Bodies in Motion: Spanish Vanguard Poetry, Mass Culture, and Gender Dynamics (review)

Cole Porter may not have gotten a kick from cocaine or flying high in the sky, but his lyrics from the 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes reflect the lifestyle of flappers, jazz, and excesses of the "roaring" twenties and early thirties in the United States and Europe. Because of the Hays Code, Porter was forced to substitute the first line of "Some get a kick from cocaine / I'm sure that if / I took even one sniff / That would bore me terrifically, too" with "Some like the perfume in Spain." The new verse, while less risqué, includes the notion that Spain also was reveling in the frenzied felices veinte. Against this cultural backdrop, Bodies in Motion evaluates the historical context of Spanish Vanguard poetry and the amazing changes in social activities and gender dynamics that it represents.

Bodies in Motion celebrates this joyous movement and its interaction with poetry in three thematic categories: dance, sports, and mechanical marvels. Youth from well-heeled families were getting their kicks from dancing at the new Ritz hotel, the Residencia de Estudiantes, and the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Couples from all walks of life were dancing (together!) at verbenas and restaurants and attending cabarets. From regional folkloric dances to staid waltzes to the foxtrot and Charleston, bodies were moving, and poets like ultraísta Juan Larrea were writing about "Locura del Charleston." Rafael Lasso de la Vega in "Cabaret" uses the same word, "locura," to describe the tango. Famous female Flamenco dancers Antonia Mercé, nicknamed "La Argentina," and Pastora Rojas Monje ("Pastora Imperio") danced solos and headlined in composer Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo. Not to be left out, women poets danced and wrote about it as well. In one of her most anthologized poems, "Danza en tres tiempos," which was first published in 1928 in La Gaceta Literaria, Ernestina de Champourcin explores external and internal dance tempos. Lest we think that all poets of the time were celebrating the high life, I cannot resist noting the contrast between the Vanguard poets' perception of dance and Juan Ramón Jiménez's cautionary pose in 1924: "El verdadero baile es el baile de una persona sola con su alma" ("Diario vital y estético de Estética y ética estética").

Sports poetry is best exemplified by Concha Méndez. Of all the vanguardists, she most actively participated in sporting competitions, and won championships in swimming and diving. Her poetry and contributions are most intricately developed—owing in part to Bellver's extensive expertise in writing about important works by Méndez including Canciones de mar y tierra and Surtidor. Another woman, Josefina de la Torre, was the president of the first Club de Natación, and her poems speak flirtatiously about dancing and water sports, part of life on her native Grand Canary Island. José Hinojosa dressed in golf attire and tennis whites—for which he was frequently ridiculed—and while Luis Bunuel's athleticism as a boxer and pole vaulter was legendary at the Resi, he only boxed in one match. Male poets, it seems, were likelier to be spectators than dancers or athletes; certainly not daring young men in flying machines.

Mechanical marvels include cars, trains, planes, and the energy that powered them. Méndez drove a French Citroën hither and yon. Both men and women wrote about driving and flying, and perhaps some of the most erotic verses about the sensuality of driving were penned by Champourcin. Bellver goes beyond simply finding and analyzing poems with dance/sports/ mechanical themes by studying what she calls "gender dynamics"—how thematic treatment differs between male and female poets, and what that reveals about the changing times and the shifting involvement of women in society and literature. Women were literally and figuratively "on the move." Not only were they dancing like dynamos, they were dynamically active in literary and cultural events, and were changing the...