Stella Díaz Varín (11 August 1926 – 13 June 2006), also known as ''La Colorina'' ("The Redhead"), was a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

an poet of the

Generation of '50 The Generation of '50 () relates to a Spanish literary movement of the mid-20th century, also known as the children of the civil war, and relates to writers born around the 1920s and published around the 1950s. They engendered a new lyrical preoc ...

. Her unprecedented deep and philosophical style, as well as her controversial personality, marked a before and after in Chilean poetry.

Biography

Stella Díaz Varín was born on 11 August 1926 in La Serena, Chile, into a middle-class family. Her mother was a descendant of a highborn family of French origin that had fallen on hard times. Her father was an anarchist clockmaker who fostered in Díaz Varín her political ideals. Their economic situation and her father's ideas, together with her passionate readings, moved her from a very young age to write and publish poems and articles in local newspapers. In a public act in 1946, she read a poem in front of the Chilean president

Gabriel González Videla Gabriel Enrique González Videla (; 22 November 1898 – 22 August 1980) was a Chilean politician and lawyer who served as the 24th president of Chile from 1946 to 1952. He had previously been a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1930 ...

which was dedicated to him. After this, the President helped her to settle in Santiago, a desire she had been nourishing since her father's death in 1935. Díaz Varín moved to Santiago in 1947 to study medicine and psychiatry, despite the opposition of both her mother and older brother. Her interest in psychiatry came from her desire to scrutinize the human brain and understand the dreams of humans. During her studies she wrote articles and poems for several newspapers: '' El Siglo'', ''

La Opinión ''La Opinión'' is a Spanish-language daily newspaper and website based in Los Angeles, California. It is the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States and the second-most read newspaper in Los Angeles (after '' The Los Angeles Ti ...

'' (where she met

Vicente Huidobro Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (; January 10, 1893 – January 2, 1948) was a Chilean poet born to an aristocracy, aristocratic family. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the creator and greatest exponent of t ...

), '' El Extra'' (where she reported crimes in low-income sectors of

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

) and ''

La Hora is the newspaper with the most regional editions in Ecuador. It specializes in regional news, and runs a total of 10 regional editions. The headquarters of are located in Quito Quito (; ), officially San Francisco de Quito, is the capital c ...

''. The closing of the newspapers in which she worked forced Díaz Varín to abandon her studies, which she never completed. President González Videla, who had won the elections in 1946 with the support of the Communist Party, passed the Law of Permanent Defense of Democracy (Spanish: ''Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia, N°8.987'') which prohibited the existence of the Communist Party in Chile. Its members, Díaz Varín among them, became persecuted. Based on their mutual aversion toward the government, Díaz Varín, Enrique Lafourcade and

Enrique Lihn Enrique Lihn Carrasco (3 September 1929 – 10 July 1988) was a Chileans, Chilean writer, Literary criticism, literary critic, and cartoonist, mostly known as a poet, but who also wrote Essay, essays, Short story, short stories, Novel, novels, Pla ...

tattooed a skull on their shoulders, symbolizing a pact to kill González Videla, whom they considered a dictator. In 1949, the editor Domingo Morales helped Díaz Varín to publish her first book: '' Reason of My Being'' (''Razón de mi ser''). The poems of this volume reflect the vitality and strength of the poet; through suggestive images and an underground language she wrote about death, solitude and recognition of the feminine condition. These poems manifest the intricate relationship between the writer's life and poetical creation. Díaz Varín died on 13 June 2006 in

. A fictionalized version of Díaz Varín appears in

Alejandro Jodorowsky Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (; born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean and French Experimental film, avant-garde filmmaker. Known for his films ''El Topo'' (1970), ''The Holy Mountain (1973 film), The Holy Mountain'' (1973) and ''Santa Sangre'' ...

's autobiographical film '' Endless Poetry'' (2016), where she is played by Pamela Flores. Jodorowsky represents her as a Chilean Bukowski and the first

punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

woman poet (probably based on how beat literature has inspired

and

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberwa ...

literature).

Works

*''Reason of my being'', 1949 *''Symphony of fossil man'', 1953 *''Time, as imaginary'', 1959 *''The gifts foreseeable'', 1992

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Diaz Varin, Stella 1926 births 2006 deaths People from La Serena 20th-century Chilean women writers 20th-century Chilean poets Chilean women poets