Abstract

This article aims at exploring the possibility of surviving and realizing an experience from the traumatic event of war. The analysis is focused on two works by the Chilean poet Tomás Harris: "Encuentros al fin de la batalla" of Encuentros con hombres oscuros and "Balada del soldado de Oklahoma" of Tridente. Both poems are related to the issue of war trauma: in the first work, it approaches World War II and the second, the mediatic Gulf War. Thus, the poetry of Harris questions its own limits by means of a subject who oscillates between mourning and melancholy, and rejects to be reduced to a mere passive spectator.