X-Essays. Scientific Poetry by Ezequiel Martínez Estrada

Abstract

The essay from which E. Martínez Estrada becomes one of the most important argentine prose writers proposes to study his country’s history and culture from a methodological perspective which is defined by the metaphor of an x-ray. X-rays allow us to look beyond what is presented to the retina. We find ourselves facing a scientific poetics that distrusts observation and chooses the path of philology: to read the Country as if it were a written text or a speech that is heard. But Martínez Estrada’s distrust on the sense of sight precedes Radiografía de la Pampa (1933). The seed of that assumption germinates in his early poetic works, particularly, in the passage from the Argentina collection of poems of 1927, to the 1929 volumes titled Títeres de pies ligeros and Humoresca. Between them takes place an avant-garde inflection point that enables, later, the x-ray view. A perspective, that of the radiologist, that the Argentine author shares with other poetics of the avant-garde that in the twenties and thirties challenged the illustrated realism of the nineteenth century.