Ultraism
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           [Borges] (as artwork)
     
Ultraism

(see map) 

On this page:  {The 4 priniciples of Ultraism} (Borges)
          
See also:      {Parallels to Imagism}



The 4 Principles of Ultraism
Extracted from Ronald J. Christ's "The Narrow Act: Borges' Art of Allusion,
Pp.2-3.

  "A more precise definitin of the techniques and 
principles of Ultraism yields a still more precise
clue to the continuing pre-occupation of the Borges'
art. In one of his earliest articles, Borges sez:

Schematicized, the present position of Ultraism can be
summed up in the following principles:

1. Reduction of the lyric to its primordial element:
   The Metaphor.

2. Deletion of intervening sentences, of transitions, and
   useless adjectives.

3. Abolition of ornamental device, confessionalism, 
   circumstatiation, exhortations and studied
   nebulousness.

4. Synthesis of two or more images in one, which will 
   thus increase the images's power of suggestion. 
FROM:  "Ultraísmo", Nostros, P. 468.

"Ultraism [continues Ronald Christ], of course, had much 
in common with many movements of the time -- Vorticism],
for example -- but the Argentinian, transplated variety 
of Ultraism, as Bortes subsequently made clear, developed 
differently from the Spanish stock. The Spanish writers,
borrowing their name from the magazine Ultra, where 
many of their works were published, emphasized the notion of
 in the chronological and geographical sense --
going beyond the established boundaries, so that Rafael 
Cansinos Asséns defined the parent movement in the following
way:

  Ultraism is an exuberant determination which exceeds all
  scholastic limits. It is an orientation toward continuous
  and re-iterated evolutions, a proposal for perennial
  literary youth, an a priori acceptance of 
  every new idea. It represents the responsibility to go
  forward with the times.

[Ronald Christ continues] Borges in contrast, defined the
Ultraism of Argentina as seeking not merely the modern or new,
but the eternal:

  The ultraism of Seville and Madrid was a resolution for
  renewal, it was the resolve of girding aesthetic time in
  a new cycle [NB], it was a lyric written, as it were, with
  florid capital letters on the leaves of the calendar, a
  lyric whose most eminent emblems -- the airplane, antennas,
  and propellors -- are spokesman for a chronological present.
  
  The Ultraism of Buenos Aires was the yearning to obtain an
  absolute art which would not depend on the un-faithful
  prestige of the authors and which would last in the continuity
  of the language as a guarantee of beauty.

  Beneath the energetic clarity of lamps, the names of Huidobro
  and Apollinaire

(emphasis mine)

Chronology