The many faces of Chile’s ‘rock star’ of poetry: Nicanor Parra

Iconoclast and idol, a sanctioned rebel, contradictions define the anti-poet.

Nicanor Parra cemented his position among the modern literary canon when he  became the third Chilean to claim the Cervantes Prize in December 2011. But in a country that is rightly proud of having one of the 20th century’s greatest poetry traditions, Parra was already a household name. Now 97, Parra has carved out a unique position among Chile’s literary pantheon as the poet who changed the rules of the game and brought the genre of the educated class to the people.

The traditional view of Parra

In awarding him the Spanish world’s most coveted literary award, the Cervantes Institute bowed to the traditional interpretation of Parra as the “anti-poet,” describing him as a writer who “broke the traditional molds of Spanish language poetry” and developed “a new way of speaking, with direct language, incisive, sober, and ironic, which, despite all that, did not lose its lyrical essence.”

Alongside the institutional recognition that comes with such a prestigious award, Parra has added cache in the form of the late writer and cult figure, Roberto Bolaño. “He writes as if he is going to be electrocuted the next day,” said the notoriously acerbic Bolaño of Parra, his compatriot and 39 years his senior.

The endorsement brought Parra’s name to Bolaño’s legion of young fans on the Hispanic literary scene, and as his star rises across the globe, the English-speaking world may soon heed the words of one of world literature’s hottest tickets, who once said: “he who is brave, follows Parra.”

But even by his own admission, Parra is a man of contradictions and no simple interpretation fits a man who described himself in the poem “Epitaph” as:

Neither too bright nor totally stupid,
I was what I was: a mixture
Of vinegar and olive oil,
A sausage of angel and beast!

The anti-interpretation of Parra

“Parra is a very pop author, a rock star with an incredibly powerful personality cult,” Roberto Aedo told The Santiago Times. “He is both very well loved by the majority of the population [of Chile] and very well respected by both poets and academics. But he is not very well understood.”

Literary professor and author of poetry book “Replica,” Aedo is critical of the accepted image of Parra, which he says was generated largely by the personal influence of the poet himself, and fostered by political and economic interests, for whom the image of Parra become a “very nice commercial hook.”

“Parra is credited with initiating things that other Chilean authors, like Pablo De Rokha, did first,” said Aedo. “He repeats some avant-garde gestures without the proper context, and the result is that things that were very critical and liberating decades ago become innocuous, de-activated bombs, new prisons.“

Aedo notes that even the word anti-poet, now synonymous with Parra and crucial to his identity, is a term that was coined by Vicente Huidobro, a Chilean poetry great of the early 20th century.

Parra the ‘anti-poet’

In a time when neo-romanticism dominated poetry in Chile, Parra made a name for himself by attacking the idea of the “illuminated poet, a poet as person who is above the common people and essentially different from them,” said Aedo.

Parra’s career path certainly didn’t follow a trajectory traditionally associated with the poetic life. Throughout his literary career Parra simultaneously pursued the fields of physics and mathematics, studying at Brown University and Oxford, and teaching at the Universidad de Chile, one of the country’s most respected universities.

“Parra belongs to line of Chilean poets more linked to the intellect and to reason [than inspiration],” said Aedo. “Poets that have an explicit vision of what poetry is, of its importance and meaning, and try to practice this form of poetry. He is a constructor of his verse, a highly skilled artisan.”

Typical of a man who claimed to “speak the language of the tribe,” Parra did not couch his criticism of tradition conceptions of poetry in subtle verse, but boasted of it openly and clearly in his poetry:

For half a century
Poetry was the paradise
Of the solemn fool.
Until I came along
And built my roller coaster.
Go up, if you feel like it.
It’s not my fault if you come down
Bleeding from your nose and mouth.

(Excerpt from “Roller coaster” 1962)

This confrontational approach to poetry cemented Parra’s reputation and put him at odds with the established literary greats, none more so than the golden child of Chilean poetry and a man who was, at the time, simply known as “the poet.”

Parra the ‘anti-Neruda’

Ten years senior to Parra, Pablo Neruda was one of the rare breed of poets to enjoy success in his lifetime. Winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971, Neruda rose to such heights that he cast a shadow over generations of talented Chilean poets, Parra among them.

In his essay “Anti-poetry and psychic ecology” Chilean poet and psychologist Eduardo Llanos Melussa writes of “the importance that Neruda had for Nicanor,” who he describes as but a “little brother that refused to be a son or disciple and to the contrary, insisted on taking a direction that was quite different and in various senses opposing.”

That different direction manifested itself in both the style and subject of the poets. Whereas Neruda lamented the choking of a lost heart or lauded the silhouette of a fluttering eyelid, Parra compared a former lover to “a skeleton standing before that table from hell, covered with yellow cretonne.”

Melussa notes the “curious coincidence” that “by destiny or for whatever reason, the initials of Nicanor Parra, N.P., are exactly the same as Pablo Neruda, but inverted, that is P.N.”

Parra himself spoke extensively on the relationship between the man who he styled as he opponent, once quipping about Neruda’s birthplace: “Neruda was born in Parral, but I was not born in Nerudal.”

But for all their differences as poets, the two shared similarities as professionals. “They were both very interested in pursuing fame,” said Aedo who described Parra’s anti-Neruda posturing as a “long-term” strategy. “For most people at the time, the archetype of the poet was Neruda,” he said. “Parra was very intelligent. He thought, if Neruda is up here, and I am his nemesis, then I will also rise like him. And he achieved it. For younger generations, and for people who aren’t well read, the opposite of Neruda is not de Rokha, it’s not Huidobro, it’s Parra.”

By Joseph Hinchliffe (editor@santiagotimes.cl)
Copyright 2011 – The Santiago Times