The Object of the Atlantic 8flashpoints The FlashPoints series is devoted to books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks and that are distinguished both by their historical grounding and by their theoretical and conceptual strength. Our books engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emer- gence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Series titles are available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/flashpoints. series editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA), Founding Editor; Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Michelle Clayton (Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University); Edward Dimendberg (Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and European Languages and Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Nouri Gana (Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA); Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) A list of titles in the series begins on p. 273. The Object of the Atlantic Concrete Aesthetics in Cuba, Brazil, and Spain, 1868–1968 Rachel Price northwestern university press ❘ evanston, illinois this book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation. Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014. All rights reserved. Digital Printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Price, Rachel, 1975– author. The object of the Atlantic : concrete aesthetics in Cuba, Brazil, and Spain, 1868–1968 / Rachel Price. pages cm. — (FlashPoints) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8101-3013-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Atlantic Ocean Region—Literatures—21st century. 2. Literature and history—Atlantic Ocean Region. I. Title. II. Series: FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.) PN849.A85P75 2014 809.89163—dc23 2014004907 Contents Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1. Espiral Negra: Concretude in the Atlantic 25 2. José Martí’s Material Traces 47 3. The Writing on the Walls: Babylon, Wall Street, Canudos 76 4. Ramiro de Maeztu’s Primacy of Things 109 5. The Spirit of Martí in the Land of Coaybay 133 6. Object, Non-object, Trans-object, Relational Object: From Concrete Poetry to A Nova Objetividade 164 Epilogue: Hacia Post-Concretude 199 Notes 203 Works Cited 237 Index 259 Illustrations 1. Haroldo de Campos, “no â mago do o mega” 6 2. Lydia Cabrera, Anaforuana 38 3. Severo Sarduy, “Espiral negra” 44 4. José Martí, “Coma menor” 65 5. Ledgers, Sacred Heart Academy 83 6. Augusto de Campos, “Código” 94 7. Advertisement for Sal Hepática 134 8. Advertisement for Westinghouse Electric 137 9. Illustration by Arturo Souto Feijoo for “Los muebles” 154 10. Waldemar Cordeiro, Tudo Consumido 155 11. Advertisement for Cine-Kodak 159 12. Image, Revista telefónica cubana 160 13. Wlademir Dias-Pino, “Sólida” (1956) 175 14. Wlademir Dias-Pino, “Sólida” (2009) 176 15. Décio Pignatari, “beba coca cola” 177 16. Neide Dias de Sá, transparência 179 17. Augusto de Campos, “terremoto” 182 18. Wlademir Dias-Pino, “A ave” 187 19. Lygia Clark, Caminhando 191 20. Lygia Clark, Estruturas em caixas de fósforo 195 21. Lygia Clark, A casa do poeta 196 Acknowledgments The research and writing of this book took place over several years and in multiple contexts. I wish to thank especially Ranjana Khanna, Alberto Moreiras, Sibylle Fischer, Fredric Jameson, Michael Hardt, and Matt Cohen. Indispensable debates took place at Duke University with too many friends and colleagues to name, but I wish to thank particularly Beatriz Balanta, Nico Baumbach, Brian Carr, Amy Car- roll, Marta Hernández, Jorge Marturano, Jennifer Rhee, and Shilyh Warren. In Brazil, I benefited from research at the Casa das Rosas Espaço Haroldo de Campos de Poesia e Literatura and from discussions with Helba Carvalho, Augusto de Campos, Neide Dias de Sá, Wlademir Dias- Pino, Jorge Luiz, Marcos Siscar, and Luciana and Glaucia Villas-Bôas; I especially thank Fabio Durão for many collaborations over the years. In Cuba, thanks to the staff of the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, the Archivo Nacional de Cuba, and to Ana María Andreu, Arturo Arango, Kevin Beovides, Víctor Fowler, Eneida Marín, Eduardo Marín, Urbano Martínez Carmenate, and Lizabel Mónica Villares. Paul Firbas, Daniela Flesler, Gabriela Polit-Dueñas, and Katie Ver- non all made helpful suggestions while I was at Stonybrook University, as did Susan Martin-Márquez, who kindly read and commented upon a chapter. I am grateful to a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship that enabled a stimulating year of exchanges at the Cogut Humanities Center and the Hispanic Studies Department of Brown University. In Providence x ❘ Acknowledgments I was happy to rekindle a friendship and intellectual exchange with Jacques Khalip, a great sounding board from a neighboring field. I par- ticularly thank Adrián López-Denis, to whom I am indebted for push- ing me to think more critically and for sharing his vast knowledge of Cuban history and culture. At Princeton University I have had the good fortune to work in an extremely supportive environment. Thanks to Silvana Bishop, Karen González, Beth Heisler, and Nikki Woolard for their administrative support, and to my colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Por- tuguese Languages and Cultures, particularly those who read or dis- cussed portions of the manuscript: Bruno Carvalho, Rubén Gallo, Javier Guerrero, Germán Labrador, and especially Pedro Meira and Gabriela Nouzeilles for extensive and important last-minute comments. A spe- cial debt is owed to Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones for his generous reading. I would also like to thank undergraduate and graduate students, some now colleagues, who have helped me think through some of these ideas: Sergio Delgado, Duanel Díaz, Ashley Evelyn, and Nathaniel Wolfson. I have also benefited from a research group on empires sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). Thanks to the members of this group, especially Jeremy Adelman, for his interest in the questions behind this book and for his shrewd comments. I learned from exchanges formal and informal with col- leagues outside of my department, including Eduardo Cadava, Susana Draper, Rachel Galvin, Matheus Gato de Jesús, Sarah Porciau, Sonya Posmentier, Irene Small (who was very helpful during final revisions), and Alexandra Vazquez. My thanks go as well to Fernando Acosta for his gifted work as a librarian for Latin American and Iberian studies. Several trips to archives were generously supported by Princeton’s Uni- versity Committee on Humanities and Social Science and its Program in Latin American Studies, whose staff, including Rosalia Rivera and Jillian Halbe, I much appreciate. Many friends and colleagues from beyond these institutions have also been helpful: James Brittingham, Odette Casamayor, Lisa Cerami, Michelle Chase, Sarah Doty, Joshua Dubler, Kenneth Goldsmith, Shambhavi Kaul, Jacqueline Loss, Dylon Robbins, Sam Steinberg, and Anya Zilberstein. My research was helped by the holdings at the New York Public Library and by assistance from Lauren Ziarko, archivist at Manhattanville College Archives. I am grateful to Cathleen Skeen for her editorial help and to Michelle Clayton, who went far beyond the call of duty to improve the book’s ideas and language with her Acknowledgments ❘ xi dedicated and inspired editing. Thanks also to the anonymous readers’ helpful suggestions. Finally, I wish to thank my family members for their support and for their contributions to this and other projects. I like to think that these contributions began with a grandmother I never met: Dorothy Lee (née Demetracopolou) grew up in Constantinople in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire; one legacy of empires is multilingual environments that, in her case, may have inspired her studies in linguistic anthropol- ogy. While researching Brazilian concrete poetry’s engagement with cybernetics, I was surprised to find my grandmother listed as a guest at the seminal Macy Conferences where cybernetics was first developed; I later learned that she published alongside Marshall McLuhan and oth- ers of the Toronto School of Communications. Thanks to Sabra Lee, to Hermelinda Zegarra, to Michael, Seth, and Lucero Price, to Bettina Funcke, and to Lou Funcke Price, for reminding me of childhood’s sen- suous world of subjects and objects. I wish to acknowledge permission to reprint material that previously appeared elsewhere. A rather different version of Chapter 5 was pub- lished as “The Spirit of Martí in the Land of Coaybay” in Hispanic Review 77, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 245–66, and a small portion of Chap- ter 6 was published as “Object, Non-object, Trans-object, Relational Object: From Concrete Poetry to A Nova Objetividade” in Revista de Letras da UNESP 47, no. 1 (2007). The Object of the Atlantic Introduction In the early 1890s the Cuban poet, journalist, and revolutionary José Martí was living and writing in exile in New York City.