The Immortalization of Lost Souls: a Review of Raúl Zurita’s INRI
The speaker’s voice in Raúl Zurita’s INRI is but a soft whisper amongst the vast Andes that surround him. His poetic professions are immediately silenced by the sheer immensity of the Andes’ all-encapsulating, mighty peaks; nonetheless, his words intensify as they bellow across the range. The speaker forcefully strikes at the souls of those in the beyond — his thundering cry fortifying itself by violently bouncing off and denouncing the mountains around it. The menacing peaks of the Andes, in this case, represent Augusto Pinochet’s infamous dictatorship of Chile. Pinochet used his heightened position in society — having overthrown then-president Salvador Allende — to enact fear-based ruling and squash any civilian uprisings that threatened his regime. Among mass-murders of innocent civilians and propaganda campaigns that persecuted leftist opposition, perhaps the most sickening of Pinochet’s atrocities was his use of the military to dispose of murdered bodies by haphazardly tossing them into the Chilean landscape via airplanes. Having lived through the Pinochet regime, Zurita resolutely opposed and protested its atrocities on the Chilean public — crafting INRI as both a political backlash against its tyranny and an emotional tribute to the innocent people who perished. Biblically, INRI is the Latin abbreviation for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” To Zurita, however, INRI is the screech of the Chilean public — the ever-lasting echo of an “iinnrriiiii” that beckons upon Jesus’ name to rectify Pinochet’s wrongdoings. As such, Zurita’s speaker forever immortalizes and breathes new value into the lost stories of the dead Chileans during Pinochet’s reign. His now-powerful voice cries an echoing “iinnrriiiii” for the dead Brunos and Susanas who lie hidden among the Andes’ peaks — delivering a new life to them within the poem’s words and structure.
With attention to INRI’s primary concerns and subjects, Zurita highlights the injustices of the Pinochet dictatorship by illustrating how its various atrocities have stripped the Chilean public’s ability to see and respond to injustice — effectively desensitizing their perceptions of cruelty and wrongdoing. Moreover, Zurita establishes a pervading motif of lost eyes and eyesight throughout INRI as a vehicle to demonstrate the disenfranchisement and marginalization of the innocent Chilean citizens. Military personnel under Pinochet’s dictatorship reportedly “[gouged] out [civilians’] eyes with hooks” (4) as a means of torturing the innocents to further Pinochet’s fear-based tyranny. This act of removing citizens’ eyes, by Zurita’s contention, symbolizes the dictatorship’s “blinding” of the public, preventing their ability to see a path towards hope and retribution from suffering. Fear-based government, effectively, had desensitized Chile to the sheer atrocity of Pinochet’s actions. Zurita bolsters this assertion in his inclusion of braille text within INRI’s original copy (60) — providing a bold, unabating show of empathy for those remaining Chileans who were “blinded” of hope by Pinochet. Braille, metaphorically, offers a unique outlet for the representation of Chile’s deep-rooted sentiments against governmental corruption — universalizing the pain felt by both her dead, blinded citizens, and those still living with the aftermath of Pinochet’s destruction.
Furthermore, INRI strives to build on original thematic patterns related to Christian ideals that communicate a message of unrelenting hope to those Chileans suffering or who have suffered by the regime’s hands. In particular, the idea of salvation through faith plays a significant and enduring role throughout Zurita’s poem. The “Mauricio[s], Odette[s], María[s], [and] Rubén[s]” (42) that sit like “minuscule snowflakes” (42) on the vast cordilleras (mountain ranges) of Chile suddenly “ascend and sing” (110) once they hear the “sky like mouths of light [shout] their names” (108). In harmony, whether “dead or alive” (109), Zurita depicts the light of Christ reaching out and rescuing the many lost souls in Chile’s mountains, seas, and deserts. These souls return to his “small white cit[y]” (105) and live “forever transparent” (112) in bliss. Expertly, Zurita implies that those who were wronged by the Pinochet regime will find salvation through God’s embrace. Admittedly, it is impossible to tell if all of the murdered Chileans were inherently pious people (or even Christian for that matter). More importantly, however, Zurita highlights that the regime’s antagonistic actions are inherently anti-Christian, and seeking solace through faith in God is the sole avenue for redemption after death. The “blinding” of the civilians, as previously mentioned, symbolizes the citizenry’s powerlessness against the tyranny of Pinochet. Zurita, in turn, claims that Christ will be the one to “open their eyes” and provide faith-based power and strength to break past the chains to which the Chilean citizens have been bound.
By and large, this prevailing Christian theme models the idea of the aforementioned INRI screech (the “iinnrriiiii”) as a broader metaphor for prosperity after suffering. Just like the original INRI was meant to mock Jesus on the cross — who still comes out victorious — the collective “iinnrriiiii” of the Chilean public and Zurita in the face of the regime’s perpetual torture finds new life in Christian salvation. The Chileans lose their eyes, but their collective “iinnrriiiii” gives them perpetual sight through Christ in the “transparent” (112) heavens. Poetry, accordingly, is inherently an “iinnrriiiii” in Zurita’s eyes. As referenced in the opening line, Zurita’s words would have meant nothing to Pinochet or the military officers that carried out his power trip; yet, his “iinnrriiiii” reaches far beyond the boundaries of the poem — it provides validation and remembrance for the lost Brunos and Susanas. Poetry is a vehicle for immortalizing their sentiments and feelings that transcends the boundaries of power and social status. Just like the INRI on the cross inherently symbolizes Jesus’ essence to most Christians, Zurita’s “iinnrriiiii” symbolizes the lost cries and sentiments of the many dead Chileans under Pinochet’s regime.
Structurally speaking, INRI’s lack of proper and consistent rhyme and rhythm dictates its position in a unique subgenre of modern poetry — free verse. Zurita’s writing — if it were not for his deliberate separation into stanzas — would more-or-less be considered standard prose. However, his thoughtful, conscious separation of ideas into stanzas, combined with the “choppy” and discordant nature of his wordplay, produces a uniquely poetic vibe. By cordoning off groups of ideas — seen in the first two paragraphs, where Zurita describes the “baits” of bodies (11) in the first stanza and describes the “love” (11) that emanates from these baits in the second — Zurita’s speaker exudes varying emotions and moods from each of his stanzas. The first stanza connotes a mood of disgust and repulsion in Zurita’s description of the “[s]trange baits” (11) — a nod to Billie Holiday’s famous “Strange Fruit,” which describes the “strange fruit” of lynched African-American bodies hanging from trees all across America during the infamous Jim Crow era. However, the second stanza follows with a surprising connotation of love and affection from these “baits,” which the reader knows are meant to represent human bodies falling from the airplanes of the Chilean military. Perhaps most important to consider, however, is Zurita’s speaker’s unique position as an expressive “wallflower” in his descriptions. Within each subsection of the poem (i.e., from “The Sea” through “Bruno, Susana”), the speaker differs in his approach to the illustration of the scene. In “The Sea,” for example, he is blunt and open to share his grievances about the state of Chile under Pinochet: “Viviana cries . . . Vivana today is Chile” (13). Conversely, in “Bruno, Susana,” the speaker is much more reserved in his injection of feelings and sentiments, instead choosing to be objectively hopeful for the future of Chile after reaching Christ’s embrace: “There is the light of the cordilleras” (111). Regardless of the situation, however, Zurita’s speaker breathes life into both the people and inanimate objects he describes. He personifies the Andes as an active, sentient being that cries, shouts, and calls out to Bruno and Susana’s corpses, who will “live again” (106–108) after joining the light of Christ. Without a distinction between the living and dead, the speaker is a third-party force who is not afraid to inject his feelings and sentiments when describing Zurita’s characters and locations.
Furthermore, it is quite clear that Zurita’s use of language in INRI is unconventional and unique. From his preliminary description of human bodies as “baits” (11), the reader may believe that Zurita is demeaning the value of the countless lives destroyed by the regime. His good intentions come to light as the poem progresses; however, as his description comes full circle: “Surprising baits, amazing human fruits become whole again singing” (100). In doing so, not only does Zurita provide closure to the victims and their memories, but he also twists his strange metaphor into a beautiful representation of the immortality of the human soul and resilience after a tragedy. Zurita’s style of commemoration, therefore, refuses to follow the traditional pity-filled lamentations and melancholy resignations that most elegy-style poetry does. Instead, he traditionalizes the untraditional by relating all of his subjects equally — animate and living or not.
Overall, INRI accurately captures the visceral disgust and horrid internal feelings induced at the thought of senseless murder by the Pinochet regime. His vivid descriptions of the “tombs of [the victims’] eyes” (107) and their “blood-colored tear ducts” (40) bring to life the dire realities of living in an “enemy country” (66) to its own citizens. Despite grouping large masses of Chileans with labels like Bruno and Susana, Zurita maintains individuality in their responses to tyranny. Even after death, “Bruno’s gouged eyes sing” and “Susana’s emptied eyes sing” (107). However, even in INRI’s many triumphs, Zurita fails to give a face to the evil that pervades his characters’ miseries. He de-materializes and de-emphasizes the evil forces of Pinochet by neglecting to mention his tyrannical actions — choosing instead to use the passive voice in describing “strange baits” that “rain from the sky” (11), as if some unseen and unimportant force caused the citizens’ deaths.
Yet, William Rowe’s translation of INRI fails to capture the emotionality of Zurita’s words; Rowe’s input causes the inherently choppy nature of Zurita’s writing to become less natural and more forced. A primary example of this loss of emotional weight due to fumbling translation is seen on page 31. In the English version, Rowe writes: “Bruno is dead. Susana is dead. The black land and beneath it the bloody gauze of the snow on the mountains.” However, in the original Spanish version, Zurita writes: “Bruno está muerto, Susana está muerta. El campo negro y atrás la gasa sanguinolenta de la nieve de las montañas.” The Spanish word “sanguinolenta” — sharing a root with the English word “sanguine” — evokes a rich visualization with its connotation of a deep, florid, blood-red color. Interestingly, however, Rowe chooses to simplify the translation and elementarily describe the mountain as “bloody” — which is a flawed, non-literal translation that strips away Zurita’s original, raw emotions. Rowe’s interpretation of “sanguinolenta” as having minimal importance, thus simplifying its translation, suggests that his point-of-view in translating the poem may be overly literal and too concrete. Surprisingly, Rowe even contends that Christianity plays a small role in the poem’s overall message, if at all. While, of course, he is free to have his own interpretation — Rowe’s refusal to acknowledge a more significant, complex outside force influencing Zurita’s writing muddles his translation in many locations and ultimately does not do INRI proper justice.
With all of its accomplishments, INRI does not leave much more to desire. Zurita, without explicitly naming any one person or thing, expertly crafts the tale of a tyrannical Chilean regime and the terrorizing effects it had on the public’s psyche. Without giving a face to any of the victims, Zurita still honors and respects their collective legacy through his bounding “iinnrriiiii.” Although Zurita himself contends the poem offers no “redemption” (133) and ultimately does nothing to reverse the permanent damage that Pinochet’s regime caused to the Chilean legacy, his poem still accomplishes one crucial thing for the memories of the fallen: providing a sense of closure. By immortalizing the sentiments and pains — the “iinnrriiiii”s — of those lost and murdered Chileans, Zurita gives eternal value and respect to their souls. While there may be no physical body for their families to funerate, the individuals killed by Pinochet’s regime are given a collective gravestone by Zurita’s INRI. In this sense, INRI is undoubtedly worth a read. While inaccurate translations and confusing structural choices may make INRI a fierce poem to analyze, Zurita’s words offer another perspective on the tragedies of Pinochet’s regime. The reader is never left to sift through lines and lines of nagging lamentation; instead, he is kept engaged through an ever-shifting perspective by the narrator and deep underlying themes revealed through his descriptions. Hence, Zurita’s characters allow the reader to feel the “iinnrriiiii” of the Brunos and Susanas stripped of life too early. In other words, the reader becomes the vehicle that immortalizes the screams of those individuals who had no expressive outlet in the face of a menacing Pinochet dictatorship. By absorbing the meanings behind Raúl Zurita’s INRI, the reader’s body becomes the vessel for Chile’s “iinnrriiiii,” and in doing so, Bruno’s and Susana’s cries are finally answered.
