Jaime Sáenz

Jaime Sáenz
Born	8 October 1921(1921-10-08) La Paz, Bolivia
Died	16 August 1986(1986-08-16) (aged 64) La Paz, Bolivia
Occupation	Writer, poet, dramatist, journalist, profesor
Language	Spanish
Influences Thomas Mann, William Blake, Ezra Pound, Arturto Borda, Arthur Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger
Influenced Blanca Wiethüchter, David Mondacca

Jaime Sáenz Guzmán (October 29, 1921 – August 16, 1986) was a Bolivian poet, novelist, and short story writer. Born in the city of La Paz, he lived virtually his entire life in that city, and its dark atmosphere had a powerful effect on much of his work. His poetry, though individual to the point of being difficult to classify, bears some similarities with surrealist literature.

Throughout his life, Sáenz struggled with alcoholism, a struggle about which he frequently wrote in his poems. Owing to this fact, he is often viewed as a sort of poète maudit, or "cursed poet". Sáenz was openly, "unashamedly", bisexual.

Biography

Jaime Sáenz Guzmán was born on October 29, 1921 in La Paz, Bolivia, his father was the Lieutenant Genaro Sáenz Rivero and his mother Graciela Guzmán Lazarte. In 1921 his parents sent him to Muñoz school, and then to the American Institute, he ended his schooling in 1937. In 1938 he traveled to Germany with some classmates to return in 1939, this trip would be crucial in his life.

In 1941 he started to work in the Bolivian Department of Defense, then in the Bolivian Treasury. In 1942 he joined the United States Information Service and worked there until 1952. In 1943, he married German citizen, Erika [her last name has not been documented] and in 1947 they had a daughter, Jourlaine. In 1948 Erika definitely quites up Sáenz.

From this moment Sáenz devoted his life not only to write, but to drink too. Carlos Alfredo Rivera, one of his best friends, didn't want him to drink anymore so he gave him advice and tried to persuade him. Sáenz, despite this, orders just when he's about to die in a delirium tremens crisis.

Works

• El escalpelo (1955)
• Aniversario de una visión (1960)
• Muerte por el tacto (1967)
• Recorrer esta distancia (1973)
• Al pasar un cometa (1982)
• Los cuartos (1985)
• Vidas y Muertes (1986)
• La piedra imán (1989)
• Felipe Delgado -novela- (1989)
• La noche (1984), - The Night: A Poem by Jaime Saenz (bilingual edition), Princeton UP 2007, ISBN 0691124833
• Obras inéditas (1996)
• Obra dramática (2005)
• La bodega de Jaime Saenz (2005)
• Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz, Univ of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0520230485
• Tocnolencias (2009)

See also

• Bolivian literature

External links

• Jaime Saenz at University of Oregon