Minotaur in Manhattan: Nicolas Calas and the fortunes of surrealism

Kolocotroni, V. (2009) Minotaur in Manhattan: Nicolas Calas and the fortunes of surrealism. Modernist Cultures, 4(1), pp. 84-102. (doi: 10.3366/E2041102209000471)

Full text not currently available from Enlighten.

Publisher's URL: http://www.js-modcult.bham.ac.uk/editor/welcome.asp

Abstract

Nicolas Calas is at once a major and a minor figure: to the Greek observer, a bright star in the constellation of home-grown but fugitive Surrealist poets, with a decidedly international outlook, doyen of the Trotskyist left and prodigal son of the cultural diaspora; to the student of the twentieth-century avant gardes, Calas is a name from the archive, a cameo act, a distinctive figure in the 'the last snapshot of the European intelligentsia', as Walter Benjamin termed Surrealism. It is from the latter angle that this essay considers Calas, following his brief ascendancy as spokesperson for the 'School of Paris' in 1940s New York, as interlocutor of artists and poets such as William Carlos Williams, and proposes him as a representative of the heterogeneous, fundamentally foreign sensibility of radical modernism.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Kolocotroni, Dr Vassiliki
Authors: Kolocotroni, V.
Subjects:P Language and Literature > PR English literature
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
Journal Name:Modernist Cultures
ISSN:2041-1022
ISSN (Online):1753-8629
Published Online:01 May 2009

University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record