Musical and Cinematic Sabotage in the Early Poetry of Pere Gimferrer

Abstract

This essay finds inspiration in Manuel Asensi’s sabotage criticism in order to analyze Pere Gimferrer’s poetry collections La muerte en Beverly Hills and De “Extraña Fruta” y otros poemas. Gimferrer’s early poems anticipate a plethora of Spanish literary and filmic works that draw on mechanically reproduced (in terms of Walter Benjamin) art –specifically jazz records and classic film noir– in order to model subjects and actions antithetical to historical fascism. The modeling of new subjects is achieved through an affective identification (which Asensi terms affept) facilitated by a non-chronological experience of time associated with cinema. This poetry conveys a model of the world concerned with the historical subaltern struggling to find his or her voice.