Rubén Darío and Vicente Huidobro: Two Views of Language as Impregnation

St. Meinrad College (Indiana)

As Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have observed in The Madwoman in the Attic, their study of nineteenth-century women writers, the patriarchal structure of Western society has given rise to the metaphor of literary paternity (3-44). Specifically, they explain that the notion of male «impregnation» of texts has its origins in the view that «the text's author is a father, a progenitor, a procreator, an aesthetic patriarch whose pen is an instrument of generative power like his penis» (6). Using this concept, it becomes clear that the poetry of both Rubén Darío (1867-1916) and Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) reflects, either implicitly or explicitly, the idea that writing involves a kind of psychic spilling of semen on the page itself. In this regard, the generative capacity of language and the concern for the process of writing are at the heart of two key poems, «El cisne» by Darío, from Prosas profanas, and «El himno del sol» by Huidobro, from Adán. In these poems, Darío and Huidobro link language that has been impregnated with poetic energy with a type of procreative or sexual power¹⁷. This view of language as impregnation, however, is subtly shaped by each poet's view of himself as either poet/magus, in the case of Darío, or poet/god, in the case of Huidobro. From this perspective, an examination of these poems will show that Huidobro's feelings toward the generative power of poetic language represent both a certain kinship with Darío and a radical departure. Moreover, in addition to helping provide insight into the metaphor of literary paternity, it is hoped that this discussion will also shed light on the transition from Spanish American Modernism to the Vanguardia, revealing at once a sense of continuity and a sense of rupture.

Throughout his three major collections of poems, Azul (1888), Prosas profanas (1896), and Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905), Darío strives to see through the apparent chaos and disorder of external reality in order to affirm the unity and oneness of the universe. Relying on the harmonious patterns he perceives in nature, Darío sees himself as a divinely inspired poet whose mission is to discern and decipher through the magic of poetic language the signs of nature. His artistic endeavor, he hopes, will lead to a sense of inner tranquility and unity with the cosmos. This view of himself as poet/magus or high priest is rooted in Romanticism and was influenced by nineteenth-century occultist literature¹⁸. According to the tenets of esoteric doctrine, the soul of God is present in all things, and nature is a harmonious extension of God. Within this framework, Darío as poet/magus attempts to discover in nature the original cosmic unity and harmony of the Godhead, from which he has become separated and which has become obfuscated by established patterns of perception.

The procreative power of language itself partakes of this process. In his introduction to Prosas profanas, for example, Darío declares in the following passage that words themselves have souls: «Como cada palabra tiene un alma, hay en cada verso, además de la harmonía verbal, una melodía ideal. La música es sólo de la idea, muchas veces» (180)¹⁹. Like nature, then, words and poetry are imbued with the soul of God and are part of a living, rhythmic universe. As a result, Darío at tempts to capture through the mediating and generative power of language a transcendent vision of both the original musical harmony of the cosmos and the soul of God. Against this backdrop, Darío's use of sexual imagery throughout his poetic trajectory underscores his view of language as impregnation²⁰. Through the joining of male and female principles, Darío's sexual conception of the cosmos becomes a celebration of the joy of sexual and

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poetic creation²¹.

The concept of language as impregnation continues into the Vanguardia and appears as an important facet in Huidobros' poetry as well. In contrast to Darío's loving and intimate relationship with all creation, however, Huidobro happily announces his independence from nature in his manifesto «Non serviam» in 1914 (1: 653-54). In this fundamental document, which helped shape his aesthetic theory of creacionismo, the poet declares his autonomy from nature and reveals his eagerness to construct his own artistic cosmos²². Consequently, Huidobro makes clear his view of himself as poet/god with his pronouncement in «Arte poética» (1: 255), the first poem in El espejo de agua (1916), that «El poeta es un pequeño Dios».²³

The evolution of Huidobro's poetry toward creacionismo involves a movement away from more traditional poetic forms and an increased reliance on the landscapes of the poet's own mind over those of external reality²⁴. A review of his early words -the late Romanticism of Ecos del alma (1911), the ideograma of Canciones en la noche (1913), the audacious imagery and metric innovations of La gruta del silencio (1913), the prose poems of Las pagodas ocultas (1914), and the creation of a new poetic world in Adán (1916)- reveals the evolution of his efforts to create a poetic reality that is separate and apart from nature. Concluding that the poetic tradition that he has inherited has exhausted itself, Huidobro feels that his poetic mission is to fill the resulting void with language that instills life. This concern is especially evident in Adán, where Adam, as original mar, speaks the first word.

Darío's view of writing as procreation in the poem «El cisne» (213) revolves around his perception of the swan as a symbol of harmony and artistic perfection. Underscoring its significance as a symbol of harmonious perfection, the image of the swan can also be viewed as a type of androgynous figure, with the masculinity of its phallus-like neck balanced by the femininity of its soft and full body²⁵. The poet writes:

Adapting traditional verse forms to his particular needs, the structure of this sonnet and its ABAB, ABAB, CCD, EED rhyme scheme are presented as a reflection of the harmony and tranquility that Darío finds in the «music» of nature and in the classical lines and formal beauty of the swan.

Darío's evocation of the swan here functions on three levels: the artistic, the sexual, and the poetic²⁶. In the first instance, the swan that is transformed by art, especially by Wagner, with its natural grace, beauty, and androgynous features, becomes a standard of artistic excellence that the poet himself aspires to emulate. At the same time, the reference to Leda suggests sexual fusion by recalling the myth in which Zeus visits her in the form of a swan. Finally, on perhaps a more profound level, the images of artistic creation and sexual fusion seem to merge and give way to a type of poetic fusion in which artistic inspiration and the erotic impulses of the swan and Leda become one with the aesthetic impulses of the poet.²⁷

It is evident in the opening quatrain that Darío's view of the swan as a model of artistic excellence grows out of his admiration for the work of Richard Wagner, the German poet and composer (1813-1883). Specifically, Darío refers to Wagner's opera Lohengrin, in which Gottfried, the heir of Brabant, is transformed by sorcery into a swan. Later, this swan draws the boat that brings Lohengrin, a knight of the Holy Grail, to Elsa, his future bride (Cross 296-305). According to legend, the swan sings its beautiful song only once, just before it dies. In the words «aurora» and «revivir» in the fourth line, however, Darío sees art as a source of life or a new way of coming into touch with the world, so that what appeared dead or exhausted, physically and spiritually, now comes back to life. This image reinforces the link between artistic and sexual creation. Furthermore, the words «una hora divina» in the first line underscore Darío's belief that Wagner's art is divinely inspired.

The identification of the swan with the harmonious sounds of music is a source of consolation as the poet attempts to come to terms with what he calls «las tempestades del humano oceano» in the second quatrain. Through a clever play on words and imagery, the word «tempestades» is linked with war. For example,

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«el martillo del viejo Thor germano» is a direct reference to Thor, the mythic God of Thunder (Hamilton 311). In addition, the evocation of «las trompas que cantan la espada de Angantir» recalls the Icelandic tales that deal with the mythic warrior Angantyr and his magic sword Tyrfingur (Hallberg 97-100). Together, the sounds associated with thunder and the image of Angantyr's sword give an impression of war and conflict. Nevertheless, the harmonious sounds associated with the swan are so vivid and powerful that they are heard above all others, including those related to war. Once again, the swan is linked with life in the contrast between the world of art and the physical and spiritual deaths of war and fighting. Finally, the eternal quality of the «music» of nature, revealed in the words «no se cesa de oír», gives the poet hope and inspiration despite the obstacles.

In the last two stanzas, Darío explores the process of writing through a retelling of the story of Leda and Zeus, thereby creating a sexually charged atmosphere in which the procreative impulses of the universe, working through him, give rise to poetry. It is clear here that Darío perceives an analogy between the act of writing and the joining of male and female in a sexual embrace. Viewed in this way, the poet's short exclamations at the beginning of the third stanza, «¡Oh Cisne!» and «¡Oh sacro pájaro!», hint at bursts of poetic and sexual energy as Darío recalls the sexual encounter between Zeus and Leda that results in the birth of Helen, the classical model of beauty and perfection (Hamilton 41). Moreover, the «huevo azul» from which Helen emerges points to a wide range of related images. The yolk of a fertilized egg, for example, suggests conception, gestation, and birth, while its yellow-gold color and spherical shape allude to the sun and the life-giving properties associated with it. The color blue, reflecting at once the sweep of the blue sky and the place from which Zeus has come, suggests celestial unity and divine perfection in art. Similarly, the use of the adjective «inmortal» in describing Helen also points to the divine nature of her parentage. At the same time, recalling that the swan created by Wagner is both animal and human, the divine origin of the swan here completes the triad in which animal, human, and god are one, affirming Darío's belief in the unity of creation.

As the first tercet moves into the second, the completion of the «si» clause reinforces the sense of closure, balance, and perfection. Darío also clarifies here the conception between feminine beauty and «la nueva Poesía», seeing little difference between the sexual union that gives birth to Helen as Ideal Beauty and his own poetic mission to capture through imagery, sound, and the symmetry of form the supreme harmony and divine beauty of the universe. Since the swan plays an important role in both types of creation, and since both involve a form of conception, the distinction between them blurs, and they become one. In the case of Leda, the swan is a sexual partner. In the case of the poet, the swan is both an artistic model of inspiration and a symbolic partner in his effort to give birth to a poetic vision of Ideal Beauty.²⁸

The image «bajo tus blancas alas» gives the impression of both the empty page as the poet begins to write and the private, sexual nature of writing itself. As Darío conceives and gives birth to a re-creation of Helen, he links her with the words «eterna y pura», and, as already mentioned, he associates her with «la nueva Poesía». The word «nueva» here echoes the newness of Wagner's art in the first stanza, while underscoring Darío's belief that his own work, like that of Wagner, is different from that of others. In addition, the use of a capital letter in «Poesía» recalls a similar usage with the word «Hermosura» in reference to Helen, alluding to the closeness of the artistic ideal to the divine vision.

With the words «gloria de luz y de armonía», the poet completes the idyllic and peaceful scene of sunshine, celestial unity, and birth discussed earlier, while evoking the blissful harmony and tranquility of artistic and sexual release. As the poem comes to a close, Darío develops further the notion that the procreative impulses that give birth to Helen are also at work in the process of writing. The key verb «encarna» in the last line reinforces the concept that, just as Ideal Beauty becomes flesh in Helen, the poet's re-creation of her represents the embodiment of harmony, perfection, and beauty in language, the flesh of poetry itself.

Despite the tranquil and idyllic scene that the poet depicts here, there is a certain note of dissonance both within the poem and at its outer edges. The allusion to war and conflict mentioned earlier, for example, tends to subvert the serenity of the setting, drawing attention to hints of violence. The formal structure of the poem itself also suggests a sense of discord. In this case, the sixteen-syllable first line of the third stanza has an intrusive effect on what otherwise would have been a perfectly symmetrical composition of fourteen fourteen-syllable lines. Continuing this line of thought, the evocation of Wagner's swan,

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combined with references to Thor, Angantyr, and the myth of Zeus, Leda, and Helen, leaves the reader with a kind of sensory overload. This overloading of imagery can be seen as the poet's attempt to alleviate his own feelings of dissonance by filling the interior of the poem with as many auditory and visual images as he can, for lurking at the very edges of the poem is the contrasting emptiness of the blank page.²⁹

Huidobro shares the view that artistic creation is analogous to sexual creation in the collection of sixteen poems from Adán. In this work, published in the year that Darío died, Huidobro creates a symbolic world in which he does not feel bound by the poetic traditions of the past. Unlike Darío, for example, Huidobro feels too restricted by more traditional verse forms as he attempts to re-create the pre-Babelic language of an evolving, inchoate universe. In this case, Huidobro believes that the flexibility he associates with free verse is more in tune with the dynamic and changing qualities of an incipient cosmos³⁰. The link between sexual creation and the poet's desire to fuse poetic language with his procreative urges is especially clear in «El himno del sol» (1: 227-30), the second poem in this collection. In this poem, lines of varying length, stanzas ranging from two to eight lines, and assonant and consonant rhyme come together with an image of the sun as male generative principle and the earth as female generative principle to evoke the rhythmic pulse of an awakening sexual universe. At the same time, the implicit expression of dissonance in Darío's poem becomes more explicit here, with silence replacing the harmonious «music» of nature «heard» by Darío. In this case, silence is linked with death, chaos, emptiness, and a lack of poetic models to follow.

Developing his view of writing as procreation, Huidobro sees himself as a sun-like figure with tremendous artistic and sexual energy³¹. As artistic creation becomes one with sexual creation, the twenty stanzas of this poem may be grouped into three sections that correspond to both. In stanzas one through six, for example, Huidobro identifies the emerging poetic idea with the onset of sexual passion. Later, in stanzas seven through nineteen, the poet associates his loving attempt to give expression to the original poetic idea with the sexual union of sun and earth. Finally, Huidobro completes this picture in the concluding stanza with a sense of sexual release and artistic satisfaction. The correlation between the poet's artistic yearnings and the sexually charged yearnings of the sun is most evident in certain key stanzas cited and discussed here.

From the beginning, the poet equates himself with the sun and relates the life-giving power of words to the life-giving power of sunlight (numbering of stanzas added):

With the words «En medio del Silencio», the poet's perception of silence contrasts with the «sounds» that fill Darío's poem. Building on this image, the expression «Solo entre los astros muertos voy» is a reference to other poets as burned-out sources of energy who are no longer valid to lead the way. Realizing that he must rely on himself alone, Huidobro feels a great sense of power and energy as he attempts to lead and guide others in new artistic directions.

Moving into the second stanza, the color blue in «este caos de incoloro azul» can be seen as both a play on Darío and an allusion to the connection that the poet sees between language and the bright sunlight. This relationship is reflected in Huidobro's belief that his ability to give shape to the original poetic idea by filling the silence of the empty page with words is analogous to cosmic creation in the ability of the sun to give shape to the world, «este caos», by filling the empty sky with its light. Reinforcing this image, the key word «mensajera» in line three equates the sun's light with a «messenger», or bearer of words. At the same time, the poet's description of himself as being «Defendido y envuelto por mi propia luz» emphasizes that he needs no others, especially other poets, as he attempts to carry out his artistic task.

As a prelude to a type of poetic or sexual embrace of the earth, the sense of artistic and sexual tension grows in the fourth and fifth stanzas:

Holding within himself the seeds of poetry, the poet's urge to write is expressed strongly on the page itself as the first line in stanza four moves directly, without pause, into the second. In sexual terms, the image of «impacientes /Preparaciones de simientes» suggests semen, pointing to both the impregnation of language with poetic energy and the impregnation of the earth with energy from the sun.

The use of sexual imagery is more obvious in the fifth stanza, with the sun linked to fatherhood and the male generative principle. Seen from this perspective, the rays of the sun, appearing in the words «En mis rayos caminan a los mundos / Todas las ansias», can be viewed as phallus-like streams of light that seek to bathe the earth, impregnating it. The idea of sexual yearning and desire continues throughout the remainder of this stanza, beginning with «mis caricias / Son creadoras». This image underscores the tenderness and affection that Huidobro feels toward poetry as well as the sexual nature of writing.

Beginning with stanza seven and continuing through stanza nineteen, the light of the sun holds the earth in a long and loving cosmic embrace. Setting the scene for this joyous union, Huidobro portrays the moment when the sun first discovers its beloved:

With the exclamation «¡Oh Tierra!», Huidobro gives voice to the pent-up artistic and sexual tension that has been building throughout the preceding six stanzas. As the poet notes, the earth as female aspect is «inútil y desierta» without energy from the sun. Through a kind of sexual coupling, though, the joining of sunlight and earth gives birth to all creation.

As the earth responds to the warm and tender embrace of the sun, the concept of artistic fusion seems to merge with sexual fusion in stanza sixteen:

The bringing together of «las mujeres» and «los hombres» in this stanza symbolizes both the artistic and sexual fusion of mate and female principles. Not only are men and women linked artistically for the first time in this poem, but the reference to women with «febriles labios» and the image of men with «el ansia de gustarlos» illustrates the sexual attraction between them.

The feelings of artistic and sexual tension give way to a sense of release and fulfillment in the concluding stanza:

Expressing great satisfaction here with his work, the poet affirms that he will continue to break new ground as he travels along his «camino sin camino». Recalling, too, the image of other poets as burned-out sources of energy from the opening stanza, the reference to «mi rebaño de astros» implies that Huidobro will gladly lead, much like a shepherd, other poets that follow him.

While both Darío and Huidobro make use of the metaphor of literary paternity in their poetry, gender representation in «El cisne» appears as the sexual union of male (Zeus) and female (Leda). It can also be said that male and female are one in the androgynous attributes of the swan itself. In «El himno del sol», gender identification is more closely related to the procreative forces of nature, which Huidobro also interprets in terms of either male (the sun) or female (the earth). Although Darío's view of himself as poet/magus places him in a long tradition, the elements of dissonance which are implicit in «El cisne» suggest an unforeseen link between him and Huidobro. At the same time, the discord in Huidobro's poem is more explicit, for unmasking the veneer associated with the established patterns of perception does not reveal the system of correspondences «heard» and «seen» by Darío. Instead, Huidobro is faced with a poetic tradition that he believes is spiritually and artistically exhausted. Whereas Darío finds poetic inspiration in the swan created by Wagner, Huidobro is able to discern only the burned-out energy of other poets. Seeing himself as an orphan in a chaotic universe, his mission, then, is to fill this void with the poetic sounds of his own hymn, in response to the sexual/aesthetic impulses that he perceives. Compelled to make his own way, the poet emerges as a triumphant male generative force who looks to his internal landscapes for poetic inspiration. Consequently,

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Huidobro's view of himself as poet/god clearly places him at a point of rupture and a new beginning.³²

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 75, Number 2, May 1992