Canción Nueva– Vicente Huidobro

Dentro del horizonte
ALGUIEN CANTABA
Su voz
No es conocida
DE DÓNDE VIENE
Entre las ramas
No se ve a nadie
Hasta la luna era una oreja
Y no se oye
ningún ruido
Sin embargo
una estrella desclavada
Ha caído en el estanque
EL HORIZONTE
SE HA CERRADO
Y no hay salida

Vicente Huidobro
Horizon Carré, 1917

Here is my own rough translation of the poem, as I could not find one online:

“New Song” by Vicente Huidobro
On the horizon
SOMEONE WAS SINGING
His voice
Is unknown
FROM WHERE DID IT COME
Within the branches
Nobody is seen
Until the moon was a giant ear
and no sound
is heard
Nevertheless
an unfastened star
Has fallen in the pond
THE HORIZON
HAS CLOSED ITSELF
and there is no exit

From Wikipedia.org

Vicente Huidobro’s “Canción Nueva” is a poem that I would love to interpret through the medium of film. Published in 1917, it serves as an example of creacionismo (English: creationism), a literary movement pioneered by Huidobro himself in the early twentieth century. Creacionismo is founded on the idea that a poem is a world in and of itself, neither bound by nor comparable to the realities of both the external world and the mental one of the author himself. A “created poem,” according to Huidobro, “turns itself into reality.”

Huidobro’s “Canción Nueva,” in my opinion, manages to “turn itself into reality.” The poem is beautiful in an inexplicable way. Words, as I have come to understand them, work as metaphors for our experiences. I have never experienced the world captured in Huidobro’s poem, as it only exists inside the poem itself. As such, while emotionally I connect to it, I find it difficult to translate those emotions through words.

Consequently, a visual interpretation of “Canción Nueva” would be an exercise I would love to undertake. It would be as if I were adding another dimension to the world Huidobro has created. I’m still unsure as to what the project would do to the poem—enrich its world or change it completely—but I’ve come to understand the questions involved with the representation of reality to be an inherent part of the artistic process. My interpretation of “Canción Nueva,” would not have a horizon, or a tree, or a moon. That would defeat the purpose of creacionismo, as in doing so I would be assuming that Huidobro’s “luna” is comparable to/the same as my own moon. The images I would explore would be ones that drew from my emotions in the same way Huidobro’s poem does.