Aesthetics of Equilibrium Â· The Vanguard Poetic of Vincente Huidobro And Mario De Andrare

8/13/2019 Aesthetics of Equilibrium The Vanguard Poetic of Vincente Huidobro And Mario De Andrare

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AESTHETICS OF

EQUILIBRIUM


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Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Patricia Hart, Series Editor

Jeanette Beer

Paul B. Dixon

Benjamin Lawton

Howard Mancing

Floyd Merrell

Allen G. Wood

French

Paul BenhamouWillard Bohn

Gerard J. Brault

Mary Ann Caws

Grard Defaux

Milorad R. Margitic;

Glyn P. Norton

Allan H. Pasco

Gerald Prince

David Lee Rubin

Roseann RunteUrsula Tidd

ItalianFiora A. Bassanese

Peter Carravetta

Franco Masciandaro

Anthony Julian Tamburri

Luso-Brazilian

Fred M. Clark

Marta PeixotoRicardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg

Spanish and Spanish American

Maryellen BiederCatherine Connor

Ivy A. Corfis

Frederick A. de Armas

Edward Friedman

Charles Ganelin

David T. Gies

Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra

David K. Herzberger

Emily Hicks

Djelal Kadir

Amy Kaminsky

Lucille Kerr

Alberto Moreiras

Randolph D. Pope

Francisco Ruiz Ramn

Elz bieta Sk odowska

Mario ValdsHoward Young

Associate Editors

Editorial Board

volume 36


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AESTHETICS OF

EQUILIBRIUMThe Vanguard Poetics

of Vicente Huidobro

and Mrio de Andrade

Purdue University Press

West Lafayette, Indiana

Bruce Dean Willis


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Contents

vii List of Abbreviationsix Preface

The Latin American Avant-Garde: Context forVicente Huidobros and Mrio de Andrades Poetics

xxiiiAcknowledgments

xxv A Note on Translation and Orthography

1 Introduction

A Desire for Equilibrium in Avant-Garde Poetics:The Parables Non serviam and Parabola dA escravaque no Isaura

25 Part One

Poetry as Orientation of the Creative Self:Vicente Huidobro

32 Chapter One

Poetic Engineering: Creating the Poetic Realmin Huidobros Early Manifestos

71 Chapter Two

Orientation and Trajectory in Aviso a los turistas andManifiesto tal vez

85 Chapter Three

Dimensions of the Poet God: Huidobros Final Manifestos

99 Part Two

Poetry as Contraband from the Unconscious:Mrio de Andrade

104 Chapter Four

Prefcio Interessantssimo as Mock Manifesto

129 Chapter Five

At the Dock and on the Street: The Loss of Purity and

Solidarity in Mrios Poetics146 Chapter Six

Balancing the Equations: Mrios Struggle to DefineAesthetic Simultaneity

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178 Conclusion

A Poetics of Equilibrium and the Avant-Garde Paradox

191 Appendix

English Translations

203 Notes

215 Works Cited

223 Works Consulted

227 Index

Contents


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List of Abbreviations

The following abbreviations have been used to refer to theworks of Mrio de Andrade.

PCPoesias Completas

OIObra Imatura

PrefcioPrefcio in PC

Paulicia

Paulicia Desvairadain PC

ParbolaParbola dA escrava que no Isaura in OI

Escrava

A escrava que no Isaurain OI

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Preface

The Latin American Avant-GardeContext for Vicente Huidobrosand Mrio de Andrades Poetics

Generally defined as the era between the world wars, the avant-garde or vanguard period was a time of unprecedented urbanand industrial growth and consequent struggles to define theyoung republics of Latin America.1These artistic acts of self-definition, mindful of the European vanguard movements dis-paraging treatments of Western tradition and revered awe forso-called primitive cultures, revolutionized Latin Americanliterary, musical, and plastic art expressions. Although the van-guard movements can be thought of as united by their Euro-

pean heritage, pertaining to formal and thematic innovationsthat were part of a general, ongoing process of artistic change,they can also stand apart, each related to the particular aestheticand social issues that served as its national or regional foci.Brazilian modernistas,for example, revolutionized literary ex-pression in Brazilian (as opposed to Continental) Portuguese,while Mexican estridentistas rhetoricized the social progressof the Mexican Revolution, yet artists in both movements wereinfluenced by Italian futurism. In classifications of the avant-garde, Vicente Huidobro (18931948) is inevitably associatedwith his movement, creacionismo (creationism, sometimescalled literary cubism), and Mrio de Andrade (18931945)with Brazilian modernismo (he was an acknowledged leaderand received the informal title of Pope of Modernism), in thesame way that Manuel Maples Arce represents estridentismoor the early Borges ultrasmo.2These classifications are mean-ingful in that they help to comprehend the varying strategies of

the vanguard movements, yet the classified movements mayalso be seen as different means to the same end. The commongoal of all the movements is the writing of literature, especially


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poetry, as an original, subjective, and subversive act. Theseavant-garde context termsoriginal, subjective, subversive

set the parameters for dynamic creative acts that challenge ar-tistic traditions. Each individual artist explains his or her ownvision, although all the artists break with the rules and stan-dards of the past while desiring a new, modern, simultaneous,and total (and thus universal) mode of expression.

In spite of regional differences, most analysts defend the uni-versality of the Latin American movements as parts of oneavant-garde linked to Europe and North America.3The gener-ally Eurocentric orientation of the Latin American vanguard

movements, in fact, meant that a Peruvian vanguard writer, forinstance, would probably be more familiar with what was be-ing written in Paris, Madrid, or Berlin than in Buenos Aires,Santiago, or So Paulo. When this paradoxical state of affairsbecame obvious to those Latin American artists who had trav-eled in Europe and been asked about their fellow Latin Ameri-can artists, the returning travelers published Panamericananthologies, included more works by fellow Latin Americans

in their little magazines, and strengthened contacts with otherLatin Americans met in Europe. Such attempts often did notmove beyond mere catalogues of names and, with few excep-tions, did not foment transnational movements or cooperation;moreover, almost all of these fleeting inter-Latin American con-tacts were among fellow Spanish Americans to the exclusionof Brazilians. Notable exceptions include writer/philosopherAlfonso Reyess influential stay in Brazil as Mexican ambas-sador, Chilean poet Gabriela Mistrals visit to Brazil, and

Mrio de Andrades newspaper reviews of Borges, Girondo,Giraldes, and the Buenos Aires literary scene.Current scholars of the vanguard period have more aggres-

sively developed Spanish American / Brazilian comparativestudies. Beyond the excellent resources in the separate Brazil-ian and Spanish American fields, the paramount resources thatunite the two fields comparatively include Merlin H. Forsterand K. David Jacksons landmark Vanguardism in Latin Ameri-can Literature(1990), Jorge Schwartzs annotated compilation

Las vanguardias latinoamericanas(1991) and Mihai GrnfeldsAntologa de la poesa latinoamericana de vanguardia(1995).The development of such resources has been paralleled by


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The Latin American Avant-Garde

book-length comparative studies of Latin American poetry, forexample Gordon Brotherstons book (1975) and the collabora-

tive effort of Mike Gonzlez and David Treece (1992). As faras the vanguard period is concerned, the culmination of thesecomparative efforts and a standard for the next generation isVicky UnruhsLatin American Vanguards: The Art of Conten-tious Encounters(1994), covering a half-dozen major themeseach represented by four or five pithy analyses of the works ofvanguardists from all over the continent.

A survey of Forster and Jacksons extensive bibliographyand Las literaturas hispnicas de vanguardia by Harald

Wentzlaff-Eggebert confirms the favored holistic approach tothe Latin American vanguards while revealing that the major-ity of critical studies of this period focus on poetic strategieseither within one work, among the poems of one author, oramong the poems of one movement. Attention has been givento the analysis and classification of the various literary maga-zines that were of paramount importance at the time, such as

Amauta, Contemporneos,Klaxon,Martn Fierro,andRevista

de Avance,and to comparisons of Latin American with Euro-pean avant-garde expressions. Several scholars have compiledmanifestos and related prose works into anthologies with ex-planatory introductions, some opting to organize the texts ac-cording to literary and social issues, with chapter headings suchas creacionismo, criollismo, indigenismo, and negrismo(Schwartz, Gloria Videla de Rivero), while other compilers andbibliographers have conformed to political geography(Forster and Jackson, Nelson Osorio, Schwartz, Hugo Verani,

Wentzlaff-Eggebert). A recent and innovative compilation ofcritical articles is Agtese bien! A New Look at the HispanicAvant-Gardes (including analysis of Brazilian works),addressing texts which engaged extra-literary culturalmanifestations such as fashion, sport, and jazz (Pao andHernndez-Rodrguez xvii).

The present analysis breaks new ground by focusing thor-oughly on the writings on poetics of Huidobro and Mrio astwo of the most influential Latin Americans of the vanguardperiod.4Although they represented different movements, na-tions, and linguistic traditions within the avant-garde, theyshared similar poetic ideas and, more importantly, expressed


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those ideas in similar ways. Specifically, I trace the developmentand use of the writers concept of equilibrium as a polysemantic

metaphor (allegory, parable, leitmotif) and as a rhetorical de-vice (aphorism, discourse, example) for expressing aestheticideas in prose about the process of creating poetry. Existingliterary studies of Mrios and Huidobros texts have focusedalmost exclusively on their poems, novels, and dramatic works.Few anthologists of their essays and related theoretical prosehave provided studies of these texts as literary works, overlook-ing in large part the need for literary analysis of the metaphori-cal and rhetorical relationships within and among these texts.

Additionally, the present studys focus on the essay or theoreti-cal prose genre complements the critical attention that thesekinds of texts by vanguard writers such as Maritegui, Vascon-celos, and Pedro Henrquez Urea have received. Thinkingabout avant-garde literature as an original, subjective, and sub-versive act provides a fertile environment for the comparativestudy of these texts. The extent to which each writers proseworks on aesthetics can be understood to represent avant-garde

aesthetics in a universal sense will be explored and challengedwithin the particular geopolitical context, social circumstances,and literary influences of each.

The Historical Context of the Avant-Garde

The avant-garde expresses common goals of originality, sub-jectivity, and subversion because it has always been associatedwith pushing the limits of style or developing a new aesthetic,

in every way moving on past tradition, even past itself, to mo-dernity. The very selection and use of the term avant-garde,asexplored by Matei Calinescu in Five Faces of Modernity, at-tempted to define the modern moment:

The obvious military implications of the concept point quiteaptly toward some attitudes and trends for which the avant-garde is directly indebted to the broader consciousness ofmodernitya sharp sense of militancy, praise of noncon-

formism, courageous precursory exploration, and, on a moregeneral plane, confidence in the final victory of time and im-manence over traditions that try to appear as eternal, immu-table, and transcendentally determined. (95; original emphasis)


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Indeed, this victory of time over tradition is the same thatOctavio Paz identifies as a tradition in itself, la tradicin de la

ruptura which is themodern tradition: es la expresin de la con-dicin dramtica de nuestra civilizacin que busca su funda-mento, no en el pasado ni en ningn principio inconmovible,sino en el cambio (Los hijos del limo24). The artistic missionof the avant-garde becomes, therefore, the establishment of thetradition of change.

Such a mission is fundamentally paradoxical. Calinescunotes that as early as the 1860s, when the term was just begin-ning to be used in an artistic context (and long before cubism

and futurism), Baudelaire had already recognized the inherentparadox of an advance guard in the guise of the disciplinedconformity that the military metaphor connotes (110). This in-sight proved to be a prophecy fulfilled in the constant splinter-ing and congealing of avant-garde groups, the often abortiveattempts to produce definitive manifestos and literary maga-zines, and the race to label and support promising, independentyoung artists. The members of the avant-garde reacted against

the very practice of establishing schools of artistic expression,instead placing supreme value on the unique and individualexpression of each artist. Yet they constantly developed newmovements, groups or ismos and spent much effort on prose-lytizing. Ren de Costa has summarized this contradiction:Everyone in the avant-garde wanted to be original and yet be-long to a movement (Vicente Huidobro: The Careers of a Poet47). Pazs tradicin de la ruptura is thus present in thestruggle to define how much change (nonconformism) can be

accommodated by tradition, or how much tradition (confor-mity) can be tolerated in an ever-changing artistic environment.Even in their haste to break free from the bonds of the past,

the vanguardists displayed, and to a lesser extent acknowl-edged, both earlier and contemporary literary influences. Mostimportant of the earlier influences were the French symbolists,who were themselves seen as iconoclasts; it was easy for thevanguardists to assimilate them as representatives of a vision-ary tradition, worthy of much praise for their ideals and inspir-ing some emulation of their techniques. The intensifiedsuggestiveness of metaphor as the unconscious unit ofexpression, which the Symbolists found in their precursor


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Baudelaire, became, in turn, the Symbolists greatest legacy tothe vanguard poets. Regarding Huidobros inheritance of Sym-

bolist tendencies, Frank Paul Rutter describes his technical andthematic affinities with Baudelaires otherworldly images inFleurs du mal,Verlaines typography and rhythm, Rimbaudsverbal precision, and Mallarms themes of emptiness and ab-sence, though Rutter stresses Huidobros indirect assimilationof these traits (61108). Videla de Rivero also alludes to theimportance of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarm; Rimbaudespecially influenced Huidobros creacionismo through theidea of the poet as a visionary or mystic who can sense and

express what the ordinary person cannot perceive, a conceptitself derivative of the Romantic conception of the poet as seer(36). In Mrios case, Gilberto Mendona Teles recognizes theinfluence of the Symbolists (and their immediate precursors)in Brazil, stressing particularly Baudelaires synesthesia,Rimbauds challenging of the conventionality of signifiers inAlchimie du verbe, the musical composition elements ofVerlaine and Mallarm, and the idea of the collective soul in

Jules Romainss unanimismo. Teles claims that this lattermovement, which developed an antagonism to the Symbolists,influenced the composition of Mrios Paulicia Desvairada(Vanguarda1954).

Contemporary literary influence upon the Latin Americanavant-garde came primarily from European avant-garde writersand, to a very reduced extent, from other avant-garde writ-ers of the Americas. In general terms, Videla de Rivero high-lights cosmopolitismoas an important unifying tendency of the

vanguard on both sides of the Atlantic (517). To be cosmo-politan essentially meant to be well-read and up-to-date on thelatest literary tendencies, no matter whether one was writingabout rural areas and themes (Ricardo Giraldess 1926 DonSegundo Sombra,for example) or about the city itself (MaplesArces 1924 Urbe).In this way, the general ideas of Marinetti,Edschmid, Apollinaire, Tzara, Breton, and others were rapidlyassimilated and heatedly discussed. Specific connectionsamong Huidobro or Mrio with their contemporaries in Europeand the Americas will arise in context in later chapters; at thispoint the results of general comparative studies will be sum-marized, keeping in mind that most of the influential artists as-


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sociated with Huidobro were his acquaintances, whereas al-most all of those associated with Mrio, except his fellow Bra-

zilians, were known to him only in print.Rutter develops Huidobros stylistic similarities with mem-bers of the Nord-Sudmagazine group in ParisApollinaire,Blaise Cendrars, and Pierre Reverdy; the latter disputed withHuidobro the originality of the creacionistastyle, a debate thatgave rise to numerous critical analyses and that was finallysettled (12981). Mireya Camurati highlights the sources ofcreacionismo in Emerson, Gabriel Alomar, and ArmandoVasseur; both Camurati and especially Susana Benko explore

Huidobros links to the cubists in Parismost notably Picasso,Gris, and Delaunayregarding simultaneity and the visual im-pact of poems. A large and still-growing bibliography existsconcerning Huidobros relationships with the founding mem-bers of the Spanish and Argentine ultrastagroups; likewisethere is much anecdotal material detailing Huidobros quarrelswith Neruda, Pablo de Rohka, and other artistic personalities.The main sources for all of this latter material are David Bary,

Jaime Concha, and de Costa.Teles identifies Apollinaire as an important source forMrios writings on aesthetics. Apollinaire was well known toMrio not only through his literary treatiseLesprit nouveau etles potes but also, posthumously, through the Parisian journalfounded in 1920 and named, in honor of his book, LEsprit

Nouveau (Vanguarda83, 16364). Charles Russells descrip-tion of Apollinaires attempts to translate pictorial simultaneityinto a poetic style (8186) reflects what would become Mrios

main theoretical interest in polyphonics/simultaneity. MariaHelena Grembecki bases her study of Mrios influences on hisreception of the ideas of theLEsprit Nouveaucontributors, es-pecially Paul Derme, Jean Epstein, and Huidobro himself;the reader notes inA escrava que no Isaurathat Mrio wasalso quite familiar with the Italian futurists, French surrealists,German expressionists, and other vanguard writers in Russia,Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States, not to mentionBrazil. Nites Therezinha Feres also studies Mrios vast read-ings (and his analytical notes in the margin) of French authors,while Haroldo de Campos highlights Mrios familiarity withthe German vanguard, especially August Stramm.


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Personas and Ouevres

The literary and cultural accomplishments of Huidobro andMrio exemplify their status as cosmopolitan paragons.5Huidobro traveled to Europe and back seven times in his life,sometimes staying there several years at a time. His contactswith the avant-garde in Paris and Madrid were numerous andfruitful. Though mostly unsuccessful in promoting his crea-cionismomovement, he was instrumental in sparking interestin the general avant-garde period in Spain, Argentina, and Chile(and to a lesser extent in Latin American nations he did not

visit, such as Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic).This was a direct result of the impact of five books showcasingthe primacy of the shocking image, all published in Madrid in1918Hallali, Tour Eiffel, Poemas Articos, Ecuatorial,and asecond edition ofEl espejo de agua.His success was also, tosome extent, the result of his scandalous personality. Beyondthe consideration of his many petty grudges against other art-ists and writers, some of his more notorious acts included hisclandestine elopement with Ximena Amuntegui, the daughter

of a well-off Santiago family, and the subsequent abandonmentof his wife and children; the staging of his own kidnapping inEurope, supposedly in retaliation for the anti-imperialist dogmaof hisFinis Britannia;an unsuccessful campaign for the presi-dency of Chile, marred by the detonation of a bomb in front ofhis house; and an eventually fatal head wound received while acorrespondent in Germany at the end of World War IIheclaimed Hitlers personal telephone as his trophy. His matureexpression inAltazorand Temblor de cielo,his innovative stylein Mo Cid Campeadorand Cagliostro,and his experimentalstaging inEn la lunahave earned those works a place of fun-damental importance in the development of poetic, narrative,and performance strategies in twentieth-century Latin America.His manifestos, though less known, are essential to understand-ing Huidobros thought regarding the ideal practice of poetics.

Mrio traveled outside Brazil just once, and although hemade a few trips to different areas of the Brazilian interior and

lived in Rio de Janeiro for a few years, he only infrequentlyleft his beloved city of So Paulo. Active in both the musicaland literary milieux of that city, he was propelled to fame by


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his leadership in the February 1922 Modern Art Week and hispublication ofPaulicia Desvairadathat same year. His poetic

and narrative works and his critical essays on music, literature,linguistics, folklore, dance, and cinema fill some dozen vol-umes of his Obras completas. In addition, his prolific corre-spondence has been published over the years since his death inanother dozen or so volumes. During his lifetime he held nu-merous cultural offices, including director of So PaulosDepartamento de Cultura, professor of philosophy and art his-tory at the Universidade do Distrito Federal, and founder ofSo Paulos Sociedade de Etnografia e Folclore. He was an en-

thusiastic promoter of the founding of the Universidade de SoPaulo. His interest in ethnography led him to make the excur-sions to the interior and to the northeastern regions of Brazil;this interest reached its artistic apogee in his narrative master-piece, Macunama. This heteroglossic rapsdia [rhapsody]exemplifies Mrios desire to celebrate a pan-Brazilian culturaltradition and idiom, especially evident in the syncretism of dia-lects and in linguistic experimentation, as also in his poetry col-

lection Cl do Jaboti. As the acknowledged Pope of themodernistamovement, Mrio wrote the treatiseA escrava queno Isaura. This work and the Prefcio InteressantssimoofPaulicia Desvairadaare the essential texts for understand-ing the aesthetic orientation of modernismoboth as a nationalmovement and as a part of the international vanguard. Thoughnot widely known abroad at the time, these texts were veryinfluential in Brazil.

As can be surmised from their extra-literary activities,

Huidobro and Mrio were men of very different lifestyles andpriorities. Yet as far as their literary trajectories, both writersmoved from producing conservative juvenilia (Ecos del alma[1911] andH uma gota de sangue em cada poema[1917]) tomasterpieces of vanguard expression in poetry and prose(Altazor [1931], Mo Cid Campeador [1929] and Paulicia

Desvairada[1922],Macunama[1928]). Both struggled to dif-ferentiate their ideas from already existing or concurrent move-ments: Huidobro especially from surrealism and Mrio mostlyfrom futurism. Both had works translated into English duringtheir lifetimes; Mo Cid Campeador (1929) and Cagliostro(1934) were published as Portrait of a Paladin (1931) and


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Mirror of a Mage (1931), and Mrios novel Amar, verbointransitivo (1927) was translated into English with the title

Fraulein (1933). Most importantly for the concerns of thisanalysis, both authors wrote significant theoretical prose worksdedicated to the definition and expression of avant-gardepoetics.

Comparative Studies of Huidobro and Mrio

Existing comparative studies of Huidobro and Mrio outlinetrajectories as above or briefly note salient comparisons. Ana

Pizarros Sobre Huidobro y las vanguardias,besides mention-ing Huidobros similarities with the Brazilian antropofagiamovement and impact on the Brazilian concretistas,offers thecomparison of Huidobros Mo Cid Campeador and Mrios

Macunama as narrative models. The texts were publishedwithin a year of each other, both can loosely be classified asexperimental novels, and both are un comn hurgar en losorgenes, la necesidad de afincar y afincarse en una tradicin

(67).

6

In Huidobro e o Brasil Jos Santiago Naud sets up aconcise series of correspondences between Huidobros poeticsand Brazilian modernismo. For Naud, Huidobro and Mrioconverge na crtica situao da Amrica Latina, que padeceda falta de um centro cultural e sofre presses de dependncia[in criticism of the Latin American situation, which suffersfrom the lack of a cultural center and from the pressure of de-pendency] (29).7 Comparing fragments from Altazor and

Paulicia Desvairada,Naud tellingly affirms: Neles a impul-

so lrica (Potica) e a reflexo crtica (Retrica) consolidamuma entidade em equilbrio; o belo natural e o belo artsticocompletam-se [In them the lyric impulse (Poetry) and criticalreflection (Rhetoric) consolidate an entity in equilibrium; natu-ral beauty and artistic beauty make each other whole] (3031).Focusing on music as a metaphor for the characteristically van-guard use of heteroglossia, Unruh links Mrios concept ofpoetic polyphony using a simultaneous overlay of disconnectedphrases in his Prefcio Interessantssimo with Huidobroscomparable weaving together of voices through the words thathave been enemies since the beginning of the world in hismanifesto La poesa (24344).


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In an outstanding comparative analysis chapter of Na Ilhade Marapat, Ral Antelo explores Huidobros influence,

through his publications in French inLEsprit Nouveau(espe-cially La cration pure), on Mrio, a relationship he labelsum dos primeiros e mais frteis vnculos do Modernismo coma poesia de vanguarda latino-americana [one of the first andmost fertile links of modernismoto Latin American vanguardistpoetry] (6). Antelo develops major aesthetic parallels and dis-cordances between them, comparing their senses of the poetsfluctuating relationship with the bourgeosie, for example, or theepic tones ofAltazorand Mrios Eu sou trezentos. Antelos

insightful conclusion differentiates Huidobros inherent and ul-timately isolating authoritarianism from Mrios greater emo-tional need to connect to popular culture.

The first comparative article focusing exclusively on the twowriters was Leonilda Ambrozios 1982 Mrio de Andrade eVicente Huidobro: Identidades. Although Ambrozio bases herbrief article on some of the same theoretical texts to be consid-ered in the present analysis, she limits her conclusions to a few

points of agreement and disagreement between the authors, forexample: Portanto, tanto Huidobro como Mrio acreditam nanecessidade do esforo consciente do poeta [Thus, bothHuidobro and Mrio believe in the necessity of the poets con-scious force] (110) and Quanto mtrica, Mrio menos radi-cal [As far as meter, Mrio is less radical] (111). She is rightto bemoan the persistent lack of communication between Bra-zilian and Spanish American literature as a lamentable reality,a circumstance that limited what could have been a much

greater contact between the Brazilian modernistasand SpanishAmerican vanguard artists. In general, her conclusions are un-deniable, yet they are only the tip of the iceberg. WhatAmbrozio left out of her brief quotations from diverse texts isthe thrust of the present study: the analysis of these theoreticaltexts as literary works in their own right, with characteristictechniques, images, and structures that lend force to the expres-sion of a new poetics.

Such a literary analysis of these poetics texts is my intenthere, and not a comparison of the stated poetics with poetry bythe same writers. Besides the fact that the latter approach is themore common (and there already exist such studies on


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Huidobro and Mrio which will be mentioned in later con-texts), it is also the more inexact, mixing ideas from both

sources in a sometimes rushed desire to achieve a total exege-sis. Poetics and poetry are often thought of as demarcating arelationship not unlike that of Saussures langueandparole,inwhich poetics represents the range of ideal possibilities, whilea poem can be only one concrete actualization of those possi-bilities. Hence a necessary distance exists between the twokinds of texts, even within the critical evaluation of the sameauthor. Baudelaire provides a classic example of this distinc-tion in his ironic remark about Poe: Behold a poet who pre-

tends that his poetry was composed according to his ownpoetics (qtd. in Poggioli 165). A poetics expresses an ideal-ized aesthetic desire that an individual poem or even a collec-tion of poems may not manage to encompass entirely.

An Aesthetics of Equilibrium: Theme and

Variations

I propose to demonstrate that an aesthetics of equilibrium be-came the central concept in Mrios and Huidobros poetics,and that the ways in which both writers appropriated the appli-cations of such a concept support a more concrete understand-ing of key questions they sought to address: What is the role ofthe unconscious in artistic creation? Should conscious expres-sion be abandoned, as Breton and the surrealists claimed? Is aninspired poet ruled by the heart or by the mind? How can apoet more directly engage a larger public? How does a Latin

American artist reconcile European and autochthonous influ-ences? Such a concept of equilibrium did already exist in Eu-ropean vanguard parlance before either Huidobro or Mrioused the term in an aesthetic context. Mrios explicit refer-ences to European writers leave no doubt about the terms ori-gin, and although Huidobro had intuited the concept in his earlywritings, his use of the term dates from after his collaborationwithLEsprit Nouveauand other European magazines.LEsprit

Nouveauwas an important source, with which both writerswere familiar, for the idea and image of equilibrium in an aes-thetic context, in other words in the context of theorizing and


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prescribing new norms for considerations on taste and beautyin art. In several issues of the magazine, the concept of equilib-

rium describes a desired or pleasing style. For example, the fontand centering of the large-print title of the essay Science etesthtique: quilibre by Paul Recht draws the readers eye tothe term quilibre.Rechts essay promotes equilibrium as a dy-namic and harmonic life essence, in addition to linking aes-thetics to scientific discourse, a popular tendency that bothMrio and Huidobro would follow:

Lquilibre nest pas linertie, tout au contraire. Sa plnitude

vivante nest atteinte que par le maximum de dsquilibres l-mentaires qui se compensent, sannulent, sadaptent et finale-ment se cohrent, si bien que la sensation dquilibre en rsulte.[. . .]Lquilibre est harmonieux ipso facto.[. . .] Le sens de lavie, je veux dire son orientation, se rvle toujours par unchangement dquilibre. (48385; original emphasis)

Metabolism, the orbits of the planets, and Brownian motion areall invoked as natural examples of equilibrium, although Recht

also develops the concept on an aesthetic level when he notesthat artistic genius means producing a balanced order in themidst of disorder. Renowned French architect Le Corbusier of-fers a more elemental and schematic approach to the conceptof equilibrium in Le sentiment dborde:

Il est naturel que lhomme cherchant le bonheur sefforcevers un sentiment dquilibre. quilibre = calme, matrisedes moyens, lecture claire, ordonnance, satisfaction de les-prit, mesure, proportion, en vrit: cration. Le dsqui-libre tmoigne dun tat de lutte, dinquitude, de difficultsnon rsolvs, dasservissement, de recherches, stade inf-rieure et antrieur, prparatoire. Dsquilibre: tat defatigue. quilibre: tat de bien-tre.

Le Corbusiers style exemplifies the vanguard desires to list,define, and equate. Strikingly, he equates equilibrium withcreation, an important notion that Huidobro and Mrio developmuch more thoroughly. Le Corbusiers use of an equation withthe equals sign (=) (evoking Marinettis prescription to usemathematical and musical signs in his 1912 technical futurist


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Preface

manifesto), and Rechts specification of a maximumquantity,are linguistic and graphic traits that appear in the poetics of

both Latin American writers, especially Mrios.I begin this analysis with a detailed comparative study oftwo parables, one by each author, which opens a theoreticalframework for exploring the techniques and goals of the au-thors poetics of equilibrium (Introduction). Huidobros firstmanifesto, Non serviam, and Mrios Parbola, whichopens his poetic treatiseA escrava que no Isaura,define thedesire for equilibrium in poetic creation through a rich thematiccluster, common to both texts, of biblical references, the slave-

and-master paradigm, gender roles, and revolutionary rhetoric.Individual chapters (in parts 1 and 2) devoted to the main theo-retical texts of Huidobro and Mrio follow the openinganalysis. The chapters consider the formal and thematic char-acteristics of each text separately before offering collectiveanalyses of Huidobros Manifiestos and Mrios PrefcioInteressantssimo andA escrava que no Isaura,with refer-ences to additional key poems, essays, and interviews or corre-

spondence by each writer. The conclusion, after a briefcomparative summary of the two writers ideas and techniquesin light of the descriptive and prescriptive functions of a poet-ics, probes the stabilizing role of a poetics of equilibriumwithin the temporal constraints of the avant-garde as under-stood by theorists such as Paz, Renato Poggioli, CharlesRussell, Unruh, and John Weightman.


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Acknowledgments

xxiii

The initial stage of this project was conceived as my disserta-tion at the University of Virginia, where the Department ofSpanish, Italian, and Portuguese cultivated a supportive envi-ronment for my independent study comparing the SpanishAmerican and Brazilian vanguards. I especially acknowledgeDavid T. Haberly and Donald L. Shaw, my advisors, for their

inspiration and patience. Dr. Shaws quick and insightful com-ments on my drafts, and his critical guidance in the compre-hensive planning and structure of my research, were mostappreciated. Dr. Haberlys encyclopedic knowledge and conta-

gious enthusiasm for all things Luso-Brazilian have been asolid foundation for me since the beginning of my research intothe Brazilian vanguard; his very helpful and honest supportcontinued in his thorough readings of my drafts. Other readers

who provided lucid feedback, suggestions, and support in theinitial stages of this project include Gustavo Pelln, KarenRauch, E. C. Graf, and Jeff Bersett. Special thanks also to KeithMason and Cathy Cuppett for moral support and for help withtechnical aspects of beginning and completing the project.

The opportunity to build on my previous research becamepossible during my time at the University of South Alabama.While at the university, Lawrence R. Schehr aided me in bring-ing out theoretical aspects of some of my readings and, with

Bernard Quinn and Calvin Jones, helped me develop thepotential of such a research opportunity. The University ofSouth Alabama Research Council, in conjunction with the Col-lege of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Foreign Lan-guages and Literatures, funded my travel to Brazil and Chile inJuly and August 2000, enabling me to carry out archivalresearch at the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (IEB) on thecampus of the Universidade de So Paulo, and at the FundacinVicente Huidobro (FVH) and Biblioteca Nacional in Santiago.

This research led to the strengthening of my conclusionsregarding the thematic importance of equilibrium in the worksof both writers and in the cultural context of the times. I grate-

fully acknowledge the support of the IEB staff, particularlyMurillo Marx and Maria Teresa Joia, and also time spent inconsultation with Tel Porto Ancona Lopez at the IEB. In


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Acknowledgments

Santiago the FVH executive secretary, Liliana Rosa Bera-terrechea, graciously facilitated my research at that archive.

Some of the material in this book has appeared in earlierversions. The Introduction was published as A Desire forEquilibrium in Avant-Garde Poetics: Vicente Huidobros Non

serviam and Mrio de Andrades Parbola dA escrava queno Isaurain Chasqui26.2 (1997): 5671. Approximatelythe first half of the material in Chapter 5, At the Dock and onthe Street, appeared as Necessary Losses: Purity and Soli-darity in Mrio de Andrades Dockside Poetics in Hispania81 (1998): 21724. Chapter 2, Orientation and Trajectory, isa revised and translated version of Orientacin y trayectoria

de Huidobro en Aviso a los turistas y Manifiesto tal vez,Hispanfila134 (2002): 7590. I thank these journals edito-

rial boards and reviewers for their comments and suggestions.I extend thanks to my colleagues in the Department of Lan-

guages at the University of Tulsa for their steady confidence inand support for my research, and my gratitude to two anony-mous readers for the Purdue Studies in Romance Literaturesseries for their remarks and recommendations. Many thanks toPSRLs production editor, Susan Y. Clawson, for her wisdom

and patience. Finally, the support of my family has been para-mount to me throughout this project. I thank my wife, Blanca,and daughters, Giselle and Juliette, for their patience and un-

derstanding, and my father and mother, Drs. Craig D. andMarilyn E. Willis, for their encouragement, enthusiasm, andempathy.


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A Note on Translation and Orthography

Text cited in Spanish and French appears without translation,as per PSRL policy. Text in Portuguese is followed by a brack-

eted English translation. Longer translations, located in the

Appendix, are keyed to the text by the number in brackets. All

translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. Because of

changes in Portuguese orthography rules, and also because

of the Brazilian Modernists desire to distinguish written

Brazilian Portuguese from European standards, the spelling in

Mrio de Andrades texts sometimes differs from the current

norms. I have cited his texts, from the sources I list, withoutaltering his spelling.


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Introduction

A Desire for Equilibriumin Avant-Garde Poetics

The Parables Non serviamand Parabola dA escrava que no Isaura

Among the manifestos, prologues, declarations, and otherproclamatory texts characteristic of the avant-garde periodsvarious movements, the expression of a new poetics dominatesthe subject matter and tends to exemplify itself in the very for-mat of these texts. Employing a variety of styles, the texts aresometimes allegorical; those few texts that are strictly allegori-cal tend to be well represented in anthologies but too oftenoverlooked in critical analyses. In fact, these allegorical worksconstitute not just theoretical but also narrative sources for be-

liefs about poetics, and as such they are particularly rich in lan-guage, symbol, and structure. I wish to identify HuidobrosNon serviam and Mrios Parbola dA escrava que no

Isaura specifically as parables. The parable is a kind of alle-gory that

illustrates a moral attitude, a doctrine, a standard of con-duct, or a religious principle [. . .] The simple narratives ofparables give them a mysterious, suggestive tone and make

them especially useful for the teaching of moral and spiri-tual truths. (Parable)

Another kind of truth, intrinsic to these vanguard parables, canbe added to the definition: artistic truth. Since the parable as agenre has a well-known biblical context, both authors use ofthe parable format likens their expressions of artistic truth tothe spiritual insights imparted by Christ; this relationship hasspecial relevance in interpreting the poets prophetic role. Fur-

thermore, the parable genres suggestive tone stimulates theexploration of symbolic identities such as feminine and mas-culine images and, in the present case, the roles of slave and


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master. I make the generic designation of parable exclusivelyfor the purpose of the present study; Huidobro makes no men-

tion of the word parable in his text, and Mrio, although hegives his text the title of Parbola, vacillates between theterms histriaand quase parbolain its opening paragraph.

The sparse critical attention devoted to these separateparables mixes them, in the case of each author, with thatauthors other theoretical works; the tendency has been to pur-sue a theme or idea monolithically, quoting as needed from dif-ferent manifestos or other texts and contexts. Jos Quirogasdetailed look at Non serviam constitutes a worthy exception

and will be addressed below. The comparative studies ofHuidobros and Mrios works or literary trajectories men-tioned in the Preface do not engage a direct comparison of thetwo parables. In contrast, the aim of this introduction is thecomparative literary analysis of these specific poetics texts,without, at this point, drawing any relationship to other poeticstexts or to poetry by the same writers.

Huidobro claimed that he read Non serviam as a confer-

ence presentation in the Ateneo of Santiago in 1914.1

Allegori-cally, the text defines a new poetics in the form of theconfrontation between a rebellious poet slave and his mistress,Mother Nature.2Anthologized as the first of Huidobros mani-festos, the text can be divided into three sections: the third-person narrative, the poets address to his fellow poets, and thepoets words to Mother Nature. Juan Larrea reveals that the titleof Huidobros parable comes from Futurismo, a 1904 text(before Marinettis futurist manifesto) in which the author,

Gabriel Alomar, portrays Adam as el primer indmito, elprimer protervo, que ha lanzado el non serviamrepresentandola protesta de la humanidad (qtd. in Larrea 227). This leads tothe discovery of a key similarity between Huidobros andMrios parables through the character of Adam; Huidobrosunnamed poet is a metamorphosis of Alomars Adam.3Thecasting of Huidobros Non serviam protagonist as an Adamfigure can indeed be intuited from the parable text alone, butthe knowledge of Alomars proclamation makes it clearer and,moreover, links it definitively to Huidobros 1916 Adn, hisfirst free-verse poetry. The parables unnamed protagonist thusprefigures Huidobros all-encompassing Protagonist; as


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Quiroga argues, All of Huidobros heroes, fromAltazortoMoCid Campeador,are descendants (or we should say substitu-

tions) of Adam (520).Mrios parable forms the introduction to his theoreticaltreatise,A escrava que no Isaura,written between 1922 and1924 and published in 1925.4The treatise forms a sequel to thePrefcio Interessantssimo of his Paulicia Desvairada.Hehad written the Prefcio, after producing the poems that formthe body of Paulicia, as a conciliatory explanation of hispoetrys aesthetic context. Before publication, Paulicia hadbeen labeled futurista by the vanguard leader Oswald de

Andrade, provoking a spate of conservative fervor in So Paulonewspapers. Parbola, which deals with the creation, corrup-tion, and rediscovery of poetic language, forms the structuralfoundation of the treatise, both as its textual beginning and as aconstant point of reference throughout. In the parable, Poetryis Eves rival, a slave created by Adam. She is costumed by thepassage of civilizations over time but then restored to her origi-nal nudity, in a dramatic revelation, by Rimbaud as the modern

poet. The third-person narrative of the parable is framed by anopening paragraph in the first person and an appended explana-tory note that continues the opening paragraph.

The allegorical creation of poetry is the theme that unitesthese parables; Huidobros poet-protagonist wishes to make hisown trees, mountains, rivers, and seas as poetic creations, whileMrios Adam draws from himself the very personification ofPoetry. In both parables, this allegory is characterized by afourfold thematic cluster: (1) biblical subtexts, (2) a slave and

master relationship, (3) a distinct relegation of gender roles,and (4) the idea of a poetic revolution. All of these fundamen-tal characteristics, and their related theoretical underpinnings,must be analyzed both in their specific contexts and within thegeneral theme of poetic creation.

Biblical Subtexts: The Sacred Word

The rich biblical background of both parables serves to rein-force the schismatic nature of the new poetics while at the sametime lending the authority of Holy Writ to these texts. Mriosparable starts with Genesis, while Huidobros makes reference


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to Revelation. Genesis not only tells the story of an initial crea-tion, but also of a punitive destruction by flood and a second

flourishing of life; similarly, Revelation is not just the story ofthe Earths ultimate demise but also of the subsequent revela-tion of the divine, ideal existence. Not surprisingly then,Mrios Genesis-based parable implies an apocalypse, whileHuidobros Revelation-based text invokes a new Eden. It is thisduality of creation and destruction, inarguably basic in folk andreligious cosmologies, that characterizes the mission of a newpoetry in the writings of these two avant-garde leaders.

The biblical subtext of Huidobros parable is not readily ap-

parent. He directs his poetic revolution against Mother Nature,a decidedly unbiblical figure, who is rather like a Greek god-dess, interacting freely with her mortal subjects. In the begin-ning, the poet finds it necessary to appease the wrath of lamadre Natura, so that she does not strike him with a lightningbolt, yet afterwards he can politely admonish her as a futilebeliever in her own antiquated ideas: Ya no podrs aplastar anadie con tus pretensiones exageradas de vieja chocha y

regalona. Ya nos escapamos de tu trampa. Adis, viejecitaencantadora (715).She is also the feminine face of the Crea-tor, notably aged and bitter: Hemos cantado a la Naturaleza(cosa que a ella bien poco le importa). Nunca hemos creadorealidades propias, como ella lo hace o lo hizo en tiempospasados, cuando era joven y llena de impulsos creadores(715). The poet states that a change is necessary, and that heand his generation are the ones who should implement it; theywill make their own world, which should have no basis for

comparison with the existing world.Thus far, the background of the parable is ostensiblypaganthe revolt of some audacious mortal against the divinemother. Huidobro has decided not to follow Alomar tooclosely; he does not name his protagonist Adam and thusdoes not strengthen the presence of a Genesis subtext. YetHuidobro makes a paramount, though subtle, biblical referencein the last paragraph: Una nueva era comienza. Al abrir suspuertas de jaspe, hinco una rodilla en tierra y te saludo muyrespetuosamente (716). These jasper doors are similar to thewall of the New Jerusalem as described in Revelation 21.1819: The wall was made of jasper, and the city itself was madeof pure gold, as clear as glass. The foundation stones of the


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city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. Thefirst foundation stone was jasper, the second sapphire [. . .].

The troublesome fact arises that it was the wallsof the city thatwere made of jasper, not the doors, or gates, which were madeof pearl, according to Revelation 21.21. Nevertheless, in thecontext of the commencement of Huidobros nueva era, thissomewhat inexact New Jerusalem is the metaphor for a newworld. Implicitly divine, it recalls Huidobros well-knowndeclaration, el poeta es un pequeo Dios. The poet is not God,of course, but agod, endowed with supernatural creative powers.

Why is it that Huidobro cannot resist this biblical allusion,

which does not seem either obvious or necessary? The sym-bolic opening of the doors of a new era would suffice to deliverhis basic message. The use of jasper, then, gives weight toHuidobros revolution by invoking that most final of revolu-tions, the apocalypse, and by providing a sacred context for hisnew poetry that could not have been implied from the revoltagainst Mother Nature. The poet, clearly on the winning side,reveals the revolutionary world that, by implication, is perfect

and holy. The result, no matter how subtle or unconscious, isthat Huidobros parable portrays the poets rupture with thepast as an act tantamount to the apocalypse, and his new poetryas the promised revelation of divine grace and beauty.

Inevitably, the initial act of the poets revolt must also becompared to Lucifers rebellion, effectively casting the pro-tagonist in a Miltonian role as Harold Blooms paradigm of themodern poet. However, the consequences of that initial rebel-lionwhich involve an implicitly divine new creationand

the facts relating the textual background to Alomars futurism,more convincingly support the view of the poet as Adam.5Fur-thermore, the connection between the poet/self as Adam and asChrist is a very fluid one, appearing as much in Huidobros par-able as in Mrios in the context of the individual expression ofartistic truth. In the end, the main idea is that the poet is anOther, separate from the godhead, who constitutes a part of thedivine manifestation in the natural world but who seeks to cre-ate his own explicitly human, implicitly divine manifestationthrough art.

In contrast to Non serviam, the biblical background ofMrios Parbola is both obvious and necessary. It is alsomore complex, since it is made doubly manifest: on one level,


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the idea and plot of the parable are derived from Genesis, whileon another level, the opening paragraph of the text and the ap-

pended explanatory note offer a commentary on the nature ofthe expression of individual and universal truths, makingreference to Jesus use of parables. Thus the Old Testament ref-erences support the narrative structure of the parable, whereasthe New Testament reference provides a meta-narrative frame.

In Mrios opening sentences, he hesitantly defines the textto follow first as a histria and then as a Quase parbola,affirming the latter with the declaration: Gosto de falar comparbolas como Cristo . . . [I like speaking in parables like

Christ . . .] (OI 201). To defend contextually this strongly au-thoritative statement, Mrio distinguishes Christs divineVerdade from his own, humble minha verdade, setting upthe New Testament frame. Continuing in a religious vein, hedenies any association of official dogma with his informal titleof the Pope of (Brazilian) Modernism ( mentira dizer-seque existe em S. Paulo um igrej literrio em que pontifico[Its a lie to say theres some big church in S. Paulo where I

pontificate]) and concludes, in reference to the contemporarySo Paulo literary scene, that everyone has his or her own ten-dencies, ideas, and truths: Isso no quer dizer que hajadiscpulos pois cada um de ns o deus de sua prpria religio[That doesnt mean there are disciples, because each of us isthe god of his own religion] (OI 201). This is an unequivocalconfirmation of Huidobros pequeo dios slogan, effectivelyenshrining Mrio in the pagan poetic pantheon. It is also a sur-prising statement, leaning towards blasphemy, given Mrios

avowed Catholicism; perhaps for this reason he inserts a letter(A) after religio in order to direct the reader to endnote Ain the appendix ofA escrava que no Isaura.He finishes theparagraph, once more vacillating curiously on textual defini-tion, with the enthusiastic Vamos histria! (OI 201).

It is appropriate at this point to consider endnote A. The toneis not openly apologetic, although Mrio concedes that thereligio sentence is vaidosa [vain]. Instead, Mrio defendsthe necessary presence of the individual in religion, giving theexample of five monks worshipping God in a monastery; theycan never really be five monks but rather 1, 1, 1, 1, e 1monges. Cada 1 adora Deus a seu modo [Each one worships


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God in his own way] (OI 279). He further points out that in art,the individual personality has existed throughout the ages, but

that only now, with the new poetrys stress on the sub-conscincia, has that individualism been balanced.6 Theindividual personality can be altered by the force of the uncon-scious because a subconscincia fundamentalmente ingnua,geral, sem preconceitos, pura, fundamentalmente humana. Elaentra com seu coeficiente de universalidade para a outra con-cha da balana. Equilbrio [the unconscious is fundamentallyingenuous, vague, without prejudice, pure, fundamentally hu-man. She brings her coefficient of universality to the other scale

of the balance. Equilibrium] (OI 279). Mrios quirky love ofequilibrium and balance concretizes his analogy of religion andart, which serves to unify and support the essence of hispseudo-biblical parable. While God, or the divine, exists as partof the collective unconscious that unites all humans, the waysin which He is worshipped vary greatly; likewise, in art, theindividuality of each artist or work should balance, and not im-pede, the expression of a universal unconscious. The definition

of this unconscious is not given, but its characteristics are to befound in the adjectives Mrio uses to describe it: ingnua,geral, pura, and humana.

Not surprisingly, Mrio employs this same lexicon on threeother key occasions in the parable. First, he describes his truth,as opposed to Christs truth: humana, esttica e tranzitria(OI 201). Later he characterizes Poetry, Adams newly createdslave: Humana, csmica e bela (OI 201). Finally, he reprisesPoetrys unaltered essence in the moment of her unveiling:

nua, angustiada, ignara, falando por sons musicais, des-conhecendo as novas lnguas, selvagem, spera, livre, ingnua,sincera [nude, anguished, innocent, speaking in musicalsounds, not recognizing the new languages, savage, crude, free,ingenuous, sincere] (OI 202). Mrios truth and (the new)Poetry are therefore lexically equated with the unconscious andthe universal. The only difference is that Mrio humbly recog-nizes his own truth as tranzitria, whereas Poetry, csmica,seems more permanent. Not so the overly adorned, superficialpoetry of Mrios (and Rimbauds) predecessors, symbolizedby the myriad garments with which the various civilizationsinsist on dressing the slave; in such case poetic beauty is not


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augmented but rather obstructed becausefollowing Mriosbalancean excess of individualism sabotages the expression

of the universal. To return, then, to the parables New Testa-ment frame, it can be concluded that Mrio goes one step fur-ther than Jesus custom in his practice of telling parables; henot only tells the parable, but he also explains it. He not onlyshows his hand by revealing, in the end, the identities ofAdams slave and the ingenious vagabond, but also he provides,in the opening paragraph and in the appended note, the literaryhistorical background of his psychological assertions aboutmodern poetry.

Mrios Old Testament references shape the parables narra-tive and cleverly mirror the dialectic of individual and univer-sal truths established in the parables frame. Adams creationof Poetry, described as a plagiarism of Gods creation of Eve,arranges a narrative parallel of Mrios modest minha ver-dade in relation to Christs eternal Verdade; Poetry ishumankinds attempt to express Truth. The fig leaf, a manifestconsequence of the original sin, begins the cascade of clothing

that eventually buries Poetry. Cains lambskin garment, likeAdams fig leaf, is only possible as the consequence of sin; hisguilt, caused by the murder of Abel, indirectly blots out theTruth of innocent Poetry. The parade of generations and civili-zations bearing stockings, hats, boots, jewelry, fans, etc. repli-cates a procession of pilgrims bringing offerings to a holy sitein atonement for their sins.7It is left up to that ingenious vaga-bond Arthur Rimbaud, an intriguing Christ figure, to changethe focus of worship from the ostentation of the Pharisees to

the humble innocence of naked Poetry. In the aesthetic frameof reference, Rimbaud restores contact with the unconsciousby clearing away the excessive clutter of individualism to ex-pose the universal; Rimbaud, like Christ, is the bringer of Truth.The strength of both authors biblical subtexts lies in the waythat they support the revolutionary aspect of avant-garde po-etry. Huidobro hints that the force of the apocalypse resides inthe consciously non-imitative intent of the new poets to createpoetry, which shall be the New Jerusalem, the New Eden, orheaven itself. Mrio starts with Genesis to create an explana-tory myth of how poetry was born and evolved to its pre-


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Rimbaud state, and how Rimbauds revelation rescued and re-stored it, unveiling the divine Truth.

Even so, albeit to varying degrees, not one of the poetic pro-tagonists escapes the trap of mimesis. Huidobros poet seem-ingly breaks away from nature, yet even though he says Yo teresponder que mis cielos y mis rboles son los mos y no lostuyos y que no tienen por qu parecerse (715), he still mustcall them cielos and rboles; he cannot surpass the limitsof already established referents. Similarly, Adam desires to cre-ate but can only copy, while Rimbauds innovation is shown tobe retroactive; he only rediscovers (uncovers) the original

Poetry. The incomplete essence of their poetic creation mustbe reconciled with the fact that poets cannot truly be gods; theycannot create from nothing. The most far-flung fantasy hassome kind of anchor in reality, even if it is only words or im-ages. Ironically, both Mrio and Huidobro recognize andstruggle against the existence of that anchor, which is the veryreferentiality of language. Mrios Poetry, when she is exposedby Rimbaud, is falando por sons musicais (OI 202); her mode

of expression recalls the disarticulated vocalizations that con-clude HuidobrosAltazor.

Slaves, Masters, and the Identity of the Self

A lexical reading demonstrates the existence and importanceof the slave and master relationship in the two parables. InNon serviam, the word esclavo is used twice, esclavitudonce, amo[master] once, servicioonce, and forms of the verb

servir, including the Latin serviam, eight times. Numerically,Mrios Parbola lags behind, with only three instances ofthe word escrava; however, the parables are on equal footingin that they both show words from this lexicon in their titles:serviamand escrava. The poets role as slave or master changesfrom Huidobros text to Mrios; in Non serviam, the poet-slave has been dominated by Mother Nature, while inParbola, the poet-master creates his slave, Poetry, who islater liberated by another poet. Nevertheless, the role reversaldoes not hide the essential metaphor: poetic expression is en-slaved. In one case the servile, sterile adulation of nature


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impedes poetic expression; in the other, the gradual eclipse ofTruth, motivated by sin and guilt, conceals it. However, the im-

balance inherent in a slave and master relationship leaves roomto evolve from the initial oppression of poetic creativity to itseventual freedom.

The slave and master relationship embodies an elementaryphilosophical axis: the self and the other. Hegels re-creationof the original self-other relationship is that of lordship andbondage; the first two individuals were equal until, in thestruggle of each to establish his role as the essential self, onebested the other and became his master. As Hegel explains, the

struggle grew out of the natural disunity of self-awareness:

Self-consciousness is faced by another self-consciousness;it has come out of itself.This has a twofold significance:first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being;secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it doesnot see the other as an essential being, but in the other seesits own self. (111; original emphasis)

In the resulting hierarchy, the slave depends on his master interms of power and service, but, paradoxically, the master de-pends on his slave for an idea of the certainty of his self. Theslave, however, gradually realizes his independent conscious-ness through the two key moments of work and fear. In sum,the oppression of the slave develops his independent conscious-ness while it diminishes the masters.

Non serviam lends itself to interpretation on the basis ofHegels ideas. The parables first paragraph alludes to the

slaves developing self-consciousness, after years of servitude:Y he aqu que una buena maana, despus de una noche depreciosos sueos y delicadas pesadillas, el poeta se levanta ygrita a la madre Natura:Non serviam(715). That the text be-gins with the conjunction y suggests that it continues someearlier narration or action, and there is indeed a backgroundgiven to the one fine morning phrase: the poets dreams andnightmares. Dreaming, always a manifestation of the uncon-

scious, signals the slaves developing consciousness and inde-pendence. Furthermore, the poet-slaves nocturnal meditationsare presented as the natural and immediate precursor of his get-ting up and yelling at his mistress, Non serviam! The dreams


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echo the direct cause of the poets actions, as stated by the nar-rator: No era un grito caprichoso, no era un acto de rebelda

superficial. Era el resultado de toda una evolucin, la suma demltiples experiencias (715). Other references to the past,such as the poets use of the present-perfect tense in his ad-dress to his fellow poets, and the phrase pero ya tengo edadpara andar solo por estos mundos (716), establish that the poethas indeed been a slave for some time. He even decries his pastacceptance, sin mayor reflexin (715), of the servile relation-ship; only now has he thoroughly experienced Hegels criticalmoments of work and fear to realize his own independent

consciousness.Furthermore, in the poets vocal moment of self-actualiza-

tion, his cry is repeated and translatedby a supposedly naturalphenomenon, the echo: Con toda la fuerza de sus pulmones,un eco traductor y optimista repite en las lejanas: No teservir. (715). Quiroga rightly clarifies that the echo doesnot arise from nature or from the poet, but out of pure textualdesirea shadowed voice corporealized by the synecdoque

[sic] of its lungs (518). In fact the magic echo, beyond trans-lating the Latin, embellishes it by adding the second-person-singular direct-object pronoun te. This distinct voice, whichfunctions as a creative speech act rather than the merely repeti-tive echo of the natural world, is a prolepsis of the poets crea-tion of an alternate world, expressed in the later phrase, Yotendr mis rboles que no sern como los tuyos, tendr mismontaas . . . (715). The echo mediates the poets self inwords, significantly shifting from Latin, a dead language, to

the vibrantly creative tongue of the poets rebellion. Indeed, thepoet in contemplation of his self is a Narcissus figure, andwith the reinforcement of his Echo he is led to still greaterself-awareness.

In the last section of the parable the poet speaks directly toMother Nature, boasting that he will become her master (sertu amo) but settling for a kind of relationship of equals: Teservirs de m; est bien. No quiero y no puedo evitarlo; peroyo tambin me servir de ti (715). The poets proposal there-fore resembles not so much a role reversal as the uneven pas-sage to Hegels potential relationship of equals in synthesis.Following through, the poet clearly separates his actions from


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hers: Yo tendr mis rboles que no sern como los tuyos,tendr mis montaas . . . (715); he recognizes the limits of his

own self. Even the poets surprising praise of his aos deesclavitud a tu servicio (716) supports the idea that the fruitof all his labor is precisely the step of self-awareness that hecan now take. Mother Nature ends up as a viejecita encanta-dora, though still honored by the poet as he reveals his newera: hinco una rodilla en tierra y te saludo muy respetuosa-mente (716). The poet and his former mistress are now equals,and sometimes rivals, in the newly separated realms of art andnature.

Mrios Parbola presents a chain of slave and master re-lationships. Adam, although perhaps not the slave of God, ofcourse reveres Him as his master. Adam is in turn the master ofPoetry, since she is after all the escrava of the title, althoughshe does not appear to serve him. Ultimately, Rimbaud, likethe legions of Greeks, Persians, Chinese, etc., is an impliedslave of Poetrys beauty and truth; but he is also her liberator,the chosen one who arrives after generations of servitude.

In the beginning, Adamsplgio[plagiary] unlike Huidobrospoets nueva era, does not arise from years of meditation inwork and fear. Instead, it springs spontaneously from greed andcunning mimicry: Invejoso e macaco o primeiro homemresolveu criar tambm [Envious and apelike the first man re-solved to create too] (OI 201). The slaves only duty is to serveas exemplo das geraes futuras [example for future genera-tions] (OI 201). All the peoples of the ancient world becomeher admirers; she is in this sense not their slave but rather their

mistress. According to Hegel, the slaves (Poetrys) rebellioncan only happen after many years of service, in which the indi-vidual consciousness has matured to the point of expression.For that reason, just as Huidobros revolutionary poet standsout among his brother poets, Rimbaud distinguishes himselffrom his fellow pilgrims to Mount Ararat by breaking themonotonous cycle of their activity. The pilgrims clutter ofclothing was interpreted, in the parallel context of Mriosmeta-narrative commentary, as produced by an excess of indi-vidualism. To counteract this excess (to achieve equilibrium),Mrio states that the unconscious must also be present; this isthe same equilibrium implied by Hegels synthesis. Yet


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Rimbaud, rather than restoring equilibrium, suddenly tips thebalance to the unconscious side by revealing Poetry, escanda-

losamente nua [scandalously nude] in the face of modern val-ues. She is a dreamlike image; her naked body and musicalvocalizations shock the uptight, overdressed passersby that onecan imagine on the busy So Paulo thoroughfare of a socie-dade educadssima, vestida e policiada da poca actual [theextremely well-heeled, well-dressed and repressed society ofcurrent times] (OI 202).

Poetry becomes a new mistress; she is now worshipped byos poetas modernistas, freed from the guilt of Adam and

Cain. Her resurrection has been the culmination of years ofconsciousness-forming, and her role is to provide the link withthe unconscious, mirrored in Non serviam by the poetsdreams. The new poetry therefore springs from the collectiveunconscious, but also must espouse the poets individual ex-pression. Both authors insist on the desire for a balance of theseelements (although Mrio more clearly than Huidobro, by vir-tue of his narrative frame). For that reason, Huidobros poet

cannot truly become Mother Natures master, since she repre-sents the universal; rather, he concedes that he will continue torespect her because he has learned from her as a model. Mriosliberated Poetry is exactly that, a model on a pedestal, that themodern poets se puseram a adorar [dedicated themselves toworshipping] (OI 202).

The figure of Adam as representative of the self is an ideashared by both authors that springs from the collective uncon-scious; inMysterium Coniunctionis,Jung concludes that Adam

symbolizes the self because of his habitual fourfold nature inalchemy, as incorporating the four elements, the four cardinalpoints, etc.8 In this sense of the self, Huidobros poet (evenwithout the knowledge of Alomars precedent) is as much ofan Adam figure as Mrios Adam. After the original sin, thebiblical Adam is conscious of nature (his nature or his self) andattempts to dominate it by wearing the fig leaf; in Mrios par-able, he also places one on his slave. Rimbaud reverses Adamsinitial action by uncovering nature to probe the unconscious.In contrast, Huidobros poet, like Hegels slave, becomes awareof his self as opposed to his mistress, Mother Nature; his rebel-lion is his original sin. Differing from Mrios Adam,


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Huidobros poet already possesses a link to the unconsciousthrough his preciosos sueos y delicadas pesadillas (715).

Both authors cast Adam in the dynamics of a slave and masterrelationship to show the interplay of the conscious and uncon-scious elements of the creative act, leading to the possible rec-onciliation of the self with the other.

Gender Roles and Duality

Another dimension of the self-other dialectic can be scrutinizedin the relegation of gender roles. In Non serviam the woman

is the mistress and the man is the slave, whereas in Parbolathe initial relationship is the opposite: a male master and a fe-male slave. The later development of Poetry as the idol/mis-tress of her male worshippers returns to the same arrangementof gender roles as Non serviam. It is therefore necessary toexplore both of the opposite sex pairings: mistress and maleslave, master and female slave. Todorov has questioned the im-plication inherent in Hegels paradigm of lordship and bond-

age that the quest for the recognition of the self is a struggle.

9

While agreeing that the nature of the self requires an other,Todorov proposes that the initial self-defining dichotomy wasnot the relationship of master and slave, but rather of motherand child. The child is born with an incomplete sense of selfthat can only be fulfilled by the mother; for this reason, thechild wants to catch his mothers gaze, to recognize himself inthe mirror of the eyes of the other. This is not a strugglethechild wants nothing more complicated than the mothers pres-

encealthough Todorov does identify a different battle, at alater stage, among the child and his peers for adult recognition.If Huidobros protagonist is seen as the child of la madre

Natura (my emphasis), in addition to being her slave, then itis easy to extrapolate his dissatisfaction with the one-way sta-tus of their relationship. Her self exists completely, but heneeds her recognition to be complete. Like a desperate toddler,he initially grabs her attention by making her angry. She isabout to chastise him with a lightning bolt when he quicklyingratiates himself by complimenting her. He has succeeded inobtaining her attention, and thus her recognition, with littletrouble. However, because Hegels slave and master relation-


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ship exists alongside the mother and son relationship, the at-mosphere of struggle intensifies. Furthermore, the second

struggle that Todorov postulates may be foreshadowed in thepoets address to his fellow poets; in the presence of the adult,he tries to establish authority over his equals. After his presum-ably successful revolt, the poet disparages Mother Naturesmatronly role: adis, madre y madrastra (716). Through theuse of madrastra, the poet diminishes his relationship with her,bringing into doubt any genetic or hereditary connection, whileassociating her with a traditional villainess archetype, theWicked Stepmother. If he were to vanquish the false mother

(stepmother or witch), Huidobros poet would join the heroicranks of fairy-tale figures such as Cinderella or Hansel andGretel. Yet he cannot truly defeat her, as has been shown, sincemore than a mere witch or stepmother, Mother Nature repre-sents the original and divine forces of the universe. She is theGreat Mother of the collective unconsciousan essential linkto the unconscious elements of poetic creation.10

In Parbola, on her perch atop Mount Ararat, Poetry can

also be identified with the Great Mother, in her manifestationas the Earth Mother. When Rimbaud passed by the mountain,wanting to see it, he admirou-se de, em vez do Ararat de terra,encontrar um Guarisancar de sedas, setins, chapeus, jias,botinas, mscaras, espartilhos . . . que sei l! [marveled atfinding, instead of Mount Ararat, a Mount Guarisancar of silks,satins, hats, jewelry, boots, masks, girdles . . . and who knowswhat else!] (OI 202). He does not recognize the Ararat deterra, nor can he know, in that moment, that Poetry waits be-

neath the clutter of costumes. Expecting to see Mother Earth,he jumps into the pile, clearing it all away, and finds in herplace a different mother, Poetry. It is important to note the nounthat Mrio uses for Rimbaud in this moment of discovery: E omenino descobriu a mulher nua [And the boy discovered thenude woman] (OI 202); Rimbaud, the ingenious vagabond whowrote all of his poetry between the ages of sixteen and nine-teen, is here a menino, or boy, before Poetry. Furthermore,he is a child at the mothers breast; Mount Ararat is symboli-cally a breast of the earth, a poetic source. It is also the cradleof post-diluvial civilization, as the fertile ground where thewomblike ark was opened and Noah and his family were finally


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returned to the nourishing earth. Poetrys geographical loca-tion is therefore richly symbolic of a return to the Great Mother.

Standing revealed, Poetry meets Rimbauds gaze. In thismoment of mutual recognition, Mrio appropriately chooses toreveal to the reader the identities of the slave and the vagabond.Although Poetry may acknowledge her liberator in this auda-cious youth, she does not understand Rimbauds tongue; on thecontrary, she is described as desconhecendo as novas lnguas(OI 202). Rimbaud, however, as the influential Symbolist andauthor of Alchimie du verbe, is most suited to appreciatingher way of falando por sons musicais (OI 202). Rimbauds

physical struggle was limited to getting to the bottom of themountain of clothes, but, as in Non serviam, the foreseen pos-sibility of Todorovs struggle among equals is suggested in thepresence of a group of poets in the last paragraph. Again, therewill be a contest for authority among peers, a situation that infact proved to be characteristic of the avant-garde movementsin general. Therefore, the fighting among equals represents thepoets search for leadership and acceptance in the artistic mi-

lieu, while the mother and child relationship symbolizes thepoets struggle to know himself, and thus create poetry.The opposite duo, of master and female slave, suggests the

father and daughter relationship. Such a relationship, in thecontext of the master and slave hierarchy, has been shown bySandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar to be typically mythological:

Like the metaphor of literary paternity itself, this corollarynotion that the chief creature man has generated is womanhas a long and complex history. From Eve, Minerva, Sophia,and Galatea onward, after all, patriarchal mythology defineswomen as created by, from, and for men, the children ofmale brains, ribs, and ingenuity. (12)

Mrios Adam produces Poetry from his tongue, a birth which,on the psychological level of language production, is more likeAthenas birth from Zeuss headache than Eves birth fromAdams rib. Athena, from the head of the most powerful of thegods, is the goddess of wisdom; Adams creation, from thetongue of the first man, is Poetry. Such a uniquely masculinebirth reflects the Romantics striving for unilateral creation; Dr.Frankenstein, like Mrios Adam, engenders new life at the costof repressing the maternal role.11


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Jacques Derrida examines the paternal nature of language inPlatos Pharmacy. Though the written word comes to naught,

the spoken word, as the fathers seed, brings new life: [. . .]living speech makes its capital bear fruit and does not divert itsseminal potency toward indulgence in pleasures without pater-nity (152). In Parbola, Adams act of creation, from histongue (and not his rib), is a symbolic description of language.His speech act literally creates Poetry as offspring. The effort-less simplicity of this act cannot be doubted in the Edenic con-text: E como no soubesse ainda cirugia para uma operaoto interna quanto extraordinria tirou da lngua um outro ser

[And since he didnt know yet the surgery necessary for suchan internal and extraordinary operation, he drew from histongue another being] (OI 201). This act extends Adams roleas the paradigm of poets, being the original namer of animals,plants, and other natural entities. All are creatures of God, butAdam is the father of language; indeed, Adams word createsreality as does the Word of God. His tongue is the phallus thatdisseminates the spoken symbols, both defining and limiting

his environment; spoken language defines the other throughexclusion, thereby limiting the self by process of elimination.Does this father-daughter relationship exhibit the same dy-

namics as the mother-son relationship? The son, as a child,needs his mothers presence in order to feel complete, and theolder son rebels against his kind to promote himself. Yet theseneeds are ignored in the father-daughter relationship of Adamand Poetry, since there is no mother involved and the daughteris born fully adult; there exists no childhood phase of recogni-

tion and self-awareness, nor any need for Adams acknowledg-ment. Instead, as has already been seen, the dynamicinterchange in Mrios parable is displaced from this initial,spontaneous relationship of Adam and his slave to the culmi-nating, reciprocal recognition between Rimbaud and Poetry.

The gender roles in both parables go beyond the elaborationof the fundamental dialectic of the self and the other by serv-ing, additionally, to differentiate the masculine and feminineessences of poetic creation. In both cases, the slaves rebellion,or the desire to link individual expression with the collectiveunconscious, is expressed in terms of an agent and a recipient;the agent is the masculine force of language and the recipi-ent is the feminine force of nature. This description emphasizes


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the dual nature of poetic creation, not unlike the Taoist conceptof yin and yang, and conveys the idea that the revolution aims

not to change from one side to the other, but rather to restorethe balance between them. The yin and yang are thus respec-tively feminine and masculine, passive and active, recipient andagent, nature and language, universal and individual, uncon-scious and conscious, other and self. Furthermore, this essen-tial duality reflects not only the Gnostic division of the spiritualand the physical, but also, and with greater relevance, thesexual imagery of the Kabbalah. This body of mystical teach-ings exerted great influence on the Hispanic modernistasand

other vanguard predecessors, and was therefore familiar to thevanguardists. In Vientos contrariosHuidobro himself notes hismany hours of study devoted to la Astrologa, a la Alquimia, ala Cbala antigua y al ocultismo en general (Obras completas794). The Kabbalah holds that Adams sin caused the exile ofthe feminine aspect of divinity. Kabbalistic sexual imagerytherefore represents the desire for the reunion of the feminineand masculine entities of the godhead (immanence and tran-

scendence, respectively), expressed as a universal harmony(Schaya 131). The similar characterizations of these opposingsexual forces in Huidobros and Mrios parablesbeyondforegrounding, once again, the role of Adamwork toward thesame ideal goal of harmony in creation.

The gender pairings therefore shed new light on what thepoetic revolution sets out to accomplish. The two parablesrevolutions seemingly contradict one another; Huidobros maleprotagonist rebels against Mother Nature, or the unconscious,

in his moment of self-illumination, while by contrastRimbauds revolt is essentially seen as a return, in which herediscovers the feminine unconscious to thwart an excess ofindividualism. Yet, with this dualistic understanding of therevolutionary relationship, these two ostensibly opposite revo-lutions can be reconciled to describe the same moment in theLatin American (and Western) history of literature and art: thedefinition of the avant-garde as a desire to restore equilibrium.

Creating a Revolutionary Rhetoric

The goal of the poetic revolution is now clear: it is to reestab-lish the dual character of poetic creation, which is the same as


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Mrios precious Equilbrio. But the question remains: whatare the events and conditions that have led up to the necessity

for a radical shift? Both authors supply a negative historicalbackground, isolating a kind of developmental flaw that justi-fies the poetic revolution. In Non serviam this flaw ismimesis, while in Parbola it is poetic adornment or orna-mentalism; as mentioned earlier, these flaws can be seen as anupsetting of the equilibriumin the first case, there is too muchfocus on nature, in the other, too much on language. Therequired remedy, both a break with the past and a new creation,will be provided by the unnamed poet (Huidobro himself?) and

by Rimbaud.The historical context of Non serviam is presented in its

second section, in which the poet summarizes to his fellowpoets the reason for their dearth of accomplishment: Hastaahora no hemos hecho otra cosa que imitar al mundo en susaspectos, no hemos creado nada. Qu ha salido de nosotrosque no estuviera antes parado ante nosotros, rodeando nuestrosojos, desafiando nuestros pies o nuestras manos? (715). The

poet condemns this exclusive mimesis and, in the act of callingfor a new world, recognizes the role of his self: [. . .] y nohemos pensado que nosotros tambin podemos crear realidadesen un mundo nuestro, en un mundo que espera su fauna y florapropias. Flora y fauna que slo el poeta puede crear, por esedon especial que le dio la misma madre Naturaleza a l ynicamente a l (715). The moment of self-recognition, of-fered simultaneously with the cry for revolution, also definesthe mom

Documents

Aesthetics of Equilibrium Â· The Vanguard Poetic of Vincente Huidobro And Mario De Andrare