Dialogues on the formless: Trajectory from Bataille to Poeta en Nueva York

Abstract

This article examines variations of Spanish surrealism taking into account the intellectual contributions of the French thinker Georges Bataille, thus offering a new reading of Federico García Lorca’s poetic collection Poeta en Nueva York. The Bataillean concepts of “the formless” and base materialism underscore a dissident surrealist aesthetic that considers the anguish of the poetic subject and the lowly instincts of reality. In Lorca’s work, the representation of the fragmented and fallen subject demonstrates a humanized surrealist preoccupation that breaks with the principle of automatic writing affirmed by the “official” theorist of surrealism, André Breton.