Vicente Huidobro: Google Doodle celebrates avant-garde Chilean poet and writer’s 127th birthday

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates avant-garde Chilean poet and writer Vicente Huidobro’s 127th birthday celebration. Generally known as the “father of the Creacionismo (Creationism) literary movement,” Huidobro He was rejected by literary orthodoxy. Rather, he used the written word to push the cutoff points of creativity.

Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández was born to an aristocratic family in 1893 in Santiago, Chile. He became a poet like his mom, first published at the early age of 12, and proceeded to study literature at the University of Chile. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the maker and most noteworthy exponent of the literary movement called Creacionismo (“Creationism”).

Bit by bit, he started to feel restricted by traditional poetic standards, and in 1914 he dismissed them in his manifesto, Non-Serviam (“I Will Not Serve”).

Huidobro moved to Paris to team up with surrealist poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Pierre Reverdy on the literary magazine they established, Nord-sud (North-South). In Paris, he invented Creacionismo, the idea that poets ought to make their imaginary worlds as opposed to writing about nature in traditional styles with traditional language. Poemas árticos (“Arctic Poems,” 1918) and Saisons Choisies (“Chosen Seasons,” 1921) are a few examples, however, the 1931 long-form poem Altazor is Huidobro’s definitive Creacionismo work.

In 1942, Huidobro published the second editions of “Temblor de Cielo”, “Cagliostro” and “Mio Cid Campeador” in Santiago. Huidobro wrote more than thirty works, including books of poetry and poetic story, of which more than a dozen were published posthumously.

His notable lines from his poem Arte Poetica (Poetic Art), “Let the verse be like a key / That opens a thousand doors,” represents his style and inspired the present Google Doodle art, which infuses various pictures that show up in his poetry.

Huidobro wrote more than 40 books, including plays, novels, manifestos, and poetry. He always supported literary experimentation and affected numerous Latin American poets who succeeded him.

The Vicente Huidobro Foundation was made in 1990, to save the poet’s works. On 6 April 2013 Huidobro’s home in Cartagena was changed over into a museum, with help of funds from FONDART.

On January 10, 2020, Google Doodle, painted by London-based visitor artist Luisa Rivera, celebrates Vicente Huidobro on his 127th birthday.