Herrera Y Reissig and the Disorganization of the Canon

Yuri Lotman, in The Structure of the Artistic Text, devotes a chapter to what he calls the "energy of verse."^[30] He likens this con-

cept to what Tynjanov calls the "function" of the text. Lotman defines this energy as the

constant tendency toward collision and conflict, a struggle between different constructive principles. Each principle has an organizing principle within the system it creates, and it functions as a disorganizer outside of that system. Thus word boundaries interfere with the rhythmic ordering of verse; syntactic intonations conflict with rhythmic intonations, and so on. When opposing tendencies coincide, we are not dealing with an absence of conflict but with a particular instance of conflict; the zero expressson of structural tension.^[31]

Lotman explains the changing perceptions in different epochs of this textual "energy." He describes a perception of a text's diminished energy as the triumph of a system:

[T]he same system (in an isolated synchronic description) which for a given period of time sounded new and original is now perceived as imitative (mostly imitative in relation to itself). What is the point? The system has triumphed . What seemed extraordinary has become the ordinary; the anti-system has ceased to offer resistance.^[32]

For Lotman, therefore, the synchronic description of a text's structure is insufficient, for the reader must include in his analysis both internal and external structures "struggling against the system, and must see the text's function in relation to a given system of prohibitions which precede it and lie outside it."^[33] Lotman outlines how obligatory restrictions (which can function as content-forming boundaries) can change to optional limitations. In Herrera y Reissig's work we see the "hierarchy of prohibitions" being shaken, leading the way for more radical syntactic and semantic breaks, as in the poetry of Vallejo. Since a great deal of the criticism of Herrera y Reissig's work during his lifetime (for example, criticism by Juan Mas y Pí, Darío, et al.) centered on his eccentricity, on his seeming unconcern for traditional national themes in literature, we may assume that his attraction to the exotic as well as to provocative sound-play was directly perceived as resistant or subversive to the cultural boundaries of his particular time and place.