Poetas y narradores: la narrativa breve en las revistas de vanguardia en Espana (1918-1936) (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Poetas y narradores: la narrativa breve en las revistas de vanguardia en España (1918-1936) Robert A. Davidson Díez de Revenga, Francisco Javier . Poetas y narradores: la narrativa breve en las revistas de vanguardia en España (1918–1936). Madrid: Devenir Ensayo. 2005. 356 páginas. While Francisco Javier Díez de Revenga's Poetas y narradores: la narrativa breve en las revistas de vanguardia en España (1918–1936) may not be a book that one [End Page 212] picks up and reads cover to cover in one sitting, it is a valuable reference for the scholar who wishes to get knee-deep in the materia prima of the Castilian avant-garde period: the many literary journals that served as incubators for Spain's emerging artistic talent. The reader will find all of the Castilian-language papers here as Díez de Revenga's tome runs the entire gambit, from the well known (Grecia, Vltra, Mediodía, Revista de Occidente, La Gaceta Literaria) to the not-so-famous (Reflector, Ambos, Roncel, Alfar). The author balances this intense focus on the journals by dedicating fully half of the book to studies of individual authors, the majority of them poets, who dealt to varying degrees in the short fiction genre as well as in the lyric. Díez de Revenga's approach is straightforward. In the chapters about journals, he systematically details and painstakingly describes the narrative fiction found within each issue of a particular title. Hence, one encounters chapters such as "II. La narrativa breve en la revista Grecia," "III. La narrativa breve en la revista Vltra de Madrid," and "VIII. De la prosa poética a la narrativa breve en la revista Mediodía," among others. The blow-by-blow format carries over to the eight sections that deal with single authors as Díez de Revenga highlights these writers' often overlooked shorter narrative works and thus closes gaps in their respective bibliographies. This is in keeping with the inventory-like nature of the book as a whole and matches his stated motivation to "completar el estudio histórico de sus figuras y obras, y contribuir a un mejor conocimiento de su aportación a nuestro patrimonio cultural común, a la literatura española" (17). While his inclusion of luminaries Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Pedro Salinas, Gerardo Diego, Dámaso Alonso, Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti, and Francisco Ayala does work toward this lofty goal, the more precise contribution is to be found in the fine way that such a mix binds the less regarded avant-garde narrative stream to its much more recognized and esteemed lyrical counterpart, a move that reinforces the syncretic importance of the journals. The one caveat that must be made, however, is that such a tactic does result in some repetitive cross-referencing that detracts from the way each individual chapter reads. The brief chapter one, "La narrativa del arte nuevo," serves as a de facto introduction that sets the stage somewhat for the close readings that will follow. Here the author does a good job of historicizing the importance of the literary journals to the growth of the avant-garde, especially that of Ortega y Gasset's Revista de Occidente. A brief mention of the importance of the Revista and its "Nova novorum" collection to the distribution of avant-garde narrative, however, raises the practical question of production, which remains underdeveloped in the rest of the book (19). This is a pity because those to whom this book speaks most clearly—academics interested in the crucial role of the journals—would, I think, also be intrigued to know nitty-gritty details such as how many copies were printed any [End Page 213] given week, how distribution took place, how much publishers relied on subscriptions and advertising, etc. Díez de Revenga's final contention in this first chapter—that one finds the single greatest contribution to the short fiction of the time in the language that is employed in its elaboration—is solid and he amply demonstrates this throughout the book in the many close readings provided to bulwark his point. Chapters that stand out in...