The Inner World of Pedro García Cabrera

• Published in: Forum for modern language studies 2022-05, Vol.58 (1), p.28-52
• Main Author: Morris, C Brian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0015-8518; 1471-6860
• DOI: 10.1093/fmls/cqac004

Abstract When he signed the manifesto published in Tenerife in 1935 to mark the Second International Surrealist Exhibition, Pedro García Cabrera (1905–1981) ratified the fascination exercised on him by a movement that, he recalled in 1979, ‘representaba el descubrimiento del mundo interior del hombre’ [represented the discovery of man’s inner world]. That discovery generated three works: a story he categorized as a ‘narración surrealista,’ Los senos de tinta [Breasts of Ink; 1934], and two books of poetry that responded to Surrealism in different ways. By constructing the eight poems of Dársena con despertadores [Dock with Alarm Clocks; 1936] out of two lists of words he had assembled, he achieved what he called ‘un cierto automatismo síquico’ [a certain psychic automatism] and coined images ‘siguiendo los contornos de lo absurdo’ [following the contours of the absurd]. His experiments with words became a psychic imperative in Entre la guerra y tú [Between War and You; 1936–39], whose poems are like the ‘móviles delirios’ [mobile ravings] he mentioned in one of them, a phrase that evokes the mind that reacts to the disorder of war and imprisonment and the images generated by it.