Morbidities and "The Concept of the New Literature"

Book excerpt: Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963) was one of Spain’s most gifted avant-gardists. Oftentimes remembered as the inventor of the greguería—a type of witty and humorous epigram that recasts the commonplace and absurdities of everyday reality—he was a prolific writer and published dozens of novels, essays, short stories, articles, editorials, and biographies throughout his life. Two of his major works—the autobiography Morbidities (1908), and the manifesto “The Concept of the New Literature” (1909)—belong to his earliest period of experimentation. These two early works are of singular importance not only in understanding his development as an avant-gardist, but also in analyzing Spanish literature within the broader framework of European avant-garde culture. With prescient clarity, they highlight many of the aesthetic notions that would revolutionize experimental literature throughout the modernist period. This book offers the first complete English translation of Morbidities and “The Concept of the New Literature,” and it introduces anglophone readers to some of Gómez de la Serna’s most passionate ideas about modernity and “new literature.”