Enrique Lihn

Enrique Lihn Carrasco (3 September 1929 – 10 July 1988) was a Chilean poet, playwright, and novelist. The son of Enrique Lihn Doll and María Carrasco Délano, he married Ivette Mingram (1932–2008) and they had one daughter: Andrea María Lihn Mingram, an actress.

Born in 1929 in Santiago, Chile, Lihn aspired to be a painter but after a failed attempt during university he abandoned that dream to pursue writing. He proceeded to develop into a poet, playwright, and novelist and even taught literature at the University of Chile. Lihn views both the past and the future as forms of death, and his emphasis on this point is evident throughout his literary works. His work revolves around his contempt for the contemporary dictatorship, as Chile was governed by a military junta. Works layered with social, political, and religious commentary are common throughout Lihn's canon. His final book, Diario de Muerte was written in the six weeks preceding his death from cancer in Santiago, and the evening before he died, he corrected the proofs.^[1]

Notable works

Poetry

• The Dark Room
• Cemetery in Punta Arenas
• Six Poems of Loneliness
• Torture Chamber
• Of All Despondencies
• A Favourite Little Shrine
• Goodnight, Achilles

Film

• Adiós a Tarzán, directed by Enrique Lihn & Pedro Pablo Celedón

Works in English

• The Dark Room and Other Poems, transl. by Jonathan Cohen, John Felstiner, and David Unger, 1978, New Directions
• Figures of Speech, transl. by Dave Oliphant, 1999, Host Publications, Inc.

Notes

1. The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry. J. D. McLatchy ed. Vintage Books: New York, 1996. Pg. 546

External links

• Enrique Lihn papers, 1941-1988. Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California..