The Writing Community of Guinhoe: Time of the Eternal Recurrence

Abstract

This paper examines the literary thinking of the Nietzschean-influenced community Guinhoe and its central concern, Poetry and Novel (1936), a magazine published by a coterie of writers. Guinhoe was a unique community that chose to be considered as non-group, a paradoxical self-definition that reflected the concepts of the group and its members. This particular writing community presented itself through ideas, writings and literary concepts based upon Nietzsche’s concept of “Eternal Recurrence.” The deconstruction and denial of themselves as a group through their writing allows the Guinhoe community to continue to exist. There is no objective shape, only activity and process, and in this sense the community considers the action of writing itself as literature. In other words, the community is writing itself endlessly by repeating the action of writing.