Raúl Zurita on Poetry, Torture, and Dante's Divine Comedy

Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, born in Santiago in 1950 to an Italian mother, is translating Dante's Divine Comedy, a work his grandmother Josefina Pessolo recited to him as a child. A communist militant, he was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned after the 1973 coup. In 1979, he joined the Colectivo Acciones de Arte, staging performances where he self-harmed to symbolize the suffering under Pinochet's dictatorship. From 1979 to 1994, he wrote the Purgatorio trilogy (Purgatorio, Anteparaíso, La vida nueva). Notable performances include a poem written in smoke over New York City and the phrase "Ni pena ni miedo" traced in Chile's desert. His poem Canto a su amor desaparecido (1985) is part of the Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos in Montevideo. Zurita discusses writing from a body affected by Parkinson's, viewing his illness as beautiful. He describes poetry as a form of resistance, imagining poems in the sky or desert to survive the dictatorship. He sees Dante's journey as the greatest poem of solitude, rooted in a gaze exchanged with Beatrice.