Poor Mayta

All that kept going through my mind as I read the second half of this tale was “poor Mayta”.  We’ve got this character that’s been idealistic since a child, looking for way to alleviate some of the cruelty that exists in the world, forever walking on egg shells.  He goes on hunger strikes to protest poverty.  He teaches himself French in order to give the proletarian access to avant-guard literature.  He spends all of his time and energy and money on a minuscule Marxist political party that shares his ideals for a better Peru, a country he loves despite the fact that he is ostracized and forced to conceal his sexual preferences.

My heart broke as the plan for the revolution crumbles that morning in the mountains; however Mayta stays impossibly positive, taking every major setback in stride.  Even though his actions seemed doomed from the very beginning he is exulted merely to be part of the action, to be soaked by the rain.

I suppose everyone’s spirit would break eventually in this situation, but I wish I hadn’t met the disillusioned Mayta at the end of the book.  The one that finally is destroyed by the betrayal of his comrades and several stints in an over-crowded prison, the one married with four children, living in a slum, scooping ice-cream for the bourgeois of Mira Flores.  What’s the message here?   Don’t bother?

2010: Mario Vargas Llosa

Arequipa, Perú, 1936-

Isn't this book an education of left-wing splinter groups in 1950s Peru?  I must confess that my knowledge on this topic is finite, and so I've done a bit of research in order to help me understand the pedantic differences.



The Stalinists and the Trotskyites are both Marxist:  They look to implement socialism with a proletarian revolution, and gain equality of the working class and the bourgeois, namely by taking back the land.  However Trotsky argued for a vanguard party for the working class, working-class self-emancipation, proletarian internationalization, and mass democracy.  Conversely a Stalinist believes in an overly-centralized state with a totalitarian figure head, secret police, and propaganda.  It is associated with a regime of terror.  According to Trotskyites, Stalinism is a bureaucratized degenerated worker's state, where the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.  In short they're like the Montague’s and the Capulet’s.

Maoism is a form of Marxism originating in China that, like Stalinism, is “anti-revisionist”, meaning that it's not looking to change the system (and therefore it is also anti-Trotskyism).  A Maoist believes that fixing the social system is the road to capitalism, an “if it ain't broke...” sort of idea.

The Revolutionary Worker's Party aka the Marxist Workers Group, with whom Mayta is affiliated with in the book, is the first Trotskyite political party in Peru.

The APRA is the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, the oldest political party in Peru and the most established.  In the 2006 election they brought in 22.6% of the popular vote. Their politics-centre-left, democratic, and socialist- were toned down in the 50s so that the party could achieve legal status.

Pabloism is based on a man named Michel Pablo who formed an international communist party in Europe called “The Forth international”, with the goal to help the working class bring about socialism.  Not all socialists supported his politics though, and in 1953, those opposed started “The International Committee to the Forth Action”.  A person who is hostile toward the ICFI is known as a Pabloist.

Paz y la Intelligentsia mexicana

Chapter 7 of “El laberinto de la soledad” revolves around the Mexican “Intelligistsia” and their contributions to education, literature, and psychology.  After the revolution the young intellectuals began to work with the new government on legal projects, government plans, education, diplomatic services, public administration etc.  This situation is very different to that of Europe or the United States, as the educated middle class's principle mission is to examine, critique, and judge the government’s actions.  Nevertheless, in this essay Paz praises many different people of that era for their admirable work about the Mexican identity.

Ramos

Like Samuel Ramos, for example, who wrote “El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México”, the first serious Mexican attempt at self-knowledge.  Although Paz states that the central idea of this book-that the Mexican is isolated, and hides himself when he expresses himself-is valid, he also asserts that it suffers from limitations, as Ramos’ resentment reduces the significance of his conclusions.



Cuesta



Additionally there is Jorge Cuesta, who coined the phrase “Frenchification” when he investigated the meaning of tradition.   In his articles of politics, Cuesta is of the opinion that Mexico either lacks a past or re-created itself in opposition to its past.  It denies both the Indian and the colonial tradition, adopting the free election of French rationalism values.  Paz refutes the idea of adapting to French rationalism, because he feels that the Mexican revolutionary movement as well as its contemporary poetry and paintings emphasize individuality.

Reyes

Alfonso Reyes is spoken about with great admiration in this essay.  Poet, critic, and essayist, Paz states that his work is a literature in itself and a lesson in expression and clarity.  Reyes writes of the dangers and the responsibilities of language, and since the roots of language are the roots of morality, writing must be pure.  The Mexican writer has a duty, beyond the fidelity of language, to express his own nature and the feelings of a confused, inarticulate people.  Reyes also asserts that a writer is broken, because although language is a social mechanism, a writer must write in solitude.  He also complains that Latin American writers must use a European language to describe a very different world, and that it is necessary to break down and then re-create the Spanish language so that it becomes Mexican without ceasing to be Spanish.

1990: Octavio Paz

Mexico City:  March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998

So far I've really enjoyed “El laberinto de la soledad, and Paz's insight on the Mexican identity.  In chapter four, Paz describes the Mexican as inscrutable and a contradiction to outsiders: courteous, but reserved, solemn, but outrageous during fiesta, a being that retracts and then repels.   He goes on to sub-categorize his people by describing the difference between a worker and a technician (eg a government employee), their roles and effects on a contemporary, capitalist society, and how it all connects to totalitarianism.

According to Paz, the worker represents the death of old society and the birth of a new one, presumably due to the industrial revolution and the migration of workers from the country to the cities.  He lacks individuality because, like his boss, “son hijos de la máquina”, and can be bought and sold.  Neither the machines that he works on nor the product that is made belongs to him, therefore he loses his human relationship tot he world.

Contemporary society is described by Paz and complex. and the condition of the worker extended to other groups, such as the technician.  Although he (being a government employee, or another white collared worker) has a higher salary, he also lacks awareness of his creations.  The workers can be considered an analogy for society that has a great efficiency but no aim, “la del mecanismo que avanza de ninguna parte hacia ningún lado”.

He goes on the ascertain that a totalitarian regime makes this concept general when looking at capitalism in a social or political sphere.  He compares mass production to totalitarian politics, such as propaganda, terrorism or repression.

Using the example of terrorism, Paz claims that although it starts with the persecution of isolated groups (like races), it gradually touches everyone.  At the onset it is treated with indifference by a society that may even contribute to the discrimination out of hatred.  With being an accomplice comes feelings of guilt.  Therefore the terrorism is generalized, and the persecuted becomes the persecuted. 

Another interesting idea introduced in chapter for is the “moral de siervo...  son rasgos de gente dominada que teme y que finge frente al señor”.  It states that the Mexican is only intimate during fiestas, while drinking, or when a death occurs, and that metaphorically they always wear masks.  Only alone do they show themselves how they really are, and their relationships are constituted by fear and suspicion.   Paz claims the Mexican is a product of social circumstances, and blames the history of Mexico (especially the colonial period) for the psyche of the people.  He states that the country has not yet overcome their social differences, the abuse of authority by the powerful, the violence, and the skepticism and resignation of the people.

1982: Gabriel García Márquez

March 6, 1927 Aracataca, Colombia-

I’m tickeled pink that we’ve arrived at the Marquez portion of the class; I love his work and La Hojarasca didn’t dissapoint.  The story revolves around the suicide of a doctor, and the memories of the family that has come to bury him.  It takes place in the course of a single afternoon in the fictional town Macondo, but through flashbacks the reader is transported to many different periods of the town’s history. 

Maquez seemlessly switches narradors throughout the story (sometimes so seemlessly that I missed it!), and in their different perspectives the reader is better able to piece together events that have taken place in the life of the dead man.  The Colonel acts as an omniscent narrador, who has witnessed events about which rumours swirl, and is sympathetic to the hated doctor.  Isabel is an observer, but with limited knowledge, and represents the town’s feeling of spite and non-understanding toward him.  The child is an innocent and un-biased however sensitive in an almost supernatural way.  By exploring the thoughts of three narradors Marquez creates a more well-rounded tale.

Time is used cleverly in a variety of ways throughout La Hojarasca.  Times in the day are repeated to suggest the simplicity (and banality) of daily life in Macundo:  The still of the afternoon when eveyone takes a siesta, the meeting of the men at the barbarshop at dusk, the 2:30pm train that passes (but no longer stops).  It is also a trigger of memory, like when the Colonel remebers that the docotr arrived in the town at 2:30 when he heard the train.  Marques also uses months of the year to suggest the passing of time:  Martin’s arrival in December, then July, the March, then July, and that the women start preparing Isabel’s wedding dress in September, and she marries in December.  Additionally, days of the week are randomly used to mark events in the story:  The doctor dies on a Wednesday, Isabel is married on a Monday, Meme and her ruffles at church on a Sunday.

The sense of smell is also an interesting isotopía in the tale.  The child with his keen sense of smell can wander around his home blind-folded, and know who’s room he’s outside of.  At the begining of the book he is unnerved by the smell of trash (death) in the room of the doctor, later on he is visited by the spirit of his dead grandmother as the Jasmine tree “comes-out”, and of course the very end of the story:

“Ahora sentirán el olor.  Ahora todos los alcaravanes se pondrán a cantar”.  

For Whom the Bell Tolls

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

Maybe I’m going crazy with this weather or something, but I finished this book absolutely furious with all the characters in it.

Like our buddy Angel-Face, for example.  With all of the confidences and plotting that he shared with the president over the years, did he really think he was going to get away with marrying the general’s daughter?  Wouldn’t you grab your wife and your savings and run, maybe start a political newspaper in a country with no extradition laws, sip espresso in a cafe with other ex-pats and plot a revolution?

Or the lawyer’s wife, who’s so surprised when they take her husband away:

“Miedo, frío, asco, se sobrepuso a todo por estrecharse a la muralla que repetiría el eco de la descarga…  Después de todo, ya estando allí, se le hacía que fusilaran a su marido, así como así, así de una descarda, con balas, con armas, hombres como él…”

Does this woman not pass the jail every single day, with the crying women outside?  Did she not hear about the general’s flight from the uncharacteristic accusations against him?  Why does she expect her fate to be any different?

These people live in a society where a mother is force-fed lime so that she cannot feed her newborn.  Where a wife cannot find out where her husband is buried, and family bar family from their homes for fear gossip.   The jails are overflowing with students and priests, and the streets amok with a secret police that is more criminals than law enforcement.  How long are you going to keep your head down in a society like this?  You have to know that one day soon they’ll come for you too.  And if you realize that there’s no hope, that your life and the lives of your family are worth nothing, what would you do?  I’d be fighting alligators, and trying to get across the frontier, not sit there until the whim of the president gets me in front of a firing squad.  Or if I was going down I'd at least try to take a few of them with me.

1967: Miguel Angel Asturias

1899-1974-Guatamala



El Señor Presidente tiene lugar en una ciudad sin nombre, que podría ser situado en cualquiera parte de América Sur.  Hay la Plaza de Armas y el Portal de Señor, donde duermen las personas sin hogar.  Hay el bazar de los turcos, el Callejón de Judío, y el Callejón del Rey, “el preferido de los jugadores”.  Hay una escuela de párvulos, un matadero (¿Echevarría, alguien?), el cuartel de ejército y “los suburbios, donde la ciudad sala allá fuera”.  Estéticamente esta ciudad es perfectamente normal, hasta pintoresca; pero hay un sentimiento intranquilo, como si está embrujado, o silencioso.

                A prima vista, la gente de la ciudad parecen que ser habitantes ordinarios, siguiendo con sus vidas: Cónyuges se pelean el uno a la otra, el panadero reparte el pan, y todos en el barrio están invitados al bautizo del bebé nuevo.  Pero nadie habla de los cárceles atestados, que están llenos de los testigos de crimines que necesitan que cambiar sus cuentos,  hombres que han sido declarado culpables de traición.   Fuera, sus mujeres descalzas “se contaban sus penas en voz baja”.

                Es una ciudad donde unos son “obligados a trabajar para ganarse el pan, y otros con lo superfluo en la privilegiada industria del ocio: amigos de Señor Presidente, propietarios de casas”.

                Mucho así en Alemania Oriental o en Big Brother por George Orwell, esta comunidad tiene por todas partes una Policía Secreta: Una organización de paisanos, cuyo trabajo es espiar a sus vecinos y realizar asesinatos por contracto en nombre del Presidente.  Es una posición moralmente reprensible, pero una que paga dinero en una época con un desempleo alto; por lo tanto es un empleo codiciado.

                Lucio Vásquez, o “Sucio Bascas”, “al que le dicen Teriopelo” es un miembro de la Policía Secreta.  Es un borracho; frecuenta muchos de los barros de la ciudad, donde cuenta los secretos del estado a sus amigos.  “La voz de Vásquez era desagradable, hablaba como mujer con una vocecita tierna, atiplada, falsa” .  A pesar de su voz femenina, es un depredador sexual, que constantemente hostiga la fondera de la Masacuate.  Participa en la tortura y el asesinato de Mosquito, el sólo hombre que no mentiría para enviar Eusebio Canales a su muerte.  También Terciopelo asesina el Pelelele sin hesitación, y está deseando para planear el secuestro de una mujer y el pillaje de su casa:

                “¡María Santísima si uno se pone que no cabe del gusto cuando se pepena algo o se roba una jallina, que será cuando se birla a una hembre!”

                Teriopelo, como un representante del gobierno, es una metáfora por el Presidente él mismo: Sin remordimientos, sin corazón, sin piedad, sin vergüenza.

Neruda is from Mars, Mistral is from Venus



“I believe in prophetic speech… still.  I believe in Cassandra, I believe in Elektra and the charming Antigone… for me they’re more alive than the intellectual co-operation and its choice group of old men.”

 –Mistral.

Although as a rule I try my best to avoid gender issues, I think that the identity of women is a huge theme in both of the authors’ works, and it needs to be discussed.

Mistral was a successful woman living in a male-controlled literary and political culture, and because of this had trouble with her own identity as well as the role of women in society.  Raised in poverty in a rural setting, she somehow broke free from the traditional fate of marriage and housekeeping and rose to the public life of poet, ambassador, and Nobel Prize winner.   Mistral was a paradox- maternal yet bore no children, an unwavering spirituality but deranged though grief and suffering, she loved her homeland deeply and yet she always lived abroad-and her issues with self-identity are evident in her work.   She wrote about women in history considered outsiders and related to them.  The characters she created-Through Hebrew Scriptures and Greek tragedies- are self-portraits, or spiritual states through which she was passing, and contain hallucination, prophecy, raving, and altered physic states.  Through these traits of “locura”, Mistral questions the possibility that a woman is not crazy in the face of extreme conditions, but merely conflicted as she attempts to break the gender molds in which she in encased.

Neruda-also a poet, ambassador and Nobel Prize winner- didn’t seem to have an issue with being a man.  He is very up-front in his poetry about his needs and feelings, and expresses love and lust and the manly emotions that come with it.  Although he idolizes the women in his poems, he also refers to them as possessions, a doll without a voice, an object.   His description of women is mainly physical: body parts compared to mountains or fruit, with lots of nudity.   Love is repeatedly described as a violent thing with negative condemnations, and the women in the poems are constantly subject to his scorn, desire, and despair.  There is little intellect in 20 poemas (one will not hear of Orestes from Elektra, for example) however the feelings are so vivid that the reader feels physically there with Neruda as he embarks on his erotic and sensual adventures with beautiful Chilean women.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.







Hell hath no fury...

Yes, we all know that love is grand, and after reading his 20 love poems it is safe to say that Neruda is a lover.  Exhaustively so.  So after over-dosing on the beauty of woman and unbridled passion for the last two weeks I was ticked pink to read The Song of Despair, a poem rich with resentment about the end of a love affair.

The relationship is a classic one that we've seen throughout the ages:  Boy is an island until he meets girl.  Boy and girl engage in a passionate, short-lived affair.  Girl distances herself from boy, the relationship dies.  Boy is super jaded, and defames girl all over Facebook.  This is essentially the plot of the poem, although it is not in chronological order.

There was the black solitude of the islands,

and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. 

In the beginning of their union, the narrator is enamored with the woman, describing her as fruit that nourished him, a miracle, his own flesh, a possession.  He describes his feelings for her with words like hunger, thirst, and the turbulent drunkenness of love, that blazed like a lighthouse. 

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,

oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

But, alas, the passionate was short lived, and the narrator implies that the relationship was tempestuous, to say the least.

How terrible and brief my was my desire of you!

How difficult and drunken, how tense and avid.

 Here's where the bad feeling start.  While the narrator is trying to make it work,

I made the wall of shadow draw back,

beyond desire and act, I walked on.

it seems that his sweetheart is just not that into him anymore, which results  in an barrage of insults.  Now his miracle is an open and bitter well, a pit of debris, an empty jar that is shattered by infinite oblivion (burn!).  He is furious at her girdled sorrow, which I decipher as her ability to hide her emotions.

The beginning of the poem is actually well after the break-up time-wise, and the narrator uses delicious comparisons to a shipwreck (debris, deserted etc) as he looks back at the relationship.

You swallowed everything, like distance.

Like the sea, like time.  In you everything sank.

Ouch.  Hell hath no fury like Neruda scorned.

Neruda and Tagore

XVI

En mi cielo al crepúsculo/In My Sky at Twilight

This poem by Neruda is a paraphrase of the 30^th poem in The Gardener, a book of poetry by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).  Tagore was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter, and playwright, who (surprise surprise) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.  He also penned the national anthem for two countries:  Jan Gana Mana (India) and Amar Shonar Bengla (Bangladesh).  He was known for his lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplative style. 

Poem 30:  The Gardener

You are the evening cloud floating in the sky of my dreams.
I paint you and fashion you ever with my love longings.
You are my own, my own, Dweller in my endless dreams!

Your feet are rosy-red with the glow of my heart's desire,
Gleaner of my sunset songs!
Your lips are bitter-sweet with the taste of my wine of pain.
You are my own, my own, Dweller in my lonesome dreams!

With the shadow of my passion have I darkened your eyes, Haunter
of the depth of my gaze!
I have caught you and wrapt you, my love, in the net of my music.
You are my own, my own, Dweller in my deathless dreams!

  

In My Sky at Twightlight

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.

How I see this poem is an older man who has found a second chance at love with a younger woman.  “My sky a twilight” suggests a man near the end of his life, so does the image of sour wine, evening song, and widowed voice.

There is much personification of nature in this poem as well:  The sky, clouds, wind, the shore.

As usual we have a woman in the poem that the man possesses, but is also possessed by.  She is like a cloud in form and colour (white and fluffy?), with sweet lips, and eyes of mourning  Although she is captured in his net, the reader understands that she has power over him, as he describes her as a reaper, a huntress, a plunderer, and nocturnal.  The woman controls his dreams and the possibilities in his future just by being alive.  Awww, sweet.

Tagore chillin' with Gandhi

Keeping it real with Einstein

1971: Pablo Neruda

Parral, Chile 1904-1973 Santiago, Chile.

“I, a poet who writes in Spanish, learned more from Walt Whitman than from Cervantes”

                                                                                                                       -Neruda, 1972.

When I was in high school, I read a lot of Walt Whitman; I even quoted “Song of Myself” in the yearbook.  I was fascinated with the way that he celebrated nature and the beauty of self in an epic literary style.   After reading Neruda’s poetry this weekend, I am not surprised to learn that the Chilean poet was one of Whitman’s biggest fans (he kept a framed portrait of the American on his table).

Neruda was 20 when he published Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, the book of poetry that would secure his literary fame.  Freshly out of high school (where he had come to know Gabriel Mistral, a teacher who encouraged his writing), Neruda was an avid reader, and evidently deeply inspired by Whitman.    Take a look at the following parts of four poems:

From Neruda’s Ah Vastness of Pines

Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking,

slow play of lights, solitary bell…

From Whitman’s Ah Poverties

AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats!
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me!

From Neruda’s Body of a Woman:

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
when you surrender, you stretch out like the world.
My body, savage and pleasant, undermines you
and makes a son leap in the bottom of the earth.
Body of skin, of moss, of firm and thirsty milk!
And the cups of your breasts! And your eyes full of absence!
And the roses of your mound! And your voice slow and sad!

From Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.

They’re pretty similar, eh?  Whitman is famous for his parenthetical insertions (like ah!), and it looks as though Neruda is mimicking him here.   Another thing that links Neruda to Whitman is their enumerative styles (the cataloging of chaotic, random details).   They both use the sensory and the natural to express their curiosity about the experience of life.

Unlike Gabriela Mistral, Neruda’s work seems more improvised and impulsive.  There are no Greek Goddesses found in his poetry, he instead describes earthy Chilean woman, the beauty of nature, and the glory in the ordinary.  Walt would’ve been proud.

Greek Myth and The Cross-Eyed Mother

Gaia:  The Earth Mother

The second installation of Gabriela Mistral’s poetry (from Locas Mujeres), is complex and compelling.  Once again there are themes of self-exploration, motherhood, nature, love, and creation, to name a few.  Her ballad like lyricism has contrasting tones of whimsy, mourning, and reverence.  What keeps blowing me away about this author is what a good grasp she had on literature, particularly Greek mythology.  As a person with limited knowledge in this area, I find myself on Wiki a lot these days!

In “Madre Bisoja” (The Cross-Eyed Mother), Gabriela Mistral tackles the folklore surrounding the creation of Earth and all the things on it, night and day, life and death. 

Ésta que era nuestra Madre,

La tierra sombría y sacra

Y era tan vieja y tan niña

Que al verla se desvariaba.

Era la higuera de leche

Y era la Osa encrespada

Y era más, de ser la Loca

Que da su flanco por dádiva

A few things of note in these stanzas:

Firstly, the fig tree is a symbol of fertility, as it is known to bear much fruit.  The branches of the fig tree and its milky sap were offered to Juno, the fertility goddess, in ancient times.

The poem goes on to name Gea as the Mother:

Gea, or Gaia (of Greek Mythology) is the Earth Mother, the Great God of Nature, the Goddess of all creatures, and the eldest of all beings.  She is to whom all things are issued, and feeds all the creatures of the world.  She was manifest in enclosed spaces (the house, the courtyard, the womb, the CAVE), and because she is unable to completely separate herself from her element, she is often depicted half-risen from the Earth.

Gaia brought forth Uranus, the starry sky, her equal, to cover her and the sea, Virgin Mary Style.  That is, no baby daddy, but out of her owns self.  With Uranus she bore 12 children, which came to be known as the Titans.  The youngest child castrated Uranus one day, thus separating the sky from the earth.

People who worship Gaia today are unconcerned with material things and are more in tune with nature…  Hmmm.  Sound like anyone we know?

1945: Gabriela Mistral.

Gabriela Mistral

Vicuna, Chile 1889-1957, New York, USA.

“What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people”

                  -epitaph of Gabriela Mistral.

Jeez, did Gabriela Mistral have a depressing life or what?  Abandoned by her father at age 3, she had to support her mother financially at age 16, and later lost both the love of her life and her beloved nephew to suicide?  Harsh.  I read somewhere that she was dear friends with writer Stephan Zweig and his wife (who both, ironically, also committed suicide in Brazil after they fled Nazi Austria, claiming that the world was just too hopeless to live in.  Good, positive company to keep). 

All of this happened to her and she persevered, kept writing, and won the Nobel Prize.

Now that’s what I call adversity.

One can see so much of Mistral’s life in her work: 

In Tenura (Cuento-Mundo), the reader sees her delight in the beauty of nature down to its simplest elements:  air, rock, water, fire; in other words, the world of matter.  She shows her maternal, womanly side (perhaps through her grief due to the loss of her mother and the boy that she considered her own son), as she explores the delicacy of nature, rebirth after death, and her Christian faith.

In Tala (America):  one sees a duality in Mistral, that she is a fusion of Basque (in her rebellious, religious side) and Indian (in her knowledge of flora and fauna, and the stories of the ancients in South America).  Her vast knowledge of the geography of Latin America-that she learned through her years of self-imposed exile from Chile-is continually utilized, as is her teacher's education, with rich literary references throughout her poems.

There were so many names and places unknown to me in Tala, that I spent eons researching them.  I’ve consequently made a little dictionary and have posted it below.

Aztec/Nahautl references

Anáhuac: "land between the waters" (see geographical)

Mexitlis: child of the moon”, great leader, war god

Quetzalcóatl:  Aztec diety, “feathered serphant”, god of wind, venus, dawn, merchants, arts, crafts, and knowledge

Tláloc:  god of rain, fertility, water, gave life but sent hails/floods etc.

Tlálocs: four corners of the universe=4 Tlálocs

Xochiquetzal:  goddess of love and beauty, earth, flowers, plants

Xochitl: “flower”, a given female name in Latin Amerca.  Also a day sign in the Aztec Calander:  provider of life energy, day for creating beauty and truth, message:  life is beautiful and quickly fades.

Inca references:

Chasquis: communication system of the Inca Empire, a courier-relay of young boys on narrow paths

Inca Huayna:  successor to Tupac, the Inca Empire was the largest under his rule

Mama Ocllo: mother, fertility goddess, taught art of spinning to women.  The sister and husband of Cápac, together they discovered Cuzco

Manco Cápac: fire/sun god with a golden staff.  Brother and husband of Ocllo, together they discovered Cuzco

Pachacámac:  an archaeological site in Peru, temples and pyramids that were conquered by the Incas (but not built by them), and used as an important administrative centre

Christian references:

Gabriel:  messenger from God

María (Mary):  mother of Jesus and Queen of Angels, works with Raphael

Migel (Michael): commander of the army of God (against Satan), a symbol of humility before God

Rafael:  “God who heals” an archangel of Christianity, with a green healing flame (God’s fifth ring), serves with Mary, truth, concentration, healing

Santa (de Puerto Rico):  John the Baptist, baptized Jesus, and a bunch of other people in the Jordan River

Viático (Viaticum): communion of someone who is dying (part of last rites) “provisions for the journey”

Greek/Roman References:

Atalanta: daughter of Hades, raised by a bear, fierce hunter, and always happy because she was raised in the woods

Dioscuros:  two famous heroes, twin brothers of Helen of Troy=GEMINI

Walkiria (Valkyrie):  Actually Norse mythology:  supernatural women who decide who dies in battle

Los Zodíacos (the Zodiac): a ring of 12 constellations that the sun’s path crosses over a course of a year

Latin American Geographical References:

Aconcagua: highest mountain in the Americas (the Andes, Argentina)

Anáhuac: In Nahautl “land between the waters”, plateau in central Mexico that is now D.F., the center of many pre-Columbian peoples (Aztec, Toltec, Teotihuacán), surrounded by mountains, volcanoes, and lakes, the Spaniards drained the lakes and built on top of them, now D.F. is sinking and has bad air/water quality

Andes:  world’s largest mountain range

Cordillera:  chain of mountains

Cuzco:  city in S/E Peru, the capital of Inca Empire

Palenque: Mayan city in Southern Mexico

Pico del Toro:  a mountain in the Andes in Venezuela

Tacámbaro:  A village in western Mexico, where a battle took place with 300 members of the Belgium army against 3000 Mexican Republicans (the Mexicans won in 5 hours)

Tihuanaco: the oldest known ruins in the world.  Belonging to Incas or an older people?

Valle de Elqui:  in northern Chile, 360 sunny days a year, magnetic vibrations/cosmic energy produces calming affect in people, exact other side of the earth as the Himalayas

Latin America Flora/Fauna:

Araucarias: evergreen, coniferous tree (found in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil)

Braceadora: stepping horse with the smoothest gait, good speed in difficult terrain

Maguey: (in Nahuatl: Mexcalmetl) “Century Plant” from Mexico, plant that Mezcal is made of

Quetzal: strikingly coloured bird of western Mexico/Neo-tropical regions, bright green with red belly, a solitary bird

Sargassos: brown algae with round bladders, found in tropical Atlantic waters

Yuca: South American woody shrub, the root is source of protein/carbohydrates

Latin America tradition:

El cántaro del peruano:  traditional silver pitchers of Peru

La jícara de Uruápan: traditional wooden pre-Columbian cups of Uruápan (the avocado capital of the world!!!!!)