LUCILA GODOY ALCAYAGA AKA GABRIELA MISTRAL

Today, The Grandma has been reading some poetry. She loves it. She has chosen some works written by Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, the Chilean poet also known as Gabriela Mistral, who was born on a day like today in 1889.

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (7 April 1889-10 January 1957), known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and humanist.

In 1945, she became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.

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 Native American and European influences. Her portrait also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note.

Mistral was born in Vicuña, Chile, but was raised in the small Andean village of Montegrande, where she attended a primary school taught by her older sister, Emelina Molina. She respected her sister greatly, despite the many financial problems that Emelina brought her in later years.

In 1904, Mistral published some early poems, such as Ensoñaciones, Carta Íntima and Junto al Mar, in the local newspaper El Coquimbo: Diario Radical, and La Voz de Elqui using a range of pseudonyms and variations on her civil name.

In 1906, Mistral met a railway worker, Romelio Ureta, her first love, who killed himself in 1909. Shortly after, her second love married someone else. This heartbreak was reflected in her early poetry and earned Mistral her first recognized literary work in 1914 with Sonetos de la muerte.

Mistral was awarded first prize in a national literary contest Juegos Florales in the Chilean capital, Santiago. Writing about his suicide led the poet to consider death and life more broadly than previous generations of Latin American poets. While Mistral had passionate friendships with various men and women, and these impacted her writings, she was secretive about her emotional life.

More information: ThoughtCo

She had been using the pen name Gabriela Mistral since June 1908 for much of her writing. After winning the Juegos Florales she infrequently used her given name of Lucila Godoy for her publications. She formed her pseudonym from the names of two of her favorite poets, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral or, as another story has it, from a composite of the Archangel Gabriel and the mistral wind of Provence.

In 1922, Mistral released her first book, Desolación) with the help of the Director of Hispanic Institute of New York, Federico de Onis. It was a collection of poems that encompassed motherhood, religion, nature, morality and love of children. Her personal sorrow was present in the poems and her International reputation was established. Her work was a turn from modernism in Latin America and was marked by critics as direct, yet simplistic. In 1924, she released her second book, Ternura.

The poet Pablo Neruda, Chile's second Nobel Prize recipient, met Mistral when she moved to his hometown of Temuco. She read his poems and recommended reading for him. They became lifelong friends.

Mistral's work is characterized by including gray tones in her literature; sadness and bitterness are recurrent feelings on it. These are evoked in her writings as the reflection of a hard childhood, plagued by deprivation coupled with a lack of affection in her home. However, since her youth as a teacher in a rural school, Gabriela Mistral had a great affection for children that shows throughout her writing.

Religion was also reflected in her literature as Catholicism had great influence in her life. Nevertheless, she always reflected a more neutral stance regarding the concept of religion. Thus we can find the religious combined with feelings of love and piety, making her into one of the worthiest representatives of Latin American literature of twentieth century.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the image of Gabriela Mistral was appropriated by the military dictatorship of Pinochet presenting her as a symbol of submission to the authority and social order.

Mistral had diabetes and heart problems. Eventually she died in Hempstead Hospital in New York City on 10 January 1957, at 67 years of age.

More information: Poetry Foundation

 At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune,
I am the direct voice of the poets of my race
and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues.

Gabriela Mistral