Roberto Bolaño and his critics about Chilean poetry

GUADAÑAZOS PARA LA                           

BeLLA ViLLA            

                " La literatura a tajo abierto"     

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Edición No. 119, enero de 2014

Directores: 
Raúl Jaime Gaviria
Hernán Botero Restrepo 

Publicación de Revista Asfódelo
email: revistasfodelo@yahoo.com

Roberto Bolaño and his critics about Chilean poetry

By Hernán Botero Restrepo

Translated by Raúl Jaime Gaviria

In the book written by Roberto Bolaño Entre paréntesis (Under parentheses), whose selected essays were compiled by Ignacio Echavarría and published posthumously after Bolaño's death  the reader can find a not very objective vision of contemporary Chilean poetry. It's basically a subjective critical approximation, aggressive at some moments and excessively encomiastic in others. A book that surfs through a wide range of writers and works going from Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana to  Enrique Lihn's poetry.

Bolaño generally dislikes Chilean novelistics as well as poetry, but he doesn't take the time to make an argument about the very few authors and works he likes and the numerous he dislikes. Take as an example the case of Chilean surrealist poet Braulio Arenas, all Bolaño has to say about him is that he is “the horrible Braulio Arenas” nothing to say about him as a poet. In respect to Neruda Bolaño just says that he has written by large much more bad poems than good ones but he doesn't take the time to select even one example, he simply evades the profound universe of  Neruda's work. The same happens with Huidobro. Besides remembering the curious anecdote about Chilean author José Donoso asking that some excerpts of  Huidobro's famous poem Altazor were read to him when he was about to die, Bolaño just states that he likes Huidobro's poetry very much, but he says nothing about why he likes it so much.

The name of  poet Gonzalo Rojas appears in just one occasion throughout the book and not in a direct way when Bolaño takes into account the works of two prose writers still to be discovered: Claudio Giaconi and Enrique Lihn (obviously as a proser). By other side Bolaño shows his meanness by not even mentioning poets of such an importance as Humberto Díaz - Casanueva, (a perfect example of an innovative poet) or Julio Barrenechea which in his poetry manages to be cosmopolitan and Chilean at the same time. Another poet also ignored by Bolaño is Oscar Castro whose work is actually under rigorous investigation by Chilean literary critics. Same fortune (being ignored by Bolaño) goes for Rosamel del Valle, Oscar Hahn and Pablo de Rokha. In relation to Jorge Teiller Bolaños shows some kind of ambiguity.

Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral is also mentioned in several occasions in the book, one of them with bitter irony when Bolaño recalls an interview he gave to Playboy magazine where he was asked about what he would have said to the poetess in the hypothetic case that he would have talked to her personally. Bolaño's answer was the following: “I would have said to her —Mommy, please forgive me, I've been a bad boy but a woman's love has made me change into good—.

Even when Bolaño likes a poet's work very much his comments are generally circumscribed to one short phrase or two with an undoubtful flavor of excessive praise. So it is when he refers to poet Nicanor Parra as the number one living poet in Spanish language or when he wonders in respect to Enrique Lihn if the nation of Chile is really worthy of having such a great poet as a son. Not to say it couldn't be true (it also could be true that Neruda produced more bad poems than good ones) the thing is that Bolaño doesn't give solid arguments that can support his assertions.