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The poet may hint at her reasons to be buried in the second sonnet but explains with further detail in the first. In the second quatrain in this sonnet, she places her lover down as a mother would a child. Now we see the poet being able to move with ease from one space to another. Not quite above ground or below, this speaker floats between the two spaces as if she were a mythical being who had powers to do so. In ancient Greek mythology, the mythic deity Hecate had that extraordinary ability to move from the above world to the lower, without having anybody trap her.
She appears to have these supernatural abilities to move from space to space. Nelson Rojas has commented that the Sonetos are in a way a strong challenge to society. Almost as if she had promised her lover comfort in the preceding quatrain, in these tercets, she deceives her beloved. It certainly is the sonnet which has caused the most literary trouble. In it, Mistral seems to be constantly changing the recipient of her speech through changes in pronouns and objects.
This is due partly to her immediate transition or change of voice from the preceding two sonnets. But if we are to take the third sonnet as singular and not read it chronologically as a result of the previous two, then we may find a sonnet that ups the ante in transgressing the normal rules of discourse. Here in the sonnets, she changes forms of address, and she does the same with mythology and religion and verb tenses.
Her last sonnet emerges as a strange kind of hybrid. The change in verb tenses, not in the future, makes her sonnet a strange mixture of poetic action. Previous to the writing of the Sonetos , Gabriela Mistral had discovered the esoteric teachings of Madam Blavatsky, who had visited South America in the mid 19 th century. By after studying these mystic beliefs while she was in Antofagasta, Mistral became a believer in theosophy.
Mistral appears to suggest that this sonnet is an after thought to characters of the Greek underworld. Su barca empuja un negro viento de tempestad. Playing near the narcissus flowers, which she bent down to take, she is abducted to the underworld. Only Hecate and Demeter can bring her back. Yet if we return to the myth of the abduction of Persephone, we find that Persephone and the flowers are synonymous with each other. Thus the last line of the quatrain remains purposely ambiguous. The beloved is nowhere to be found. Desperate and emphatic, her one-way conversation with God commands him to return her lover to her.
Without a proper guide, the poet fears her lover will be lost forever. And yet again, the poet plays with the perspective of time and space. The poet moves us in her desperation as she remarks how she cannot follow her lover down the pathway. The mixing of metaphors between Christianity and myth interweaves when the lost lover must make a journey down a river. As all who must travel down to Hades encounter, it is the river Styx which cuts the path from the living and the dead.
And as if God or Christ had been listening to her, just for an instant, the boat that still appears to be carrying the lover is briefly detained, as told by Line At the end of the poem and the last tercet, we do not know whether the poet has been successful or not in reclaiming her lover. Only Christ or God can judge her for her transgressive actions. The sonnets continually make us as readers lose track of the perceived lover as object and destabilize conventions of heterosexual amorous discourse.
The insistence that the lover must remain underground and eventually disappear to turn into mere bones, although a horrific conceit, brings the lover closer to the poet. In the last sonnet, quite a different reading occurs. Her transgression is to command God or Christ to grant her an unusual love affair.
Although she cannot follow the lover completely underground as she does in Soneto I, she can bring her lover back through her command of language to a higher deity or order. She talks back and just for a mere moment, she can pretend that her love does not require cruelty for it to survive. Easy answers to a difficult romance do not emerge.
Instead, the reader is invited to step outside the patriarchal norms and imagine a new contexualization of what love or desire may possibly mean between two women. See Queer Mother for a Nation. Likewise, in a previous article, Horan demonstrates how Mistral was not a writer who defined herself in one category or another; she had many personae, one of whom showed conflictual responses towards her sexuality and relationships. In a letter she wrote to Moure, Mistral writes anxiously about receiving the prize and about meeting him: She displayed mixed feelings about the interpretation of the Sonetos.
In an early letter to Eugenio Labarca, she made clear that the fame garnered from the Sonetos involved being grouped with certain male intellectuals with whom she did not want to be associated: New York and London: A Queer Mother for a Nation. University of Minneapolis Press, With "Los sonetos de la muerte" Mistral became in the public view a clearly defined poetic voice, one that was seen as belonging to a tragic, passionate woman, marked by loneliness, sadness, and relentless possessiveness and jealousy:. The scene represents a woman who, hearing from the road the cry of a baby at a nearby hut, enters the humble house to find a boy alone in a cradle with no one to care for him; she takes him in her arms and consoles him by singing to him, becoming for a moment a succoring mother:.
It is difficult not to interpret this scene as representative of what poetry meant for Mistral, the writer who would be recognized by the reading public mostly for her cradlesongs. By she had adopted her Mistral pseudonym, which she ultimately used as her own name. As Mistral she was recognized as the poet of a new dissonant feminine voice who expressed the previously unheard feelings of mothers and lonely women. Explaining her choice of name, she has said:. In whichever case, Mistral was pointing with her pen name to personal ideals about her own identity as a poet.
She acknowledged wanting for herself the fiery spiritual strength of the archangel and the strong, earthly, and spiritual power of the wind. Coincidentally, the same year, Universidad de Chile The Chilean National University granted Mistral the professional title of teacher of Spanish in recognition of her professional and literary contributions.
This short visit to Cuba was the first one of a long series of similar visits to many countries in the ensuing years. In fulfilling her assigned task, Mistral came to know Mexico, its people, regions, customs, and culture in a profound and personal way. This knowledge gave her a new perspective about Latin America and its Indian roots, leading her into a growing interest and appreciation of all things autochthonous.
From Mexico she sent to El Mercurio The Mercury in Santiago a series of newspaper articles on her observations in the country she had come to love as her own. These pieces represent her first enthusiastic reaction to her encounter with a foreign land. They are the beginning of a lifelong dedication to journalistic writing devoted to sensitizing the Latin American public to the realities of their own world.
These articles were collected and published posthumously in as Croquis mexicano Mexican Sketch. In Mexico, Mistral also edited Lecturas para mujeres Readings for Women , an anthology of poetry and prose selections from classic and contemporary writers--including nineteen of her own texts--published in as a text to be used at the Escuela Hogar "Gabriela Mistral" Home School "Gabriela Mistral" , named after her in recognition of her contribution to Mexican educational reform. While the invitation by the Mexican government was indicative of Mistral's growing reputation as an educator on the continent, more than a recognition of her literary talents, the spontaneous decision of a group of teachers to publish her collected poems represented unequivocal proof of her literary preeminence.
As such, the book is an aggregate of poems rather than a collection conceived as an artistic unit. Divided into broad thematic sections, the book includes almost eighty poems grouped under five headings that represent the basic preoccupations in Mistral's poetry. Under the first section, "Vida" Life , are grouped twenty-two compositions of varied subjects related to life's preoccupations, including death, religion, friendship, motherhood and sterility, poetic inspiration, and readings. The following section, "La escuela" School , comprises two poems--"La maestra rural" The Rural Teacher and "La encina" The Oak --both of which portray teachers as strong, dedicated, self-effacing women akin to apostolic figures, who became in the public imagination the exact representation of Mistral herself.
The second stanza is a good example of the simple, direct description of the teacher as almost like a nun:. A series of compositions for children--"Canciones de cuna" Cradlesongs , also included in her next book, Ternura: In a second printing of the book appeared in Santiago, with the addition of a few compositions written in Mexico.
Before returning to Chile, she traveled in the United States and Europe, thus beginning her life of constant movement from one place to another, a compulsion she attributed to her need to look for a perfect place to live in harmony with nature and society. In , on her way back to Chile, she stopped in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, countries that received her with public manifestations of appreciation.
By then she had become a well-known and much admired poet in all of Latin America.
Her second book of poems, Ternura , had appeared a year before in Madrid. Because of this focus, which underlined only one aspect of her poetry, this book was seen as significantly different from her previous collection of poems, where the same compositions were part of a larger selection of sad and disturbing poems not at all related to children. Ternura includes her "Canciones de cuna," "Rondas" Play songs , and nonsense verses such as "La pajita" The Little Straw , which combines fantasy with playfulness and musicality:. The book also includes poems about the world and nature.
They are attributed to an almost magical storyteller, "La Cuenta-mundo" The World-Teller , the fictional lyrical voice of a woman who tells about water and air, light and rainbow, butterflies and mountains. There is also a group of school poems, slightly pedagogical and objective in their tone.
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I leave it behind me, as you leave the darkened valley, and I climb by more benign slopes to the spiritual plateaus where a wide light will fall over my days. From there I will sing the words of hope, I will sing as a merciful one wanted to do, for the consolation of men. Ternura , in effect, is a bright, hopeful book, filled with the love of children and of the many concrete things of the natural and human world. The same year she had obtained her retirement from the government as a special recognition of her years of service to education and of her exceptional contribution to culture.
The rest of her life she depended mostly on this pension, since her future consular duties were served in an honorary capacity. Mistral returned to Catholicism around this time. A fervent follower of St. Francis of Assisi, she entered the Franciscan Order as a laical member. This decision says much about her religious convictions and her special devotion for the Italian saint, his views on nature, and his advice on following a simple life.
As a member of the order, she chose to live in poverty, making religion a central element in her life. Religion for her was also fundamental to her understanding of her function as a poet. Her admiration of St. Francis had led her to start writing, while still in Mexico, a series of prose compositions on his life.
Fragments of the never-completed biography were published in as Motivos de San Francisco Motives of St. At the time she wrote them, however, they appeared as newspaper contributions in El Mercurio in Chile. In Paris she became acquainted with many writers and intellectuals, including those from Latin America who lived in Europe, and many more who visited her while traveling there. She was the center of attention and the point of contact for many of those who felt part of a common Latin American continent and culture. She started the publication of a series of Latin American literary classics in French translation and kept a busy schedule as an international functionary fully dedicated to her work.
She was gaining friends and acquaintances, and her family provided her with her most cherished of companions: She was living in the small village of Bedarrides, in Provence, when a half brother Mistral did not know existed, son of the father who had left her, came to her asking for help.
He brought with him his four-year-old son, Juan Miguel Godoy Mendoza, whose Catalan mother had just died. The young man left the boy with Mistral and disappeared. In a series of eight poems titled "Muerte de mi madre" Death of My Mother she expressed her sadness and bereavement, as well as the "volteadura de mi alma en una larga crisis religiosa" upsetting of my soul in a long religious crisis:.
The dream has all the material quality of most of her preferred images, transformed into a nightmarish representation of suffering along the way to the final rest. In this poem the rhymes and rhythm of her previous compositions are absent, as she moves cautiously into new, freer forms of versification that allow her a more expressive communication of her sorrow. When still using a well-defined rhythm she depends on the simpler Spanish assonant rhyme or no rhyme at all. The most prestigious newspapers in the Hispanic world offered her a solution in the form of regular paid contributions.
The same year she traveled in the Antilles and Central America, giving talks and meeting with writers, intellectuals, and an enthusiastic public of readers. The Puerto Rican legislature named her an adoptive daughter of the island, and the university gave her a doctorate Honoris Causa, the first doctorate of many she received from universities in the ensuing years. Several of her writings deal with Puerto Rico, as she developed a keen appreciation of the island and its people.
In June of the same year she took a consular position in Madrid.
As had happened previously when she lived in Paris, in Madrid she was constantly visited by writers from Latin America and Spain who found in her a stimulating and influential intellect. Neruda was also serving as a Chilean diplomat in Spain at the time. In characteristically sincere and unequivocal terms she had expressed in private some critical opinions of Spain that led to complaints by Spaniards residing in Chile and, consequently, to the order from the Chilean government in to abandon her consular position in Madrid.
Mistral was asked to leave Madrid, but her position was not revoked.
She left for Lisbon, angry at the malice of those who she felt wanted to hurt her and saddened for having to leave on those scandalous terms a country she had always loved and admired as the land of her ancestors. In the Chilean government had given her, at the request of Spanish intellectuals and other admirers, the specially created position of consul for life, with the prerogative to choose on her own the city of designation.
It coincided with the publication in Buenos Aires of Tala Felling , her third book of poems. In solidarity with the Spanish Republic she donated her author's rights for the book to the Spanish children displaced and orphaned by the war. In Tala Mistral includes the poems inspired by the death of her mother, together with a variety of other compositions that do not linger in sadness but sing of the beauty of the world and deal with the hopes and dreams of the human heart. These poems are divided into three sections: These poems exemplify Mistral's interest in awakening in her contemporaries a love for the essences of their American identity.
After living for a while in Niteroi, and wanting to be near nature, Mistral moved to Petropolis in , where she often visited her neighbors, the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig and his wife. The suicide of the couple in despair for the developments in Europe caused her much pain; but the worst suffering came months later when her nephew died of arsenic poisoning the night of 14 August For Mistral this experience was decisive, and from that date onward she lived in constant bereavement, unable to find joy in life because of her loss.
Although it was established by the authorities that the eighteen-year-old Juan Miguel had committed suicide, Mistral never accepted this troubling fact. In her pain she insisted on another interpretation, that he had been killed by envious Brazilian school companions. She never brought this interpretation of the facts into her poetry, as if she were aware of the negative overtones of her saddened view on the racial and cultural tensions at work in the world, and particularly in Brazil and Latin America, in those years. In "Aniversario" Anniversary , a poem in remembrance of Juan Miguel, she makes only a vague reference to the circumstances of his death:.
This poem reflects also the profound change in Mistral's life caused by her nephew's death. She composed a series of prayers on his behalf and found consolation in the conviction that Juan Miguel was sometimes at her side in spirit. In her sadness she only could hope for the time when she herself would die and be with him again. Despite her loss, her active life and her writing and travels continued. She was still in Brazil when she heard in the news on the radio that the Nobel Prize in literature had been awarded to her.
It was , and World War II was recently over; for Mistral, however, there was no hope or consolation. She traveled to Sweden to be at the ceremony only because the prize represented recognition of Latin American literature. In the same year she published a new edition of Ternura that added the children's poems from Tala , thus becoming the title under which all of her poems devoted to children and school subjects were collected as one work.
As a consequence, she also revised Tala and produced a new, shorter edition in Minus the poems from the four original sections of poems for children, Tala was transformed in this new version into a different, more brooding book that starkly contrasts with the new edition of Ternura. While the first edition of Ternura was the result of a shrewd decision by an editor with expertise in children's books, Saturnino Calleja in Madrid, these new editions of both books, revised by Mistral herself, should be interpreted as a more significant manifestation of her views on her work and the need to organize it accordingly.
Mistral liked to believe that she was a woman of the soil, someone in direct and daily contact with the earth. In all her moves from country to country she chose houses that were in the countryside or surrounded by flower gardens with an abundance of plants and trees.
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