Poetry
Desolación
Gabriela Mistral · 1922
Synopsis
The collection has seven sections: five in verse, Vida, La Escuela, Infantiles, Dolor and Naturaleza, and two in prose, prose poems and tales. The section Dolor, the heart of the book according to critics, contains the Sonetos de la muerte, awarded a prize at the Juegos Florales of Santiago in 1914; Jaime Concha reads in them the shadow of Romelio Ureta, a friend of the author's youth, who took his own life in 1909. Other pieces come from the school, such as the Oración de la maestra, and the poet wrote the title poem in Magallanes, in the far south.
Context
The book appeared in New York in 1922, on the initiative of the Instituto de las Españas of Columbia University: Federico de Onís, who taught there, had discovered her poems scattered in journals and wrote to her in early 1921 to propose a volume; she gathered and arranged her texts, and the work appeared with a prologue by Onís and a dedication to Pedro Aguirre Cerda. The first Chilean edition followed from Nascimento in April 1923, with a prologue by Pedro Prado. Omer Emeth, in El Mercurio, then judged her language obscure. A complete English translation did not appear until 2023.
Who it is for
Poems of mourning, school and nature, in a harsh language; the book can be read in French in selections and in English in full.
Prizes and reception
Nobel Prize in 1945 for her body of work; when it was published, Daniel de la Vega praised its high moral value, according to Memoria Chilena.
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