Charles of Rokha

Carlos de Rokha, pseudonym of Carlos Díaz Anabalón (Valparaíso, October 17, 1920-Santiago, September 29, 1962), was a poet, short story writer and Chilean painter.

Biography

Carlos de Rokha was born with the name Carlos Díaz Anabalón. He was the eldest son of Carlos Díaz Loyola (Pablo de Rokha) and Luisa Anabalón Sanderson (Winétt de Rokha), members of a family of renowned artists in Chile—among them, his own parents and siblings Lukó, José, Pablo and Laura, among others-.

At the age of 11 he escapes from home and is found in the central plain three days later, hungry and poorly dressed. At that time he was studying primary school at the Liceo Valentín Letelier in Santiago. In 1936 he published his first poem, titled "Lina Odana", in Homage of Chilean intellectuals to the motherland, edited by Gerardo Seguel. He studies humanities at the Secondary Institute of Fine Arts.

A follower of Arthur Rimbaud, he was included by some critics within the Literary Generation of 1938, despite the stylistic, age and thematic gaps; However, he was a unique poet, who walked through different styles, so he cannot be classified only in this generation, but also, to a certain extent, in the generation of 1950. He shared with Enrique Lihn, Mahfúd Massís—who was the husband of his sister, the painter Lukó de Rokha—and with the group La Mandrágora, where he participated tangentially.

Throughout his life, he suffered from schizophrenia, for which he was admitted to the Psychiatric Hospital on more than one occasion.

In 1961, his work Memorial and keys was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Municipal Games Prize from the Municipality of Santiago. In 1962, his work Pavana del gallo y el harlequin won the same award.

Carlos de Rokha died at the age of 41 from a drug overdose. The reason for death is debated between accidental ingestion or suicide.

His death deeply affected his father, Pablo de Rokha, who was never able to recover from the death of his son. In Lost Letter to Carlos de Rokha he wrote: «the seal of Winétt's genius pursued you, like a great eagle of fire, from the cradle to the grave, but it did not influence you, because it did not influence you nobody, above the world. Forgive me for having given you life.

Mahfúd Massís, referred to his death in the following way: «Carlos was the thirsty, selfless, tormented angel, who fulfilled a single function in the world, a single function, and no other, a main function, imposed by the destiny of his psychic organization, and even physical, since all his features accused the poet without possible redemption. He was, thus, the irremediable poet, the poet without salvation, condemned from the start. Terrible, sad, enviable destiny. Likewise, Enrique Lihn dedicated Elegy to Carlos de Rokha in his book The Dark Piece (1963).

In 1964, his first posthumous work was published: Memorial and keys. Then, in 1967, his second posthumous work was published: Pavane of the Rooster and the Harlequin . In 2004, Patricia Tagle, niece of Carlos de Rokha, received $9,000,000 from the National Book Fund for the publication of unpublished poems compiled in about ten notebooks that the poet owned.

Influences and Style

Eduardo Anguita states that «He fell in love with the work of authors as different as Góngora, André Bretón, Vicente Huidobro, Humberto Díaz Casanueva; and from so many influences he emerged more virgin and proper. With an infallible intuition, he knew how to vibrate—inwardly and not only in its syntactic branch—with the cult poetry, with the surreal magic or with the innocence—in this chord was where he best fit: this was his field—of the Huidobrian work..

In the words of the poet «Poetry is not just a recreation, nor a representation of the living universe of man: it has to go to a transformation of this universe. It cannot remain pure expression: it has to go beyond the dream and conquer reality. At the same time, the poet must drink from the very sources of popular creation. It can't just be expression, but communication. "Poetry is a sensitive form of knowledge and in itself is the highest experience that man can achieve on earth."

The first part of his work is immersed in an imaginative, hallucinatory world, typical of a surrealist aesthetic, defined by chance, automatic writing and dream experience. At this stage there is also the exaltation of the self of a romantic nature or the gloom of a symbolist tendency. In the period between the publication of "Prophetic Canticle to the First World" and "The visible order" The poet will gradually acquire a singular voice, where there is an ordering of the visionary experience, the ordering of an interiority immersed in the imaginal game itself to an incomprehensible exteriority, in opposition or indifferent to his fantasy world.

Works

The work of Carlos de Rokha is collected in only four publications.

• Code of Ethics to the First World (1943) - downloadable from the Portal Memoria Chilena
• The visible order (1956) - downloadable from the Portal Memoria Chilena
• Memorial and keys (1964)
• Pavana del gallo y el arlequin (1967; second edition, 2002)

Posthumous anthology

• Anthology (2022) — UV publishing

Enrique Lihn referred to the limited dissemination of Carlos's work with the following words: «The poetry of Carlos de Rokha is one of those that would benefit if the totality of our literature were truly historicized. With its own and unmistakable characters, de Rokha's work recorded all the expressive-formal concerns that have contributed to the development of a small but brilliant literary tradition.