Vicente Huidobro

Who was Vicente Huidobro?

Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He was an exponent of the artistic movement called Creacionismo, 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 wearing a ring, which he claimed, was for marriage. He studied literature at the University of Chile and published Ecos del alma in 1911, a work with modernist tendencies. The following year he married, and started to edit the journal Musa Joven, where part of his later book, Canciones en la noche appeared, as well as his first calligram, "Triángulo armónico".

In 1913, along with Carlos Díaz Loyola, he edited the three issues of the journal Azul, and published both Canciones en la noche and La gruta del silencio. The next year, he gave a lecture, Non serviam, which reflected his aesthetic creed. In another work of the same year, he explained his religious doubts and criticized the Jesuits, earning himself the reproach of his family.