Irriadiador was a Mexican avant-garde journal, created by Manuel Maples Arce and Fermín Revueltas in 1923. They published three issues, all of them in 1923. Manuel Maples Arce (1900 - 1981) was a poet, art critic, lawyer, and diplomat, and the founder of the Stridentism art movement. Mexican painter Fermín Revueltas (1901 - 1935) was also a member of the Stridentism movement.
Here’s the beginning of the editorial of the first issue, a manifesto of sorts, written in the second person:
Ud. es un hombre extraordinario. ¿Sabe Ud.? He aquí el sentido espectacular de una teoría novísima. Ud es un subvercionalista específico en el fondo. Pero Ud. no se entiende a sí mismo: quizá es Ud. todavía un imbécil; Ud. tiene talento. Ahora se ha extraviado Ud. en los pasillos vacíos de su imaginación. Y Ud. tiene miedo de sí mismo. Ud. equivoca la salida y no puede encontrarse. Detective. Fantomas lo cita a Ud. para el Hotel Regis. Voronoff reclama glándulas de mono y el estridentismo ha inventado la eternidad. Pero Ud. no entiende una palabra.
Translation to English: You are an extraordinary man. You know? We have here the spectacular meaning of a very new theory. You are a specific subversionalist at heart. But you don’t understand yourself: perhaps you are still an idiot; you have talent. Now it has you lost in the empty corridors of it’s imagination. And you are afraid of yourself. You mistake the exit and cannot find yourself. Detective. Fantômas makes an appointment with you at the Hotel Regis. Voronoff demands monkey glands, and Stridentism has invented eternity. But You don’t understand a word.
It is hard for me to comprehend this type of text — perhaps because my understanding of Spanish isn’t quite up to pair, perhaps because it’s a slightly old fashioned writing style … or is it a slightly futuristic writing style?Whatever the text means, the modernist sentiment shines clearly through, a sort of poetry that to me feels somehow cubist, observing every object from several different angles simultanesouly.
There are also three references, very 1920, thrown in that I had to look up: 1. Fantômas is the protagonist of a French book series which originated in 1911, a criminal genius but a sociopath and sadist who appeared in a total of 43 volumes. 2. Hotel Regis was a luxury hotel in Mexico City which opened around 1918, and 3. Serge Voronoff was a Russian-French surgeon who gained fame and fortune in the 1920s and 30s by transplanting monkey glands into humans (implanting them inside men’s scrotums), for the purpose of rejuvenating the patients.
Among many featured poets in Irradiador was a 24 year old Jorge Luis Borges. From issue 1:
Ciudad
by Jorge Luis Borges
Charras algarabías
entran a saco en la quietud del alma
Colores impetuosos y marciales
escalan las atónitas ventanas
De las plazas hendidas
rebosan ampliamente las distancias
El ocaso arrasado
que se acurruca tras los arrabales
ya es escarnio de sombras desatadasYo atravieso las calles aturdidas
por la insolencia de las luces falsas
Es tu recuerdo como una brasa encendida
que nunca suelto
aunque me quema las manos.
Naturalmente, Ud. puede irritarse. Ud. está en su derecho. Ud. puede tirarse de los pelos y escandalizar en los periódicos: no tiene Ud. la culpa de vivir en pleno siglo veinte. A Ud. le cuesta un dolor de cabeza atravesar una boca-calle. Ud. se levanta tarde y sale a ver quién tocé la puerta. Ud. es incapaz de tripular un automóvil y se marea en el carrusel de la Alameda. Ud. ha imaginado que el ascensor eléctrico es un truco intelectual. El Ideal supremo para Ud. es alumbrarse con velas de estearina. Ud. es un enfermo. Pero Ud. enseña los puños increpantes frente a las carátulas de nuestros libros y de nuestros periódicos subversistas que estallan maravillosamente enmedio de los escaparates de las librerías directrices. Ud. puede curarse. Vea hoy mismo al Dr. inverosimil, al gran saca-muelas literario, medalla de oro, gran premio, exposición de San Luis 1900, etc. Inradioscopia y estridentoterapia. Sintomatismo y causalidad. Véalo Ud. hoy mismo.
Translation to English: Naturally, You may get irritated. You have the right. You can pull your hair out and scandalize in the newspapers: it is not Your fault that you live in the twentieth century. You get a headache just to pass a street entrance. You get up late and go out to see who knocked on the door. You are unable to drive a car and get dizzy on the Alameda carousel. You believe the electric elevator is an intellectual trick. The supreme Ideal for you is to illuminate yourself using stearin candles. You are a sick person. But you show your unconvincing fists in front of the covers of our books and of our subversive newspapers that marvelously explode in the middle of the shop windows of the leading bookstores. You can be cured. See Dr. Unlikely, the great literary tooth-puller, gold medal, grand prize, St. Louis 1900 Exposition, etc. today. Inradoscopy and strident therapy. Symptomatism and causality. See it for yourself today.
Sources:
- Flores, Tatiana. Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30–30! New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
- Irradiador. Revista de Vanguardia. Proyector internacional de nueva estética publicado bajo la dirreción de Manuel Maples Arce & Fermin Revueltas, no. 1-3, 1923.
- Zurián, Carla. Fermín Revueltas: Constructor De Espacios. Mexico City: Inba, 2002.