Jaime Saenz
Jaime Saenz Guzman was a Bolivian writer born on October 8, 1921, in La Paz, where he spent his entire life until his death from malnutrition on August 13, 1986. Saenz is recognized for his unique literary voice, characterized by an exploration of themes related to death, identity, and the grotesque. His autobiographies reveal a person who rejected societal norms and embraced an antisocial lifestyle, often revealing a deep obsession with decay and mortality. Saenz's poetry and prose, including notable works such as "Felipe Delgado" and "Aniversario de una visión," delve into surreal experiences and the human psyche, often depicting a struggle for self-identity amidst hallucinations and self-destructive behavior. His writing is marked by graphic imagery and a blend of characters, reflecting a profound sense of loss and the complexities of love, particularly in his final novel, "Los papeles de Narciso Lima Achá." Despite his personal challenges, Saenz garnered a dedicated following and has left an indelible mark on Latin American literature, captivating readers with his bold and unsettling narratives.
Subject Terms
Jaime Saenz
Bolivian poet and novelist
- Born: October 8, 1921
- Birthplace: La Paz, Bolivia
- Died: August 13, 1986
- Place of death: La Paz, Bolivia
Biography
Jaime Saenz Guzman was born on October 8, 1921, in La Paz, Bolivia, and he would remain in that city for his entire life. In his two posthumously published autobiographies, Saenz portrays himself as an antisocial and subversive person, aggressively avoiding any relationship or activity that could be construed as being mainstream or normal by the standards of society. An outsider with peculiar interests, Saenz was known to frequent morgues to satisfy his obsession with death, cadavers, and human decay. He frequently could only find comfort by consuming massive amounts of alcohol, and he would associate only with other hedonistic alcoholics and freeloaders. Despite these personality traits, Saenz married, but his aversion to conformity and inability to maintain a normal relationship made marriage, or any type of long-term relationship, impossible, despite his respect for the institution of marriage.
Saenz developed a devout following throughout his career and was praised for his poetry and his talent for writing about the grotesque. His poetry often combined one person with another, and in a surreal fashion these two people would become one. This blending becomes apparent in the poetry collection Aniversario de una visión, in which the blurring of the individual with other people is expressed through hallucinations and an ultimate loss of identity resulting in the destruction of the self. A short-story collection, El escalpelo, highlights decay and physical anomalies, appealing to the reader’s more psychotic tendencies.
Perhaps Saenz’s best known work is his novel Felipe Delgado. It tells the story of Delgado, who searches for his inner self and pure being through the company of eccentric friends and gallons of alcohol. The self-searching journey conjures horrific apparitions and hallucinations that send Delgado on a path of self-destruction and insanity. Along this path, he decides the only way to free himself from the demons which repeatedly visit him in his visions is to destroy his physical body and release his soul.
Published after his death, his final novel, Los papeles de Narciso Lima Achá, reveals that the homosexuality of protagonist Lima-Acha is actually self-love. Lima-Acha’s endless search for self-identity also is seen as a form of self-love, in which the love becomes greater than the object and overpowers him. The novel expresses Saenz’s belief that the emotion or act of love is more powerful than the person who is the object of this love, ultimately rendering that person unimportant to the lover.
Saenz died of malnutrition on August 13, 1986, in La Paz. His ability to simultaneously repel his readers through graphic descriptions of horrific visions, real or imagined, and to raise their curiosity and desire to continue reading is his greatest literary achievement.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
Felipe Delgado, 1979
Los cuartos, 1985
Los papeles de Narciso Lima Achá, 1991
Nonfiction:
Vidas y muertes, 1986
La piedra imán, 1989
Obras inéditas, 1996
Poetry:
El escalpelo, 1955
Muerte por el tacto, 1957
Aniversario de una visión, 1960
Visitante profundo, 1964 (Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems, 2002)
El frío; Muerte por el tacto; Aniversario de una visión, 1967
Recorrer esta distancia, 1973
Obra poética, 1975
Bruckner: Las tinieblas, 1978
Al pasar un cometa, 1982
La noche, 1984 (The Night, 2007
Obras poética, 2002
Drama:
Obra dramática, 2005
Bibliography
"Bolivia Reported in the Verses and Drawings of the Poet Jaime Saenz." laInfo.es, 20 Aug. 2016, http://lainfo.es/en/2016/08/20/bolivia-reported-in-the-verses-and-drawings-of-the-poet-jaime-saenz/. Accessed 29 June 2017. Overview of Saenz ahead of an exhibition of his drawings.
Chetty, Deshan. "Jaime Saenz." Bolivian Express, 30 Sept. 2012, http://www.bolivianexpress.org/blog/posts/jaime-saenz. Accessed 29 June 2017. A brief remembrance of the Bolivian poet from an English-language website devoted to Bolivian culture.
Gander, Forrest. "The Strange Case of Jaime Saenz." A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory, and Transcendence. Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005, pp. 105–14. An overview of Saenz and his work, with photographs, from an essay collection by one of the translators of Immanent Visitor and The Night.
Garcia Pabon, Leonardo. "Jaime Saenz (1921–1986)." University of Oregon, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~lgarcia/Saenz/Biografia.htm. Accessed 29 June 2017. Almost 2,000-word Spanish-language biography by a University of Oregon Spanish professor.