a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1945. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Indian and European influences.
Life
Gabriela Mistral was born in Vacuna`, where she attended primary and secondary school. Her father,Juan Gerónimo Godoy Villanueva , abandoned the family when she was three years old. At age 14, she began to support herself and her mother by working as a teacher's aide. Her mother, Petronila Alcayaga, died in 1929 - Gabriela dedicated the first section of the book Tala (Tree Fall) to her.
In 1904 she published some early poems, such as Ensoñaciones, Carta Íntima (Intimate Letter) and Junto al Mar, in the local newspaper El Coquimbo de La Serena, using various pseudonyms.
In 1906, while working as a teacher, she met Romeo Ureta, a railway worker, who killed himself in 1909. The profound effects of death were already in the poet's work; writing about his suicide led the poet to consider death and life more broadly than previous generations of Latin American poets. Mistral had passionate friendships with a number of men and women, and these impacted her writings.
Formal recognition came on December 12, 1914, when she was awarded first prize in a national literary contest Juegos Florales in Santiago, with the work Sonetos de la Muerte (Sonnets of Death). From that moment on she began using the pen name Gabriela Mistral in almost all of her writings. She formed the name from the two of her favorite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral.
In 1922 she was invited to Mexico by that country's Minister of Education, as part of a plan to reform libraries and schools, to start a national education system. That year she published Desolación which won her international acclaim. A year later she published Lecturas para Mujeres (Readings for Women), a text in prose and verse that celebrates motherhood, childhood education, and nationalism.
Back in Chile, she was given the academic title of Spanish Professor by the University of Chile.
Her international stature led to lectures first in the United States and then in Europe. In 1924, traveling to Europe for the first time, she published Ternura (Tenderness) in Madrid, a collection of lullabies and rondas written primarily for children but often focused on the female body.
The following year she returned to Latin America and toured Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Back in Chile, she was given a pension and retired from teaching.
She lived primarily in France and Italy between 1925 and 1934. During these years she worked for the League for Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. She also taught at Barnard College of Columbia University, Vassar College and the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras.
As common with many Latin American artists and intellectuals, Mistral served as a Chilean consul from 1932 until her death, working in Naples, Madrid, Petrópolis, Nice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Veracruz, Mexico, Rapallo and Naples, Italy, and New York. As consul in Madrid, she would occasionally have professional interactions with another Chilean consul and Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda, and she was among the earlier writers to recognize the importance and originality of his work. She published hundreds of articles in magazines and newspapers throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Tala appeared in 1938, published in Buenos Aires with the help of longtime friend and correspondent Victoria Ocampo. The proceeds for the sale were devoted to children orphaned by the Spanish Civil War. This volume includes many poems celebrating the customs and folklore of Latin America as well as Mediterranean Europe. Mistral uniquely fuses these locales and concerns, a reflection of her identification as "una india vasca," her European Basque-Indigenous Amerindian background.
In August 14, 1943 her 17-year-old nephew Juan Miguel killed himself. The grief of this death, as well as her responses to tensions of the Cold War in Europe and the Americas, are the subject of the last volume of poetry published in her lifetime, Lagar, which appeared in 1954. A final volume of poetry, Poema de Chile, was edited posthumously by her friend Doris Dana, and published in 1967. Poema de Chile describes the poet's return to Chile after death, in the company of an Indian boy from the Atacama desert, and an Andean deer, the huemul.
In November 15, 1945, she became the first Latin American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She received the award in person from King Gustav of Sweden on December 10, 1945. In 1947 she received a doctor honoris causa from Mills College, Oakland, California. In 1951 she was awarded the long overdue National Literature Prize in Chile.
Poor health eventually slowed her traveling. During the last years of her life she made her home in Hempstead, New York, where she died from cancer on January 10, 1957, aged 67. Her remains were returned to Chile nine days later. The Chilean government declared three days of national mourning, and hundreds of thousands of Chileans came to pay her their respects.
Some of her best known poems include: Piececitos de Niño, Balada, Todas Íbamos a ser Reinas, La Oración de la Maestra, El Ángel Guardián, Decálogo del Artista and La Flor del Aire.
Work
Sonetos de la Muerte (1914) Desolación (1922) Lecturas para Mujeres (1923) Ternura (1924) Strangely, both her favourite cousin and her lover Romeo Ureta committed suicide. Nubes Blancas y Breve Descripción de Chile (1934) Tala (1938) Antología (1941) Lagar (1954) Recados Contando a Chile (1957) Poema de Chile (1967, published posthumously)
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Poetry Corner (Translation included)
Decálogo del Artista
I. Amarás la belleza, que es la sombra de Dios sobre
el Universo.
II. No hay arte ateo. Aunque no ames al Creador,
lo afirmarás creando a su semejanza.
III. No darás la belleza como cebo para los sentidos,
sino como el natural alimento del alma.
IV. No te será pretexto para la lujuria ni para
la vanidad, sino ejercicio divino.
V. No la buscarás en las ferias ni llevarás
tu obra a ellas, porque la Belleza es virgen,
y la que está en las ferias no es Ella.
VI. Subirá de tu corazón a tu canto y te habrá
purificado a ti el primero.
VII.Tu belleza se llamará también misericordia,
y consolará el corazón de los hombres.
VII.Darás tu obra como se da un hijo: restando
sangre de tu corazón.
IX. No te será la belleza opio adormecedor,
sino vino generoso que te encienda para la acción,
pues si dejas de ser hombre o mujer,
dejarás de ser artista.
X. De toda creación saldrás con vergüenza,
porque fué inferior a tu sueño, e inferior
a ese sueno maravilloso de Dios,
que es la Naturaleza.
English Translation:
Decalogue of the Artist
I. You shall love beauty, which is the shadow of God
over the Universe.
II.There is no godless art. Although you love not the
Creator, you shall bear witness to Him creating His likeness.
III.You shall create beauty not to excite the senses
but to give sustenance to the soul.
IV. You shall never use beauty as a pretext for luxury
and vanity but as a spiritual devotion.
V. You shall not seek beauty at carnival or fair
or offer your work there, for beauty is virginal
and is not to be found at carnival or fair.
VI. Beauty shall rise from your heart in song,
and you shall be the first to be purified.
VII.The beauty you create shall be known
as compassion and shall console the hearts of men.
VIII.You shall bring forth your work as a mother
brings forth her child: out of the blood of your heart.
IX. Beauty shall not be an opiate that puts you
to sleep but a strong wine that fires you to action,
for if you fail to be a true man or a true woman,
you will fail to be an artist.
X. Each act of creation shall leave you humble,
for it is never as great as your dream and always
inferior to that most marvelous dream of God
which is Nature.
To See Him Again
Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?
Or at the edge of a pale path
that encircles the farmlands,
or upon the rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a shimmering moon?
Or beneath the forest's
luxuriant, raveled tresses
where, calling his name,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my cry?
Oh no. To see him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!
To be with him...
every springtime and winter,
united in one anguished knot
around his bloody neck!
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