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

Appendix: English Translations

191 The following are English translations for the longer Portuguese quotations . They are keyed to the text by the numbers in brackets. All translations are mine. Introduction A Desire for Equilibrium in Avant-Garde Poetics: The Parables “Non serviam” and “Parabola d’A escrava que não é Isaura” 1 And after centuries and centuries . . . An ingenious vagabond born October 20, 1854 happened to pass by the mountain. Chapter Four “Prefácio Interessantíssimo” as Mock Manifesto 2 Reader: Hallucinationism is founded. * This preface, though interesting, is useless. 3 And excuse me for being so far behind the contemporary artistic movements. I am outmoded, I confess. No one can liberate himself , all at once, from the grandmother-theories that he imbibed; and the author of this book would be a hypocrite if he pretended to represent a modern orientation that he still does not understand well. 4 Some facts. Not all of them. And no conclusions. For whomever accepts me both are useless. The curious will take pleasure in Appendix English Translations 192 finding out my conclusions, juxtaposing work and facts. For whomever rejects me, it’s a lost cause to explain that which, before reading , he has already not accepted. 5 When I feel the lyric impulse I write without thinking all that my unconscious is shouting to me. I think later: not only to correct, but also to justify what I wrote. Hence the reason for this Very Interesting Preface. 6 “This Koran is no more than a confusion of mixed-up, incoherent dreams. It is not inspiration received from God, but rather created by the author. Muhammad is not a prophet, he’s a man who writes verses. Let him present some sign that reveals his destiny, like the ancient prophets.” Maybe they will say of me what they said of the creator of Allah. The whole difference between the two of us: Muhammad presented himself as a prophet; I judged that it would be more convenient to present myself as a lunatic. 7 I was vain. I tried to come out of obscurity. Now I have pride. It wouldn’t weigh on me to go back into obscurity. I thought that my ideas (which aren’t even mine) would be disputed: they disputed my intentions. I won’t be quiet any longer. They would ridicule my silence as much as they would this cry. 8 Forgive me for giving some worth to my book. There is no father who, being a father, would abandon his deformed, drowning son in order to save the neighbor’s handsome heir. The wet nurse of the story was a huge perverted ham. 9 Inspiration is fleeting, violent. Any little imp will perturb it or even silence it. Art, which added to Lyricism yields Poetry, does not consist of impairing the crazed course of the lyric state to warn it of the rocks and wire fences along the path. Let it trip, fall down, and get hurt. Art is weeding out of the poem, later, fastidious repetitions , romantic sentimentalities, and useless or inexpressive details. 10 Artistic beauty: arbitrary, conventional, transient—a question of fashion. Natural beauty: immutable, objective, natural—it has the eternity that nature will have. Art doesn’t consist of reproducing nature, nor is that its goal. All the great artists, whether consciously (Raphael of the Madonna paintings, Rodin of the Balzac statue, Beethoven in his Pastoral Symphony, Machado de Assis with his novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas) or unconsciously (the vast majority), were deformers of nature. From this I infer that artistic beauty will be all the more artistic, all the more subjective, English Translations to Pages 109–15 193 the more it is distanced from natural beauty. Let others infer whatever they want. It matters little to me. 11 Our senses are fragile. Perception of exterior things is weak, impaired by a thousand pretenses that derive from our physical and moral defects: diseases, prejudices, indispositions, antipathies, ignorance , heredity, circumstances of time and place, etc. 12 There is the order of the schoolchildren who leave their classes hand-in-hand, two-by-two. There is an order for the high school students, who come down the stairs four steps at a time, graciously bumping into each other. There is an order, even higher, in the unfettered fury of the elements. 13 Marinetti was great when he rediscovered the suggestive, associative , symbolic, universal, and musical power...