Perspective

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1930 · Authors: Domingo López Torres

Domingo López Torres (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1910-1937) was one of the most outstanding Canarian avant-garde poets of his time. Born into a humble family in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, after completing elementary studies and leaving secondary education unfinished, he first worked as a goldsmith and later in a ship agency company. He developed an early self-taught education.

The record of his literary work dates back to issue no. 28 of 1926 of the illustrated weekly Hespérides , with the appearance of the poem "Tus ojos glaucos". In 1927 he coincided during military service with the painter Óscar Domínguez, from whom he learned about the emerging surrealism movement. He published in La Prensa , El Progreso , Altavoz and El Socialista , while also being a member of the PSOE. At the end of the 1920s he became involved in the collective linked to the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Tenerife, Pajaritas de Papel .

In 1930, together with Canarian authors Pedro García Cabrera, Rodríguez Doreste, Julio Antonio de la Rosa, José Antonio Rojas and Juan Ismael, he founded Cartones , a magazine with ideological content and clear avant-garde tendencies. Both initiatives were cut short following the deaths of members Julio Antonio de la Rosa and José Antonio Rojas in an accident suffered alongside López Torres himself while handling a boat in the bay of the capital's port; López Torres was unharmed.

In 1931 Domingo López Torres joined the Literature Section of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, leading the following year to the publication of Gaceta de Arte . In 1935 the poet opened a shop located in Plaza de la Candelaria, where books and tobacco were sold, making the establishment a reference point for the Canarian literary elite and left-wing trends of the time. In May of the same year he participated in the Surrealist Exhibition , held between the 11th and 21st at the Ateneo de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where the Surrealist Manifesto was drafted, signed by Breton, Péret, Agustín Espinosa, García Cabrera, Eduardo Westerdahl, Domingo Pérez Minik and López Torres himself.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Domingo López Torres was arrested and taken to Fyffes prison, from where, in February 1937, he was transferred to a prison ship and later thrown into the sea wrapped in a sack along with other prisoners.

In his poem "Perspective", perhaps written in 1930 but published posthumously in the Anthology of Canarian Poetry (1952), selected, compiled and annotated by Domingo Pérez Minik, López Torres recreates, with his broad sensitivity, a place he knew like the back of his hand: the port of Santa Cruz, and does so in this way:

«The port's lighthouses make furrows in the sea.
To send the offering
of their golden light,
green, blue, yellow, crimson.
The wind, soft, combs
the masts of the anchored schooner.
The stars, in the blackness,
are the windows through which escapes
the reflection of light from the sky's orgies.
And ships, in light tones,
seem like silhouettes cut out
against the dark landscape.»

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