A brief poetic archaeology: on Serge Mansilla T.

Abstract

In a personal tone, through an exercise that moves between testimony and archaeology, intertwining experience, memory, and language, this writing summarizes, from Hoefler’s perspective, a type of “parallel life” with Mansilla. The narrative is based on the fact that the former was the latter’s professor during their beginnings as poets, a path they later continued sharing, additionally, as literary theorists. At the same time, both figure as recognized “representatives” of important literary groups from the south of Chile: Hoefler of Trilce, born in Valdivia, and Mansilla of Aumén, originally from Chiloé. Thus, in this text, the biographical and the cultural merge in the density of poetic language. The writing and the literature, then, are relieved as ethical and critical works in relation to the search and construction of meanings.