SOURCE: "Xavier Villaurrutia and The Modern Mexican Theatre," in Modern Language Forum, Vol. XXXIX, No. 2, December, 1954, pp. 108-14.

In the following essay, Lamb offers a brief overview of Villaurrutia's career, with emphasis on his dramatic work.

Xavier Villaurrutia appears in Mexican letters among the young men who formed the group known as "Contemporáneos," which soon became by its own efforts a literary generation.¹ A poet above all, Xavier Villaurrutia has not failed to utilize the other disciplines of letters, and he has demonstrated his ability and his technical strength in the theatre and in critical writing.²

According to Villaurrutia himself the most important mission of the "Contemporáneos" group was to put Mexico in touch with the universal. "We tried to make known the contemporary manifestations of art, to open the way for a knowledge of foreign literatures .. . It can be said that the most important group...