Lihn, Enrique (1929–1988)

Enrique Lihn (b. 3 September 1929; d. 10 July 1988), Chilean poet. Lihn was the prominent Chilean poet of his generation and one of the most original voices of contemporary Latin American poetry. La pieza oscura (1963) (The Dark Room and Other Poems [1978]) marks the initial maturity of his poetry of biographical experience and the manifestation of the strange and ominous. Poesía de paso (1966) develops a poetry of circumstance, which emanates from visits to art museums and famous cities and travel to foreign countries. It parodies art criticism and the language of travelogues. Escrito en Cuba (1969) and La musiquilla de las pobres esferas (1969) present an ironic vision of life and poetry, which marks a new stage of Lihn's work.

During the military dictatorship Lihn produced a series of books, which included Por fuerza mayor (1974), París, situación irregular (1977), A partir de Manhattan (1979), Estación de los desam-parados (1982), El paseo Ahumada (1983), Pena de extrañamiento (1986), Al bello aparecer de este lucero (1983), La aparición de la Virgen (1988), and Album de toda especie de poemes (1989), published posthumously. These books played with all kinds of allusions to social, cultural, and political circumstances. Lihn also wrote three novels of parody, a collection of short stories, Agua de arroz (1964), plays, and numerous essays, and he did a number of original drawings. Diario de muerte (1989) is a collection of poems written when the author was suffering from cancer.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rodrigo Cánovas, Lihn, Zurita, Ictus, Radrigán (1986).

Cedomil Goic, Historia y crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana (1990), vol. 3, pp. 241-243.

Pedro Lastra, Conversaciones con Enrique Lihn (1980).

Dave Oliphant, "On translating the poetry of Enrique Lihn," Dactylus 6 (1986): 61-63.

Additional Bibliography

Aguilera Garramuño, Marco Tulio, and Fernando Burgos. Los escritores y la creación en Hispanoamérica. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 2004.

Polanco Salinas, Jorge. La zona muda: Una aproximación filosófica a la poesía de Enrique Lihn. Valparaíso: Universidad de Valparaíso; Providencia: RIL Editores, 2004.

                                          Cedomil Goic