Of course, I would rather that we entered the twenty-first century (which incidentally means nothing) in a more civilized fashion, perhaps engaged in conversation, which also means listening and reflecting, but if, as everything seems to indicate, that won’t be possible, then it wouldn’t be a bad thing, or at least not the worst thing, to enter the third millennium asking for forgiveness right and left, and in the meantime, while we’re at it, we should raise a statue of Nicanor Parra in Plaza Italia, a statue of Nicanor and another of Neruda, but with their backs turned to each other.
At this point, I foresee that more than one alleged reader will say to himself (and then run to tell his friends and relatives): Bolaño says Parra is the poet of the right and Neruda is the poet of the left.
Some people don’t know how to read.
Out in the Cold
Long ago, when I was young, a friend showed me an anthology of contemporary poetry in Spanish, one of the many lackluster volumes that appear each year. This one had been published in Chile, and the contribution of one of the editors, a poet of certain standing, was to insist that at least half of the anthology be devoted to Chilean poetry. In other words, if the anthology was three hundred pages long, thirty pages were devoted to Spanish poetry, twenty to Argentine poetry, twenty to Mexican poetry, five to Uruguayan poetry, five to Nicaraguan poetry, maybe ten to Peruvian poetry (and Martín Adan wasn’t included), three to Colombian poetry, one to Ecuadorian poetry, and so on until one hundred and fifty pages were filled. Across the other hundred and fifty pages Chilean poets strolled at their leisure. This anthology, the title and editors of which I prefer not to recall, is a fair reflection of the image that Chilean poetry once had of itself. Poets were poor but they were poets. Poets lived off state patronage but they were poets. Until it all came to an end. Then the Chilean poets descended from the Chilean Olympus — which, incidentally, excepting the five greats (who might only be four, or possibly three), had little significance in other latitudes — in Indian file, reluctantly, bewildered and terrified, and they saw how their former home, the famous House of Handouts, had been taken over by an illustrious group of writers who called themselves novelists, noveltrixes, and even nouveau novelists. The recent arrivals, as one might expect, were quick to explain this change of tenancy with the magic word modernism or postmodernism. Novelists (in the absence of filmmakers) are modern and therefore they are the real mirror in which a modern society should examine itself. The poets, who, with a few exceptions, had until then carefully cultivated an apocalyptic aesthetic mixed with the crudest kind of nationalism, didn’t make a peep. They abandoned the field, surrendering to the evidence of sales figures. Chile is no longer a country of poets. Today there’s little chance that a couple of Chilean poets would think to put together an anthology of contemporary poetry in Spanish in which Chileans occupied more than half the pages. That supreme ignorance, that brutish provincialism, is today the exclusive heritage of the Chilean novel. The poets, those poor Chilean poets between the ages of thirty and fifty-five, today bow their heads and wonder what’s happened, why it’s suddenly started to rain, what are they doing out there in the cold, their minds blank, not sure which way to run. Anywhere else this would be a nightmare, but in Chile it’s a good thing. Literary status acquired by trickery and deceit was blown to pieces. Poetry’s respectability was reduced to a handful of dust. Now Chilean poets live out in the cold again. And they can go back to reading poetry. And they can even read or reread some Chilean poets. And they can see that what those poets wrote wasn’t bad, and that sometimes it was even good. And they can go back to writing poetry.
Chilean Poetry Under Inclement Skies
The picture I have of Chilean poetry is like my memory of my first dog, Duke, a mongrel who was part St. Bernard, German shepherd, and Alsatian. He lived with us for many years, and when I was lonely he was like father, mother, teacher, and brother all in one. To me, Duke is Chilean poetry and I have the vague suspicion that Chileans see Chilean poetry as a dog, or as dogs in their various incarnations: sometimes as a savage pack of wolves, sometimes as a solitary howl heard between dreams, and sometimes — especially — as a lap dog at the groomer’s. I think of Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Huidobro, Parra, de Rokha, but I also think of Pezoa Véliz and his poem about the hospital, a poem that deserves a place in the annals of Latin American melancholy, and about the songs of Violeta Parra — straight out of the repertoire of Archaic Greece — that speak unflaggingly of the tragedy of Latin America.
So it is for us Chileans: this seems to be our fate and our particular splendor. And that’s how I think of Lihn, as an undeserved luxury, who throughout his work tried to teach us to avoid melodrama, and that’s how I think of Teillier, who retreated to one of Santiago’s most miserable neighborhoods to die, accepting his fate as a poet and alcoholic. After Lihn and Teillier, nothingness or mystery offers us its little paw and even wags its tail. Zurita creates a wonderful body of work that marks a point of no return for the poetics of the previous generation and for which he stands out among his generation, but his eschatology and his messianism are also the pillars of a mausoleum or a funeral pyre toward which almost all the poets of Chile marched in the 1980s. That dolce stil novo tried to be fresh and epic, and in some ways it was, though its fringes were bitter and pathetic.
The poetry of Gonzalo Millán, as consistent and lucid as anything on the Chilean and even the Latin American scene, has stood for some years as the only secular poetry in the face of an avalanche of sacramental verse: it’s a relief to read Millán, who doesn’t present himself as the voice of the nation or of the oppressed. Juan Luis Martínez makes a fleeting study of Duchamp (the perfect study, in a way) and disappears. Rodrigo Lira blazes a path and is lost. But one must reread Lira. Instead of trying to be Dante, he tries to be the cartoon bird Condorito. Instead of trying to gain entrance to the House of Handouts (which for so long was the House of Poets), he tries to gain entrance to the House of Destruction. Diego Maquieira writes just two brilliant books, and then opts for silence. What, I ask myself sometimes, was Maquieira trying to tell us? Did he wag his tail, did he growl, did Chilean poetry toss him a little stick to fetch and he never came back? With Maquieira anything is possible, good or bad. And yet the ultimate rebel of my generation is Pedro Lemebel, who writes no poetry but whose life serves as an example for poets. In Lemebel there’s tenderness, a sense of the apocalypse, fierce bitterness. With him there are no half measures; to read him requires deep immersion.