Las pagodas ocultas (hidden pagodas): Building "Vicente Huidobro" form the imaginary of creator's poetic self

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the articulation of the imaginary in Las Pagodas Ocultas (1914), the first lyrical text the poet signed as "Vicente Huidobro ". The focus is placed on the imaginary dimension of the text in order to explicate the formalization of an underlying authorial self that is to become pervasive in the poet's later Creationist compositions. After highlighting the recurrent elements found in Huidobro's differential imaginary, which appear for the first time in this poem, this paper revises the interpretation of this particular text. Thus, the poem can be conceived as a pseudo-biography of the "creative self", which extends from his imaginary family relationships to both nocturnal and silent spaces. These spaces in turn revert both vision and writing back to a narcissistic centrality that stands as a peculiar feature of Huidobro's poetic self.