Resisting Alienation

Enrique Lihn (1929-1988), winner of the Premio Casa de las Amricas (Poesa de paso, 1966), was one of Chile's most significant creative minds of the twentieth century. Surprising his predecessors, inspiring his contemporaries, and always venerated by younger inheritors of his legacy, he is as important to the Latin American literary community as Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, or Nicanor Parra. This book provides a detailed study of all major stages of his literary production, from his third book, La pieza oscura [The Dark Room] (1963) to his posthumous Diario de Muerte [Diary of Dying] (1989). A critical introduction provides an orientation to Lihn's work as related to the critical apparatus of Western Marxism and postmodern theory. An additional auxiliary section comes between chapters two and three, accommodating the vary significant change in historical period from the pre- to post-Pinochet eras, and further investigating Theodor Adorno's provocative questioning of whether "art after Auschwitz" can truly exist.