Poetry
Metropolis
Urbe
Manuel Maples Arce · 1924
Synopsis
A long poem in five cantos about a modern city in the throes of revolutionary upheaval, inspired by a great workers' demonstration. The city is “strung with cables and efforts”, loud with engines and wings; crowds surge through the streets and the bourgeoisie must tremble. The poem follows the revolution from its first exaltation to violence, then to a confused disappointment in the last canto. The city is never named: one can guess at Mexico City or Xalapa, without certainty.
Context
The poem was written from 1923 to 1924 and appeared in Mexico City from Andrés Botas, printing completed on 24 July 1924, under the subtitle “súper-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos”, with a cover and woodcuts by Jean Charlot. Its publication was a triumph for the movement. John Dos Passos, who met the author in Xalapa in 1926, translated it into English under the title Metropolis, published in New York in 1929: it is one of the first avant-garde poems in Spanish to be translated into English.
Who it is for
A poem of a few dozen pages, with juxtaposed images and broken syntax; translated into English, no French translation found.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the most successful works of Estridentism, the only Mexican avant-garde of its time.
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