The empty suit. Origin, survival and evolution of a motif in the avant-garde spanish poetry: ultraism, creationism and surrealism

Abstract

This article sets out the study of the motif of the representation of the man as an empty suit that appears in a significant way in the first half of the 20^th century in the Spanish poetry, in authors like Gerardo Diego, Pedro Salinas, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Emilio Prados, Vicente Aleixandre and Luis Cernuda. During this time, and not only in the above mentioned authors but in many others, the motif crosses different aesthetics and diverse literary movements, evolving and adapting to the exigencies of each of them, without losing its original basic meaning of falsification, lack of authenticity and superficiality. The work consists of the study of the evolution of this motif that goes back to the Baroque poetry and even before and still is present in the Spanish poetry after surrealism. From an initial valuation of the empty man, represented only by the external clothes that he wears, like in the ultraist and creationist poetry, the motif evolves towards the negative connotations that acquires during the surrealism, that views this image as a sign of the alienation of the man and the contemporary society. This critical and negative vision would cause that the motif derives at the end towards the preference by the natural man, the naked man or the animal man of surrealistic and social poetry in a process of returning to humanization and in an attempt of recovery of the authentic being of the man.