Avant-Garde Dislocations: Antofagasta, Valparaíso, Nueva York y Budapest. The case of Neftalí Agrella (Chile) and his friend Zsigmond Remenyik (Hungary)

Abstract

This article proposes to study, taking as a point of departure the poems of Chilean poet Neftalí Agrella, and his participation in the Avant-Garde of Valparaíso as a promoter of the so called "New Art" through "Nautical Rose Manifesto" (1922), as well as with the indigenous and cosmopolitan literary journal, Nguillatún (1924). Therefore, through a close reading of poems and manifestos, calling to practice this "new art", it will be studied how they assimilate as "alternative cosmopolitism" (Fernando Rosenberg). This will illustrate in what way this "cosmopolitan desire" (Mariano Siskind), characteristic of marginal Latin American Avant-garde, is expressed through the circulation of Agrella. Due to its strategic position, Valparaíso is established as a focus of this particular Avant-Garde, allowing to see how certain aesthetics and intellectual alliances are articulated with peers and artists not only Chilean, but also, Peruvians, Argentines, and even Hungarians, as it is appreciated between Zsigmond Remenyik collaborations particularly with this Valparaiso's Avant-Garde. Thus, another "tone" of the Latin American Avant-garde is exhibited, and can be read as a "heterogeneous" counterpoint (Cornejo Polar), through these alternative cosmopolitan spaces. As seen on those unusual imaginaries present in Agrella's poetry, allowing other places to arise as sites where these alternative Avant-Garde are located.