The following research is about the relationship between myth and modernity in the literary work (poems,short stories,novels and chronicles) of the Chilean author Rosamel del Valle (Curacaví, 1901 – Santiago de Chile, 1965). In his diverse texts there is a tension between a poetic project based on a mythical worldview and a historical context that favors more rationalistic views, setting aside what is poetic and mythical. By the nineteenth century, the modernity and its correspondent associated phenomena of modernization caused a shift of poetry in terms of speech, and of the poet as the individual in a precarious situation inside the society, which is extended to the twentieth century. Due to this conflict Rosamel del Valle questions in his work the scope of his own principles both aesthetic and vital. This leads to a vacillation between the confirmation of his poetic-life project and the consciousness of failure. That is why the work of this Chilean poet contains a Lebenswissen, which conceives poetry as a privileged way of life. However, given the historical conditions difficulties it is possible to understand this Lebenswissen also as an ÜberLebenswissen (Ette).
The mythical conception of del Valle poetry is studied in the first part of the text, and also the different levels at which the myth appears in his literary work are analyzed either as thoughts, language and a traditional narration. The identification of poetry and myth shows the main features of his poetics: an ontological conception distinguishing between a visible and an invisible dimension of reality;the mystical tendency of poetry;a cyclical conception of time that establishes a relationship with the discourses of memory and death, and the idea of a utopian past, which through poetry would revive in the present;moreover, the figure of the woman as a symbol of love and poetry.
In the second part, the relationship and the consequences of this “mythical poetry” were investigated under the context of modernity. The effect of the Entzauberung der Welt (Weber) as the specific experience of those times on Rosamel del Valle’s poetics was especially discussed. For all the above mentioned, his impressions on New York were necessary to be pointed out since it was the city where he lived and worked between 1946 and 1963, which turned in his texts into a place where the “poetic dwelling of man” in modernity could be possible.