La animalidad, la poesía y la situación indígena: del cisne dariano al cisne de Jaime Luis Huenún

Abstract

This article aims to compare the use of the figure of the swan in the Spanish-American poetry of three authors: Rubén Darío, Delmira Agustini and Jaime Luis Huenún. Indeed, it will be shown that the use of the figure of the swan in their poems evolves to reach the poets’ representations of their political and social commitment. At the same time, a different use of the traditional lyrical subject can be pointed out, as well as a change of what it embodies, in other words, of what the author defends. Darío distinctly used a symbolic swan and a traditional lyrical subject to serve the author’s interests. Later, Agustini made the lyrical subject unstable. The swan embodies the lyrical “I” and represents therefore the poet, to claim a space for women in poetry. Finally, Huenún used the poetry to claim a space for the collective memory of the Chilean/Mapuche people by using a lyrical “we”, where the swan embodies multiple voices, silenced during the past 150 years, which want to be heard.