ultraísmo

(also ultraism), a leftist trend in Spanish poetry that emerged after World War I (1914-18). The motto of ultraísmo—ultra—was proclaimed in December 1918 by the critic R. Cansinos Assens. One of the leaders of ultraísmo was the poet and critic G. de Torre, the author of Vertical: Ultraist Manifesto (1920) and of the poetry collection Helices (1923); Torre was also the editor of the journals Grecia (1919-20) and Ultra (1921-22).

Ultraísmo expressed the anarchist revolt of the petit bourgeois intelligentsia against banality and narrow-mindedness. The trend’s adherents rejected national cultural traditions, proclaiming the need to create a new poetry that would correspond to the dynamism of the 20th century. Ultraísmo sought to eliminate rhyme, traditional metrics, and punctuation. It aimed to combine verbal and visual images by innovative typographical arrangements of poetry. Ultraísmo also strove for elliptical imagery, to be achieved by means of purely subjective associations.

The adherents of ultraísmo included the poets P. Salinas, J. Guillen, and A. Espina; the Argentine poet J. L. Borges became the movement’s leading advocate in Latin America. Although ultraísmo was a prominent trend in the early 1920’s, its adherents produced no significant works, and by 1923-24 it had ceased to exist.