatinAmerica. It had emerged with turn-of-the-centurypoetic
movements (modernism in Spanish America and symbolism in Brazil)
and had been superimposed on a long-standing great divide between
learned and popular culture. This tension in Latin America between
what Mikhail Bakhtin would call centripetal (or normative) and centrifugal (or divergent) linguistic forces39was at one time characterizedby
Angel Rama as a continuing struggle persisting into modern times between the colonialist-shaped "lettered city" and the democratizing
forces within it.40
Mariategui affirmed that, with a few notable exceptions, Peruvian artistic and intellectual life was still tied to Spain by a "sickly umbilical cord" (2:24) and had extended colonialist relationships into the
early twentieth century. He posited three stages in a nation's cultural
development-the colonial, the cosmopolitan (allowing the influx of a
variety of internationaltrends), and the national-and he characterized
his own era as the beginning of Peru's cosmopolitan period. Yet he
believed that Manuel Gonzalez Prada, whose most importantwork had
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LatinAmericanResearchReview
predated World War I by two decades, had been the first to initiate
change in recommending that Peruvian art break with Spain and the
conservative Lima spirit, explore Peru'sindigenous traditions, seek linguistic renewal through popular sources, and search for new forms in
other literarytraditions.41Mariateguiand most of Peru'sself-designated
vanguardists therefore claimed Gonzalez Prada as a mentor for their
attack on the attempt to reinstate colonialist cultural ideals represented
by Lima's "futurist"generation.42An important member of this group
was Jose de la Riva Aguero, whose Caracterde la literaturadel Peruindependiente(1905) occasioned Mariategui'sessay on literature as a direct
response. According to Mariaitegui,Riva Agiueroand his contemporaries had helped to institutionalize Peruvian culture and literatureby establishing the Instituto Historico del Peru, the RevistaHistorica,and the
Academia Peruana de la Lengua, the Peruvian counterpart of Spain's
Academia Real de la Lengua. According to Mariategui, this approach
and much of the content of these efforts represented a restoration of
colonialist thinking, particularlyRivaAgiiero's thesis that advocated adhering to peninsular models, accepting the cultural hegemony of Europe and North America, and abandoning the concept of literaryAmer*icanism as mere exoticism.43
The first task before Peru'sand Spanish America'savant-gardes,
therefore, was to complete the "rupturewith the metropolis,"to divest
themselves of the colonialist aristocracy,and to refuse at all costs to
"make ourselves fiefs to Spain again" (12:117).Eliminatingcultural dependence would also requireabandoning the reactionaryarielistanotion
of Spanish America's Latin roots (3:148). Mariaiteguimore than once
compared the initial role of Peruvian vanguardism to that of early Italian futurism, before its avant-gardeshad become domesticated and had
sought to restore aestheticist goals.
The value of the avant-gardes for creating a new peruanidad,
however, went beyond the model they presented for ending cultural
dependence. Mariaiteguishared his contemporaries' attraction to Oswald Spengler'sNew Worldidealism and peppered his own assessment
of postwar European culture with Spenglerian metaphors: a decadent
civilization of "decrepitude"was facing its "twilight"and its "sunset."
Yet Mariategui often criticized his generation's utopian Americanism.
He insisted instead that there were no indications that whatever
emerged from a declining Westernbourgeois culture would exclude Europe or spring forth spontaneously from New World soil. He believed
that Jose Vasconcelos'sprophecy of an emerging Latin American cosmic
race was too utopian and that the concept of Spanish America was a
fashionable phantasm of intellectual and political rhetoric that had yet
to assume a coherent shape. In the case of Peru, the New World
seemed at times even more weary than the Old, laboring under a lassi62

MARIATEGUI'S AESTHETIC THOUGHT

tude that differed in kind from the self-reflexive skepticism of a declining West: "la pobreza, la anemia, la limitacion, el provincialismo del
ambiente, . . . el cansancio de los que no han hecho nada" (11:17-18).

Mariategui'shope was that such an enervated environment could draw

energy from the vitalist and liberationist metaphors of vanguardism,
which encouraged artists to be "superiorto all limitations"(11:79).
Mariategui suggested that, to some extent, the liberating power
of art could be tapped by deploying technical innovations of the avantgardes, as demonstrated by the work of Sabogal, Girondo, and Vallejo.
But Mariategui also insisted on the need for an original spirit. As art
critic Rosalind Krauss has pointed out, within international vanguardism, "originality"was a fiction of a special kind, "conceived as a literal
origin, a beginning from ground zero, a birth."In this process, "originality becomes an organicist metaphor referringnot so much to invention as to sources of life."44Interestingly, Mariaiteguirecognized the
fictive quality of vanguardism's metaphors of origin, as when he referred to futurism's"verbalillusion of inaugurating all things" (11:118).
He insisted that revolutionariesin both politics and art must realize that
history did not begin with them. At the same time, Mariateguivoluntarily subscribed to the illusion of inauguration, which he seemed to
believe had a salutary creative power. His own characterizationsof his
era, the new art, and the new peruanidad were cast in originist terms:
his was the age of the "dawning spirit";his generation was witnessing
"'theworld in gestation" and the "germinationof the New World"and
bringing about the "dawn" of Peruvian literature. By casting off the
skepticism of the Old World and eliminating all the "refuse" of bourgeois literature, artists could create works in which "artand the world
recover their innocence" (12:107).
In Peru, the originating space that could help create a new peruanidad was to be found in part by recovering the culturalorigins that
had been obscured by the colonialist experience. But while Mariategui
was unequivocally committed to creating a more equitable materiallife
and a more just environment for Peru'sIndian population, his support
of aesthetic indigenismowas circumspect. As has been shown here, in
the aesthetic domain, he favored the intuitive, the unconscious, and
the metaphysical over the scientific and the rational. This preference
drew him toward the avant-gardes'antirationalistdimension, a feature
of European vanguardism sometimes manifested in the cultivation of
primitivist art forms. But Mariateguisuggested that this primitivistimpulse was often merely a form of exoticism, an extension of the romantic tradition, and one more manifestation of cultural decadence. Such
exoticist views of Latin America had led to ridiculous demands that
Peru's Parisian-based surrealist poet Cesar Moro produce work with
indigenous themes. While distinguishing indigenist art from indige63

LatinAmericanResearchReview
nous art (which would be produced only when Indians themselves created it), Mariateguiproposed that Peru's new artists could acquire an
original creative spirit from mestizo and indigenous cultures.
In keeping with his rejection of conventional realism, Mariategui
cautioned that this approach did not mean merely using the Indian as a
picturesque type, motif, or character.Instead, a creative myth for the
new peruanidad, an originating"mood"could be gleaned by intuitively
apprehending indigenous life and thought (2:328)."Si el indio ocupa el
primer plano en la literaturay el arte peruanos," he wrote, "no sera'
seguramente por su interes literarioo plastico, sino porque las fuerzas
nuevas y el impulso vital de la nacion tienden a reivindicarlo.El fenomeno es mas instintivo y biologico que intelectual y teorico"(2:333).By
apprehending the "intimateindigenous truth,"artists would communicate the poetic and the metaphysical (not the historical) truths of that
world, as well as its more universal "cosmic sentiment" (11:63-64). But
the purpose of artistic indigenismo, Mariateguicautioned, was not for
artists to bury themselves in tradition to extract lost emotions from
some "obscuresubstratum"(2:310),and he parted company with indigenist writers like Luis Valcaircelwho suggested a total rejection of
Western thought and a return to indigenous life. Rather, the "native
energy" of indigenous cultures could help artists elaborate the great
myths of a new peruanidad (as Riverahad done with postrevolutionary
Mexican art) and thus create an art more organicallyjoined to the realities of life in Peru.
"El literato peruano," Mariategui wrote, "no ha sabido nunca
sentirse vinculado al pueblo. No ha podido ni ha deseado traducir el
penoso trabajo de formacion de un Peru integral, de un Peru nuevo"
(2:242). Connections between Peruvian art and Peruvian experience
were to be created by Peru's"new men" not only through the pursuit of
myths linking artistic originality to origins but also through forms divested of literaryartificiality.In keeping with the preference for "natural" language over verbal artifice and the belief that the art of his era
should express a "multitudinous"experience, Mariateguiproposed that
Spanish America and Peru's literary vanguardists could bridge the divide that had traditionallyseparated them from everyday experience by
employing vernacularlanguage. All classical national literatures, he affirmed, had originated with the language of the street. The Peruvian
writers who had contributedmost to the creationof a national literature
were those who, irrespective of the quality of their art, had kept in
touch with its popular linguistic sources: Abelardo Gamarra (el Tunante) through his use of street language, Ricardo Palma through his
popular tone, and Mariano Melgar for his "plebeian turns of phrase"
and his "streetlikesyntax." Thus popular language both originated national literaturesand provided the perpetual source of literary innova64

MARIATEGUITSAESTHETIC THOUGHT

tion. Consequently, Gonzalez Prada should be regarded as the initiator

of Peruvianmodernity both because he had sought formal innovations
in a range of internationalcurrents and because he had supported linguistic renewal through popular sources. The innovative potential of
popular language had been exploited by even the most cosmopolitan of
Spanish America'svanguardistpoets, among them Borges, one of those
most "saturated by Occidentalism and modernity" who frequently
adopted the "prosody of the people" (2:244). But because Mariaitegui
preferred art that maintained an aura of authenticity, he believed that
popular language was most effective when it emerged from an organic
connection with its sources. Thus Vallejo'suse of the "vernacularturn"
was considered the most authentic because it was neither deliberatenor
studied: "su poesia y su lenguaje emanan de su carne y su anima"
(2:310).Through more direct contact with indigenous and popular languages and cultures, contemporaryartists could draw closer to the social realities of Peru and create a "more fertile"human art.
CONCLUSION

Mariategui'sassiduous analyses of the avant-gardes were germane to the development of his ideas about art and to his interrogation
of art'sstatus as a culturalinstitution. These investigations of vanguardism shaped his approach to several problems: first, the relationship of
artisticrepresentationto human experience and this connection'simplications for the aura and organicity of art; second, the relationship between artistic or intellectual activity and the language, culture, and experience of ordinary people; and third, the potential of the new art's
modes and spirit for revitalizing Peruvian and Latin American culture
and forging a new sense of peruanidad in building a new Peru.
What is most interesting about Mariaitegui'sartistic criticism is
his resistance to the facile or doctrinaire response to the global questions that he posed. Although an intensely political person concerned
with the material sources of social problems, he was also a great lover
of art, fascinated by the hedonistic and liberating potential of human
creative energy, its capacity to express and alleviate "the sorrow of the
world," and its possible impact on social life. In the spirit of the avantgardes, Mariaitegui'scriticalproject placed art itself on trial but insisted
on maintaining for art, artists, and intellectuals a privileged, but less
self-isolating, space. Although Mariaiteguivalued the satirical and the
parodic, he preferred works of art that, notwithstanding technical experiment, maintained an illusion of organicity,an aura of presence, and
an autonomy of domain. He suggested that the best art, like the work
of Chaplin, was simultaneously aristocratic in its vanguardism and
democraticin its human spirit. Art's relationship to social reality ought
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LatinAmericanResearchReview
to be one of engaged autonomy: "Autonomia del arte, si, pero, no
clausura del arte" (6:47-48). But if artists and intellectuals in the revolutionary era of the 1920s were to abandon their aestheticist towers to face
the demands of the times, specifically the ideological project of creating
a new Peru, their attitude should nevertheless remain critical.Art, Mariaiteguiaffirmed, was "substantially and eternally heterodox" (6:64),
and the role of the most engaged artists or intellectuals in any social
cause would always be to provoke debate and critique.
Writing from the perspective of the third decade, Mariaitegui
viewed the twentieth century as one of cataclysmicchange, shaken by
"strongcurrents of the irrationaland the unconscious" (7:39).Ironically,
his premature death spared him many events that would have continued to test his ideas and ideals. It is difficult for the contemporary
reader not to speculate about how Mariateguimight have responded to
the problems of literatureand engagement in Latin America posed by
subsequent developments in both history and art. His views might
have undergone change, as did those of other politically committed
intellectuals of his time. But the legacy of Mariategui'swriting suggests
that, in keeping with his own idea of Peru's"new men," he would have
continued to eschew easy answers to hard questions, remaining steadfastly passionate in his reasonings and criticalin his faith.
NOTES
1.
2.

66

The last three issues of Amauta(numbers30-32) appeared after Mariategui'sdeath,

under the editorship of RicardoMartinezde la Torre.
Significantextensive studies of Mariategui'sliterarywork and views include Eugenio
Chang-Rodrfguez,Poeticae ideologiaen JoseCarlosMaridtegui(Madrid:Jose Porrua
Turanzas,1983);and the collection of criticalessays entitled Mariateguiy la literatura
(Lima:BibliotecaAmauta, 1980),edited by the Centrode Documentaci6ny Estudios
"JoseCarlos Mariategui"under the direction of RicardoLuna Vegas. Seminal work
has been done by Antonio Melis, whose "Medio siglo de vida de Jose Carlos
Mariategui"appears in Mariateguiy la literatura(125-35); other important pieces
include his excellent introductoryessay to the anthology of Mariategui'sliterary
writings, Criticaliteraria:
JoseCarlosMaridtegui(BuenosAires: EditorialJorgeAlvarez,
1969), 7-45; his introduction to Mariategui'sCorrespondencia
(1915-1930)(Lima:BibliotecaAmauta, 1984);and "Estetica,criticaliterariay politicaculturalen la obra de
Jose Carlos Mariategui:apuntes," Textual,no. 7 (June 1973):66-69. Other studies
dealing with selected elements of Mariategui'sliterary thought include Eugenio
Chang-Rodriguez,"Poeticay marxismoen Mariategui,"Hispamerica
12, nos. 34-35
(Apr.-Aug. 1983):51-67;G. M. AguirreCardenas,"Laestetica de Jose CarlosMariaRevistade Filosofia,Psicologiay Arte(1970):53-65;PeterG.
tegui," TEQSEIFundamento:
Earle, "Ortegay Gasset y Mariateguifrente al arte nuevo," in Homenajea Luis Leal:
estudiossobreliteraturahispanoamericana,
edited by Donald W. Bleznick and Juan 0.
Valencia(Madrid:Insula, 1978), 115-27; ElizabethGarrels,"Mariategui,la edad de
piedra y el nacionalismoliterario,"Escritura1, no. 1 (1976):115-28;Diego Meseguer
Illan, "JoseCarlosMariateguiy el realismoliterariomarxista,"Textual,nos. 5-6 (Dec.
1972):9-12;YerkoMoretic, JoseCarlosMaridtegui:su vida e ideario,su concepci6ndel
realismo(Santiago,Chile:Edicionesde la UniversidadTecnicadel Estado, 1970);and
Antonio Pages Larraya,"Mariateguiy el realismomagico,"Cuadernos
Hispanoamericanos, no. 325 (July 1977):149-54.

MARIATEGUIIS AESTHETIC THOUGHT

See, for example, Luis Mongui6'sLapoesiapostmodernista

peruana(Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1954):"la influenciaque, sin llegar a esos extremos de exito
en el proselitismo, ejercieronMariateguiy Amautaen el vanguardismoperuano fue
tal que esta etapa de la literaturaperuanabien pudiera llamarseel 'ciclo'o el 'clima'
de Amauta"(pp. 84-85).
4. For examinationsof Mariategui'sunorthodox approach to politicalideology, see Jesus Chavarria,lose CarlosMaridteguiand the Rise of ModernPeru(1890-1930)(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979);and Harry E. Vanden, National
Marxismin LatinAmerica:JoseCarlosMariategui's
Thoughtand Politics(Boulder,Colo.:
Lynne Rienner,1986).Forcommentaryon Mariategui'slack of orthodoxyin the arts,
see Antonio Melis's and Eugenio Chang-Rodriguez'swork and Gerardo Mario
y la
Goloboff, "Mariateguiy el problemaestetico literario,"in Luna Vegas, Maridtegui
literatura,109-23.
5. Peter Burger,Theoryof theAvant-Garde,
translatedby MichaelShaw, vol. 4 of Theory
andHistoryof Literature
(Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1984), 56.
6. The group and its aesthetic position were often identified either with the name of
in Mexico, Amautain
the magazine (MartinFierroin Buenos Aires, Contempordneos
in Brazil),or with
Lima, Revistade Avancein Havana,Klaxonor RevistadeAntropofagia
a specific ismo (agorismoand estridentismoin Mexico, ultrafsmoin Argentina,
in Brazil,
euforismo,diepalismo,and atalayismoin Puerto Rico, verdeamarelismo
runrunismoin Chile, and postumismo
in the DominicanRepublic).In a few cases, the
and
ismowas the aesthetic projectof one individual, as with Huidobro'screacionismo
PeruvianAlbertoHidalgo'ssimplismo.
7. Comprehensivecharacterizationsof LatinAmerica'savant-gardesinclude MerlinH.
Forster,"LatinAmerican Vanguardismo:
Chronology and Terminology,"in Tradition
andRenewal(Urbana:Universityof IllinoisPress, 1975),12-50;Noe Jitrik,"Papelesde
trabajo: notas sobre la vanguardia latinoamericana,"Revista de Critica Literaria
Latinoamericana
8, no. 15 (firstsemester 1982):13-24;KlausMuller-Bergh,"Elhombre
y la tecnica:contribuci6nal conocimientode corrientesvanguardistashispanoamericanas," RevistaIberoamericana
48, nos. 118-19 (Jan.-June1982):149-76;Julio Ortega,
"Laescriturade vanguardia,"RevistaIberoamericana
45, nos. 106-7 (Jan.-June1979):
187-98;Nelson Osorio, "Parauna caracterizaci6nhist6ricadel vanguardismoliterario,"RevistaIberoamericana
48, nos. 118-19 (Jan.-June1982):227-54;Hugo Verani,Las
literariasen Hispanoamerica
vanguardias
(Rome:Bulzoni Editores, 1986), especially the
introductorystudy; and SauilYurkievich,"Losavataresde vanguardia,"RevistaIberoamericana
48, nos. 118-19 (Jan.-June1982):351-66,and selected essays in his A traves
de la trama:sobrevanguardias
literariasy otrasconcomitancias
(Barcelona:MuchnikEditores, 1984).
8. Jose CarlosMariategui,Correspondencia
(1915-1930),edited by Antonio Melis, 2 vols.
(Lima: BibliotecaAmauta, 1984), 2:331. The translationwas taken from Vanden's
NationalMarxismin LatinAmerica,113.
9. The primary source on Mariategui'sEuropean experience is his own collection of
cr6nicasand articles published in Lima'sEl Tiempofrom 1920 to 1922, which have
de
been reprintedas Cartasde Italia,volume 15 of the twenty-volume Obrascompletas
Jose CarlosMariategui(Lima: BibliotecaAmauta, first editions published between
1957and 1970).The most comprehensivestudies of his Europeanexperienceinclude
EstuardoNuinez'sLaexperiencia
europeade JoseCarlosMaritteguiy otrosensayos(Lima:
EmpresaEditoraAmauta, 1978) and Bruno Podesta'sMariateguien Italia(Lima:BibliotecaAmauta, 1981).
10. Obrascompletasde JoseCarlosMariategui,20 vols., vol. 6 (9th ed.), 81. Subsequent
citationsfrom Mariategui'swork will be documented directlyin the text accordingto
volume and page numbers of the following editions of individual volumes of the
Obrascompletas:vol. 1, La escenacontempordnea
(12th ed.), 1983;vol. 2, 7 ensayosde
de la realidadperuana(22nd popular ed.), 1982;vol. 3, El almamatinal(8th
intepretaci6n
ed.), 1983;vol. 6, El artistay la epoca(9th ed.), 1983;vol. 7, Signosy obras(6th ed.),
1980;vol. 11, Peruanicemos
al Peru(7th ed.), 1981;vol. 12, Temasde nuestraAmerica
(7th ed.), 1980;and vol. 15, Cartasde Italia(5th ed.), 1980. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translationsare my own.
3.

67

LatinAmericanResearchReview
11. In addition to Amauta,other Peruvianvanguardistmagazines include the eight issues of Poliedro(Aug.-Dec. 1926), edited by Armando Bazan;the four-issue series
Trampolin-Hangar-rascacielos-Timonel
(Oct. 1926-Mar. 1927), edited by Magda Portal
and Serafin Delmar;the two issues of Guerrilla(1926), edited by BlancaLuz Brum
Parradel Riego;the single issue of Hurra(1927),edited by CarlosOquendo de Amat;
the thirty-fiveissues of the BoletinTitikaka(1926-1930),edited in Puno by brothers
AlejandroPeraltaand GamalielChurata;and the seven issues of Chirapu(Jan.-July
1928),edited in Arequipaby Antero PeraltaVasquez.
12. For more detailed accounts of the literaryactivities, little magazines, and cultural
politics of Peru's avant-gardeperiod, see Wilfredo Kapsoli, "Prospectodel grupo
'Los Zurdos' de Arequipa,"Revistade CriticaLiterariaLatinoamericana
10, no. 20 (second semester 1984):101-11;MirkoLauer,"Lapoesia vanguardistaen el Peru,"Revista
de CriticaLiterariaLatinoamericana
8, no. 15 (first semester 1982):77-88;chap. 3 of
Mongui6, El vanguardismo
en la poesiaperuana,60-86; chap. 2 of my dissertation,
"The Avant-Gardein Peru:LiteraryAesthetics and CulturalNationalism,"University of Texas,1984;and David Wise, "Vanguardismoa 3800metros:el caso del Boletfn
Titikaka(Puno, 1926-1920),"Revistade CriticaLiterariaLatinoamericana
10, no. 20 (second semester 1984):89-100.
13. Peruvian writers who received Mariategui'ssupport were numerous: Jose Maria
Eguren, whom he regardedas a link between modernismo
and vanguardism;Alejandro Peralta(Ande, 1926);Carlos Oquendo de Amat (Cincometrosde poemas,1927);
surrealistsCesar Moro, XavierAbril, and Emilio Westphalen;MartinAdan (Lacasa
de cart6n,1928);and Cesar Vallejo.For accounts of Mariategui'sor Amauta'ssupport
of vanguardistactivitiesin Peru, see MirlaAlcibiades, "Mariategui,Amautay la vanguardia literaria,"Revistade CriticaLiterariaLatinoamericana
8, no. 15 (first semester,
1982):123-39;as well as EstuardoNnfiez, "JoseCarlosMariateguiy la recepci6n del
surrealismoen el Peru,"Revistade CriticaLiterariaLatinoamericana
3, no. 5 (first semester 1977):57-66;and the chapter "Amautaand the Art of the 1920s"in David
Wise, "Amauta(1926-1930):A CriticalExamination,"Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1978.
14. These writersincluded Spain'sRam6nG6mez de la Sernaand Guillermode la Torre,
Argentina'sOliverio Girondo and RicardoGuiraldes,Mexico'sManuel Maples Arce
and the estridentistas,and Mexico'sJaime TorresBodet and the Contemporaneos
associated with the review Contempordneo.
15. Other "complete"vanguardistsfor Mariateguiincluded Phillippe Souppault, Andre
Breton, Blaise Cendrars,and EmilioPetto Rutti.
16. "Presentaci6nde 'Amauta,"'Amautano. 1 (Sept. 1926):1.
17. Obrascompletasde VicenteHuidobro,2 vols., edited by BraulioArenas (Santiago:ZigZag, 1964), 1:653-54.
18. Notesfroma DadaDiary, translatedby Eugene Jolas in TheDadaPaintersand Poets,
edited by RobertMotherwell(New York:Wittenborn,Schulz, 1951), 222.
19. En AvantDada:A Historyof Dadaism(Hanover, 1920), translatedby RalphManheim,
in DadaPaintersandPoets,36.
20. "Note on Poetry,"translatedby Mary Ann Caws in TristanTzara:Approximate
Man
and OtherWritings(Detroit,Mich.: WayneState University Press, 1973), 169.
21. Manifestoof Surrealism,translatedby RichardSeavarand Helen R. Lane, in Manifestoesof Surrealism(Ann Arbor:Universityof MichiganPress, 1969), 30.
22. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"translated by Harry
Zohn, in Illuminations,
edited by Hannah Arendt (New York:Shocken Books, 1969),
223-24.
23. Foran analysis of the avant-gardes'attackon the notion of the organic work of art,
see the chapter "The Avant-GardisteWorkof Art," in Burger, Theoryof the AvantGarde,55-82.
24. "Manifestoof mr. aa. the anti-philosopher,"from the Seven Dada Manifestoes,in
Motherwell,DadaPaintersandPoets,84.
25. See RobertoGonzalez Echevarria,The Voiceof the Masters:Writingand Authorityin
ModernLatinAmericanLiterature
(Austin:Universityof TexasPress, 1985), 34.

68

MARIATEGUIIS AESTHETIC THOUGHT

26. TristanTzara, "Note on Poetry,"translatedby Mary Ann Caws, TristanTzara:Approximate

Man, 169.
27. GuillaumeApollinaire,ThePoetAssassinated,translatedby RogerShattuck,in Selected
Writingsof GuillaumeApollinaire(New York:New Directions, 1971), 259.
28. Andreas Huyssens, After the GreatDivide:Modernism,Mass Culture,Postmodernism
(Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1986), vii-viii.
29. Fillippo TommasoMarinetti, with Emilio Settimelli and Bruno Corra, The Futurist
SyntheticTheatre,in Marinetti:SelectedWritings,translatedby R. W. Flint and Arthur
A. Cappotelli, edited by R. W. Flint (New York:Farrar,Strauss, and Giroux, 1972),
128.
30. Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes,Historyof Dada, translated by Ralph Manheim, in
DadaPaintersandPoets,109.
31. SeedsandBran,translatedby MaryAnn Caws, in TristanTzara:Approximate
Man, 215.
32. Andre Breton, "WhatIs Surrealism,"translatedby David Gascoyne, in WhatIs Surrealism:Worksof AndreBretonand OtherDocumentsof Surrealism,edited by Franklin
Rosemont (New York:PathfinderPress, 1978), 116.
33. Breton, "The SurrealistSituation of the Object,"in Seavarand Lane, Manifestoesof
Surrealism,262.
34. Marinetti,BeyondCommunism,
translatedby Flint, in Marinetti:SelectedWritings,155.
35. Marinetti, Technical
Manifestoof FuturistLiterature,translatedby Flint, in Marinetti:
SelectedWritings,87.
36. Hans Arp, "Dadaland,"in Dadason Art, edited by Lucy Lippard(EnglewoodCliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1971), 27.
37. Rene Crevel, "Resumed'une conference,"from Le Surrealisme
au servicede la revolution, translationby Ana Balakian,in Surrealism:
TheRoadto theAbsolute(New York:
E. P. Dutton, 1957), 139.
38. See, for example, GerardoGoloboff, "Mariateguiy el problemaestetico literario,"in
Luna Vegas, Maridtegui
y la literatura,110.
39. MikhailBakhtin,"Discoursein the Novel," translatedby MichaelHolquistand Caryl
Emerson, in TheDialogicImagination,
edited by MichaelHolquist (Austin:University
of TexasPress, 1981), 272-73.
40. Angel Rama, La ciuidadletrada(Hanover, N.H.: Ediciones del Norte, 1984), particularly 23-39.
41. For Gonzalez Prada'sideas on language and literature,see "Discursoen el Teatro
Olimpo,""Conferenciaen el Ateneo de Lima,"and "Notasacercadel idioma,"all in
PdginasLibres/ Horasde Lucha,edited by Luis Alberto Sanchez (Caracas:Biblioteca
Ayacucho, 1976).
42. Issue 16 of Amauta(July 1928), dedicated to Gonzalez Prada,included essays on his
poetic work and his ideas.
43. See Jose de la RivaAgiuero,Cardcter
de la literaturadel Peraindependiente
(Lima,1905),
Volume 1 of the Obrascompletasde Josede la Riva Agiiero(Lima:Publicacionesdel
InstitutoRivaAguaero,1956).
44. See RosalindKrauss, "The Originalityof the Avant-Garde,"in TheOriginalityof the
and OtherModernistMyths(Cambridge,Mass.: MITPress, 1985), 157.
Avant-Garde

69