AL FILO DE LA MODERNIDAD: LAS DÉCIMAS AUTOBIOGRÁFICAS DE VIOLETA PARRA COMO LITERATURA1/AT THE EDGE OF MODERNITY: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 'DÉCIMAS' OF VIOLETA PARRA AS LITERATURE

Headnote

RESUMEN

La vida y obra de Violeta Parra (1917-1967) han sido objeto de innumerables estudios que recalcan la identificación de la artista con los estratos populares chilenos. Salvo contadas excepciones, la crítica considera sus composiciones y escritos como una expresión popular auténtica, sin prestar atención a la voluntad estética. Su autobiografía en décimas no ha corrido mejor suerte. Los ensayos sobre la misma giran, sobre todo, en torno a la temática social, subrayando la identificación diáfana de la artista con el pueblo. El presente ensayo se dirige a demostrar que, contrariamente a lo que se ha repetido en cuanto a la transparente mimesis de la autorrepresentación, las Décimas de Violeta Parra son un texto literario y, como tal, recurren a la forma, la retórica y el estilo para perseguir un fin determinado.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Literatura chilena, folklore, autobiografía.

ABSTRACT

Violeta Parra's life and work have been the object of countless studies highlighting the artist's identification with popular social classes. Apart from a few exceptions, the critics consider her compositions and writings as an authentic popular expression, without noticing their aesthetic intention. Parra's autobiographical décimas have undergone a similar process. The scholarly analysis of the décimas has mainly focus on the social theme and on the author's diaphanous identification with common people. This paper attempts to demonstrate that - in spite of what has been said about the transparent quality of the mimesis in selfrepresentation - the Décimas of Violeta Parra are a literary text and, as such, resort to form, rhetorical resources, style and to other literary techniques in order to achieve a pre-determined goal

KEY WORDS: Chilean Literature, Folklore, Autobiography

Recibido: 03/02/2010 Aceptado: 05/04/2010

"To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world-and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are".

MARSHALL BERMAN, ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR

"It is part of being modern to lament, in an antimodernist stance, the loss of an imagined traditional order, a 'lost community' and 'true values,' and then project this onto sites or times that are made representations and ruins of such an order".

PERTTI J. ANTONNEN, TRADITION THROUGH MODERNITY:...