Vicente Huidobro - in perpetual motion

The Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948) is one of the most important figures in 20th-century Hispanic poetry and one of its pioneering avant-gardists. Originally from an aristocratic Santiago family of landowners and winemakers, 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 scene with a passion, quickly publishing several collections in 1917–18, and then a selected poems in French in 1921. Influenced initially by Apollinaire, Huidobro befriended forward-looking French writers such as Reverdy and Cocteau, as well as the artists, such as Picasso, who were then revolutionising painting and sculpture in the city. He was to reach his artistic maturity in 1931 with the publication of two master-pieces: the long poem, Altazor, and the book-length prose-poem Temblor de cielo (Skyquake). Two further original collections and an extensive Selected followed during his lifetime, all published in Santiago. While he also published successful novels and plays, it is for his poetry that he is best remembered today. With his impetuous love life, his political posturing, his often miscalculated attempts to bestride the public stage in Chile, Spain and France, not to mention an unparalleled ability to make enemies, Huidobro makes a fine subject for a biography. Volodia Teitelboim’s impressionistic biography of Huidobro was first published to coincide with the centenary of the poet’s birth in 1993, and has the advantage of being written by someone who actually knew him, and many of the other significant figures in Chilean poetry of the 1930s and later. As the author relates in the course of the book, he started out as, and remained, an admirer of the poet’s work, but he is commendably clear about Huidobro’s personal faults – and about the causes of the breakdown in his own relationship with him. He was to reach his artistic 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 original collections and an extensive Selected followed during his lifetime, all published in Santiago. While he also published successful novels and plays, it is for...