Chile, due to its geographical location, is for the inhabitants of the Old World and even of the neighboring Republics, one of the most unknown and forgotten countries in America.
It is not uncommon, then, that we are judged in a light or contemptuous way, if not bizarre, when it comes to our ethnography, our political, social or economic systems, scientific, artistic or literary currents, or any other aspect of our intellectual or material life.
This hurts us enormously, because it surrounds us in a discredit that we do not deserve and in a forgetfulness that places us in places that are inappropriate for our true worth.
Foreign feathers, some eminent, and others of a certain prestige, have made really diabolical mistakes when commenting on some topic of our national activity, sometimes creating for us atmospheres of ridiculous and ignominious decadence in the eyes of other countries, which, if they have not encountered A propitious ground to fertilize, at least they have contributed to arouse misgivings and withdraw sympathies in embryo.
It has come to present us gnawed by old defects that today we repudiate and with judgments made against a false or incomplete appreciation of our true nationality.
Thus, it has been tried to hang us poets that we do not have, indigenous Presidents and civil revolutions at every step.
By deteriorating names, some of our scientific personalities have been suppressed, and by dismembering others, we have been measured yesterday by what we were in distant times.
But, much blame for these errors and ignorance that exist abroad about our country, is due to the negligence of ourselves, the apathetic and disdainful character of those who are worth something, and the audacious, upstart and pretentious spirit of those who do not mean.
Merit intellectuals care very little that their works are spread beyond the seas or the mountain range, and the insignificant ones ignominiously seek to exhibit themselves outside and inside the country, as the representatives of the most advanced generation of our intellectualism.
From Chilean poetry, for example, a firm and valuable product, of an originality and beauty superior to what can be imagined from the "land of saltpeter and broken," a despicable idea and a profoundly wrong conception are formed.
Poetillas de cajón, versifiers of chamarasca, shaken by indifference or house censorship, are the direct culprits of such failures and errors.
Fleeing the just indignation of their compatriots, they have come to ask for protection from the tolerant kindness of strangers, outsiders, those who do not know them thoroughly, and have begged pages for their verses, in foreign newspapers or works, praising the artistic capacity of its leaders or authors and offering them a reciprocal claim or hype for their apotheosis in the country. For the work of those Longinus of art we have been judged many times, and, logically, the judgment on it-bastard product of a ridiculous and absurd intellectual representation-has had to result in the way it was to be presumed.
On other occasions it has jumped over our best poets, and measured our lyricism by that of some old or incipient versifiers. Thus, a Doctor and Professor of Literature at the Escuela de Estudios Superiores del Magisterio, who published his work Spanish and Hispano-American Authors in Madrid in 1911, consecrates very few words to Chilean poetry.
For him there are only two poets of this nation: Pedro de Oña, colonial poet, and the lyricist. Eduardo de la Barra to whom he dedicates two and a half lines in an appendix to his book.
With knowledge of our literature as deep and honest as we represent, it is not surprising that we are considered among the most prosaic and the least idealistic of the inhabitants of the New World.
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This book tends to fill in several gaps: Foreign authors who intend to produce anthologies, dictionaries or literary histories will find in this work the true representation of Chilean poetry, the quality of which can be judged by the works that are inserted in it. These pages, vibrant with truth and sincerity, will destroy many false glories that stand unjustifiably and artificially, inside and outside Chile, and will raise the modest, the misanthropes, the meritorious, who will occupy the place usurped by versifiers. indecorous.
We prove: that Chile also has its group of highly appreciable poets, who, at least, are far above many crowned mediocrities of other countries.
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Undoubtedly, many are going to be shocked by the new, sincere and daring bill of this book, like few others of this kind, accustomed as we are to pay tribute with our sinful silence to certain Chinese paper idols, which until today remain wrapped in an aura of false prestige, and to cowardly silence before the fatal invasion of the gualdraperos of literature.
This is a work of youth, of art, of sincerity, without prejudice or bastard animosities, of combat and encouragement, of action and evolution.
To reach this result we have had to use all kinds of resources, even sharp stratagems, since the natural apathy of many of our poets and the suspicions and indifference caused by our modest literary names, made them distrust the work of the authors of Selva Lírica.
And despite everything, we have fought impassively to obtain our object, our main object of artistic purification and consecration. And only then, in the midst of this struggle, in the midst of this series of difficulties and refusals from those who were obliged to help us, have we almost justified the errors and deficiencies of some foreign authors when dealing with our literature.
But, just as some poets have made us smile bitterly with their ridiculous poses, others, the greatest ever, have fraternally extended their hands ... For these, our most intimate recognition. For those, our proudest contempt.
In the composition of this book and in the judgments on the poets or pseudo poets that appear in it, no personal resentment, no scholastic prejudice, no friendly ceremonial has intervened.
It is a product of our psychological vision and perception, having served as a receptacle for the emotions of the author himself and the conscious opinion of 12 expectant crowds.
See in our small studies not the fruit of a critical laboratory analysis, but a lyrical impression emanating from the spirit of two enthusiastic cultivators of the ideal.
This book is not a poetic anthology, it is not a work of rigorous selection, because, in order to indicate the various stages or modalities of the poet studied, we have had to exhume the compositions that respond to each of his metamorphoses, with all their defects and virtues.
Thus, it is not surprising that some authors appear with works that show declines in style or substance, since, in order to reveal their perfection or evolution, we have always tried to follow the poet from his initial period to his last artistic demonstrations.
This Lyric Forest is divided into two large parts: First: The neo lyricals, and Second: The poets of ancient tendencies.
The First Part is divided into three: I) The precursors and representatives of the various modernist tendencies; II) The poets who follow them in merit, and III) The nationalists and criollistas.
The second part contains the classical, romantic, tropical and indefinable poets.
In addition, there is a Review of the poets not included in the previous series; and, to complete our work, we have added various studies and works on:
• Poesía Araucana; • Acratic Poets; • Holiday writers in verse; • Fabulists; • Athenaeum of Santiago; • Higher Council of Letters and Fine Arts, and • Poetic Contests. This work includes all those authors who have performed in our Parnassus with or without success during the last twenty-two years, placed within each group in chronological order of birth.
Some are interspersed in sections of merit, despite our adverse judgment of their poetic work, not because we consider them worthy of them, but because by dint of so much and so much attention with books or periodicals in the press, they have become known in such a way that they are usually considered with the right to merit, and because it is vulgarly estimated out there, in certain lost neighborhoods, that the popularity they enjoy is directly related to the real artistic value of their productions, and, above all, to not take away a place that they will have to give to others with less pretensions and greater worth.
Other poets go in sections of less merit, than to which they could aspire, because their scarce or incipient work, although promising, has not allowed us to make them more widely known and to form a complete concept of their lyrical work.
If some are missing (we allow ourselves to doubt it), it will not be our fault, since in order to make this book as complete as possible, we have resorted to all imaginary sources, from notices in the entire national press, to individual invitations in the form of requests. .
We are sure that most of the authors who appear in Selva Lírica, especially those who are mistreated and the disaffected who are never absent, will lash out at our good intentions and will see their motive rise from among them.
