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Original article: Ediciones facsimilares de Mauricio Redolés: Libros que incomodan

By Osvaldo Carvajal M., academic in Literature and Applied Humanities Doctorate at U. Andrés Bello

Mauricio Redolés is arguably, after Gabriela Mistral, the most sung poet of Chile. However, we have very few of his books available.

Let’s start by stating the facts. The literary field, often an elite affair, decides—through academia and criticism—what enters and remains in the literary canon. Only after this filtration process does a work begin to be produced, circulated, and, in the best case, reach a wider audience.

Redolés, uncomfortable for any elite, was, of course, not invited to that table. Everything changed when he set his poems to music. Orality lies at the very beginning of poetry, and he knew how to restore it to that place. That is why his following is remarkably diverse: spanning age, gender, and even class.

The celebration of his fifty years of artistic career last year presents a prime opportunity to revisit a body of work that, despite its breadth and diversity, has been systematically overlooked as a subject for literary analysis. However, there’s a catch. We do not have his books.

Or, to put it more accurately, the books exist, they existed, but they do not reach mass publishing circuits. Many were published during his exile. Others appeared upon his return as self-published works or through small presses with limited print runs, and very few have been reissued.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us have read Redolés through anthologies. This was the case for those who discovered him through Entre la lluvia y el arcoíris, an anthology of young Chilean poets published by Soledad Bianchi in 1983; and also for those who today find El estilo de mis matemáticas, edited by Lumen in 2017, on the shelves of an independent bookstore. The latter is also a kind of “remastering”—as described by Yanko González—of the anthology the author himself compiled in 2000, known as “Redolés’ pink book.”

So yes, anthologies have allowed us to read Redolés. But an anthology inevitably selects: even when that selection is made by the author. It chooses some poems, leaves others out, alters the sequence of the texts, and arranges them in a new architecture. It constructs a narrative from the present. While this isn’t a flaw, it does result in a different book.

The story behind the publication of Notas para una contribución a un estudio materialista sobre los hermosos y horripilantes destellos de la (cabrona) tensa calma and Notas as well as Chilean Speech/Chilean Espich can be read as told by Redolés himself. But here’s a spoiler: they are not simply two books. They are also two objects that allow us to reconstruct the material, emotional, and political conditions that made their writing possible: the network of exiles who wove these books.

This is why it’s so significant for these works to be circulated again in facsimile editions. A facsimile does not merely aim to recover the content of a book. It does not seek to modernize it, correct its appearance, or adapt it to today’s editorial conventions.

In this sense, the facsimile is an exercise in memory. But not a comfortable memory. It does not return a sanitized or entirely tamed past. It also brings back its tensions, rough edges, and contradictions. That’s why I believe these editions unnerve in a way similar to how the entire body of Redolés’ work does.

Redolés disturbs because he does not easily allow for the separation of poetry and song, literature and politics, high culture and popular culture. It disturbs because he doesn’t have many books, and when he does, they are hard to find. It disturbs because we do not encounter him in the mall bookstores or on the websites where we purchase with influencer discounts.

To acquire his books, one must approach that table that always waits by the exit of his concerts and has traveled to the far corners of Chile. There, Carolina González Sáez—editor, producer, and life partner of Redolés—usually presides, the heart of the self-management that has literally kept the poet and his work afloat over the past decades. If Kharito is addressing an urgent matter, her daughter, Florencia Redolés González, takes her place. Previously, it was Sebastián Redolés Jadresic—now a member of the band—who performed this same task.

It’s no coincidence. Beta Pictoris, the independent label that publishes the books and albums of a single author (Mauricio Redolés), serves as more than just a publishing house: it is a new network of solidarity, affection, and political commitment that has allowed Redolés’ work to continue circulating and, above all, to keep unsettling.

Thus, these facsimile editions do not correct this discomfort. They preserve it and display it with pride. And that matters because making memory also means returning to the present what can still disarrange and stir it up. Redolés disturbs, after all, because he does not allow us to forget.

Osvaldo Carvajal M.

La entrada Facsimile Editions of Mauricio Redolés: Unsettling Literary Works se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.