Gabriela Mistral

Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga

Pseudonym(s):	Gabriela Mistral
Born:	April 7, 1889 Vicuña, Chile
Died:	January 11, 1957 Hempstead, New York
Occupation(s):	poet
Nationality:	Chilean
Writing period:	1922-1957

Gabriela Mistral (April 7, 1889 – January 11, 1957) was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator and diplomat who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945. Though her personal life was often struck by tragedy, Mistral played an important role in changing Mexican and Chilean educational systems; and, was active on the cultural committees and societies.

Mistral published over thirty collections of poetry in her lifetime. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love (especially maternal love), sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Indian and European influences. Mistral's poetry is influenced by her Christian faith and a recurrent theme seen in some of her poems is that of a "rebirth" after death; and, hence, liberation from the world. Some of Mistral's 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

Life

Mistral was born in Vicuña, a small town in northern Chile. Her parents were both of mixed Basque and Indian heritage. Her father, Jerónimo Godoy, who was a teacher, abandoned the family when she was three years old. She lived with her mother and sister, Emelina, in a small house in the Elqui Valley. Mistral attended rural primary school and Vicuña state secondary school until she was twelve years old. At age fourteen, she began working as a teacher's aide and began to teach classes when she was fifteen.

In 1906, while working as a teacher at La Serena, Mistral met and fell in love with Romelio Ureta, a young railway worker, who killed himself in 1909. The profound effects of death were already in the poet's work; writing about his suicide led Mistral to consider death and life more broadly than previous generations of Latin American poets. The tragedy continued when two of her friends committed suicide in 1942; and, later, when her nephew Juan Miguel committed suicide — he was only seventeen years old. Mistral never married, but adopted a child who subsequently passed away.

After Mistral was invited to help reform the schools in Mexico, she traveled widely and lived in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Central America, the United States, the Antilles and Puerto Rico. She only returned to Chile for two brief visits, in 1938 and 1954. Mistral lived in France and Italy between 1925 and 1934, where she worked for the League for Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. During this period she wrote more than fifty newspaper and magazine articles a year.

Mistral held honorary degrees from the University of Florence and the University of Guatemala.

Her mother, Petronila Alcayaga, died in 1929. Gabriela dedicated the first section of the book Tala (Tree Fall) to her.

As a poet

Around 1913 the pseudonym Gabriela Mistral first appeared. It is believed that Mistral formed her pseudonymn from the two of her favorite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral. Under this name she submitted three sonnets under the general title Sonetos de la muerte (Sonnets of Death), which told the story of love and death. She won first prize for these poems in the Juegos Florales contest, organized by the city of Santiago. After this, newspapers and magazines throughout South America began to invite her to write for them. After winning the Juegos Florales she rarely used her given name of Lucila Godoy for her publications.

Mistral published her first collection of poems, Desolación (Despair) in 1922. The main themes of this collection are that of Christian faith, pain and death. In 1924 Ternura (Tenderness), a collection of poems dominated by the theme of childhood, appeared. This publication was followed by Tala in 1938, which also focuses on the theme of childhood, as well as that of maternity.

In November 15, 1945, Mistral became the first Latin American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The death of Mistral's 17-year-old nephew, 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.

Mistral may be most widely quoted in English for Su Nombre es Hoy (His Name is Today):

“We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow,’ his name is today.”

File:Gabiela Mistral con Santiago Martinez Delgado.jpg

Gabriela Mistral with Master Santiago Martínez Delgado at Columbia University in NY, probably 1939.

As an educator

In 1918, Mistral was appointed director of a secondary school for girls in rural Punta Arenas. Mistral's advancement in Chile's national school system continued and, in 1921, when she was named director of the newest and most prestigious girls' school in Chile, the Santiago Normal School. This meteoric rise as an educator was due to Mistral's extensive publications, which were directed at a diverse audience from schoolteachers to students to other poets; which included some of Mistral's first texts, such as Diario Radical de Coquimbo and La Voz de Elqui, which were published in a local newspaper in 1905.

She left Chile in 1922, when she was invited to Mexico by that country's Minister of Education, José Vasconcellos, to take part in a program of educational reform. He had her join in the nation's plan to reform libraries and schools, to start a national education system. She introduced mobile libraries to rural areas to make literature more accessible to the poor. In 1923, Mistral was awarded the title of "Teacher of the Nation" by the Chilean government. She left Mexico for Europe in 1924 before returning back to Chile.

Later in life, Mistral taught Spanish literature at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Barnard College, Vassar College and at the University of Puerto Rico.

As a diplomat

She left for Europe in 1926 as an official emissary of the Chilean government. In 1933, Mistral entered the Chilean Foreign Service; and, became an ambassador-at-large for Latin American Culture. She represented Chile as honarary consul in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the United States before and during World War II.

Death and legacy

Poor health eventually slowed Mistral's traveling. During the last years of her life she made her home in New York. After a long illness, Mistral died on January 11, 1957 in New York. She ws buried in the cemetary in Montegrande village, in the Elqui Valley, where she lived as a child.

Following her death, American poet Langston Hughes translated a selection of Mistral's verses into English.

The "Gabriela Mistral Prize" was created in 1979.

Wikipedia

A year later she published Lecturas para Mujeres (Readings for Women), a text in prose and verse that celebrates motherhood, childhood education, and nationalism.

As consul in Madrid, she had occasional 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, which she had known while he was a teenager, and she as school director in his home town of Temuco. As Neruda, Gabriela Mistral became a supporter of the Popular Front which led to the election of the Radical Pedro Aguirre Cerda in 1938. She published hundreds of articles in magazines and newspapers throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Among her confidantes were Eduardo Santos, President of Colombia, all of the elected Presidents of Chile from 1922 to her death in 1957, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

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.

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.

Selected bibliography

• Desolación (1922)
• Lagar (1954)
• Lecturas para Mujeres (1923)
• Poema de Chile (1967, published posthumously)
• Sonetos de la Muerte (1914)
• Tala (1938)
• Ternura (1924)

• Nubes Blancas y Breve Descripción de Chile (1934)
• Antología (1941)
• Recados Contando a Chile (1957)

See also

• Gerardo Martinez
• Grito de Lares

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Noble Prize Library New York City: Helvetica Press, Inc., 1971 ASIN: B000GOY51K

External links

• Gabriela Mistral (1945) Poet Seers Retrieved November 11, 2007.
• Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) - pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga Retrieved November 11, 2007.
• Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) Distinguished Women of Past and Present Retrieved November 11, 2007.
• Gabriela Mistral: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1945 Nobelprize.org Retrieved November 11, 2007.