Various versions of a modern individual. Analytical-contrastive approach to a poem by stridentist author Salvador Gallardo Dávalos

Abstract

In the studies on stridentism, it is common to find that Salvador Gallardo Davalos joined the Mexican avantgarde when he published his collection of poems El pentagrama eléctrico in 1925. However, we present the poem “Cinema de viaje” that appeared in Ser magazine in Puebla, in 1923. Directed by Germán List Arzubide, this magazine has gone unnoticed in avant-garde studies, even though it is the written testimony of the conformation of the stridentist group. In this article we analyze how this poem presents an individual immersed in a contemporary reality that makes him uncertain, through a series of images that try to emulate the language of a budding art: cinema. Likewise, we propose an overview of the different versions of “Cinema de viaje”, its most significant changes, and their possible implications in the constitution of a modern subject. This perspective even allows us to claim that the constant rewriting of his poem is representative of Salvador Gallardo’s avant-gardist style as a belief in the unfinished poem, one that is in constant transformation.