Promethean imaginary and avant-garde of Valparaíso: Explorations among modernity and metropolis in the poetry of Pedro Plonka

Abstract

This article examines the various positions, either convergence, divergence or dissent, they take representations of modernity in two poems –“The wind and the multitude in the metropolis” and “Maneuver gray (mist on the port)”– from Pedro Plonka, a member of the historical avant-garde literature developed in Valparaíso. In these poems can be seen a gradual distancing from the Promethean imaginary that led to the belief in progress and technique thus encouraging industrial growth, trade and shipping in the city since the late nineteenth century until the early decades of last century. Through the analysis of literary texts mediating appreciate being built in both poems a imaginary that undermines that Promethean imaginary, providing a critical view, and not of failure, the rapid and progressive conception of historical time itself modernity.