THINKING THE CONTEMPORARY BY THE LYRICAL: THE WORK OF NICANOR PARRA AND ROBERT BOLANO
- Two Chilean poets with equal and yet different conceptions of poetry: While Nicanor Parra is considered one of the most important Latin American lyricists of the 20th century, the poetry of novelist Roberto Bolaño only finds little attention in comparison to his highly successful prose. Yet both authors give constructive answers to the possible functions of contemporary poetry under an epistemology based upon materialism that affects language as emancipatory capacity of each human individual. A comparative reading of two volumes of their poetry, Parra’s well known Poemas y antipoemas (1954) and Bolaño’s last ‘collection of poems’ Tres (2000), does not only demonstrate some structural links. The urgent question concerning the benefits of literature among globalized societies, involving highly complex cultural and linguistic identities, could benefit from a revived awareness towards poetry as historically relative formalization of language, but also as an efficient instrument to reflect the restrictions of language in times of itsTwo Chilean poets with equal and yet different conceptions of poetry: While Nicanor Parra is considered one of the most important Latin American lyricists of the 20th century, the poetry of novelist Roberto Bolaño only finds little attention in comparison to his highly successful prose. Yet both authors give constructive answers to the possible functions of contemporary poetry under an epistemology based upon materialism that affects language as emancipatory capacity of each human individual. A comparative reading of two volumes of their poetry, Parra’s well known Poemas y antipoemas (1954) and Bolaño’s last ‘collection of poems’ Tres (2000), does not only demonstrate some structural links. The urgent question concerning the benefits of literature among globalized societies, involving highly complex cultural and linguistic identities, could benefit from a revived awareness towards poetry as historically relative formalization of language, but also as an efficient instrument to reflect the restrictions of language in times of its economic and cultural-industrial standardization.…
