The anguish of Adam in America

Abstract

The metaphysical journey of Adán Buenosayres, protagonist of the novel of the same name, written by the Argentine poet Leopoldo Marechal, caused the encounter with Xul Solar and Ismael Nery, the first, Argentine and the second, Brazilian. The focus of the meeting was based on art marked by the aesthetics of anguish, of Christian-Adamic-Kierkegaardian roots, typical of the language of the poets and painters who communicated restlessness in the contingent world, and wished to transcend time and space, in search of the lost Paradise or the childhood of humanity. Metaphysical art was the aesthetic language that helped the agonic artist to reconnect with the infinite and to find the essence of humanity. The agonic affection that irrigated the art of Leopoldo, Xul and Ismael, raised here to signs of anguish in America, is part of the cultural anxiety that occurs on the psychic plane within the framework of Western civilization. Therefore, the agonistic metaphysical art, practiced in America, comes from the same source, the biblical source, which irrigated the anguish in the metropolis, Europe.