Aesthetics of Equilibrium: The Vanguard Poetics of Vicente Huidobro and Mário de Andrade

Chapter One. Poetic Engineering: Creating the Poetic Realm in Huidobro’s Early Manifestos

Huidobro’s early manifestos display a combination of mystical and didactic approaches. Along with “Non serviam,” “La poesía” builds Huidobro’s poetic mystique while showing a more intrinsically creative and metaphorical textual construction . In contrast, the more traditional manifestos—“La creación pura,” “Manifiesto de manifiestos,” “El creacionismo,” “Yo encuentro . . . ,” “Futurismo y maquinismo,” “La poesía de los locos,” and “Necesidad de una estética poética compuesta por los poetas”—didactically expound and exemplify the principles of creationism. Not completely bereft of metaphor, the imagery of these latter texts sometimes supports Huidobro’s mystique while maintaining his authoritarian tone. The brief “Época de creación” begins a transition back to more intrinsically creative texts—the final manifestos analyzed in chapters two and three. • The Pierced Tongue The inherent magic of words dominates the fundamental manifesto “La poesía (Fragmento de una conferencia leída en el Ateneo de Madrid, el año 1921).”1 Bary notes that Larrea and Gerardo Diego, Huidobro’s Spanish disciples, met their master for the first time at that 1921 conference in which Huidobro read this text. Larrea later summarized the piece as Huidobro’s “eco de la doctrina mallarmeana de la palabra poética como lenguaje del paraíso y del juicio final” (Bary, Nuevos estudios 13); Larrea confirms the importance of these two biblical extremes in Huidobro’s poetic vision. In a series of imaginative aphorisms and definitions, Huidobro elaborates his poetic mystique by restoring a kind of supernatural power to verbal exChapter One Poetic Engineering Creating the Poetic Realm in Huidobro’s Early Manifestos 32 pression, and then, by extension, to poets, or to those who would recognize and exercise this power of words. In both cases this act is facilitated by images that are implicitly or explicitly biblical and recall the dawn of civilization. Poetry is “el vocablo virgen de todo prejuicio; el verbo creado y creador, la palabra recién nacida. Ella se desarrolla en el alba primera del mundo. Su precisión no consiste en denominar las cosas, sino en no alejarse del alba” (716). The comparison to “el verbo” recalls the opening verses of the Gospel of John, lending poetry a divine nature. Its “precisión” lies not in denomination , as in the traditionally masculine role of Adam, but rather in maintaining the virginal, original qualities of the first dawn. Poetry is thus a feminine essence, as the womb or the source, while the masculine act of naming is relegated to the poet. Huidobro emphasizes poetry’s divine state through atemporality : “Para ella no hay pasado ni futuro” (716). Similarly, poetry represents alpha and omega: “La Poesía está antes del principio del hombre y después del fin del hombre. Ella es el lenguaje del Paraíso y el lenguaje del Juicio Final, ella ordeña las ubres de la eternidad, ella es intangible como el tabú del cielo” (716). The image of the eternal udders reinforces poetry’s feminine essence.2 In addition, the divinity of poetry becomes sanctified in ritual; Huidobro here depicts an almost personified poetry in terms of clothing and nudity, like Mário’s Poetry of the “Parábola”: “El lenguaje se convierte en un ceremonial de conjuro y se presenta en la luminosidad de su desnudez inicial ajena a todo vestuario convencional fijado de antemano” (717). Moreover, poetry’s otherworldly essence is reminiscent of the neutralizing power of Mário’s “equilíbrio”; it is “el último horizonte, que es, a su vez, la arista en donde los extremos se tocan, en donde no hay contradicción ni duda” (717). Only the poet can understand and wield these grandiose powers of poetry. Accordingly, he assumes a cosmic identity: “Las células del poeta están amasadas en el primer dolor y guardan el ritmo del primer espasmo. En la garganta del poeta el universo busca su voz, una voz inmortal” (717). The poet, an Adam figure, primally experiences pain and ecstasy. The sexual connotations of “ritmo” and “espasmo” represent the artistic creative act as natural and reproductive, in fact comparing artistic expression to the first instance of procreation (“del Poetic Engineering 33 34 Chapter One primer espasmo”). Moreover, the poet’s “garganta” and universal “voz” will become privileged corporeal synecdoches, calling attention to his verbal magic. The poet’s Adam-like nature bestows upon him his special skill; he subverts, by...