Today, The Grandma has been reading some poems written by Alfonsina Storni, the Argentine poet who died on a day like today in 1938.
Alfonsina Storni (29 May 1892-25 October 1938) was an Argentine poet of the modernist period.
Storni was born on May 29, 1892 in Sala Capriasca, Switzerland. Her parents were Alfonso Storni and Paola Martignoni, who were of Italian-Swiss descent. Before her birth, her father had started a brewery in the city of San Juan, Argentina, producing beer and soda.
In 1891, following the advice of a doctor, he returned with his wife to Switzerland, where Alfonsina was born the following year; she lived there until she was four years old.
In 1896 the family returned to San Juan, and a few years later, in 1901, moved to Rosario because of economic issues. There her father opened a tavern, where Storni did a variety of chores. That family business soon failed, however.
Storni wrote her first verse at the age of twelve, and continued writing verses during her free time. She later entered into the Colegio de la Santa Union as a part-time student.
In 1906, her father died, and she began working in a hat factory to help support her family.
In 1907, her interest in dance led her to join a travelling theatre company, which took her around the country. She performed in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, Benito Pérez Galdós's La loca de la casa, and Florencio Sánchez's Los muertos.
More information: Poem Hunter
In 1908, Storni returned to live with her mother, who had remarried and was living in Bustinza. After a year there, Storni went to Coronda, where she studied to become a rural primary schoolteacher. During this period, she also started working for the local magazines Mundo Rosarino and Monos y Monadas, as well as the prestigious Mundo Argentino.
In 1912, she moved to Buenos Aires, seeking the anonymity afforded by a big city. There she met and fell in love with a married man, whom she described as an interesting person of certain standing in the community. He was active in politics... That year, she published her first short story in Fray Mocho.
At age nineteen, she found out that she was pregnant with the child of a journalist and became a single mother. Supporting herself with teaching and newspaper journalism, she lived in Buenos Aires, where the social and economic difficulties faced by Argentina's growing middle classes were inspiring an emerging body of women's rights activists.
Storni was among the first women to find success in the male-dominated arenas of literature and theatre in Argentina, and as such, developed a unique and valuable voice that holds particular relevance in Latin American poetry.
Storni often gave controversial opinions. She criticized a wide range of topics, from politics to gender roles and discrimination against women.
In Storni's time, her work did not align itself with a particular movement or genre. It was not until the modernist and avant-garde movements began to fade that her work seemed to fit in. She was criticized for her atypical style, and she has been labelled most often as a postmodern writer.
Storni published some of her first works in 1916 in Emin Arslan's literary magazine La Nota, where she was a permanent contributor from 28 March until 21 November 1919. Her poems Convalecer and Golondrinas were published in the magazine. In spite of economic difficulties, she published La inquietud del rosal in 1916, and later started writing for the magazine Caras y Caretas while working as a cashier in a shop.
Even though today Storni's early works of poetry are among her most well known and highly regarded, they received harsh criticism from some of her male contemporaries, including such well-known figures as Jorge Luis Borges and Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza. The eroticism and feminist themes in her writing were a controversial subject for poetry during her time, but writing about womanhood in such a direct way was one of her principal innovations as a poet.
In the rapidly developing literary scene of Buenos Aires, Storni soon became acquainted with other writers, such as José Enrique Rodó and Amado Nervo. Her economic situation improved, which allowed her to travel to Montevideo, Uruguay. There she met the poet Juana de Ibarbourou, as well as Horacio Quiroga, with whom she would become great friends. Quiroga led the Anaconda group and Storni became a member together with Emilia Bertolé, Ana Weiss de Rossi, Amparo de Hieken, Ricardo Hicken and Berta Singerman.
During one of her most productive periods, from 1918 to 1920 Storni published three volumes of poetry: El dulce daño, 1918; Irremediablemente, 1919; and Languidez, 1920. The latter received the first Municipal Poetry Prize and the second National Literature Prize, which added to her prestige and reputation as a talented writer.
More information: Poetry North West
She also published many articles in prominent newspapers and journals of the time. Later, she continued her experimentation with form in 1925's Ocre, a volume composed almost entirely of sonnets that are among her most traditional in structure. These verses were written around the same time as the more loosely structured prose poems of her lesser-known volume, Poemas de Amor, from 1926.
After a nearly 8-year hiatus from publishing volumes of poetry, Storni published El mundo de siete pozos, 1934. That volume, together with the final volume she published before her death, Mascarilla y trébol (Mask and Clover), 1938, mark the height of her poetic experimentation. The final volume includes the use of what she termed antisonnets, or poems that used many of the versification structures of traditional sonnets but did not follow the traditional rhyme scheme.
In 1935, Storni may have discovered a lump on her left breast and decided to undergo an operation. On May 20, 1935, she underwent a radical mastectomy.
In 1938, she found out that the breast cancer had reappeared. Around 1:00 AM on Tuesday, 25 October 1938. Storni left her room and headed towards the sea at La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, and committed suicide. Later that morning, two workers found her body washed up on the beach.
Although her biographers hold that she jumped into the water from a breakwater, popular legend is that she slowly walked out to sea until she drowned. She is buried in La Chacarita Cemetery. Her death inspired Ariel Ramírez and Félix Luna to compose the song Alfonsina y el Mar.
More information: Alfonsina y el mar
El oro falso de unas cuantas rimas
Sobre su espalda, y se creyó gloriosa,
De cosechas opimas.
I have been the one who walked proudly
The fake gold of a few rhymes
On her back, and she thought herself glorious,
Of opima crops.
Alfonsina Storni
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