Vicente
Huidobro (1893-1948) is one of the great forgotten modernists – forgotten for all
the wrong reasons. Even in his native Chile he is under-rated: his
collected works are long out of print; there is no scholarly edition
of any of his works (something which is sadly true of all the great
Latin-American writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, amazing as
it might seem); and there is no acceptable biography. In addition,
academic studies run to no more than half a dozen books (two of them
in English) and there is only one decent selection of his work in
English translation, barring the one under review here. Why things
happen thus is inexplicable, but struggle against it one must.
The
cynic in me suggests that the over-rating of Neruda (whom I do
not wish to denigrate, by the way; it's just that some space
should be made for others) – ten years younger than Huidobro,
and someone with whom Huidobro fell out at an early stage – has
been decisive in the diminution of the older poet's reputation;
that and Huidobro's early death. It might be worth mentioning
here that Neruda also fell out with the other great Chilean modernist,
Pablo de Rokha (an avant-garde poet even more under-rated than
Huidobro, albeit not of the same level of achievement). These three
great contemporaries
fell out, partly for artistic reasons, partly because provincial
Santiago could not hold all three of them – and there were
in fact occasions when all three were in the city – and partly
because all three of them were at various times members of the
Communist Party. Leftist factionalism is nothing new of course,
but the three
of them had political differences: Huidobro was a confused liberal-cum-social-democrat
who joined the CP in the 30s when it was fashionable to do so.
To his credit, he was to leave in the wake of the Hitler/Stalin
pact.
Neruda was a lifelong member of the Party and was a Senator at
the time of the 1971 right-wing coup. De Rokha was an unrecalcitrant
Stalinist all his life, to the eventual detriment of his literary
position and also that of his wife, Winétt, who died young
in 1951 and has never been given her due as a poet. [May I enter
a plea here that some hispanicist take on the task of reviving
her work? As a fine poet lost in the shade of a domineering husband,
she is tailor-made for rediscovery and reassessment. And the sooner
the better.]
It might
fairly be argued that Huidobro's magpie existence in the inter-war
years has led to some confusion: how does one
classify this restless self-promoting avant-gardiste? Doesn't
he look
somewhat effete when arrayed against the committed Spanish poets
of the thirties (such as García Lorca or Miguel Hernández)
and sterner Latin American figures such as the expatriate
Peruvian, César Vallejo? Nonetheless, Huidobro's effective
sidelining over the past half-century is nothing short of criminal.
What has led to this state of affairs?
Well,
for one, he steamed off to Europe at an early stage and made a
reputation in Paris, writing in French (and initially
bad French:
his earlier works were corrected by Picabia, who was fluent,
and by other helpful accomplices such as Reverdy). He also
wrote novels,
prose poetry, screenplays, and weird political diatribes; he
exhibited painted poems in art galleries, and generally mixed
with the great
and the good of the international Parisian inter-war avant-garde.
He also left his first wife and ran off with a young (Chilean)
lady who was barely above the age of consent – in the
wake of which he wrote the amazing erotic prose-poem Temblor
de cielo, published
in the same year as Altazor. He ran for President of Chile
as the candidate of the Youth Party that he founded, was the
subject of
an assassination attempt, and became a war reporter in WW2,
where he was twice wounded, never making a complete recovery
and died an
early death.
Strip
away the biographical excesses, the confusions, the restless inventiveness
and self-promotion, and underneath there isin fact
a great poet. Initially he was too much in the thrall of
fashionable
avant-gardiste posturing, post-dada and post-futurism, but
he
found his way to
a robust poetics of dense and startling imagery, that
indicate some parallels to surrealism, despite his attacks
on that movement
(another falling-out between literary-political factions).
There are several
fine
volumes in the 20s, such as the Poemas árticos (Arctic
Poems) but it is with Altazor (1931) that he comes
into his own. This huge
poem of flight, that ends in meaningless syllables, is – I
would suggest – one of the two great monuments of the
Spanish-language vanguardia, the other being Vallejo's
astonishing earlier work,
Trilce. Where Vallejo is less visible in his poem,
Huidobro stands astride his pages bellowing at the heavens
and demanding
to be heard.
All very bardic, somewhat uncomfortable and – these
days – unfashionable.
In some respects Trilce and Altazor represent
a Spanish-language equivalent of The Wasteland and Paterson in
terms of their attempts to do things radically differently,
and at great length,
redefining what
poetry was about and could do.
Vallejo's
poem seems to be an almost inexplicable eruption, but Huidobro's
work is part of the greater European modernising
movement in the arts. For various reasons, his influence
has not been felt: in Chile, as I have pointed out, there
were
special problems;
in Spain, this kind of work was not much attended to during
the Franco period; elsewhere in the Hispanic world it sometimes
seems
as if
nationalisms get in the way of a clear view of great writing.
As it does of course in the UK and the USA – just
ask writers from the Republic of Ireland or from Canada.
Huidobro threw himself
into the ferment of 1920s' Paris and made an early name
for himself, thanks in part to being a natural salesman,
but also because
he was a restless natural talent, at ease with poets and
painters both. Some of the posturing can sound a little
embarrassing at a
century's remove, but there is an innocent charm to it,
rather than just cynical careerism.
Huidobro
first became interesting as a poet around the close of World War
1, with the composition of the long
poem Ecuatorial (Equatorial)
and the Poemas árticos. Thereafter
he wrote in French for some years, and with increasing
deftness.
Altazor might have
been written in French; there again it might not. Such
is the state of Huidobro scholarship. At any rate it
was
published
in
Madrid,
in Spanish. Parts had previously appeared in French.
By contrast, the ecstatic Temblor de cielo appeared
in French in its entirety
under the title Tremblement du ciel, but that
work is translatable,
whereas the cascade of neologisms that is Altazor was
always thought to be untranslatable. Eliot Weinberger,
without doubt the leading
anglophone translator of modern Spanish-language poetry,
here
proves that the poem IS translatable, and what's more
he
does it for
the second time. His first edition was published fifteen
years ago in Cecilia Vicuña's fine Latin American
series for Graywolf Press. Long out of print, the title
has now been revived by Wesleyan,
and Weinberger has further revised the poem, making it
even more of an essential acquisition. Even the cover
is apt, being a painting
by Robert Delaunay, with whom Huidobro worked in Paris.
Angel
exiled from common sense
Why do you speak? Who asks you to speak?
Explode pessimist but explode in silence
How the mean a thousand years from now will laugh
Dog man you howl at your own night
Delinquent from your soul
The man of tomorrow will laugh at you
And your petrified shouts dripping stalactites
Who are you inhabitant of this little stellar corpse?
What is your nausea of the infinite your ambition for
eternity?
[…]
I speak
because I am an act of protest an insult a grimace of pain
I believe only in the climates of passion
Only those with clear-sighted hearts ought to speak
In high-frequency language
Explorers of truth and lies
Tired of swinging their lanterns in the labyrinths
of nothing
In the cave of alternate sentiments
Pain is the only thing eternal
And no one can laugh in the face of the void
[…]
Give
me hurry give me a plain of silence
An unpopulated plain like the eyes of the dead.
[from Canto 1 – presumably written before the rest
of the poem. René de Costa, who edited the only good Spanish
edition of the poem (for Cátedra, Madrid) argues that its
composition dates in part from 1918, and it is true that the language
is not
far removed from that of poems such as Ecuatorial,
published in that year. Some parts of this
Canto were printed in magazines in the early
1920s.]
My swallow
anchors
Its sources in the sea
My angel
such darkness
such color
Such statue and such breath
Earth and hand
Sailors well-armed
Armored hair
Sanctuary eyes
and the beggar
Heart exploded
Mountain tower
Bell sierra
Pearls ring
Pearls invoke
The horror of goodbye
Cloud crystal
The whisper and the knotted bow
Swimmer
Night crystal
Ruined Medusa
Will say a ghost
Silk crystal
Forgetting the serpent
Forgetting its two legs
Its two eyes
Its two hands
Its ears
Aeronaut
in my terror
Wind aside
Swallowlin and mandotail
Mandowind and gust of linn
Buried
Bells
The forgotten buried
In its ear
north wind
My crystal
Bath eternal
night knot
Glory trailing
without dismay
At such wonder
And its statue
Night and branch
Crystal dream
Crystal voyage
Flower and night
With their statue
Crystal death
(the
closing lines of Canto VI)
Canto
VII, which contains no recognisable words,
just sounds,
closes 4 pages
later, thus
(and here I quote
the original too):
Luntanando
Sensorida e infimento
Ululayo ululamento
Pegasuena
Cantasorio ululaciente
Oraneva yu yu yo
Tempovío
Infilero e infinauta zurrosía
Jaurinario ururayú
Montañendo oraranía
Arorasía ululacente
Semperiva
ivarisa tarirá
Campanudo lalalí
Auriciento auronida
Lalalí
Io ia
i i i o
Ai a i ai a i i i i o ia |
Or
in 'English':
Moonaluning
Sensiwooned infirmament
Ululayo ululament
Pliasounding
Chanteloping ululaissance
Hallenujah you you yo
Tempolary
Infilite and infinaut buziety
Quaginary uruahyou
Sierratuning faraprair
Ululascent aurorarary
Livfrever
Lefdalafda dedeedah
Campellationed lalalee
Auricental centauroral
Lalalee
Eeoh eeah
ee ee ee oh
Ahee ah ee ahee ah ee ee ee ee oh eeah |
Altazor is a poem that the
literate Anglophone
public needs
to know,
and
this translation
is a magnificent achievement
that allows it to come over as well as it ever will.
