Literary and political culture and as a product of the rural middle class-might speak.” Īnd yet she felt compelled to speak: “I write poetry because I cannot disobey the impulse, it would be like blocking a spring surging up in my throat.” Mistral operated with “acute consciousness of the small number of authoritative positions from which she-as a woman in a male-controlled It would be foolish to resist an autobiographical reading of these depictions. The first section of Lagar (usually translated as Winepress) is “ Locas Mujeres.” The “Madwomen” series portrays women in extremis: “strong, intensely human beings confronting situations to which no sane response exists.” She remains the only female Latin American to be so honored.ĭespite this early recognition, Mistral’s strongest work appears in her final collection, Lagar.
In 1945, Mistral was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mistral refused, supposedly out of modesty, to accept her award in person, thus establishing her persona as humble schoolmarm. Mistral (1889–1957) won acclaim at age twenty-five, when “The Sonnets of Death,” written after an ex-lover’s suicide, captured first prize in a national competition. It is no coincidence that some of Mistral’s most famous poems portray women struggling to perform their roles under impossible conditions. Mistral channeled these perspectives into her poetry, but to achieve literary success, the Chilean poet had to craft a nonthreatening public persona.
Gabriela Mistral sensed what others could or would not, whether it was the anguish of her dead son or of Chile’s marginalized populations. Despite the suffering he causes her, the sleepless woman tries to help the ghost: When the night thickens In Gabriela Mistral’s poem “The Sleepless Woman,” the narrator lies in bed listening to a ghost climb up and down the stairs all night, every night. Listening to the Lost, Speaking for the Dead: Speculative Elements in the Poetry of Gabriela Mistral by Lisa M.
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