Mitigating hell, suffering beauty: the late poetry of Emilio Adolfo Westphalen

Abstract

Beginning in the 1980s, Westphalen published several poetry collections. This article questions the reasons for Westphalen’s break of ethical silence, which he had maintained for decades, after his first two books of 1933 and 1935. The article further defends the opinion that Westphalen wished to confirm his modern poet’s condition: it does not extensively repeat modern strategies or principles, but rather comments on them briefly in a metapoetic manner.