Brief chanson by Lily Iñiguez Matte: exemplary agony and human plenitude

Summary

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 of Davos in 1926. From the age of twelve, she wrote a diary in French that was published in the same language with the name of Pages 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 of her 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 less formal type of poetry. Lily Iñiguez reviews herself, beyond her biography, as a sincere poet, without excesses, without affected rhetoric; as a profound and communicative human being, who aesthetically has the gift to reach spiritual and existential heights. With strength and simplicity, she overflows us with her immense humanity.