Manuel Maples Arce 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 , that Jorge Luis Borges criticized the same year; in 1924, Urbe , which English version, made by John Dos Passos, was publisheded in 1929 in New York ; 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, he was responsible for the magazines Actual and Irradiador, followed by Horizonte directed by his colleague German List Arzubide. Around Maples Arce, poets such as German List Arzubide, Salvador Gallardo and Kyn Taniya, novelists such as Arqueles Vela, and artists such 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. Maples Arce served as an ambassador to Norway in the 1960s.
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 literature, which are now better known. So it was an almost completely forgotten writer that the young Roberto Bolaño interviewed in 1976. He is referred to as a former avant-gardist poet in Bolaño's novel Los detectives salvajes, in which he appears as a character.
Spanish editions
A la orilla de este río, Madrid, Editorial Plenitud, 1964.
Andamios interiores , Mexico City, Editorial Cultura, 1922.
Antología de la poesía mexicana moderna, Rome, Poligráfica Tiberina, 1940.
Ensayos japoneses, Mexico City, Editorial Cultura, 1959.
El arte mexicano moderno, London, Zwemmer, 1945.
El paisaje en la literatura mexicana, Mexico City, Librería Porrúa, 1944.
Incitaciones y valoraciones, Mexico City, Cuadernos Mexicanos, 1957.
Urbe , cover and engravings by Jean Charlot, Mexico City, Andrés Botas e hijos, 1924.
Translations
English
Metropolis , translated by John Dos Passos, New York, The T. S. Book Company, 1929, p.; now in Jed Rasula and Tim Conley
Burning City : Poems of Metropolitan Modernity, Notre Dame, Action Books, 2012.
City, Bolshevik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos , 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 , bilingual and illustrated edition, organization, French translation, notes and afterword by Antoine Chareyre, Paris, Le Temps des Cerises, "Commun'art", 2013 .
Critical references
Flores, Tatiana. Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30-30!, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
Monahan, Kenneth Charles. Manuel Maples Arce and Estridentismo, Northwestern University, 1972.
Rashkin, Elissa J. The Stridentist Movement in Mexico: The Avante-Garde and Cultural Change in the 1920s, New York: Lexington, 2009.
Schneider, Luis Mario. El estridentismo o una literatura de la estrategia, México: Conaculta, 1997.
