|
Showing 1 - 19 of
19 matches in All Departments
This selected edition presents an overview of all of Huidobro's
work, from 1914 until 1948, when his final, posthumous volume was
published. moving from the early symbolist work, though the high
avant-garde phase towards the end of the First World War, then
through the phase of Altazor and Temblor de cielo (Skyquake), the
highpoint of his career (both published 1931), and on into the
quieter late poetry which synthesises the previous work and settles
down into a post-vanguard style. Also includes manifestos and
interviews.
The Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) is one of the most
important figures in 20th-century Hispanic poetry and, with Cesar
Vallejo, one of the pioneering avant-gardists in Spanish.
Originally from an upper-class Santiago family, Huidobro was
fortunate to have the means to support himself and his family while
he found his artistic way. After an early phase writing in a
quasi-symbolist style in his native city, he moved to Paris and
threw himself into the local artistic milieu with a passion,
quickly becoming a notable figure, publishing a large number of
books in the period 1917-1925. Influenced initially by Apollinaire,
Huidobro quickly befriended both forward-looking French writers
such as Reverdy, Cocteau and Radiguet, and the Spanish expatriate
artists, including Picasso and Juan Gris. He reached his poetic
maturity in 1931 with the publication of two masterpieces: the long
poem, Altazor, and the book-length prose-poem Temblor de cielo
(Skyquake). Two further collections would follow during his
lifetime, both published in Santiago in 1941. While he also
published successful novels and plays, it is for his poetry that he
is best remembered today. El ciudadano del olvido was published in
Santiago in 1941, as one of a pair of volumes that summed up
Huidobro's shorter poems from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s. The
two books show the author as a quieter figure, more mature, but
somewhat ground down by misfortune - he had been forced by economic
circumstances to return to Chile in the early 1930s, and was
subsequently distressed by his lack of recognition in his homeland,
by the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, by the fall of France in 1940,
and by the collapse of his second marriage. The book contains some
of his finest individual poems, less creationist than his previous
efforts, and somewhat more surrealist than he would no doubt have
cared to admit. The book and its companion, Ver y palpar
(forthcoming in this series) are vital to an understanding of the
range and complexity of Huidobro's poetic achievement.
|
El Creacionismo (Paperback)
Vicente Huidobro; Translated by Jonathan Simkins; Foreword by Leo Lobos
|
R467
R389
Discovery Miles 3 890
Save R78 (17%)
|
Out of stock
|
|
Adam (Paperback)
Vicente Huidobro; Translated by Tony Frazer
|
R461
R405
Discovery Miles 4 050
Save R56 (12%)
|
Out of stock
|
Adam, published in 1916, is Huidobro's earliest mature work and his
first attempt at free verse. While still full of rhetorical
gestures from his previous symbolist (or modernista) style, heavily
influenced by Ruben Dario, the book shows the author moving into
very new territory, if at this stage not fully able to cast off his
previous allegiances. It is fair to say that the book would today
be forgotten, were it not for the author's spectacular later
career, but it retains some interest as a transitional volume,
albeit not as much as that demonstrated by El espejo de agua (The
Water Mirror), also first published in 1916, but written after
Adam. Adam is a young man's book, embarrassingly so at times, as
the author proudly sets out his stall, but it represents a major
leap forward. With his claim to Emersonian influence, his dismissal
of traditional Hispanophone poetry in the Preface, and that
typically outrageous tone-one we will meet many times in his later
works, where he shouts from the rooftops, "Look at me!", and lays
into his perceived enemies-it's hard to ignore the fact that
Huidobro was all of 21 when he began this poem. The sins of youth,
indeed.
In 1931, while on holiday in Arcachon, Huidobro and the
Franco-German artist and writer, Hans (Jean) Arp together
wrote Tres novelas exemplares (Three Exemplary Novels
— no doubt a reference to the Exemplary Novels by
Cervantes, to which of course they bear no resemblance at all), a
set of wild quasi-surrealist "stories". In 1935, Huidobro — once
again living in Chile — offered the set to a publisher in
Santiago, but was told that the book was too short. Accordingly he
wrote two further stories on his own, and the whole volume was
titled Tres inmensas novelas. Which are therefore, not three,
not huge and not novels. This volume offers all five stories in a
bilingual format, and the cover is almost a copy of the
one used in the first edition.
Cagliostro is a lurid tale of magic and secret societies during the
reign of Luis XVI, centred on the figure of the Italian occultist
Giuseppe Balsamo, known under his alias of Count Alessandro di
Cagliostro. The book owes its style of presentation to the example
of German expressionist cinema, of the kind exemplified by The
Cabinet of Dr Caligari. In the early 1920s, Vicente Huidobro-always
fascinated by the new medium of film-wrote a film script on the
subject of Cagliostro, in a treatment apparently very much in tune
with the German expressionist cinema of the era. The film was
apparently shot in 1923 by the Romanian director Mime Mizu but it
was scrapped due to dissatisfaction over the editing. No trace of
the film survives, although there are three pages from a script in
the author's papers. A revised version of the script was submitted
to The League for Better Motion Pictures in New York and won a
$10,000 award as the best candidate for filming. Alas for the
author, this was just at the point when the "talkies" arrived and
this style of film-making was immediately rendered outmoded.
However, the novella, which has many cinematic elements, was
published in English translation in 1931 in both London and New
York, to positive reviews. It appeared in the original Spanish only
in 1934, in Santiago, Chile, where it had no impact at all. This
edition reproduces the text of the 1931 translation. "[This book]
is my answer to the question whether the cinematograph can
influence the novel." (Vicente Huidobro)
Huidobro published Horizon carre in Paris in 1917), and quickly
followed it with Tour Eiffel (in French and Spanish; Madrid, 1918),
Hallali (in French; Madrid, 1918); Ecuatorial (in Spanish; Madrid,
1918), Poemas articos, likewise published in Spanish in Madrid, and
El espejo de agua, a Spanish-language volume from 1916, reissued in
Madrid in 1918. Horizon carre is heavily influenced by the work of
Guillaume Apollinaire and marks Huidobro's definitive arrival on
the avant-garde scene in Paris, even if-it has to be said-the
volume is derivative. Huidobro's French was good even before he
arrived in Paris: he had been educated well in Santiago, but this
would not have prepared him for the linguistic and intellectual
ferment he would find upon arrival in the main seat of the
international avant-garde. Many of his early French-language
manuscripts show signs of corrections by his friends at the
time-the French poet, Pierre Reverdy and the Spanish artist,
Picabia, both being among them.
The prose-poem Temblor de cielo is more apparently unified work
than its companion, Altazor, although this might owe more to its
style of delivery: an ecstatic outpouring of words that largely
revolve around the themes of love, sex and death. The Isolde to
whom much of the poem is addressed is an idealised feminine
figure-part goddess, part idealised beloved, part Isolde from
Wagner's opera (another ecstatic outpouring on the theme of love,
sex and death) and part Ximena Amunategui, the young woman who had
become the poet's second wife. I tend to think that the central
impetus for the work is an erotic storm occasioned by the second
Mrs Huidobro, notwithstanding the artistic fusion with the other
elements mentioned above. The poem is also a sustained lyric
effusion of a kind that Huidobro had never produced before, and it
marks the point at which his work moves on from the barnstorming
avant-garderie of his younger years to a more mature style, albeit
one influenced by surrealism, a movement which Huidobro had
previously attacked. It is also the last time that Huidobro was to
adopt the god-like narrative persona that occurs in his earlier
work. In Temblor, as in some earlier works, God is conflated with
the poet-creator, as he is in Altazor, where the opening lines
reflect the opening of a love-poem addressed to Ximena that the
author published (to great scandal) in the Santiago newspaper, La
Nacion: "Naci a los treinta y tres anos, el dia de la muerte de
Cristo" [I was born at the age of thirty three, on the day Christ
died]. (It should be noted that the author was 33 when he first met
Ximena, which gives the imagery another dimension.)
In 1928, shortly after his marriage to Ximena Amunategui, and after
meeting the actor Douglas Fairbanks, who expressed interest in the
possibility of a new swashbuckler, Huidobro began writing his
version of the Cid legend as a novel. The result is a highly
readable, if slightly arch, version of the story, that casts aside
the style of romantic 19th-century historical fiction in favour of
more modern approaches and cinematic influences. Style aside, the
book can be read a straightforward tale of adventure that sits
happily alongside the 1961 epic movie that starred Charlton Heston
and Sophia Loren and had thousands of extras. More than one line of
the script for that movie sounds as if lifted from Huidobro's
novel. The translation by Wells appeared quickly, under the title
Portrait of a Paladin in 1931, in both London and New York, and
this reprint offers the original version with only some minor
edits, together with a new afterword and an extensive glossary to
aid with figures, both legendary and genuine, from Old Spain.
Huidobro published Poemas articos in Madrid in 1918, this being the
last of a rapid series of publications which established him as a
major new talent both in French and in Spanish. Poemas articos is
particularly interesting in that it shows the author taking on
board lessons learned from Guillaume Apollinaire-an early friend in
Paris-and probably also Pierre Reverdy, although this is something
of an assumption, given that Reverdy repudiated his early work from
this period and the poems that might have been an influence are no
longer extant; the two poets also fell out, for reasons that are
unclear. In any event, this is his longest Spanish-language volume
up to this point, and marks a significant breakthrough. This
edition also includes variant French versions.
|
Manifestos (Paperback)
Vicente Huidobro; Translated by Tony Frazer
|
R512
R424
Discovery Miles 4 240
Save R88 (17%)
|
Out of stock
|
In 1925, Huidobro published this collection of manifestos to
consolidate his position in the avant-garde in the face of the
burgeoning new Surrealist movement and also as a reaction to
attacks from one Spanish critic in particular, a member of the
Ultraist movement, who seemed to want to establish the Spanish
avant-garde as an independent force, free of the influence of this
loud, self-confident Chilean. The book appeared in the same year
that he published his last two collections of French poetry, one of
which demonstrated Dadaist influences, and the other Surrealist
influences. 1925 is therefore a watershed year for Huidobro, one
where he experimented with new approaches and also tried to shore
up his prominent position as the artistic tides began to turn. Six
years later, after some time back in Chile, and periods in Madrid,
Paris and New York (where he had tried to get into the film world,
and failed to do so because of the eruption of the talkies at a
time when he was engaged in producing scripts for silent movies),
Huidobro produced his two masterpieces, Altazor, written – the
author claimed – between 1919 and 1930, and Temblor de cielo
(Skyquake), written in 1928. The other work written at this time,
i.e. between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s, was only to be
collected in two volumes published in 1941, but it reinforces the
impression given by the 1931 publications, that Huidobro had
reached his maturity after the Parisian apprenticeship. The
manifestos should be read with some seriousness, but perhaps also
with a tongue in the cheek.
Before attaining his poetic maturity — and this would be through
poems written mostly in Spanish — Huidobro wrote these two
collections in French and published them in Paris in 1925, the same
year that a volume of his manifestos appeared (see below). The two
books have never been republished in France and have likewise not
been published in Spanish translation other than in collected
editions of the author’s works. While they are in some respects a
developmental dead-end for Huidobro,
they do demonstrate his attempts to engage, in one
volume, with the influence of Dada, and, in the other, with the
influence of Surrealism. His later work transcends these overt
influences and moves onto new pastures, but these experiments were
necessary in order to get him there. The complete texts of both
first editions are included here along with all the (later) Spanish
versions of the poems, made by the author himself, that have so far
come to light.
Often compared with Apollinaire as the first and liveliest
avant-garde poet in his language, Vicente Huidobro was a one-man
movement ("Creationism") in the modernist swirl of Paris and
Barcelona between the two World Wars. His masterpiece was the 1931
book-length epic Altazor, a Machine Age paean to flight that sends
its hero (Altazor, the "antipoet") hurtling through Einsteinian
space at light speed. Perhaps the fastest-reading long poem of the
century, and certainly the wildest, Altazor rushes through the
universe in a lyrical babble of bird-languages, rose-languages,
puns, neologisms, and pages of identical rhymes, finally ending in
the pure sound of the language of the future. Universally
considered untranslatable until the appearance of Eliot
Weinberger's celebrated version in 1988, Altazor appears again in
an extensively revised translation with an expanded introduction.
Altazor y Temblor de cielo (1931), poemas en verso y prosa,
respectivamente, son las abras clave del chileno Huidobro, uno de
los importadores de las vanguardias a Espana. Altazor es una
intensa abra metafisica, ademas de un ingenioso juego de palabras,
culminacion del creacionismo.
|
|