Sinergias: poesía, física y pintura en la España del siglo XX by Candelas Gala (review)

With Sinergias: Poesía, física y pintura en la España del siglo XX—a translation of Poetry, Physics, and Painting in Twentieth-Century Spain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)—Candelas Gala adds new and exciting dimensions to our reading of Spanish poetry of the 1920s and 30s. By examining selected works of seven poets of this era through the lens of science and the visual arts, the author illuminates aspects of canonical and lesser-known texts and integrates them into a larger cultural context. These poets were highly attuned to and informed of scientific theories and discoveries of the time, including Einstein's theory of relativity, field theory, electromagnetism, the fourth dimension, x-rays, light, and aspects of chaos theory. Although these concepts are not stated explicitly in the poetry, they provide the basis for the poets' approach to reality and the formulation of metapoetic statements.

The first chapter deals with three works by Pedro Salinas: Presagios (1924), Seguro azar (1924-28), and Fábula y signo (1931). A key term in the discussion of this poetry is trasrealidad, a perception of what lies beneath the surface of reality, which Gala links to the discovery of x-rays in particular, but also to the concept that matter is not as solid as it appears. She discusses light and shadow as they relate to words, employing the phrase le malentendu to describe the disguised and hidden connotations of words. She adduces the ideas of French physicist Henri Poincaré to explore various dimensions of "perceptual space" that provide depth and fullness in contrast with mere "geometric space." She also invokes the "radiant matter" of William Crooke and Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to question not only a superficial view of reality but also the blurred line between observer and observed, linking all of these approaches to reality with cubism. The many facets of this discussion demonstrate the density of the critic's analysis, the depth of her understanding of these concepts, and the acuity of her approach. The breadth of sources on which she calls is challenging and requires careful attention. However, when she applies these concepts to specific poems, the reader can appreciate the revelation of added depth and meaning in the poetry.

Chapter 2 explores Jorge Guillén's approach to reality in Cántico, which is reminiscent of the non-atomistic perspective in physics as well as the role of sensations and the fusion of observer and observed. Guillén's exploration of reality has metapoetic dimensions in which words and things grow out of one another reciprocally. Gala calls on the concept of field theory and "radiant material" to show how Guillén captures the energy of light in particular but also goes beyond the surface of reality to perceive an inner energy that radiates from the world around him. She also refers to the Uruguayan painter Rafael Barradas's vibracionismo, akin to cubism and futurism, based on the experiments on electricity carried out by Hertz as well as the discovery of x-rays by Roentgen and of radioactivity by Becquevel. Relying on the theories of Ernst Mach, Gala contradicts the inveterate interpretation of Guillén's poetry as static. The poet's attention to details attests to the vividness of his perceptions and sensations, fusing observer and observed.

The poetry of Juan Larrea provides the material for analysis in the third chapter. Using Larrea's intellectual diary Orbe as a complement, Gala examines the poems Larrea wrote between 1919 and 1932, which he collected under the title of Versión celeste. Larrea was engaged in a search for meaning and structure in what he viewed as the disintegration of his sense of self and "las asfixiantes situaciones personales, sociales y artísticas que estaba experimentando en España" (122). He was particularly attracted to the structure of the atom and to the concept of the fourth dimension. As Gala explains, Larrea created the...