The Ultraist movement () was a

literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...

movement born in

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

in 1918, with the declared intention of opposing Modernismo, which had dominated Spanish poetry since the end of the 19th century. The movement was launched in the

tertulia A ''tertulia'' (, ; ; ) is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberian Peninsula, Iberia or in Spanish America. Tertulia also means an informal meeting of people to talk about current affairs, arts, etc. The word ...

s of

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

's ''Café Colonial'', presided by Rafael Cansinos Assens. The Ultraist core was formed, among others, by Guillermo de Torre, Juan Larrea,

Gerardo Diego Gerardo Diego Cendoya (October 3, 1896 – July 8, 1987) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. Diego taught language and literature at institutes of learning in Soria, Gijón, Santander and Madrid. He also acted as lite ...

and the Argentine

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

, who lived in Madrid at the time. The first manifesto of the group was published in the Seville-based literary magazine '' Grecia'' in 1919. In the trend of Russian and Italian

futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

ism and French

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

, the Ultraist movement, which ended in 1922 with the cessation of the journal ''Ultra'' (though some authors, such as Borges, continued writing in the Ultraist style for nearly a decade afterwards), proposed an aesthetic change, less ambitious than that of surrealism, trying to extend to all arts and to daily life itself. The Ultraists departed completely from the mannerisms and opulence of Modernismo. Ultraist poetry is characterized by evocative imagery, references to the modern world and new technologies, elimination of

rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final Stress (linguistics), stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciou ...

, and creative graphic treatment of the layout of poetry in print, in an attempt to fuse the

plastic arts Plastic arts are art forms which involve physical manipulation of a ''plastic medium'', such as clay, wax, paint or even plastic in the modern sense of the word (a ductile polymer) to create works of art. The term is used more generally to ...

and poetry. Ultraism was influenced in part by Symbolism and by the Parnassians. In a manifesto published by '' Nosotros'' magazine (

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

, 1922), Borges summarized Ultraist goals thus: # Reduction of the lyric element to its primordial element,

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

# Deletion of useless middle sentences, linking particles and adjectives. # Avoidance of ornamental artifacts, confessionalism, circumstantiation, preaching and farfetched nebulosity. # Synthesis of two or more images into one, thus widening its suggestiveness. The expression "ornamental artifacts" was clearly a reference to Rubén Darío's Modernismo, which the Ultraists considered over-ornamented and lacking in substance. The Ultraist movement agreed with other

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

movements in its elimination of sentimentalism. Ultraism was akin to the of the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, who met with the Ultraists in their tertulias. Huidobro proposed that a poem should always be a new object, distinct from the rest, which must be created "like nature creates a tree"—a position that implied freedom of the poem from reality, including the inner reality of the author.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ultraist Movement Spanish literary movements