Enrique Lihn: Santiago, París, Manhattan

Abstract

This text studies trauma and travel in Enrique Lihn's poetry, analyzing relationships betweentrauma, writing and the cultural experience the poet worked on, from a critical perspective, in three key places: Santiago, Paris and Manhattan. In all three,a foreigner, a stranger, whose homeland is not to be found in a place, but only in the act of writing itself ("días de mi escritura/ solar del extranjero"). A stranger in his city of origin, both in the earlier traumatic dimension of his formative years, and in the later writing in Santiago during the military dictatorship. A stranger in Paris, a city that does not recognize the fervent desire of those raised, elsewhere, in the veneration of its culture. And a stranger in modern Babel, Manhattan, a place in which the poet perceives the frantic anonimity of a civilization based on ephemeral images and spectacle.