The crucified mind : Rafael Alberti and the surrealist ethos in Spain
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The crucified mind : Rafael Alberti and the surrealist ethos in Spain
(Colección Támesis, Serie A,
Tamesis, 2001
Available at 6 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [234]-241) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Alberti is the key in this study of the intense religious element in Spanish avant-garde poetry, art and film of the 1920s and '30s.
Why is the Spanish input to Surrealism so distinctive and strong? What do such renowned figures as Dali, Bunuel, Lorca, Aleixandre and Alberti have in common? This book untangles the issue of Surrealism in Spain by focusing on a consistent feature in Spanish avant-garde poetry, art and film of the late twenties and thirties: its supersaturation in religion. A repressive religious upbringing, typically under the Jesuits, intensifies both the paranoiac and the mystical - Surrealism's twin pillars - which were already deeply ingrained in the Spanish psyche. Striking examples are Lorca's prophetic voice in New York, Dali and Bunuel's Eucharistic transformations, Alberti's Loyolan materio-mysticism. Alberti is the fulcrum of this study since his poetry goes the full distance of Surrealism's evolution from Freudian catharsis to metaphysical transcendence until it expires in a Marxist reaction to church-bound tradition when his nation convulses in civil war, the surrealist ethos in Spain is not reducible to measuring how closely it imitates French theory. It is 'more serious' than the French, says Alberti, and its bearings are found on a cross of mental suffering and in a journey out of hell that made real art in practice.
ROBERT HAVARD is Professor of Spanish, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Table of Contents
- The crucified mind
- under the Jesuits
- last things first- scatology and eschatology
- from pain to prophect
- transubstantiation and metamorphosis
- come the revolution.
by "Nielsen BookData"