Altazor, or A Voyage in a Parachute, is the
Chilean poet
Vicente Huidobro''s summit. Composed of seven songs and a prose prologue, Altazor is a trip, but a trip whose purpose can be interpreted in the most various ways. It may be the author''s recognition of the literary space journey as a poet, or the life space traveled as a person. The literary journey is reflected mainly in the construction form of the work. In the prologue, Altazor describes himself as an author. The
First Canto shows an Altazor of clear verse in meaning for the reader, where it does not very markedly outcrops yet the creationist style that Huidobro devised. The
Second Canto is described by critics in general as a long poem of love. But more than that, it is a recognition of the beloved woman, a deep and tender admiration for the being he loves, viewed from all angles that a being can be seen and identified with all the dreams that a man desires to identify in a woman. Then in the
Third Canto, the presence of the creationist style imposes, where Altazor reflects with words of his own invention, with a meaning that is individually more phonetic than semantic, but
that taken together find the interpretationn of Alazor''s impressions on his voyage in a parachute.
Arriving at the
Seventh Canto, the language has become completely new and of musical significance. But in addition to being a book that condenses Huidobro''s process towards
Creationism, it also reflects the fall of a man, from the sky, or his rising from the ground. Altazor is the cluster of human memories, of a being who doesn''t seem to be such, a kind of angel or a being similar to an angel, that not only falls, through sidereal space, but that falls as being within himself, in an inner journey whose expression moves, surprises, disturbs occasionally. Altazor faces life, death, and whatever there is in the middle of them, that great space-time, with the depth afforded by its structure, the turns on the meaning of the verses and the fact of discovering, at some point, at the beginning or at the end, that this voyage doesn''t have to be precisely in parachute, that if Huidobro''s creationist fervor is imitated just a bit you can travel with him, in a pararisings.