Jorgenrique Adoum: El sentido de la lucha en exilio

Abstract

Gabriela Chauvin’s essay is both a tribute to the poet Jorgenrique Adoum –who passed away in July, 2009– and a critical reading of his Prepoemas en posespañol. This collection of poems is seen as a reflection on exile’s relation to memory, death and resistance. Two poems are used to illustrate the point: «Good-Bye Lola» and «Epitafio del extranjero vivo». Chauvin’s reading studies the significance of fighting while in exile; fighting is, most of the time, a requisite for or a link to either victory or defeat, in Adoum’s poetry; battle is the matter Sundays and their vanishment are made of: if there is a way to go nowhere, it is static fighting, without rest, defeat or victory, wandering in the emptiness that exile is. Thus, the epitaph becomes a metaphor for the perennial battle between Death and the word, between existence through language and the grave that tolerates it. Prepoemas en posespañol was included in the book Informe personal sobre la situación, and was published for the first  time in 1973.