The title poem of Enrique Lihn’s 1963 collection La pieza oscura (The Dark Room) uses dense description and rich symbolism to communicate the problematic division between childhood and adulthood. The setting of La pieza oscura gives the poem its title.

In a dark room, four children—the speaker, his sister Paulina, and his cousins Ángel and Isabel—engage in a ritualistic battle. Mimicking the more consciously sexual interactions of adults, the two pairs of children struggle, rolling around on the floor, their game at once innocent and provocative. The poem repeatedly recalls “la vieja rueda” (the old wheel), an image it blatantly associates with life and the transition from childhood to adulthood and between generations. The wheel turns as the children’s game becomes less and less of a game, as they grow more aware of the sexual act that their mock battle could precipitate.

On the verge of tumbling into adulthood, the wheel rotating faster and faster, the speaker in the poem suddenly pulls away, releasing Isabel, afraid to move too fast into the unknown. The lights come back on as the speaker wonders where their childhoods have fled, even as the four children hurry to behave properly once the adults arrive. Ultimately, the poem suggests the dark period bridging childhood and adulthood, but it also investigates the shadow self, the “fantasma,” or ghost, of the child speaker, permanently petrified before the “imposibles presagios,” the unbearable omens, of a future his naive mind cannot imagine.

Both the depth of imagery and the psychological exploration of the poem are typical of Lihn’s work. The images of La pieza oscura are often surprising and occasionally violent. For example, the poet describes “la crueldad del corazón en el fruto del amor, / la corrupción del fruto y luego . . . el carozo sangriento, afiebrado y seco” (the heart’s cruelty in the fruit of love, the fruit rotting / and then . . . the bloody pit, feverish and dried out). United by the cyclic symbol of the wheel, the speaker’s former self, the innocent boy, and his mature presence are able to recall this important moment of transition perfectly.

Bibliography
Lihn, Enrique. The Dark Room and Other Poems. Edited by Patricio Unger, translated by Jonathan Cohen, John Felsteiner, and David Unger. New York: New Directions, 1978.

Categories: British Literature, Chilean Literature, Literature

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