Creative Entropy in Rafael Alberti's Sobre los ángeles

Abstract

Rafael Alberti's Sobre los ángeles has been read as the expression of the poet's personal and religious crisis and as a manifestation of the crisis of modernism and the social and political upheavals affecting Europe and Spain in the early decades of the twentieth century. While taking into consideration these valid approaches, this paper approaches Alberti's book by establishing an analogy with chaos theory, not simply as another discourse or vocabulary but because the properties found in the physics theory of complexity are also found in Sobre los ángeles. Like others in his generation, Alberti articulates his crisis in images from physical, material reality. Radical changes were taking place in physics, and relativity, electromagnetism and thermodynamics were being discussed widely at the time of this book's composition. Prigogine's theory of creative chaos serves as framework for Alberti and his creation out of the ashes of youthful romantic constructions. ResumenSobre los ángeles de Rafael Alberti se ha leído como expresión de la crisis personal y religiosa del poeta, reflejo de la crisis del modernismo y de los trastornos sociopolíticos en Europa y España a comienzos del XX. Sin descartar estas lecturas, este ensayo se aproxima al libro de Alberti mediante una analogía con la teoría del caos, no como otro discurso sino porque las propiedades en dicha teoría física de la complejidad se encuentran también en Sobre los ángeles. Como otros miembros de su generación, Alberti articula su crisis mediante imágenes de la realidad física. Cambios radicales estaban teniendo lugar en la ciencia física de entonces, y la relatividad, el electromagnetismo, y la termodinámica se discutían ampliamente. Prigogine y su teoría del caos como fuente de creación sirve de marco para analizar la obra de Alberti a partir de las cenizas de sus juveniles construcciones románticas.

Understanding and Interpreting Entropy: A Case Study of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four

“…Conflicts can only accelerate the spread of entropy increase. "Modern rush is dissipative in its dissipative nature of all structures" (Gala, 2011). In modern life, new technology and society's ongoing replacement are unavoidable, as is the Nineteen Eighty-four timeline's development trend, which also introduces new instability.…”