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Thursday 7 May 2020

Poet of the Month 063: GABRIELA MISTRAL

  



GABRIELA MISTRAL
7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957





 
 
 
SLOW RAIN



 
 
This timorous, sorrowful water
Like a child that suffers,
Before it touches the earth,
    Falls fainting.
 

The tree and the wind are quiet
And in the stupendous silence,
These clear and bitter tears
    Keep falling.
 

The sky is like an immense heart
Which opens bitterly.
It does not rain:  it is bleeding, slowly,
    Abundantly.
 

Men indoors at the hearthstone
Feel none of this bitterness,
This gift of sorrowful water
    From above us.
 

This wide and weary descent
Of conquered waters
Toward the earth, reclining
    And exhausted.
 

The lifeless water is falling
As quietly as in a dream,
Like the slight creations
    Dreams are full of.
 

It rains… and like a tragic jackal
Night lies in wait in the mountains.
Out of the earth, in darkness,
    What will rise up?
 

And shall you sleep, while, outside,
This sickly lifeless water of death
    Is falling?



 
 
 
Published May 1943


 
 
 
 
 
 
Translated by 
 
HR HAYS







 

 

 

'Gabriela Mistral' was the pseudonym of Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, social activist and Nobel Prize winner Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga. 

 

Alcayaga was born in the small town of Vicuña on 7 April 1889 and spent her childhood in the village of Monte Grande, nestled in an arid valley of the Andes mountains, where she attended the local primary school run by her sister Emelina who was fifteen years her senior.  Her father, also a teacher who loved to sing and carouse, abandoned his family when she was three years old, returning only rarely to visit his wife and daughters before disappearing for good and probably dying in 1911.  Alcayaga would always recall her days in Monte Grande as an idyllic time of her life where she was able to indulge her lifelong love of nature to her heart's content. 

 

In 1910 she qualified as a teacher, having already spent several years supporting her mother by working as a teaching assistant in the seaside village of Compañia near the southern town of La Serena.  She was also a published writer, with several of her poems appearing in local newspapers in 1904 (when she was just fifteen) and an important if controversial article La instruccíon de la mujer [The Education of Women] following them into print two years later.  The publication of the latter probably explains why she was refused entry to the teaching course at the Normal School in La Serena, its Catholic chaplain marking her out as a potential troublemaker because he considered her so-called 'radical' ideas to be at odds with those of a dutiful Catholic woman and future moulder of young minds.  Alcayaga overcame this setback by studying for and obtaining her teaching certificate on her own, although she remained bitter all her life at being denied such an important educational opportunity.

 

Her lack of formal education did not prevent Alcayaga from rising swiftly through the ranks of the Chilean education system after gaining her teaching credentials.  She was sent to many different parts of Chile to teach and serve as an educational administrator and came to know her country and its inhabitants very well.  She also continued to write, sending several poems and a short story to the Spanish language magazine Elegancias, published in Paris by the Nicaraguan editor Rubén Darío.  Her work appeared in this magazine in 1913 while she was working in a liceo, or high school, in the city of Los Andes –– a six year appointment that allowed her to pay regular visits to the Chilean capital Santiago and participate to some degree in the city's intellectual life.  A year later her collection of poems titled Sonetos de la Muerte [Sonnets of Death], inspired by the suicide of her first love Romelio Ureta in 1909, was awarded first prize in the Juegos Florales, a prestigious national literary contest.  It was after winning this prize that Alcayaga permanently adopted the pseudonym 'Gabriela Mistral,' allegedly created by combining the names of two of her favourite poets, the Italian Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Frenchman Frédéric Mistral.  But this success in no way diminished her devotion to her pupils or prevented her from running the night classes she offered for free to poor workers, none of whom had access to any other form of education. 

 

After spending time in Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in Chile located in the desolate Patagonia region, and then in the largely native community of Temuco (where she encouraged the teenaged Pablo Neruda to pursue his literary ambitions and began a lifelong friendship with him), Alcayaga returned to Santiago where she was appointed principal of the Liceo des Niñas #6 [Girls High School #6].  Although this was a much coveted position, she only remained in the job a year, leaving Chile in 1922 for Mexico where she had accepted an invitation from that country's Minister of Education to help him construct a national education system based upon the successful Chilean model.  

 

Her poems and other writings continued to appear in magazines, newspapers, education journals and literary periodicals, with her showing no interest in publishing a book until Desolacíon [Desolation], featuring some of the bleak poems she had written while living in Punta Arenas, appeared in 1922.  The fact that this collection was published in New York by the Spanish language Instituto de las Españas helped to consolidate her growing international reputation, as did the lectures she gave in several US cities and the time she spent in Europe prior to the publication of her second poetry collection Ternura [Tenderness], which appeared in Madrid in 1924.  Although she returned to Chile in 1925, Alcayaga did not remain at home for long.  With the passing of new government legislation which forbade anybody without a recognized university degree to teach in the national school system, she found herself suddenly jobless and accepted a post at the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation sponsored by the League of Nations.  In early 1926 she left for Paris and a new life of entirely self-imposed exile from her native land.

 

Alcayaga spent the rest of her life combining her work as a poet and essayist with that of a lecturer on education-related subjects and, from 1932 onward, as Chilean consul in cities including Naples, Lisbon, Los Angeles and New York.  Her third volume of poetry, titled Tala, appeared in 1938, with all proceeds from its sale being donated to children orphaned in the Spanish Civil War.  In November 1945 she made history by becoming the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, an honour that her former pupil Pablo Neruda would also receive in 1971. 

 

An enthusiastic traveler throughout her life, failing health eventually forced Alcayaga to settle in the New York town of Roslyn with her final female partner Doris Dana.  She was transferred from Roslyn to Hempstead Hospital in New York City where she died, of pancreatic cancer, on 10 January 1957 with Dana, who had been named her literary executor, at her bedside.  Her body was returned to Chile, with its government declaring three days of national mourning which saw her remains visited by thousands of Chileans who rightly considered her a champion of the poor and underprivileged and a legitimate national treasure.


 

 

Use the link below to read more poems by Chilean poet, essayist, educator and diplomat GABRIELA MISTRAL:

 

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gabriela-mistral

 

 

 

 

 

 

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