Draft:Jitanjáfora

• Comment: This is an interesting article, but almost all of it is uncited. Readers (and reviewers) need to be able to verify the information, and having all the information sourced will make this much more likely to be accepted. It's not really enough at the moment. -- NotCharizard ^🗨 00:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

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Jitanjáfora is a linguistic statement composed of words or expressions that are, for the most part, invented and have no meaning or significance on their own. In a literary work, their poetic function lies in their phonetic value, which can make sense in relation to the text as a whole.

The term was created by the writer Alfonso Reyes, who took it from the poetry of Mariano Brull (Cuba, 1891-1956), who in turn played with sounds by inventing words with out any apparent meaning. Reyes claimed that Brull's daughters would recite poems for their guests. To surprise his audience, which included Reyes, Brull wrote a poem and made the girls recite it, leading Reyes to write: "Choosing the most fragrant word from that raceme, I said to call Mariano Brull's girls 'jitanjáforas'. It now occurs to me to extend the term to this entire genre or verbal form of poetry."

The word "jitanjáfora" appears in some of Bull's verses, such as this one:

Filiflama alabe cundre
ala olalúnea alífera
alveolea jitanjáfora
liris salumba salífera.

— Mariano Brull, Leyenda

History of the Jitanjáfora

Examples of this type of poetic expression can be found in the poetry of the Spaniard Lope de Vega (1562-1635) — "Piraguamonte, piragua // piragua, jevizarizagua" — or Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695).

Jitanjáfora and the Avant-Garde

Some artists of the avant-garde movement cultivated jitanjáfora, especially the Dadaists. The Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974) made notable use of it, especially in his work El señor Presidente, as did the Spanish writer Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910-1999) en La saga/fuga de J. B. and the Argentine writer Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) in the extravagant La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polígrafa. Julio Cortázar also employed this syntactic technique in his novel Rayuela, for which he created the conlang he called Gíglico.

Children's Jitanjáforas de sorteo

In the mid-twentieth century, children in Argentina would recite a jitanjáfora de sorteo, which was passed orally from child to child and never written in any book or magazine. It was shared from child to child without any adult interference:

Apetén sembréi

tucumán lenyí

mamamí surtí

buri vú carchéi.

Other versions can also be found throughout various Argentine provinces:

first verse	second verse	third verse	fourth verse
apetén sembréi	tucumán lenyí	amamey surquí	tururú carchí
apetén sembréi	tucumán lenyí	mamamí surtí	buri vú carchéi
apetén sendén	tucumán lenyí	a mamá lecí	guri guri garchí
apetem sem bem	tucumán lenyí	a mamá surtí	buri buri garchí
apetén sen den	tucumán lenyí	a mamá surtí	guri guri garchí
apetén sembrén	tucumán lenyí	amammer surquí	tururú gachí
apetén sembré	tucumán lenyí	mamemí surquí	tururú cacheu
a petén sen ben	cutibán len li	mamamí sur ti	buribú car che
ape ten sen blen	tucumán len bri	ama mer tur qui	gary gary gary chi
a petei cham blei	tucumán lenchí	mama di surquí	gulibú charquéi
apetén sen den	tucumán nenchí	a mamá surtí	buri buri carchí
a petén sen ben	tucumán lenchí	a mama surtí	gury gury carchí
a petén chen ben	cutival lendí	a mamá surtí	curi buri carchí
ape tem sem brem	tucu man len yi	mame mi sur quí	turu rú ca chí
apentén sen den	tucumán lenchí	a mamá surtí	buri buri carchí
a petén sembrei	tucumán lenyí	mama mi surtí	buribú car chei
a petén sen ven	tucumán lenyí	de mamá surchí	buri bú carchí

Contemporary Jitanjáforas

We can find some examples of jitanjáforas in contemporary poetry, such as these anonymous verses in which the author plays freely with alliteration, trying to transmit sensations through the words:

Crososto pinfro

Imenoclacto plecto plex

Astrasfo, pásporo indro

Musocrocto puclásforo estro

Susuclotno cricáscono etpro

Frocotú, rususú, plu plu, metaplú.

Zutrotpor ascror,

trotocopulfo pritel.

See also

• The language glíglico, in the novel Rayuela by Julio Cortázar
• The language jabberwocky (gibberish) by Lewis Carroll
• Alliteration
• Jerigonza
• Nonsense
• Scat
• Vonleska

References

Category:Poetry Category:Articles with unsourced statements