Convulsive Transfers in the Work of César Moro

Abstract This article explores the poetry and essays of Peruvian surrealist poet César Moro (1903–56) in relation to the French surrealist aesthetic of convulsive beauty as defined by André Breton (1896–1966). By examining Moro’s textual construction of a speaker who privileges nature as a poetic agent, the author argues that his historical role as an agent of cultural transfer emerges. Using the aesthetic of convulsive beauty as a case study, the author shows how Moro’s poetic mythification of Peru’s colonial legacy creates a hybrid surrealist canon through metonymic techniques that reflect Amerindian notions of animism. In particular, Moro’s renditions of diamonds, precious stones, animals, plants, and other natural forms challenge the subject-object divide that limits the European modernist aesthetic. What emerges in this global process of cultural transfer is a translational poetics that avoids the binaries of source and target audiences, thereby allowing the emergence of nonlinear and dynamic modes of contact.