Altazor

by Vicente Huidobro

Con el poema Altazor, publicado en 1931, Vicente Huidobro logra materializar los planteamientos fundamentales de su proyecto creacionista. En él, un sujeto declama, llora y grita mientras cae en un paracaídas con dirección a la Tierra, desplegando una galería de bellas y conmovedoras imágenes.

La lectura de este libro es una fascinante aventura; la de acompañar a este protagonista que se irá convirtiendo durante su recorrido en aviador, "pastor de aeroplanos", "orquesta trágica", gran poeta, pájaro, mago, o incluso un ángel, que puede transformarse tanto en uno caído, como en otro salvaje o loco. Altazor es, sin duda, la obra más emblemática de uno de los principales poetas de la literatura hispanoamericana del siglo XX.

Genres: Poetry, Spanish Literature, Classics, Latin American, Latin American Literature, Literature, 20th Century

135 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He was an exponent of the artistic movement called Creacionismo ("Creationism"), which held that a poet should bring life to the things he or she writes about, rather than just describe them.

Huidobro was born into a wealthy family in Santiago. After spending his first years in Europe, he enrolled in a Jesuit secondary school in Santiago where he was expelled for using a ring, which he claimed, was for marriage. He studied literature at the University of Chile and published "Ecos del alma" ( Soul's Echoes ) in 1911, a work with modernist tendencies. The following year he married, and started to edit the journal "Musa Joven" ( Young Muse ), where part of his later book, "Canciones en la noche" ( Songs in the Night ) appeared, as well as his first calligram, "Triángulo armónico" ( Harmonic Triangle ).