García Lorca at the Edge of Surrealism: The Aesthetics of Anguish
examines the variations of surrealism and surrealist theories in the
Spanish context, studied through the poetry, drama, and drawings of
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). In contrast to the idealist and
subconscious tenets espoused by surrealist leader André Breton, which
focus on the marvelous, automatic creative processes, and sublimated
depictions of reality, Lorca's surrealist impulse follows a trajectory
more in line with the theories of French intellectuals such as Georges
Bataille (1897-1962), who was expelled from Breton's authoritative
group. Bataille critiques the lofty goals and ideals of Bretonian
surrealism in the pages of the cultural and anthropological review
Documents (1929-1930) in terms of a dissident surrealist ethno-poetics.
This brand of the surreal underscores the prevalence of the bleak or
darker aspects of reality: crisis, primitive sacrifice, the death drive,
and the violent representation of existence portrayed through formless
base matter such as blood, excrement, and fragmented bodies. The present
study demonstrates that Bataille's theoretical and poetic expositions,
including those dealing with l'informe (the formless) and the somber
emptiness of the void, engage the trauma and anxiety of surrealist
expression in Spain, particularly with reference to the anguish, desire,
and death that figure so prominently in Spanish texts of the 1920s and
1930s often qualified as "surrealist." Drawing extensively on the
theoretical, cultural, and poetic texts of the period, García Lorca at
the Edge of Surrealism offers the first book-length consideration of
Bataille's thinking within the Spanish context, examined through the
work of Lorca, a singular proponent of what is here referred to as a
dissident Spanish surrealism. By reading Lorca's "surrealist" texts
(including Poeta en Nueva York, Viaje a la luna, and El público) through
the Bataillean lens, this volume both amplifies our understanding of the
poetry and drama of one of the most important Spanish writers of the
twentieth century and expands our perspective of what surrealism in
Spain means.
