Days of their writing, solar of foreigners: rooting and banishment in three chilean poets (Lihn, Uribe, Teillier)

Abstract

In this article, we study a certain modality of the theme of the traveling in the work of three Chilean poets: Enrique Lihn, Armando Uribe and Jorge Teillier. In this context, we establish that in these works and also in others since ancient times (despite the differences that they have among themselves), this modality takes the form of displacement as exile; as banishment. Likewise, we argue that, in close relation with their respective life stories, the work of each of these poets is related to an important historical-cultural process in Latin America: the widespread influence and cultural hegemony of Europe, particularly that of French culture, the forced exile resulting from the civil-military dictatorships of the second half of the twentieth century and, finally, the complex process of country-city migration, respectively. Last but not least, we sustain that the figure of the foreigner in these works updates the double condition of the poet as marginalized and marginal, and that of poetry as a space for expressing one’s roots, criticism as well as resistance to the values of the capitalist model of production’s social order.