The Poet of Electroshocks: On the Radioactive Mystics of Francisco Matos Paoli.

Francisco Matos Paoli (1915-2000) is probably Puerto Rico's most famous Nationalist poet. His Canto de la locura (1962) is probably his most important work. It was the last in a cycle of prison poems, written after the Puerto Rican Nationalist Insurrection in 1950. Like much of his work, Canto is a...

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Publicado en:Revista Hispánica Moderna (0034-9593) Vol. 78; no. 2; pp. 206 - 223
Autor principal: Trigo, Benigno
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: University of Pennsylvania Press Dec2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: The Poet of Electroshocks: On the Radioactive Mystics of Francisco Matos Paoli.
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        au: Trigo, Benigno
        affil: Vanderbilt University
      su:
        Nationalism
        Poetry (Literary form)
        Critics
        Subjectivity
        Religion & state
        Captivity
        Literary criticism
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          Nationalism
          Poetry (Literary form)
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          Subjectivity
          Religion & state
          Captivity
          Literary criticism
          Commonwealth (Organization)
      keyword:
        Faitheism
        Francisco Matos Paoli
        Puerto Rican Identity
        Puerto Rican Literature
        Puerto Rican Nationalism
      ab: Francisco Matos Paoli (1915-2000) is probably Puerto Rico's most famous Nationalist poet. His Canto de la locura (1962) is probably his most important work. It was the last in a cycle of prison poems, written after the Puerto Rican Nationalist Insurrection in 1950. Like much of his work, Canto is a hermetic text that has been the object of much speculation and interpretation by literary critics and historians alike. In this article, I argue that Matos Paoli's Canto is an assault on the belief in the existence of a self-identical, serene, and self-originated Puerto Rican spirit or soul by the newly instituted Commonwealth government of Puerto Rico. Matos Paoli's book of poems instead reveals the dependence and fragility, the contradictions and antinomies, at the center of subjectivity in general, and at the center of the fiction of the omnipotent and almighty Christian subject in particular. As such, the book undermines the foundation of what I call the faitheistic state, a state that presents itself as secular, but in reality is dependent on the existence and recognition of an omnipotent Other modeled after the Christian divinity. At the same time, Matos Paoli embraces a radical serenity based on a different account of subjectivity, more fragile and dependent.
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