Draft:Jitanjáfora

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:

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:

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.