(Sub)Versiones of Discursive Power: “En medio del camino” from Zurita’s Purgatorio

I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,And henceforth I will not deny them—For how can I deny myself?

Whitman

In the aftermath of the 1973 military coup d’état, Latin America’s oldest republic, La República de Chile, struggled toward political and social stability while simultaneously reformulating its national identity. These endeavors proved to be interrelated for the newly installed junta; as the regime took control of the various industries that had been previously nationalized under the socialist government of Salvador Allende, it effectively outlawed debate, discussion, and dissent, which were jeeringly referred to as “politics.” The new Chile would be characterized by unity, order, economic and technological progress, culture, morality, and civility. Many Chileans, weary of the chaos that had plagued the country since the mid-60s, initially welcomed the order and security that the regime provided, even as their civil liberties were increasingly sacrificed.

Yet the image of a stable and progressive Chile was as much a state-manufactured myth as it was reality. Media outlets (radio, television, print media and cinema) as well as cultural and academic centers (museums, universities, journals, and university presses) came under the purview of a regime intent on projecting an idyllic vision of the country while suppressing the unseemly aspects of authoritarian rule. To that end, pro-Allende artists and intellectuals either disappeared during the first weeks subsequent to the coup, were forced into exile, or were relieved of their influential posts. To speak out against the regime was to court serious reprisals or even death.

In addition to toiling under the constraints of political oppression and censorship, post-coup Chilean poets also contended with the specter of Pablo Neruda, whose death mere days subsequent to September 11 would forever cement his association with the Allende government. At the same time, the regime would manipulate Neruda’s timely death for political advantage, outlawing the use of the poet’s name or image in an effort to exorcise him and his socialist ideology from the national consciousness. Wittingly or otherwise, literary critics in state-controlled academic institutions and press agencies furthered the regime’s agenda in their search for emerging writers to represent the new Chile and to fill the void left by Neruda’s death.

The conjunction of artistic repression and the privileging of the new and novel would prove providential for Raúl Zurita. In the early 70s the young poet’s tiny corpus of work—a selection of poems in an Argentine anthology and a smattering of verses in a university journal—went entirely unnoticed.¹ In 1975, however, the unknown engineering student’s poetry was featured prominently in the only edition of the journal Manuscritos alongside the work of celebrated poets Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn and articles by Ronald Kay, Jorge Guzmán, and Castor Navarte. Literary critic for El Mercurio, Ignacio Valente (pseudonym for J. Miguel Ibañez Langlois), a Catholic priest and member of the ultra-conservative organization Opus Dei, immediately elevated Zurita to the status of the new generation’s greatest poet, the very future of Chilean letters.

Algo menos de un centenar de versos, que aparecen con amplia y cuidadosa diagramación […] consagran ya a Raúl Zurita entre los poetas de la primera fila nacional, como un digno descendiente de los grandes de nuestra lírica, y de aquellos otros—Arteche, Lihn, Barquero, Uribe, Teillier—que ya no son tan jóvenes y que no parecían tener herederos del mismo calibre en la generación novísima. ¿Quién es este poeta, que a los veinticuatro años irrumpe con una voz enteramente propia y ya formada, con un timbre de inequívoca propiedad a pesar de lo exiguo de su obra?

(277)

But Valente went further in his praise, asserting that Zurita’s work was “enteramente personal y ajena a las influencias convencionales: ni dejo nerudiano ni anti-poesía ni poesía de los lares ni acento alguno de escuela o parentesco se percibe en esta voz extrañamente original” (277).

Ironically...