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Carlos Pellicer and Creacionismo

Author(s): George Melnykovich


Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Spring, 1974), pp. 95-111
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO

The first two decades of the twentieth century shaped the artistic avant
garde in Europe and the Americas and gave birth to a multitude of isms.
Cubism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Imagism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Ul
traism are some of the major movements that formulated modern aesthetic
theories. In Latin America the most influential ismo during the burgeoning
years of the avant-garde was creacionismo.
Creacionismo, whose chief exponent was the Chilean poet Vicente Hui
dobro, is clearly an avant-garde movement in the full sense of the word. In
The Theory of the Avant-Garde Renato Poggioli characterizes the avant-garde
as an "activist movement" which is "formed in part or in whole to agitate
against something or someone.'n
In addition avant-garde art implies a spirit of futurism in the broad sense
of the word and not merely in the limited sense given to it by Marinetti.
Poggiolo contrasts this futurist consciousness of the modern avant-garde
period with the consciousness of the past of a classical epoch.
These attitudes are expressed on numerous occasions in Huidobro's mani
festos and in his poetry. His program is in direct opposition to what preceded
him and clearly outlines a plan for the future.
While there have been some disagreements as to Huidobro's originality,
recent criticism points to the undeniable fact that the Chilean's verse and
essays reflected the latest European achievements in poetry and aesthetics
and initiated corresponding trends in Latin America. Although there was no
formal school or banner for creacionista poets, its influence was manifest in
poets such as Pablo Neruda, Jorge Carrera Andrade, Oliverio Girondo, and,
as we will demonstrate later in this study, Carlos Pellicer.
The influence of Huidobro on the modern poets of Latin America is
made obvious in an interview with the Ecuadorian poet, Jorge Carrera An
drade, by William J. Straub:

W.J.S. With whom, among the ultraistas, do you feel most affinity as
a writer?
J.C.A. I do not believe that I have afinity with any ultraista poet. I feel
closer to Huidobro and creacionismo. Someone has said that I oc

1 Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard


University Press, 1968), p. 25.

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96 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

cupy a place equidistant and equinoctial between the intellectual


ism of Borges and the intuitive expressivism of Vallejo.
W.J.S. Do you believe that the creacionismo of Huidobro marks a radical
and fundamental dividing line in American poetry?
J.C.A. Yes. In Latin American poetry, the creacionista movement mani
fests itself with strong outlines. In Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru
many followers of Huidobro appear. The aesthetics of Huidobro
can be identified in some poems of Carlos Pellicer, Villaurrutia,
Queremel, Parra del Riego, Alberto Hidalgo and others. There is
no poet of the second quarter of the XXth century who does not
owe something to creacionismo?

The influence of creacionismo was paramount in the development of avant


garde poetry in Mexico. The theories of estridentismo owe much to Futurism
and creacionismo. The "Contempor?neos", especially Ortiz de Montellano and
Salvador Novo, reflect in their poetry the aesthetic doctrine of creacionismo,
but it is Pellicer who is the chief exponent of creacionismo in Mexico. One
critic contends that: "Without doubt, Carlos Pellicer's was one of the first to
attempt adopting creacionista airs to a simple and vernacular poetry."3
As early as 1913 the Chilean poet began to realize the uniqueness of the
modern epoch. In a letter to the literary editor of El Mercurio of Santiago de
Chile (Nov. 15, 1913), he writes: "We are now in other times, the true poet
is he who knows how to vibrate with his epoch or move ahead of it, not he
who looks back.'M
In a manifesto entitled Non serviam read in the Ateneo of Santiago de
Chile in 1914 he states his desire to liberate art from nature and to create
autonomous realities: "We have sung to Nature (a thing which matters little
to her). We have never created our own realities, as she does or did in times
past when she was young and full of creative impulses".5
In 1916 Huidobro travels to Buenos Aires where he delivers his theories
of creacionismo to the Ateneo there. He states that a work of art "is a new
cosmic reality that the artist adds to Nature.. ."6 Later in the same discourse
he contends that "the history of art is no more than the evolution of man
mirror towards man-god." In other words he traces the development of art
from the Aristotelian concept of mimesis to his own aesthetic theories ex
pressed in the poem "Arte po?tica" [Poetic Art] where "The poet is a little
God."
2 William J. Straub, "Conversation with Jorge Carrera Andrade," Latin American
Literary Review, I, 1 (Fall, 1972), p. 73.
3 Antonio de Undurraga, "Teor?a del creacionismo," in Huidobro, Poes?a y
prosa, p. 37. [AU translations from Spanish text are mine.]
4 Vicente Huidobro, Poes?a y prosa: Antolog?a, 2nd. cd. (Madrid: Aguilar,
1967), p. 20.
5 Vicente Huidobro, Obras completas de Vicente Huidobro, Vol. II, ed. Braulio
Arenas (Santiago de Chile: Zig-Zag Editores, 1964), p. 261.
? Ibid., p. 661.

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO 97

A sythesis of creacionista principles is found in this poem, where in


free verse form Huidobro outlines the technique of the new poetry and the
role of the creacionista poet:
ARTE PO?TICA

Que el verso sea como una llave


Que abra mil puertas
Una hoja cae; algo pasa volando;
Cuanto miren los ojos creado sea,
Y el alma del oyente quede temblando.
Inventa mundos nuevos y cuida tu palabra;
El adjetivo, cuando no da vida, mata.

Estamos en el ciclo de los nervios.


El m?sculo cuelga,
Como recuerdo, en los museos;
M?s no por eso tenemos menos fuerza:
El vigor verdadero
Reside en la cabeza.

Por qu? cant?is la rosa, ?oh, Poetas!


Hacedla florecer en el poema;

S?lo para nosotros


Viven todas las cosas bajo el Sol.

El Poeta es un peque?o dios.7


[Poetic Art]

[Let verse be like a key that opens a thousand doors. A leaf falls;
something passes flying; whatever the eyes see, let it be created, and
the soul of the listener tremble. Invent new worlds and take care with
your words. The adjective, when it does not give life, kills. We are in
the cycle of nerves. The muscle hangs as a memory in the museums. It
is not only for this that we have less strength: True vigor resides in
the mind. Why sing to the rose, poets. Make her bloom in the poem.
All things under the sun live only for us. The poet is a little god.]

The "Arte po?tica" and other creacionista doctrines were not to fall on
deaf ears in Latin America. Earlier in this study we cited specific poets who
iecognized the importance of Huidobro to the development of the avant
garde in Latin America. Let us now examine specific instances of creacionismo
m the poetry of Carlos Pellicer.

7 Ibid., p. 255.

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98 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

The reader will note that some poetic elements introduced here as
creacionistas have been discussed in other studies on avant-garde poetry and
attributed to different sources. This is not to deny Huidobro's contributions,
but to suggest a simultaneous creativity. For Huidobro was only one of
hundreds of poets who were seeking a new poetic that would be capable of
responding to the challenge of language and reality in the modern world.
His theories are similar in many ways to those put forth by other isms, but
in as many ways Huidobro shows original thought in postulating guidelines
tor the poet of the twentieth century. Modern poetry has no one hero, no
one school, and no fixed point in time. Philosophers and poets, together as
well as other artists, have all fashioned an aesthetic, a view of reality and
man's role within that reality, which falls into a general category of "the
modern." Thus the poetic elements we term creacionistas are those that are
consistent with Huidobro's manifestos and his poetry, as well as with the
works of other artists of the age

The creacionista poem, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, is a


creation in and of itself. It needs no external, a priori reality to give it
veracity or validity. It creates situations which could never exist in any
reality other than of the poem. Or as Huidobro put it so succinctly: "A
poem is a poem, in the same way that an orange is an orange and not
an apple."8
Where in Huidobro this is a statement of aesthetic doctrine, in Pellicer
it rises above a formalistic principle and characterizes a unique, personal
vision of reality that is inherent and natural.
Pellicer's relationship to the world surrounding him has never been a
passive one. In an interview with this writer he spoke of his first encounter
with the sea: "When I was six years old, my mother took me, for the first
time, to the sea. This trip by way of the Tabasco River to the seashore
was my first contact, which I would call violent, with Nature."9
The experience was not one of mere contemplation; but rather the
"violent" act of interiorizing that aspect of external reality.
In Colores en el mar [Color in the Sea], his first book of poems, the
sea is not copied or described in accordance to an a priori adherence to an
exterior reality, but undergoes a transformation, a creation to use Huidobro's
terms, in the imagination of the poet. At times it is a great orchestral
arrangement:

Sonata alternativa de adelante y andantino


Las notas que no surgen en perlas se cuajaron.

8 Ibid., p. 697.
9 Unpublished interview, February, 1969.

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO 99

Y el mar se desmelena tocando su diurno,


concierto matinal en sus gloriosos pianos.10

[A sonata alternating in movement and andantino.


The notes which do not surge forth as pearls are
coagulated. And the sea disarranges itself playing
its diurnal, matutinal concert on its glorious pianos.}

Later the sea is children bathing:

Pareci? que en el mar


se ba?asen mil ni?os (13)

[It seemed that a thousand children were bathing


in the sea.]

Las olas se estaban ba?ando. (15)

[The waves were bathing themselves.]

But ultimately it is an object over which the poet has complete contro
The use of creacionista techniques is found in many poems and is
images throughout the early production of Pellicer. Most notable amon
are a group of poems entitled "Suite Brasilera" ["Brazilian Suite"]
poem which we will transcribe in its entirety, "El sembrador" ["The So

El sembrador sembr? la aurora;


su brazo abarcaba el mar.
En su mirada las monta?as
pod?an entrar.

La tierra pautada de surcos


o?a los granos caer.
De aquel ritmo sencillo y profundo
mel?dicamente los ?rboles pusieron su danza a mecer.

Sembrador silencioso:
el sol ha crecido por tus m?gicas manos.
El campo ha escogido otro tono
y el cielo ha volado m?s alto.

10 Carlos Pellicer, Material po?tico: 1918-1961, 2nd ed. (Mexico: Univers


Nacional Aut?noma de M?xico, 1962), p. 14. All further quotes of Pellicer's p
will be from this edition with the page number given in parentheses.

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100 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

Sembrada la tierra.
Su paso era bello: ni corto ni largo.
En sus ojos cab?an los montes
y todo el paisaje en sus brazos. (134)

[The sower sowed the dawn; his arm reached the sea. The mountains
could enter his vision. The earth lined by furrows heard the grains
fall. The tree began to dance to that simple and profoundly melodic
rhythm. Silent sower: the sun has grown by your magical hands. The
countryside has chosen another tone and the sky has flown higher.
The earth is sown. His step was fair: neither short nor long. The
mountains filled his gaze and all the landscape in his arms.]

Here we have many of the characteristics of creacionista verse: destruction


of spacial concepts; "en su mirada las monta?as/pod?an entrar" also; "En
sus ojos cab?an los montes/y todo el paisaje en sus brazos"; the joining of
two disparate elements in one image as in the following example where the
noun "tierra" is joined with the verb "o?a": "La tierra pautada de surcos/o?a
los granos caer"; and most important the concept of the poet (here represented
as the "sower") as creator of reality: "El sembrador sembr? la aurora."

II.

As Huidobro states in "Arte po?tica" the poet "is a little god."


Hugo Friedrich refers to this attitude as the "dictatorial imagination", that
is, a poetic imagination that assumes complete liberty in recreating reality
according to the laws of the poet and not some external absolutes.11
In Pellicer the poet's autonomy is proclaimed early in his literary career in
a poem from Colores en el mar entitled "Estudios": ["Studies".]

Jugar? con las casas de Curazao


pondr? el mar a la izquierda
y har? m?s puentes movedizos.
?Lo que diga el poeta! (29)

[I will play with the houses of Curazao. I'll put the sea on the left and
will make more moving bridges. Whatever the poet says!]

And in the fourth poem of "Suite Brasilera" ["Brasilian Suite"] he writes:

Profundamente oblicuo, el aeroplano


se retorc?a y el paisaje entero

11 Hugo Friedrich, Estructura de la l?rica moderna (Barcelona: Seix Barrai, 1959),


p. 311.

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO ?OT

era un acto glorioso de mis manos.


Sin un solo recuerdo ni un deseo,
como un dios, desdobl? los panoramas,
ataviado de luz, leve de vuelo.
?Y jur? entre las nubes alzar una monta?a! (80)

[Profoundly oblique, the airplane twisted and the entire landscape was
a glorious act of my hands. Without a single remembrance nor desire,
as a god, I unfolded the panoramas, adorned with light, airy with
flight. And among the clouds I promised to raise a mountain!]

In "Las colinas" ['The Hills") the poet-creator-god is a painter whose


will it is to:
?Dibujar las colinas!
Repartirles los ojos
y llevarles palabras finas.
Mojar largo el pincel; apartar neblina
de las nueve de la ma?ana,
para que el vaso de agua campesina
se convierta en alegre limonada. (165)

[To draw the hills! To give them eyes and bring them fine words. To
dip the brush slowly; to divide the fog at nine o'clock in the morning,
so that a country glass of water becomes a happy lemonade.]

This theme is again repeated in "Eleg?a" ["Elegy"]:

Si yo fuera pintor
me salvar?a
con el color
toda una civilizaci?n yo crear?a.
El azul ser?a
rojo
y el anaranjado
gris:
el verde soltar?a en negros estupendos. (119)

[If I were a painter I would save myself with color. I would create a
whole civilization. Blue would be red and orange, gray; green would
leap out in stupendous blacks.]

In the poetic world of Pellicer the wind possesses the ability to change the
color of the landscape:

Y el viento que mesaba las ?giles palmeras


le cambiaba al paisaje el color. (15)

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?Q2 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

[And the wind that plucked the agile palms changed the color of the
landscape.]

The day becomes a celestial gambler:

Ei d?a jug? su as de oro


y lo perdi? en tanto azul. (16)
[The day played its golden ace and lost it in so much blue.]

And night is depicted as:

la selva de vidrio en agua abierta (221)


[the jungle of glass in open water]

The sky is water that has decided to fly:

El cielo de los Andes


es una agua divina que se ha echado a volar. (69)
{The sky of the Andes is a divine water that has begun to fly.]

His poetry creates a world of fantastic events and autonomous images


that defy literal interpretations:

Por la tarde vendra Claude Monet


a comer cosas azules y el?ctricas (29)
[In the afternoon Claude Monet will come to eat blue and electric
things.]
La desnudez os ilumina
como un poco de piano en la noche (107)
^Nudity illuminates you like a little bit of piano at night.]

HI.

Although the method of formulating a creacionista image is limited


only by the imaginative powers of the poet, we have found four constants in
the creacionista imagery of Pellicer: 1) the combination in one image of
two disparate things; 2) destruction of normal limitations; 3) representation
of the abstract and intangible by the concrete; and, 4) the creation of unreal
sensuous imagery.

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO 103

Creation of Unreal Sensuous Images1'2

If one were to catalogue the most repeated phrases used by critics to


describe the poetry of Pellicer, they would most certainly be "sensuous,"
"visual," and "plastic." Speaking of the early period of Pellicer's production,
Octavio Paz states: "Many of his poems of that period are no more than a
prodigious succession of metaphors and visual and sonorous impressions."13
Pellicer's poetry abounds in visual imagery which subordinates intel
lectual expression. His poetry is involved with the world of things rather
than with metaphysical ponderings. It is not our purpose to reiterate here
all that has been written about this aspect of Pellicer's poetry, but we will,
however, stress an aspect of this imagery that pertains to the modern era
as a direct inheritance from Baudelaire, the creation of unreal sensuous
imagery in its most common form, synesthesia.
We have frequent examples of synesthesia in Pellicer's "Ruido oscuro"
("Dark Noise"] for example. Sound to describe other senses, appears with
far less frequency and is characteristic of modern incursions into synesthesia.
Thus in Pellicer we have examples of the visual given in terms of the audible:

Nubes en sol mayor


y las olas en la menor. (13)
[Clouds in sol major and the waves in la minor.]

El oleaje finge rumores de gacela


perseguida (17)
[The waves feign the sound of a pursued gazelle].

Desde el avi?n
la orquesta panor?mica de R?o de Janeiro
se escucha en mi coraz?n (78)
[From the airplane, the panoramic orchestra of Rio de Janeiro is heard
in my heart]

La bah?a, dirigida como una orquesta


toca las luces (81)
[The bay, directed as an orchestra, plays the lights]

La luz, rota en el ritmo de la h?lice,

12 We use the term "unreal" to refer to images which are not attached to any
consideration of an a priori exterior reality.
13 Octavio Paz, Las peras del olmo, 2nd ed. (M?xico: Universidad Nacional Au
t?noma de M?xico, 1965), p. 100.

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104 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

humeaba de furor entre mis ojos


y se o?a pasar. (79)
[The light, broken in the rhythm of the propeller, smoked in fury between
my eyes and was heard passing].

In the last image light is not only described in terms of sound, but it is also
given physical mass by virtue of the verb "rota" [broken].
A quite uncommon use of synesthesia is found in "Mi sed amarga que
alz? gritos" ["My bitter thirst that raised shouts"] where the sensation of
taste is expressed in terms of sound, or the combination of smell and sight in:

Es la bolsa de semen de los tr?picos


que huele a azul. . . . (257)
[It is the pocket of semen of the tropics that smells of blue. . . .]

In "amarillenta voz de radio" (125) ["yellowed radio voice"] he joins


two sensations with a similar attitude, the feeling of brightness, linked in an
audio-visual experience. The practice of joining two sensations sharing a
common attitude is repeated in: "Y ardimos en la sed del Helesponto."
(150) ["And we burned in the thirst of the Helespont"].
Other sensuous images are created by describing sound in terms of touch
which in turn is described in terms of light which is then qualified by the
word "?mbar" [amber] which has properties of smell and light: "Tu voz
ten?a el tacto de las luces del ?mbar." (221) ["Your voice had the feel of
lights of amber"]. One can appreciate the ingenuity of combining four
sensations within an image, but its effect is limited by the obvious strain
of the relationships.
The unreal sensuous image is not limited to synesthesia. For example,
movement is described in terms of color:

El agua se mueve en semitono (79)


[The water moves in semitones].

An important use of sensory images in Pellicer is attaching sensory


qualities to emotive or physical states. Solitude is given both dimension and
sound in the following image:

ruido de las vastas soledades (258)


[the noise of the vast solitudes]

Absence is described in terms of taste and given a characteristic of physical


mass:

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CARLOS PEIXICER AND CREACIONISMO 1?5

tu dulce ausencia m? encarcela (335)


[your sweet absence imprisons me]

Thus the effect of sensuous imagery in Pellicer is multiple: it can expand


the sensuous limits of a given object by the introduction of new senses; it
can assign sensuous qualities to abstracts and intangibles; or create what
Friedrich calls "irrealidad sensible" [sensuous irreality]14 in which real objects
of nature become unreal through attachment to a sensuous image.

Destruction of Normal Spacial and Temporal Limitation

Perhaps the single most important technical advancement of the twentieth


century which altered man's vison of reality was the invention of the airplane.
The once massive and imposing reality of nature was now seen in miniature
from above. Tall mountains were now lumps of rocks, huge rivers were
now but mere lines, large cities were but quadrangles on the terrain. The
poet in capturing this new vision of reality certainly felt himself to be "a
little god."
Very early in his poetic career Pellicer made a trip through Latin America
and viewed this continent from, a plane for the first time. The result of this
trip was his second book of verse entitled Piedra de Sacrificios [Sacrifkal
Rock] which contains a series of aerial poems entitled "Suite Brasilera." In
images from these poems we can experience the new perspective of reality
which is a result of aviation and the consequential destruction of normal
spacial limitations:
El cielo en mi frente
cambi?ndome el mar. (77)
[The sky in my face, changing my view of the sea.]

Tu mar y tu monta?a
? un pu?adito de Andes y mil litros de Atl?ntico. (79)
[The sea and the mountain?a handful of Andes and a thousand liters
of Atlantic]

El mar se ba?a entre mis brazos. (80)


[The sea bathes in my arms.]

Canci?n de las palmeras sobre la colina


y de la colina junto al coraz?n. (82)
[A song of palms on the hill and of the hill next to my heart.]

14 Friedrich, p. 309.

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106 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

This technique is not only used in the poems of aviation but is also
effective in expressing the closeness of two lovers:

Tan cerca est?s de m?


que la estrella del ?ngelus nace entre nuestras manos. (221)
[You are so near to me that the evening star is born between our hands.]

Or it can express the strange perspective of a ship sailing at night:

El buque ha chocado con la luna. (320)


[The ship has collided with the moon.]

Once the borders of normal spacial confines are crossed the poet is free
to attack even a more sacred absolute: time. Pellicer lives in two temporal
worlds: one which is modern and western in which time and history are
linear thus constantly moving to some end. The other is of his native tropical
Tabasco and a circular concept of time characteristic of the pre-Columbian
cultures of that region. In "Estudios" from Hora y 20 [Hour ?md 20~] he
captures the essence of timelessness:

Relojes descompuestos,
voluntarios caminos
sobre la m?sica del tiempo

La juventud se prolonga diez minutos

las horas se adelgazan;


de una salen diez.
Es el tr?pico,
prodigioso y funesto.
Nadie sabe qu? hora es.

No hay tiempo para el tiempo.


[Broken watches, free roads on the music of time.... Youth is pro
longed for ten minutes... the hours are stretched, from one come ten.
It is the tropics, prodigious and mournful.... Nobody knows what
time it is.... There is no time for time.]

He aids the poem with an image of time which is not speeding to some
conclusion, but rather moves slowly in a circular path:

Y en una l?nea nueva de la garza,


renace el tiempo,

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO 107

lento, fecundo, ocioso,


creado para so?ar y ser perfecto. (193)
[Time is reborn in the new line of the heron, slow, fecund, idle, created
to dream and be perfect.]

Combination of Two Disparate Elements

Through the combination of two existing elements of reality, the modern


poet creates a situation that is unlike any that can exist outside of his poem.
Thus a sky can be filled with automobiles:

El cielo se llenaba de autom?viles (77)


[The sky was filled with automobiles].

Palm trees can go shopping:

Las palmeras desnudas


andaban de compras por la Rua D'Ouvidor. (77)
[The nude palms went shopping on the Rua D'Ouvidor.]

And a city seen from an airplane is "un libro deshojado" (79) ["an un
bound book"].
Pellicer's combination of disparate elements in one image has various
effects. It can be humorous as in:

El Pao de Assucar era un espantap?jaros (71)


[The Pao de Assucar was a scarecrow],

or by the use of a single verb the commonplace is converted into a fantas


tic event:
El ma?z en la mazorca
re?a de buena gana

El cielo de Tilantongo
vuela en un pico de garza (352)
[The corn in the cornfield laughed heartily.... The sky of Tilantongo
flies in the beak of a heron.]

Through combination of disparate elements the poet makes a statement about


modern reality as an element composed of both the natural and the mechanical
coexisting equally:

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108 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

Bajo las ruedas de las monta?as


el mar moderno y resonante
rueda lentamente sus antiguas m?quinas

Y el puerto suntuoso,
liberal y tropical
entre gr?as y palmeras en reposo (81)

[Under the wheels of the mountain the resonant and modern sea turns
its ancient machinery slowly. ... And the sumptuous port, liberal and
tropical between cranes and palms in repose].

And:
Bajaron las palmeras
de las trescientas olas autom?viles (262)
[The palms descended from the three hundred automobile waves.]

By combining words of the modern technical world such as "wheels,"


"machines," "cranes," and "automobiles" with traditional natural elements
the technical terminology is lifted to poetic heights, expanding both its
meaning and the limits of poetry as well.
Although these images are delightful in their own right, they have the
power to describe an object beyond the limits of normal adjectivation. To
express his awe of an airplane motor he states:

El motor que perfora el aire espeso


algo tiene de b?lido y de toro. (77)
[The motor that perforates the thick air has a little of a shooting star
and bull.]
or:

El aire est? en soprano ligero (79)


[The air is a light soprano]
and:
la voz, la silenciosa
m?sica de callar un. sentimiento (268)
[the voice, the silent music to quell a sentiment].

At times, however, the combination of disparate elements creates an obscure


and personal image that d?fies any attempt at interpretation:

Aquella luna del pueblo

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO 109

con su piano y su esquina


donde acab? la aurora (124)
[That village moon with its piano and its corner where the dawn ended].

And:
la luz es im fruto que devora el paisaje. (124)
[the light is a fruit that devours the landscape.]

Pellicer's early involvement with this technique is manifest in a poem


from his first book, Colores en el mar [Colors in the Sea], in which the
body of the poem constitutes a series of arrangements of disparate elements:

Ayer se hundieron
un barco holand?s y el Sol.
La medianoche ha quedado estancada
en los astros mayores y en los pechos de amor.
En la playa hay preguntas y luci?rnagas.
En el puerto s?lo yo soy feliz.
?Tu nombre me salva del mundo!
?Divina palabra!
Silencio y abril. (37)
[Yesterday a Dutch boat and the sun were sunk. Midnight has become
stagnant in the larger stars and in the breasts of love. On the beach
there are questions and bats. In the port I alone am happy. Your name
saves me from the world. Divine word. Silence and April].

Through this seemingly chaotic arrangement one can sense the utter fri
volity, the youthful exuberance that Pellicer brings to poetic creation. Nothing
is too sacred or too commonplace for his imaginative manipulations. Octavio
Paz captures this sense of joy in Pellicer when he states: "His poetry is a
vein of water.in the desert; his joy returns to us the faith in joy."15
The final category, representation of the abstract and the intangible by
the concrete, could easily be discussed here but its frequency of appearance
in Pellicer's poetry merits its own section.

Abstract and Intangible by the Concrete

As we have stated before, the poetry of Carlos Pellicer is a poetry of


things. He is a man fascinated with every aspect of the world that surrounds
him. Pellicer's command of his circumstances goes beyond personifying objects
of nature to making concrete and visible the abstract and intangible. Hugo

ir> Paz, Las peras del olmo, p. 107.

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110 LATIN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW

Friedrich contends that this stylistic technique is not uncommon among many
modern poets: "Another stylistic law," says Friedrich, "that has almost become
topical consists of situating on the same level the tangible and concrete and
the abstract."16 This technique in Pellicer, however, was not simply a borrowed
innovation, but an act which demonstrated his natural desire to express himself
in visible or other sensual terms. His poetry is not about things, but rathei
about the things created in a reality all his own.
In "Eleg?a" he writes "Yo tendr?a ojos en las manos/ para ver de re
pente." ["I would have eyes in my hands in order to see suddenly"]. Here
he expressed the desire to see by touching and feeling and not through a
conceptual process. This desire is again repeated in "Estudios Venecianos"
[Venetian Studies]:

(Como Santa Lucia,


llevaba yo los ojos en las manos
para ver de tocar lo que ve?a.) (226)
[(As Saint Lucia I carried my eyes in my hands in order to see by
touching what I saw.)]

In this poetic reality his personal emotions are given physical dimension
?solitude: "es olvido esf?rico de mi soledad"; (234) ["it is the spherical
oblivion of my solitude"], "Vuelvo a t?, soledad agua vac?a,/ agua de mis
im?genes, tan muerta,/ nube de mis palabras, tan desierta"; (267) ["I return
to you, solitude, empty water, water of my images, so dead, cloud of my
thoughts, so empty"], "ausencia/ manzana a?rea de las soledades"; (340)
["absence, aerial block of solitudes"], "veo tu soledad c?rcel abierta"; (212)
["I see your solitude, open jail"], or this personification: "la soledad est?
pensando/ junto a la ventana." (157) ["Solitude is thinking next to the
window"].
Note how in the second example solitude is not only given a concrete
representation through its metaphoric relationship to water and clouds, but
the intensity and immensity of the emotion is heightened as well through its
attachment to elements which are vast and unfathomable.
Another emotion which is made concrete is happiness: "por el rinc?n
de un sollozo/pas? la felicidad." (224) ["happiness passed through the
corner of a sob"]; here not only is happiness personified by the use of the
verb "passed," but "sob" is given physical dimension in the metaphor "corner
of a sob." No emotion or concept is free from Pellicer's poetic sculpture:
sound; "tu voz... de perfil," (221)) ["your voice... of profile"]; the
afternoon is capable of being cut, "El segador con pausas de m?sica/siega la
tarde." (135) ['The reaper cuts the afternoon with musical pauses"]; and
night is personified in "La noche, lentamente se desnuda/para dormir sobre
mi coraz?n" (72) ["Night slowly undresses itself to sleep on my heart"].
Friedrich, p. 315.

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CARLOS PELLICER AND CREACIONISMO 111

Even the inverse is possible as in the following image where two tangible
objects are described in terms of an abstract: "ventanas y puertas de alegr?a"
(29) ["windows and doors of joy"].
This then is the body of the poetic work of Pellicer. A world of things,
visible and invisible, but all transformed to correspond to his unique vision
of reality. Although, as we have demonstrated, Pellicer had adopted many of
the creacionista techniques, philosophically there stretched a distance between
him and Huidobro. Where in Huidobro there is a tendency to reject nature,
Pellicer's relationship to nature is one of harmonious coexistence. It is an
interchange by which the sun, the sea, and the wind provide him with inspi
ration, and he in turn dresses them in imaginative colors and forms.
Thus we come to the problem of classification?is Pellicer a creacionista
poet? To the extent that he adopts many of the creacionista techniques we
would answer yes. However, Carlos Pellicer is clearly not an avant-garde
artist. While he adopts many of the devices and attitudes which originate
in avant-garde movements, he is not disposed to the avant-garde mentality.
His poetic production begins at a time when the avant-garde frenzy of the
first two decades of the century had subsided. His modernity is manifest
most of all in the attitude that all advances in poetry are his own. He is at
once a contempor?neo, a creacionista, an ultraista, but most of all he is Car
los Pellicer.

Hiram College GEORGE MELNYKOVICH

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