Places that make words: A Reading of Simbólico retorno, by Delia Domínguez

Abstract

We propose a reading of Simbólico retorno, 1955, Delia Domínguez’s first book, in the interest of offering an evaluation of the aesthetic representation of Chile’s deep south living nature and of the feminine lyric subject which inhabits it and lives it, as an experience of plenitude that contrasts with the familial and social orphanhood. The elegiac and somber tone of the text, testifies of the author’s pain due to the early loss of her mother, a pain that feeds a certain anticipatory cision of decadence of her social class and origin: the gemanic agrarian bourgeoisie of the south of Chile of that time.