Altazor, a coinage derived from “alto” (high) and “azor” (hawk), the work identified by its recent English translator as Huidobro’s masterpiece, interrogates both the nature of the modern poet and his lofty aspirations. Despite its importance, however, Altazor is also one of Huidobro’s most problematic works.

Fluent in both Spanish and French and living for a long time in Paris, Huidobro wrote in both languages—and he wrote Altazor in both languages. The book itself is not bilingual, but different parts of the same (original) text exist in French and in Spanish, complicating its translation. A version of the work was published in Spanish in Madrid—finally—in 1931; however, Huidobro had begun Altazor’s composition in 1919.

Huidobro, whose unique poetic movement, creationism, regarded the poet as a “little god,” explores the heights and the depths of poetry and poetic creation in Altazor. In the preface to the poem, the speaker observes that he came into the world on the same day Christ left it, already 33 years old. But the world the speaker enters is recognizably the modern world, complete with planes and cars and mechanical inventions.

Vicente Huidobro

It is also a highly imaginative world in which the speaker passes through fanciful dreams and encounters realistic and impossible creatures and places. By the first lines of Canto I, Altazor, the figure of the poet, has begun to fall, descending through worlds, suspended from a parachute.

The meaning of the parachute changes throughout the cantos, as does the significance of the fall itself. So, too, does the idea of the poet change. When the poem refers to God, as it does in Canto I, speaking of him as “todo y nada” (all and nothing), a God of the Mind and the Breath, a God both young and old, a “Dios pútrido” (putrid God), the poem might as well be referring to the poet.

In many ways, the book is a search for a modern poet, an examination of the poet’s new identity and continued relevance in a modern world. Indeed, Altazor interrogates the very nature of poetry, questioning its potency and its ability to shape truly new, real worlds from the imagination.

Altazor also investigates words themselves; it is a work consciously poetic, and its language changes as the cantos progress. Ultimately, the poem’s language devolves into—or restores—meaningless, imitation words, vocalizations, perhaps, of the poet’s interior state.

Canto VII, then, represents language without ascertainable public meaning: poetry derived from sound rather than sense. It is also Altazor’s last expression, a scream of sorts—either the poet’s howl of relief or joy as his feet touch solid ground, or the splat of language, as his parachute fails.

Bibliography
Huidobro, Vicente. Altazor, or, A Voyage in a Parachute: Poem in VII Cantos (1919). Translated by Eliot Weinberger. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.

Categories: Chilean Literature, Literature

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