''Hebdomeros'' is a 1929 book (referred to by some as a novel) by Italian painter

Giorgio de Chirico Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...

. Chirico did not produce any other long-form writing. The book is narrated in the third person and loosely concerns the movement of a man, Hebdomeros, westward. Writing in '' The Kenyon Review'', Alan Burns referred to the text as a " surrealist dream novel".

Context and publication

At the beginning of his career, Chirico produced works in a style he developed with his fellow Italian painter

Carlo Carrà Carlo Carrà (; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number ...

. They referred to the style as or

metaphysical art Metaphysical painting ( it, pittura metafisica) or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contra ...

. In the early 1920s, the French poet and writer

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

(around whom the surrealist movement organized itself) noticed and became enthralled by a "metaphysical" painting of Chirico's at the gallery of Paul Guillaume. Due to admiration from Breton and other surrealists, Chirico became an accepted member of their social and artistic group in Paris. Later in the 1920s, other surrealists became increasingly critical of Chirico's new work, and he split from the other artists. Despite Chirico's split with the group, critics generally refer to ''Hebdomeros'' as belonging to the body of

surrealist writing Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. Peer artists who both painted and wrote include Max Ernst. Though Chirico did not write another full book, he did write poetry.

Reception

Writing in ''

Books Abroad ''World Literature Today'' is an American magazine of international literature and culture, published at the University of Oklahoma. The stated goal of the magazine is to publish international essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, and book review ...

'', Hélène Harvitt referred to the book as "hard to read", blaming both its indistinct plot and the "typographical aspect" of few paragraph breaks and no divisions into chapters. Despite her reservations, she wrote that readers with "patience" would find "much poetry and food for thought." The American writer Thomas Pynchon refers to ''Hebdomeros'' as a "dream novel" in his own debut novel, '' V.''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hebdomeros 1929 French novels Surrealist novels Giorgio de Chirico