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Gabriela Mistral's Poema de Chile
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
The distinguished Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1945, died in Hempstead, Long Island, on January 10, 1957, of cancer. In the numerous articles that appeared in newspapers and magazines after her death the factual mistakes about her life and writings were endless. Although her critics have not been careful to separate myths from facts, most of these errors can be corrected by referring to books or articles about her—but not the mistakes about her as yet unpublished Poema de Chile. For this reason I have assembled these notes about the Poema de Chile taken from conversations with Gabriela during the last four years of her life which she spent for the most part working on the Poema and on her Lagar poems. Part of the Lagar poems she published in 1954. The rest of her Lagar poems will be published posthumously by her literary heir, Doris Dana. These will probably appear before the unfinished Poema de Chile because of the difficulties inherent in the preparation of the Poema for publication.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1961
References
1 I should like to express my thanks here to Doris Dana for permission to quote excerpts from the Poema de Chile.
2 “Recado de Chile,” Diario las Américas (Miami), January 15, 1957.
3 (Santiago, 1950). “Cuatro tiempos del huemul” (pp. 86–95) is also part of the Poema de Chile although it is not cited here as a fragment.
4 Pp. 96–100.
5 Pp. 101–109.
6 Desolación (New York, 1922), p. ii.
7 Tala (Buenos Aires, 1938), p. 271.
8 Poesías completas de Gabriela Mistral, ed. Bates, Margaret (Madrid, Aguilar, 1958), p. 287.Google Scholar This I will refer to as Poesías completas.
9 Each part of the Poema has a title.
10 The manuscript has a blank space here. Gabriela often left spaces if the word didn’t come to her immediately and went on.
11 Gabriela was repeating in 1955 something that she had said earlier—almost with the same words. In Zig-Zag (July 6, 1918) Gabriela had praised Acuña’s, Carlos Vaso de arcilla: “Creo que no hay nada más difícil que hacer poesía criolla. Es tan fácil caer en la grosería y en la insipidez.”Google Scholar Castro, Raúl Silva, “Producción de Gabriela Mistral de 1912 a 1918,” Anales de la Universidad de Chile, año 115, no. 106 (1957), p. 248.Google Scholar
12 “Versicle of Peace” delivered by Mistral, Gabriela on receiving the Serra Award of The Americas for 1950. (The Americas, 7, 3 [January, 1951], 282.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 I quote from the typescript of a lecture given by Palma Guillén de Nicolau at the Universidad Femenina, Mexico, D. F., April 30, 1957, p. 4. It has no title.
14 After Gabriela’s death I discovered that she had published in Sur (November, 1939, pp. 17–18) a very inferior version entitled “Lago Llanquihue.” It would seem to me to be a rough draft published in a weak moment at the insistence of some friend. Gabriela calls the water “tierna y vieja” but the tenderness is not as well expressed as in this excerpt I quote from the Poema.
15 Gabriela sometimes uses this word, as well as “jugarreta,” with its New World meaning. The suffixation does not always give the word the pejorative sense of “mala pasada.”
16 Poesías completas, p. 451. In this first edition there are many misprints. Here casuales should be read casales. In the second edition the misprints will be corrected.
17 Most of Gabriela’s poetry is autobiographical. This does not cause difficulties in the Poema de Chile because the circumstances of the poem, that fact that she is talking to a child, keep her away from the psychological complexity of Lagar, for instance, which is written parallel chronologically to the Poema. Even “the right kind of reader” sometimes misinterprets some of the poems of Lagar because of the predominance of autobiography, autobiography of a very unique and original personality: “Encontrarse cara a cara por primera vez con un ser tan peculiar como Gabriela, con una personalidad tan cautivadora, es un acontecimiento que sigue siempre gravitando en nuestra vida.” (Ocampo, Victoria, “Gabriela Mistral y el premio Nobel,” Testimonios; tercera serie [Buenos Aires, 1946], p. 173.)Google Scholar According to Palma Guillén de Nicolau, an intimate friend, Gabriela's writings only give a fragmentary portrait of her: “Era uno de los seres a los que hay que conocer personalmente para darse cuenta de la multiplicidad de sus dones. Gabriela no se dijo entera a si misma en sus mejores poesías. Su obra no ha entregado sino muy fragmentariamente lo que ella fué.” (Typescript of a lecture on Gabriela Mistral given April 26, 1957, at the Facultad de Derecho, Universidad Nacional de México, p. 9.) Gabriela’s poetry poses a special problem for those critics who say, and for very good reasons, that one should not go beyond the text, that one should not read things into poetry by making use of information extrinsic to the poem. For most writers this is the best method because of the normalcy of the experiences described by them but if this method is used with Gabriela Mistral often something will be lacking in the understanding of the poem.
18 Poesías completas, pp. 291–292.
19 Poesías completas, p. 308.
20 See note 15.
21 Agrarian Reform only is mentioned in the Poema. But that was second best. Gabriela’s ideal was common ownership of the land and equitable sharing of its fruits, a truly Christian community. And it wasn’t in books that Gabriela had discovered this ideal. She had experienced the joy of such a society as a child in Montegrande. In this Andean valley division of the land was simply a formula; the land belonged to everybody. In this patriarchal setting generosity was expected and not applauded as something exceptional. Gabriela, as she grew older, realized more and more how rare this truly Christian communism of her childhood was, and how impossible it was to restore it. The hard headed Sancho who accompanied her on her journey certainly would laugh at such fantastic ideas. The Agrarian Reform was something he could accept. Much to Gabriela’s chagrin these ideas sometimes caused a “Communist Legend” to grow up around her (“Alone” [Arrieta, Hernán Díaz] discusses this in: “Gabriela Mistral y el comunismo,” La tentacion de morir [Santiago, 1954], p. 100).Google Scholar The social justice she worked for was a Christian social justice. She was constantly looking for practical ways of solving the problem of the poor Chilean farmer working someone else's land, without training and without tools and proper equipment. Sometimes she would send seeds back to Chile, other times, technical publications. The best solution she saw in television as an educational instrument and one of diversion—this, she thought, might be powerful enough to cure the plague of alcoholism that resulted from the frustrations of a hard, sub-human, unrewarding life.
22 Loynaz, Dulce María, “Gabriela y Lucila,” Poesías completas, p. 119.Google Scholar
23 Poesías completas, p. 712.
24 de Vázquez, Margot Arce, Gabriela Mistral, persona y poesía (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1958), pp. 93–94.Google Scholar
25 “La desasida,” Poesías completas, p. 604: “… que de haber ido tan lejos / no me alcanzan las flechas.”
26 In some of the poems of Lagar there is a feeling of peace and happiness as Gabriela sees again her loved ones who are separated from her by death. In Tala she had called to them in vain. One of her purposes in returning to earth in the Poema was to teach the boy the importance of the friendship of the dead. Separation by death does not cause her the anguish it did in Tala. Her belief in immortality had become stronger.
27 This is a surmise on my part. Gabriela’s typescripts are seldom dated.
28 The poem “Lago Llanquihue” (see note 14) is an example of an intermediate version, I would surmise. It has a predominance of nine syllable verses (14 out of 26). There are 4 verses of eight syllables; 3 verses of nine or eight, 5 verses of ten.
29 The “Cuenta-Mundo” section (Poesías completas, pp. 287–313) consists of an introduction and 17 poems. In the five poems that were published for the first time in Ternura, 1945 (“La piña,” “La fresa,” “Trigo argentino,” “Carro del cielo,” “El arco iris”) the eight syllable verse predominates. Already in Tala (1938) in “La tierra” (pp. 221–222) the “niño” has become “niño indio”: “Niño indio, si estás cansado,/tú te acuestas sobre la Tierra. ….”
30 “Imperfección y albricia,” Homenaje a Gabriela Mistral (Madrid, 1946) p. 37. What intrigues Gerardo Diego is the “rhythmical elasticity” of Gabriela. He is exasperated at the pedantry of critics like Julio Saavedra Molina who call “imperfection” what to Diego is “necessary abnormality.” But what is even more curious is “… de tales escrúpulos y casi remordimientos llega a contagiarse el propio poeta. Abundan en las confesiones de Gabriela Mistral alegatos de silvestre rudeza y excusas de autodidáctica, e incluso rubores de la nativa y no vencida limitación y bastedad. Ni ella ni sus aristarcos tienen razón” (pp. 38–39). This problem I have referred to in “Apropos An Article on Gabriela Mistral,” The Americas, XIV, 2 (October, 1957), 145–151.
31 A proof of her sensitivity, in spite of all her confessions in regard to her ear, is her attitude to the reading of her own poetry. This has also been discussed in my “Apropos An Article …” (note 30). What I said there has since been corroborated by Loynaz, Dulce María in “Gabriela y Lucila,” Poesías completas, p. 139.Google Scholar Dulce María Loynaz, realizing how difficult it was to read aloud the poetry of Gabriela, rehearsed beforehand with Gabriela: “Leía yo ante una Gabriela entredormida, bajos los párpados, inmóviles los músculos del rostro. Pero bastaba el salto de una coma, el titubeo de un acento, o simplemente que la inflexión no fuese la esperada por ella, para verla ya incorporada en el asiento, atajándome el verso con mano ligera como firme.” Loynaz, Dulce María read in Gabriela’s place since Gabriela realized that “su voz no era la más indicada para ello …” (p. 139).Google Scholar Those who have heard the recordings of Gabriela reading her own poetry would hardly agree.