Poetry
Aphorisms
Greguerías
Ramón Gómez de la Serna · 1917
Synopsis
A collection of very short sentences, often of a single line, which the author called greguerías and for which he himself gave the formula: humour plus metaphor. Each places on an object or on some aspect of reality an unexpected image, born of the clash between thought and things; some are witticisms or wordplay, others philosophical or lyrical remarks. The ordinary objects of daily life hold a place of honour in them: two eggs served together, for example, look like twins without even being cousins.
Context
The word existed before him: it denoted a confused clamour, and the author said he took it almost at random from the forgotten vocabulary, to name what beings and things cry out confusedly. He wrote some from around 1910, kept columns of them in the newspapers and never stopped publishing them, from the 1917 collection to Total de greguerías in 1955. Valery Larbaud made them known in France in the 1920s. The French translation by Laurie-Anne Laget, in 2018, gives the Spanish text on the facing page and carries Brouhahas as a parallel title.
Who it is for
Isolated sentences, of a line or two, to be opened anywhere and read slowly, one image after another.
Prizes and reception
The Spanish Academy defines the form as a creation of the author; the collection has been translated into French and, in a selection, into English by Miguel González-Gerth.
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