«Two Eyes of a Dark Animal»: the Appropriation of Delmira Agustini’s Poetics and Figure in the Poetry of Amanda Berenguer

Abstract

The Uruguayan Generation of '45 carried out a fundamental rereading of the poetry of Delmira Agustini. Beyond the biographical myth that surrounds the life and the tragic death of the fin-de-siècle poetisa, the women poets of the second half of the twentieth century looked at themselves in her mirror to identify with her image or delineate their own work from a shared intensity. Specifically, in this article we propose to trace some indices of the presence of the figure and the poetics of Agustini in the poetry of Amanda Berenguer (Montevideo, 1921-2010). From the examination of texts belonging to different stages of this author’s aesthetic and vital trajectory, we will study the recurrence of the nocturnal and melancholic imaginary, the counterpoint achieved through rhythm and images in amorous discourse, and the importance of the visual in the configuration of the poetic text. To delve into this last question, we will offer a first reading of "Interviews to Delmira" (1990), a composition in verse -not collected in a book- in which Berenguer imagines a face-to-face dialogue with her admired antecessor on the day she would have been one hundred years old.