Non Serviam, or the new image: Cagliostro, by Vicente Huidobro

Abstract

I highlight the importance of the visual image in Vicente Huidobro's work by way of an analysis of the novel Cagliostro, begun in French in 1921, first published in English with the title Mirror of a Mage (1931), and finally published in Spanish in 1934. Conceived in theory as a movie script, it blends together poetry and cinema together and echoes some of the defining characteristics of Huidobro´s poetics: his interest in the occult sciences, his megalomania, his interest in new technologies, and, above all, his elaboration of new, unprecedented and surprising images