Vicente Huidobro

Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (Santiago, Santiago province, January 10, 1893-Cartagena, then Valparaíso province, January 2, 1948), better known as Vicente Huidobro , was a Chilean poet. Initiator and exponent of creationism, he is considered one of the most outstanding Chilean poets, along with Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda and Pablo de Rokha.

Biography

The son of Vicente García-Huidobro and María Luisa Fernández Bascuñán, he was born into a wealthy family, related to politics and banking. His father was the heir to the Marquesado de Casa Real and his mother, a feminist activist and host of numerous literary evenings.

After spending his first years in Europe, in 1907 he entered the Colegio San Ignacio in Santiago, belonging to the Society of Jesus. He studied literature at the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile, which he left unfinished. He published, in Santiago, in 1911, Ecos del alma , with a modernist tendency. The following year, he married Manuela Portales Bello. During his youth, he lived with his family in the García-Huidobro Fernández Palace, located on the corner of Alameda and San Martín Street.

He founded and directed the magazine Musa Joven, where part of his later book Songs at night and his first calligram, Triángulo armónico, appeared.. In 1913 he directed with Carlos Díaz Loyola, real name of Pablo de Rokha, the three issues of the magazine Azul and published the collections of poems La gruta del silencio and Canciones at night . The following year, he dictated the conference Non serviam , which reflects his aesthetic creed. In Pasando y pasando, he exposed his religious doubts and his criticism of the Jesuits, which earned him reproaches from his family. He also published Las pagodas ocultas (1916), a book of "psalms, prose poems and essays", which he signed for the first time with the name Vicente Huidobro.

Permanences in Argentina, France and Spain

Harmonic triangleYour first callogram.

Together with the writer Teresa Wilms Montt, who left a convent, Huidobro traveled to Buenos Aires in 1916, where he outlined his creationist theory. In that same year he embarked for Europe with his wife and children. Passing through Madrid, he met Rafael Cansinos Assens, with whom he had maintained an epistolary relationship since 1914. He settled in the Paris of World War I and published Adán (1916), a work that closes the initial period of their training. In Argentina, he edited El espejo de agua (1916), a short work made up of nine poems with which Huidobro, although still in its infancy, began his new aesthetic form.

In 1917, he collaborated with the magazine Nord-Sud, directed by Pierre Reverdy, together with Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis Aragón, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob and Tristan Tzara, among others, until that a dispute with his director distanced him from this medium. At this time, he related to the Parisian avant-garde of the time: Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Jacques Lipchitz, Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Paul Éluard and Blaise Cendrars, in addition to those previously named. He published Horizon carré (1917), which includes poems that had appeared in El espejo de agua translated into French with the help of Gris and presented with more advanced typesetting.

In the fall of 1918, Huidobro returned to Madrid, where he made contact with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, refugees in Spain, and resumed his friendship with Rafael Cansinos Assens and Guillermo de Torre, sharing their ultraist gathering at the Colonial. He also visited Café Pombo was associated with Ramón Gómez de la Serna and his acolytes, and presented his idea of the creationist movement. He corresponded with Tristan Tzara and collaborated on his magazine Dada. In Madrid he simultaneously published four books: Hallali and Tour Eiffel in French; Arctic Poems and Equatorial in Spanish, as well as reprinting El espejo de agua.

The following year, on another of his trips to Madrid, according to Cansinos, he took with him the draft of Voyage en parachute, the first draft of what would later become Altazor. He took various science courses at various universities and was also interested in esoteric knowledge: alchemy, astrology, ancient Kabbalah and occultism in general.

In 1920 he continued writing in Paris; he collaborated, along with Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, in L'Esprit Nóuveau —magazine directed by Paul Dermée—, La Bataille Littéraire, La Vie des Lettres , Le Cœur à Barbe and Actino; He also wrote for the ultraist Spanish magazines: Grecia , Cervantes , Tableros and Ultra . In El Liberal of Madrid, Enrique Gómez Carrillo published an interview with Pierre Reverdy, who claimed authorship of creationism and accused Huidobro of backdating the edition of El espejo de agua. Greece expressed solidarity with Huidobro and he traveled to Madrid between August and September to refute Gómez Carrillo.

Creationism and Altazor

Cover Altazor (1931).

In 1921, the first issue of Creación, an international art magazine founded and directed by Huidobro, appeared in Madrid, which included productions of a sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz and paintings by Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Albert Gleizes. The second issue appears in Paris in November under the title Création Revue d'Art. In December he gives his famous conference Poetry , which will serve as a prologue to the Spanish edition of Tremor of Heaven . He publishes Saisons Choisies , an anthology prepared by his author.

The following year he exhibited his theory on pure creation at the Branche Studio in Paris and gave lectures on the same subject in Berlin and Stockholm. He published in the Polish magazine Nowa Sztuka . His exhibition of painted poems, presented at the Edouard VII Theater in Paris, was closed for being too disruptive, and the project to publish them under the title of Salle XIV was cut short. He collaborates with Sonia Delaunay in the creation of Robes-poèmes He maintains friendship with the musicians Edgar Varèse, Erik Satie and Georges Auric. He organizes with other people the costume ball Salle Bullier , in July, in a stage of intense social activity.

In 1923, Guillermo de Torre, in an article in the September magazine Alfar, argued with Huidobro by accusing him of having copied creationism from the Uruguayan Julio Herrera y Reissig. He writes the screenplay for Cagliostro , moved by the editing project of the Romanian director Mime Misu. He publishes Finis Britannia , a critique of British imperialism and in 1924 he is allegedly kidnapped for this reason, generating great interest in the European press. He enters the Masonic Grand Lodge of France. That year he meets Miguel de Unamuno, who is in exile in Paris, and number 3 of Création appears, where he publishes his Manifeste peut-être . Tristan Tzara, René Crevel, Juan Larrea and Erik Satie participate in the magazine. It includes the supplement Al fin se descubre mi maestro, which responds to the accusations of Guillermo de Torre.

He collaborated with other French magazines and in 1925 he continued the controversy with Guillermo de Torre, who published Avant-garde European Literatures, where he did not do very well. In the midst of the rise of Surrealism, he gave the conference "L & # 39; unconscious et I & # 39; inspiration artistique."

Chile returns in April and enters politics founding in August Action. Diario de Purificación Nacional , but he was beaten in front of his house for denouncing fraudulent activities of high-ranking political-administrative personalities and on November 21 his newspaper was closed. Huidobro then founded another, La Reforma and was proclaimed a symbolic candidate for the presidency of the Republic by the progressive youth. He suffers a second attack when a bomb explodes in front of his house. He collaborates with the magazines Andamios, Panorama and Ariel and publishes Automne Régulier and Tout à coup, with poems that oppose surrealist tendencies, as well as Manifestes (all three in 1925), where he collects a series of essays and proclamations that express his aesthetic position.

In 1926, he published in the April issue of the magazine Panorama a poem that would be a fragment of Canto IV of Altazor.

He traveled to New York in 1927 and met, through Varèse, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Gloria Swanson. He plans to take his novel Cagliostro. to the cinema.

Installed in Europe, together with Tristan Tzara he directs the literary section «Feuille Volante» of Cahiers d'Art. He begins to write his novel Mío Cid Campeador and discovers that he is heir to the Marquesado de Casa Real, a noble title that his mother, in the following years, wanted to process, without finally doing so. In 1929 he continued the work of Altazor and the one of Tremor de cielo begins. Around this time, there is a small scandal when he married Ximena Amunátegui for the second time, according to the Mohammedan rite, for which Huidobro must take vows within this religious faith. He publishes Mío Cid Campeador (1929), with illustrations by Santiago Ontañón.

In 1930, in the Italian Alps, he wrote the «novel of anticipation», La próxima, while spending some time with his friend Roberto Suárez Barros. He published his poem "Chanson de I'oeuf et de l'infini" in the Revue Européenne, later collected in Spanish, in Ver y palpar (1941), as well as an excerpt from Altazor, in French, in the June issue of Transition magazine.

In 1931, he returned to Madrid to manage the publication of Altazor and Tremor de cielo. He attends the recital of Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca. A brief epistolary dispute with Luis Buñuel is generated for political reasons. While on vacation in Arcachon with Hans Arp, they both wrote the texts for Trois Nouvelles Exemplaires. He begins a friendship with the Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres García. He publishes Portrait of a Paladín , English version of Mío Cid Campeador, Tremor of Heaven and Altazor or the parachute trip .

Return to Chile

Huidobro's commitment to the Second Spanish Republic in an interview for the magazine Spacein the summer of 1937.

He returned to his country in 1932 under pressure from the global economic crisis and published Gilles de Raíz.

In 1933 he lived an intense political activity in favor of the Communist Party of Chile. In the magazine Europa of Barcelona he publishes the article "Manifesto to the youth of Hispano-America", where he proposes to create a republic made up of Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. He sponsored the Decembrist Group of Neo-Cubist painters among whom is his friend Carlos Sotomayor.

In 1934 he wrote film criticism for the Santiago press. She is born her fifth son, Vladimir, a name given in honor of Lenin. In a year of intense editorial activity, she publishes Cagliostro , (Santiago, Zig-Zag), novel-film; the science fiction novel The Next One. History that happened in another time (Santiago, Walton); Papá or the diary of Alicia Mir (Santiago, Walton), a novel written in the form of an intimate diary; and En la Luna (Santiago, Ercilla), theater. She founded the magazine Vital / Ombligo with Omar Cáceres and Eduardo Anguita.

The controversy between Huidobro and Pablo Neruda broke out in 1935 when the former appeared more prominently in the Anthology of new Chilean poetry by Anguita and Volodia Teitelboim. He publishes Three Exemplary Novels (due to their brevity, he must add two more texts written with Arp, at the suggestion of his editor).

In 1936, together with Picasso, Arp, Vasily Kandinsky, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, among others, he signed the Dimensionist Manifesto. She produces anti-fascist political articles for the newspaper La Opinión , adheres to the Popular Front, and founds the magazine Total . He also organized Chilean writers in solidarity with Republican Spain during the civil war caused by the military rebellion of July 1936. He published the poem "Está sanrando España" and traveled to Valencia to participate in the II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture held between July 2 and 12, 1937.

In 1937 the controversy with Neruda intensified when both found themselves in Spain supporting the republican cause. The Association Internationale des Escrivains pour la Défense de la Culture intervened from Paris in May, sending a letter to both of them urging them to drop their attitude. Signed, among others, Tristan Tzara, Alejo Carpentier, César Vallejo and Juan Larrea.

Back in Chile, he publishes the prose poem "Get out of here", against Italian fascist soldiers who visit the country, which provokes an attack against them. He publishes the poem «Gloria y sangre» in Madre España. Tribute to Chilean poets. In 1938, the group La Mandrágora was born, a Chilean surrealist movement that took shape in meetings at Huidobro's house. María Luisa Fernández, his mother, dies. The second and last issue of Total comes out in July. Satyr or the Power of Words appeared in 1939 and the following year his three «Letters to Uncle Sam» appeared in El Mercurio and La Nación. Subsequently, he publishes See and feel and The citizen of oblivion , with unpublished poems and others that have appeared in national and foreign magazines.

Last years

Huidobro as a war correspondent talks with General Jean de Latre de Tassigny (1945).

In 1942, second editions of Tremor de cielo, Cagliostro and Mio Cid Campeador appeared in Santiago. He founded Actual , the last magazine created by Huidobro, whose only issue appeared in September 1944. On his way to Europe, in November, he stopped in Montevideo, where he gave the lecture "Introduction to poetry". He arrived in Paris as a correspondent and in 1945 he broadcast his chronicles for the Voice of America from the French capital. He received a letter from his wife, Ximena, announcing the final separation. He entered with the allied troops in Berlin. He was discharged and returned to Santiago with his third wife, Raquel Señoret. He published the Anthology , compiled by Eduardo Anguita.

In 1946 he settled in Cartagena, a coastal resort in the central region of the country. He reissued Trois Nouvelles Exemplaires , which contains only the texts written with Arp. The following year he suffered a stroke which was attributed to a consequence of his war injuries and on January 2, 1948 he died at his home. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried on a hill facing the sea. His eldest daughter, Manuela, and Eduardo Anguita wrote the epitaph: "Here lies the poet Vicente Huidobro / Open the tomb / At the bottom of this tomb you can see the sea."

The same year as her death, Manuela published Últimos poemas, a compilation of unpublished texts and texts scattered in magazines. Huidobro wrote more than thirty works, including books of poetry and poetic narrative, of which just over a dozen were published posthumously.

Foundation and museum

The desk of Huidobro in his Casa Museo de Cartagena.

The Vicente Huidobro Foundation was created in Santiago in 1990 with the aim of preserving the poet's legacy. It has "a Documentation and Archive Center that is open to researchers, students and the general public[, and] promotes initiatives for the study and dissemination of the works of Huidobro and along with them those of the avant-garde." The Foundation, which is a non-profit institution, it is chaired by Huidobro's grandson, Vicente García-Huidobro Santa Cruz. The management is made up of the members of the council and the executive committee.

On April 6, 2013, the Vicente Huidobro Museum was inaugurated in what was his home in Cartagena. The Foundation that bears his name managed to recover the 320 m² house in 2009 and obtained funding from the Council of Culture. The museum has six rooms and more than 300 documents.

Works

Cover Tout à coup (1925).

• Ecos of the soul, Santiago de Chile, Imprenta Chile, 1911.
• The cave of silence, Santiago de Chile, Imprenta Universitaria, 1913.
• Songs at night, Santiago de Chile, Imprenta Chile, 1913.
• Passing and passing, Santiago de Chile, Imprenta Chile, 1914; downloadable from the Portal Memoria Chilena
• The hidden pagodas, Santiago de Chile, Imprenta Universitaria, 1914.
• Adam, Santiago de Chile, Imprenta Universitaria, 1916.
• The water mirrorBuenos Aires, Orion, 1916.
• Horizon carreParis, Paul Birault, 1917.
• Arctic Poems, Madrid, Pueyo, 1918.
• Equatorial Guinea, Madrid, Pueyo, 1918.
• Eiffel Tour, Madrid, s. e., 1918. (written in French)
• Hallali, Madrid, Editions Jesús López, 1918.
• Saisons choisiesiesParis, La Cible, 1921.
• Finis BritanniaParis, Fiat Lux, 1923.
• Automne régulierParis, Librairie de France, 1925.
• Tout à coupParis, Au Sans Pareil, 1925.
• ManifestosParis, Revue Mondiale, 1925.
• Contrary WindsSantiago de Chile, Nascimento, 1926.
• My Cid Champion, Madrid, Ibero-American Publishing Company, 1929.
• The tremor of heaven, Madrid, Plutarco, 1931.
• Altazor or parachute trip, Madrid, Ibero-American Publishing Company, 1931; downloadable from the Portal Memoria Chilena
• Tremblement de cielParis, l'As de Coeur, 1932.
• Gilles de Raíz, Paris, Totem, 1932; downloadable from the Portal Memoria Chilena
• NextSantiago de Chile, Walton, 1934.
• Dad or Alicia Mir's diarySantiago de Chile, Walton, 1934.
• CagliostroSantiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1934.
• On the moonSantiago de Chile, Ercilla, 1934.
• Three huge novels, Zig-Zag, Santiago, 1935 (with Hans Arp) downloadable from the Chilean Memory portal
• Satiro or the power of the wordsSantiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1939.
• See and palpSantiago de Chile, Ercilla, 1941.
• The citizen of oblivionSantiago de Chile, Ercilla, 1941.
• Last poems, Santiago de Chile, Ahués Hermanos, 1948; downloadable from the portal Memoria Chilena
• Complete works, 2 vols., Santiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1964 (recollection of Braulio Arenas).
• Complete works, 2 vols., Santiago de Chile, Andrés Bello, 1976 (enlarged collection of Hugo Montes).
• Epistolary between Huidobro and his mother; Writer Archive, LOM, Santiago, 1997 downloadable from the Chilean Memory portal
• Poetry work, critical edition under the coordination of Cedomil Goic; ALLCA XX, Collection Archives, 45, Madrid, 2003
• Poetry and creation, anthology, selection of Gabriele Morelli; Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid, 2013
• Altazor and other poems, anthology, selection of José Manuel Zañartu, illustrations by Catalina Silva Guzmán; Zig-Zag, Santiago, Chile, 2013.

Offspring

• His grandson, Vicente García-Huidobro Opazo is the leader of the avant-garde Akinetón Retard band and driver of Radar Rock & Pop in Rock & Pop.

Cinema

The film The poet's flight (2009), directed by Marcelo Ferrari, is based on the life of the poet.