Breve chanson de Lily Iñiguez Matte: agonia ejemplar y plenitud humana

Abstract

Lily Iñiguez Matte was the daughter of the diplomat Pedro Felipe Iñiguez and the outstanding Chilean scülptress Rebeca Matte Bello. She was born in Paris in 1902 and died at a sanatorium ofDavos in 1926. From the age oftwelve, she wrote a diary in French that was published in the same language with the ñame ofPages d'un Journal. Her poems were collected and published by her mother under the title of Brief Chanson in Paris in 1930. Her poetry captures for posterity, by means ofher careful and at the same time uncomplicated craft, her unique agony and human plenitude. Reading her poetry we are confronted to a non familiar experience, quite strange indeed, for we are used to a more hermetic and lessformal type ofpoetry. Lily Iñiguez reveáis hersélf, beyond her biography, as a sincere poet, without excesses, without affected rhetoric; as a profound and communkative human being, who aesthetically has the gift to reach spiritual and existential heights. With strength and simplicity, she overflows us with her immense humanity.