Rec(h)ording Elegy: Transformative Mourning in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña

Rachel Elizabeth Robinson

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Chapter 8 Rec(h)ording Elegy

Transformative Mourning in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña

In: The Contemporary Elegy in World Literature

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Rachel Elizabeth Robinson

Rachel Elizabeth Robinson
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 153–180

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004723603_010

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Abstract

Traditional lyric elegiac subjects about the loss and mourning of individuals, land and community often emerge in writings about the late Twentieth Century and contemporary Chilean experience in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Responses to this period, under which tens of thousands were exiled, killed or ‘disappeared’ and a path towards massive destruction of the environment was forged, have marked Chilean literature and art. Nonetheless, avant-garde experiments move away from solely thematic and lyric expressions of loss to radical formal ones that, through an emphasis on the materiality of poetry, propose new ways of embracing such loss and then converting it into creative practices for both author and reader.

Elegiac expressions make us aware of humanity’s fundamental precariousness. Many Chilean experimental poets embrace such precariousness as a condition that is also as laden with sorrow and trauma, but also as one that offers the possibility to produce new forms of relationships. This essay will illustrate how the Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña’s poetry of precariousness processes the loss of social, cultural and ecological stability in today’s globalised world. In her diverse work, Vicuña not only engages the condition of precariousness, but also highlights the ambiguity of the word “precarious” itself. She evokes the word’s primary connotation as “that which is not securely held or in position; likely to fall; dependent on chance; uncertain.” For her, this instability is always a condition of (at least partial) loss. She also brings to the fore the word’s secondary etymological meaning, coming from the Latin root, prex or prec-, which means “prayer.” In order to demonstrate this state, Vicuña creates nonlinear, asyntactic spatial arrangements of language on the page as interactive prayers for the future. Through an emphasis on the materiality of language, Vicuña embraces the instability that our contemporary world has produced in order to combat complete destruction. This paper will explore how Vicuña’s precarious poetry involves an elegiac process of loss (of stability) that, in the recognition and then acceptance of that loss, allows for collective and continuous creation and (re)connection.

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The Contemporary Elegy in World Literature

Series: DQR Studies in Literature Online, Volume: 66/1, DQR Studies in the Lyric, Volume: 66/1, and DQR Studies in Literature, Volume: 66/1

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004723603

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 14 Jan 2025

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Chapter 8 Rec(h)ording Elegy

Transformative Mourning in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña

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The Contemporary Elegy in World Literature

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