Background

Gabriela Mistral started out as a girl in the small Chilean village of Montegrande. Or rather, Lucia Godoy Alcayaga did. Lucia didn’t become Gabriela until afteer she turned 19 and began to publish regularly. She chose to take the pseudonym that honored her favorite poets: Gabrielle D’Anunzio and Frederic Mistral (HEY! We know him!)

Unsurprisingly, poetry didn’t pay the bills at first and she began a teaching career (so there’s hope for me to write one of these about myself yet). As a teacher Mistral ran across another young Chilean poet who will get his own entry in a few years: Pablo Neruda. When her renown as a poet grew, she left the classrooms and entered a variety of embassies all around the word. (Which was probably for hte best given Chile’s history of brutal dictatorships…distance was probably for the best).

Living the rest of her life as an exile, she did make good friends in a variety of literary circles until 1945 when she became the first Latin American to become a literature laureate “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world”.

Works

All selections taken from Mistral’s Madwomen collection–translated by Randall Couch

“When I walk all the things
of the earth awaken,
and they rise up and whisper
and it’s their stories that they tell.

And the peoples who wander
leave them for me on the road
and I gather them where they’ve fallen
in cocoons made of footprints

Stories run through my body,
or purr in my lap.
They buzz, boil, and bee-drone
They come to me uncalled
and don’t leave once told.”

—“The Storyteller”

“In a whirlwind she would rule
over meals and linens
the winepress and beehives
the minute, the hour and the day…

And wherever they went, all things
voiced a wounded cry to her:
crockery, latches, doors,
as to their bellweather;
and for her sister they grew hushed,
spinning tears and Ave Maria”

–Martha and Mary

Message

In an evergreen theme, Mistral’s topic throughout her Madwomen’s poems seems to challenge the presumptions endemic to humanity. To all the men in government, academia, literature and life write large the women who would be named “the poet of motherhood” seems to say “there’s more complexity in our lives than you are ready to behold”

Position: #6 Defensive Midfield

Like thee friend she made on her diplomatic tour, WB Yeats, Mistral seems to have a split view of the craft. She keeps one foot in the past with her style, structure and symbolism, and another foot on the gas with novel and innovative themes and expressions. To my mind that makes her a good choice for a defensive midfielder. She’s absolutely valuable, but a little too stiff for my tastes.

Try as I might to read this in Spanish most of the ideas slipped through my fourth grade level understanding of the language. If you have a different point of view or would encourage me to read another translation, let me know in the comments below.

Next Time, 1965 Honoree Mikhail Sholokov