Papa or the Diary of Alicia Mir (1934) and Women’s Illustration

Abstract

The novel Papa or the diary of Alicia Mir (1934), by Vicente Huidobro, is a fictional reflection on the role that the poet expected woman to fulfill within his proj- ect of cultural modernization. We see this mainly in the figure of Alicia, the girl who writes and thinks about the divorce of her parents, symbol of the problematic relation- ship between the oligarchy (represented by the mother) and the projects of cultural transformation of the avant-garde (represented by the father). This intellectual and thinking girl is the artistic projection of a series of women who were part of the life of Huidobro, and, incidentally, a rhetorical resource through which Huidobro positioned itself favorably with respect to the female illustration, attributing to the woman a function of mediation between the two universes in conflict, that is, a political role to the ancient marian figure of the songs of Altazor.