SOURCE: "A Breath of Satire in Chile," in The Nation, Vol. 325, No. 17, November 19, 1977, p. 535.

In the following essay, MacShane discusses a controversial performance of Parra's Hojas de Parra in Chile.

For years Nicanor Parra has kept silent. Then, some months ago, his poetry was heard again in Chile. The occasion was a theatrical performance based on his work called Hojas de Parra—or Pages from Parra. It opened on February 24 in a circus tent erected in Providencia, a residential section of Santiago. Subtitled "A Fatal Leap in One Act," it was a collage of circus and theatre, poetry reading and happening, deriving from his poems, some of them never before heard in public.

Two Chilean actors, José Manuel Salcedo and Jaime Vadell, were responsible for the production. Salcedo described it in the newspaper El Cronista as "an experimental work which tries to resolve scenically the metaphysical problem that...