Vicente Huidobro
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the creator and greatest exponent of the literary movement called Creacionismo.
Life and work
Early years
Huidobro was born into a wealthy family from Santiago, Chile. He spent his first years in Europe, and was educated by French and English governesses. Once his family was back in Chile, Vicente was enrolled at the Colegio San Ignacio, a Jesuit secondary school in Santiago, where he was expelled for wearing a ring that he claimed was a wedding ring.In 1910 he studied literature at the Instituto Pedagogico of the University of Chile, but a good part of his knowledge of literature and poetry came from his mother, poet María Luisa Fernández Bascuñán. She used to host "tertulias" or salons in the family home, where sometimes up to 60 people came to talk and to listen to her talk about literature, with guests including members of the family, servants, maids and a dwarf. Later, in 1912, she would help him financially and emotionally to publish his first magazine "Musa Joven".
In 1911 he published Ecos del alma, a work with modernist tones. The following year he married Manuela Portales Bello. In 1913 he published Canciones en la noche. The book included some poems previously published in "Musa Joven" as well as his first calligram, "Triángulo armónico".
In 1913, along with Carlos Díaz Loyola, he published three issues of the magazine Azul, and published both Canciones en la noche and La gruta del silencio. The next year, he gave a lecture, Non serviam, in which he reflected on his aesthetic vision. The same year, in "Pasando y Pasando", Vicente explained his religious doubts, earning himself the reproach of both his family and the Jesuits.
The same year, he published "Las pagodas ocultas", and signed it for the first time as Vicente Huidobro.
Move abroad
In 1916, he traveled to Buenos Aires with Teresa Wilms Montt, a young poet whom she had rescued from a convent. While in Buenos Aires, Huidobro outlined his creationism literary theory, later a literary movement, and published "El espejo de agua".Also in 1916, he moved to Europe with his wife and children. While passing through Madrid, he met Rafael Cansino Assens, with whom he had exchanged letters since 1914.
He settled in Paris and published Adán, a work that began his next phase of artistic development. Huidobro met and mixed with most of the Parisian avant garde of this period: Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Jacques Lipchitz, Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, Amedeo Modigliani and Blaise Cendrars.
In 1917, he contributed to the magazine Nord-Sud edited by Pierre Reverdy, along with Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, Jean Cocteau, André Breton, Louis Aragon and Max Jacob, until a disagreement with Reverdy forced him to leave the magazine. That same year he published Horizon carré, including poems previously shown in "El espejo de agua" translated to French with the help of Juan Gris.
In October 1918, Huidobro traveled to Madrid, making the first in a series of annual trips to that city. There he shared both Creacionismo and his knowledge of the Parisian vanguard with the artistic elite. In Madrid, Vicente met with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, refugees in Spain, and resumed his friendship with Rafael Cansinos-Assens. He started the literary movement Ultraísmo, corresponded with Tristan Tzara and collaborated with him on his Dadaist magazine.
In 1919, he brought to Madrid a rough draft of the series of poems that would eventually become his masterpiece, Altazor. That same year, he took some science classes and became interested in esoteric subjects like astrology, alchemy, ancient Kabbalah among other forms of occultism.
While in Paris, he worked with Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier at L' Esprit Nóuveau, a magazine directed by Paul Dermée. There he also worked for the Spanish magazines "Grecia", "Cervantes", "Tableros" and "Ultra".
In the El Liberal, a Spanish newspaper, journalist and literary critic Enrique Gómez Carrillo published an interview with Pierre Reverdy where he accuses Huidobro of antedating the edition of "El espejo de agua" and claims that he himself created "creacionismo". Grecia magazine took Huidobro's side, and between August and September Huidobro traveled to Madrid to refute Gómez Carrillo's claims.
Altazor and creacionismo
In 1921, Huidobro founded and edited an international art magazine, Creación, in Madrid. The magazine featured a Lipchitz sculpture and paintings by Georges Braque, Picasso, Juan Gris and Albert Gleizes. In November he printed a second issue in Paris, titled Création Revue d'Art. In December he presented his famous lecture, La Poesía, which served as prologue to his works Temblor de Cielo, and "Saisons Choisies".The next year, Huidobro presented his theory of "Pure Creation" at "Branche Studio" in Paris, and then in Berlin and Stockholm.He wrote for the Polish magazine "Nowa Sztuka". In Paris, his "Painted poems" exhibition at the Théâtre Edouard VII was shut down for being too "disruptive".
In 1923, he published "Finis Britannia", a critique of the British empire, which provoked antipathy from the British and resulted in him receiving a postcard in support from Mahatma Gandhi. In 1924 he was -arguably- kidnapped for this reason, disappearing for three days. Later in an interview, he briefly commented that the perpetrators of the kidnap were two "Irish scouts" but refused to give more details.
Huidobro continued with his diverse artistic activities in Europe, producing the third edition of "Création", where he published his "Manifeste peut-être". Collaborator in this edition included Tristan Tzara, René Crevel, Juan Larrea and Erik Satie. He joined the French Masonic Lodge and met Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno, who was exiled in Paris at the time.
In 1925 he returned to Chile, where he edited and published "Acción. Diario de Purificación Nacional" a political newspaper where he criticised the state and reported fraudulent activities. He was consequently assaulted and beaten outside his home and, on 21 November, the newspaper was shut down. He started another newspaper, "La reforma", in a symbolic gesture, young supporters of the progressive party declared him as their candidate for president. A bomb was then set off outside his house, though Huidobro escaped unharmed.
While in Chile, he wrote for the publications "Andamios", "Panorama" and "Ariel" and published "Automne Régulier" and "Tout à coup".
In 1926, he published a fragment of what would become the fourth canto of "Altazor" in "Panorama".
In 1927, he traveled to New York, where he met Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Gloria Swanson, wrote a script for a film of his novel "Cagliostro", and wrote the "Canto a Lindbergh" dedicated to aviator.
He returned to Europe by the late 1920s, where he began to write the novel, Mío Cid Campeador; he also continued his work on Altazor and began Temblor de Cielo. It was at this time that he discovered that he was heir to the Marquisate of Casa Real. He also participated in the Mandrágora, a Chilean surrealist movement founded in 1938. There was a scandal when he married Ximena Amunátegui in a Muslim ceremony.
In 1930, while in the Italian Alps, he wrote "La Proxima", and published his poem "Chanson de l'oeuf et de l'infini" in the magazine "Revue Européenne" and a fragment of "Altazor", in French, in the June edition of "Transition".
In 1931, he went back to Madrid to publish "Altazor", where he attended Federico García Lorca’s poetry recital "Poet in New York" and started his friendship with Uruguayan painter Joaquín Torres García. The same year he published "Portrait of a Paladin" and the English versions of his "Mío Cid Campeador", "Temblor de Cielo" and "Altazor".
Back to Chile
Huidobro went back to Chile in 1932, under the pressure of the Great Depression. In Chile, he published "Gilles de Raíz".In 1933, he got involved with the Chilean communist party and published his article "Manifiesto a la juventud de Hispanoamérica" in Barcelona's "Europa" magazine, where he proposed the creation of a united republic formed of Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
In 1934 he wrote film reviews for Santiago magazines and newspapers, and published "La Próxima" ; "Papá o el diario de Alicia Mir" , a novel written as a diary; and the play "En la Luna" . He founded the magazine Vital/Ombligo with Omar Cáceres and Eduardo Anguita.
In 1935 a young Volodia Teitelboim read a Rabindranath Tagore poem, similar to Poem 16 of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Teitelboim mentioned this to Huidobro, and Huidobro accused Neruda of plagiarism. This would initiate a conflict between Neruda and Huidobro that later would involve Pablo de Rokha.
In 1936, along with Picasso, Arp, Kandinsky, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay among others, he signed the " Dimensionist Manifesto"
In 1937, while in Spain supporting the republican cause, the conflict with Neruda resurfaced while Neruda was also supporting the republicans. The Parisian "Association Internationale des Ecrivains pour la Défense de la Culture", sending them a letter which called on them to change their attitude, signed by Tristan Tzara, Alejo Carpentier, César Vallejo and Juan Larrea, among others.
Once back in Chile, he published the prose poem "Fuera de aquí", arguing against Italian fascism and the Italian military, as well as the poem "Gloria y Sangre" in "Madre España: Homenaje de los poetas chilenos". In 1938 his mother died, and he became part of the creation of the Chilean surrealist group La Mandrágora. The first meetings of the group took place in his home.
Last years
In 1942, Huidobro published the second editions of "Temblor de cielo", "Cagliostro" and "Mio Cid Campeador" in Santiago.In 1944, he edited and published the first and last edition of "Actual", the final magazine he would create. In November of that year he traveled back to Europe and made a stop in Montevideo, Uruguay to give a lecture on "Introducción a la poesía". In 1945 he went to Paris as a correspondent for “La Voz de América". In Paris, he received a letter from his wife Ximena informing him of her wish for a divorce. He entered Berlin with the Allies. He was discharged and went back to Santiago with his third wife, Raquel Señoret.
In 1946 he settled in Cartagena, a seaside town in central Chile, and published a new edition of "Trois Nouvelles Exemplaires", with text written in collaboration with Jean Arp.
The following year he suffered a stroke attributed to his war wounds, and died on 2 January 1948, in his Cartagena house. According to his wishes, he was buried on a hill facing the sea. His eldest daughter Manuela and Eduardo Anguita wrote the epitaph: "Aquí yace el poeta Vicente Huidobro / Abrid la tumba / Al fondo de esta tumba se ve el mar".. That same year, Manuela published unedited texts and poems previously seen only in magazines.
Huidobro wrote over thirty works, including books of poetry and poetic narrative, of which more than a dozen were published posthumously.
& Maria Teresa Herreros, board members of the Vicente Huidobro Foundation