Biography of Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was born in Vicuña, Chile. The daughter of a dilettante poet, she began to write poetry as a village schoolteacher after a passionate romance with a railway employee who committed suicide. She taught elementary and secondary school for many years until her poetry made her famous. She played an important role in the educational systems of Mexico and Chile, was active in cultural committees of the League of Nations, and was Chilean consul in Naples, Madrid, and Lisbon. She held honorary degrees from the Universities of Florence and Guatemala and was an honorary member of various cultural societies in Chile as well as in the United States, Spain, and Cuba. She taught Spanish literature in the United States at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Vassar College, and at the University of Puerto Rico.

The love poems in memory of the dead, Sonetos de la muerte (1914), made her known throughout Latin America, but her first great collection of poems, Desolación [Despair], was not published until 1922. In 1924 appeared Ternura [Tenderness], a volume of poetry dominated by the theme of childhood; the same theme, linked with that of maternity, plays a significant role in Tala, poems published in 1938. Her complete poetry was published in 1958.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Gabriela Mistral died on January 10, 1957.

Biography of Nicolas Guillen

Guillén, a mulatto from the Cuban provincial middle class, was born in Camagüey to Nicolás Guillén y Urra and Argelia Batista y Arrieta, both of whom were descendants of Africans and Spaniards. Guillén's father, a journalist and Liberal senator, was assassinated in a political skirmish in 1917. According to Vera M. Kutzinski, after his father's death, "the young Guillén became increasingly interested in poetry and journalism," and his poems were first published in the journal Camagüey Gráfico in 1919. Guillén graduated from high school in 1920 and then attended the University of Havana, where he planned to study law. Guillén left school after a year, however, and founded the literary magazine Lis with his brother Francisco while also writing for various Cuban newspapers and magazines. In 1937, Guillén joined the Communist Party, campaigning for various political offices throughout the 1940s. He became president of the Cuban National Union of Writers and Artists in 1961, a position he held for twentyfive years. His honors include the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1954 and the Cuban Order of José Marti in 1981. Guillén died after a long illness in 1989. He was given a state fianeral with military honors.

Biography of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile. He studied in Santiago in the twenties. From 1927 to 1945 he was the Chilean consul in Rangoon, in Java, and then in Barcelona. He joined the Communist Party after the Second World War. Between 1970 and 1973 he served in Allende’s Chilean Government as ambassador to Paris. He died shortly after the coup that ended the Allende Government.

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.
Neruda wrote in a variety of styles such as erotically charged love poems as in his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."^[1] Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was the colour of (hope).
On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes.^[2] During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When a Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.^[3]

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.

Biography of Alfonsin Storni

Alfonsina Storni was born in Capriasca, Switzerland of Italian-Swiss parents. Paulina, Alfonsina's mother was a teacher who studied music and the soprano voice. Alfonso, her father had started a business in 1880, in which he produced soda, ice, and beer with his three older brothers in San Juan, Argentina. In 1885 her parents married and had one son and one daughter by 1888. The family held a prestigious place in society during much of this time, until her father became an alcoholic and the family doctor suggested a vacation. The four of them left for Switzerland immediately.

In the village of Sala Capriasca, Alfonsina Storni was born in April of 1892. When she was four, the family moved to San Juan and then in 1901 they moved to Rosario, Argentina. Seven years later, they had their fourth child, Hildo, for whom Alfonsina developed a maternal affection. From this point forward, the family lived under reduced circumstances due to a bankruptcy of the family business. Her mother tried to run a private school with 50 children, but Alfonso decided a small cafe, which he would run, would be better. The cafe failed and their living conditions worsened. Her father died in 1906.

At age eleven Storni contributed to the household and began writing. At the age of twelve she toured Argentina for a year. She was then sent to Normal School in Coronda and earned a diploma in teaching in 1910. Rosario was her first place to begin teaching. While living here she met and fell in love with a well-educated newspaper journalist who was also a provincial deputy. Despite the fact that they had a child together, Storni could not marry him because he was already married. With his reputation at stake she fled to Buenos Aires, where her son was born in 1912.

She soon gained employment with an oil importing firm, where she gave orders and continued to write. Storni's first book was published in 1916, when she was poor, unmarried, without proper contacts, and considered unattractive by the standards of the time. Five hundred copies were published for 500 pesos. Her following collections, El dulce dano ("Sweet Pain," 1918), Irremediableminte ("Irremediably," 1919), and Languedez ("Languor," 1920) expresses her frustrations with stereotypes of women. In Tu Me Quieres Blanca, (You want me white) she articulates discontent with the Spanish-American man wanting women to be pure. Or in Hombre pequenito (Little Man), she talks about the imprisonment woman may feel from relationships. Storni spoke on the behalf of many women by suggesting that relationships between men and women be intellectual and more balanced. She urged the government to grant women the vote and wrote articles and essays on women's rights. "La Nacion of Buenos Aires" published several articles that she wrote under the pseudonym Tao-Lao. She became a part of a group of writers, poets, artists, and musicians of the time who together visited "La Pena," a restaurant where Alfonsina used to stand to recite her poetry. In 1920, she wins the First Municipal Prize of Poetry and the Second National Prize of Literature for Languidness.

She took a rest from life's challenges around 1921 when the Teatro Infantile Municipal Labarden created a chair for her. In 1923 she became professor of "Lectura y declamacion" at the Escuela Normal de Lenguas Vivas. Shortly following she earned a chair at the Nacional de Musica y Declamacion.

Her fifth collection Ocre ("Okra," 1925) and Poemas de Amor ("Love Poems," 1926) express the female resentment for the merely comfort-seeking man. Great women in history, like Las grandes mujeres, and intellectual women, as in Las Mujeres Mentale represent the conflict between the individual and the surrounding world. Compared to her earlier works these are more cynical and ironic poems that express her ever-growing biting attitude toward men.

In the summer of 1935, she found out that she had breast cancer. She was operated on, but the cancer continued. She suffered depressions. Since then she began calling out to the sea in her poems and talked about the embrace of the sea and the crystal house awaiting for her there in the bottom, in the Madre pore avenue. In 1938, she revealed to her son the fact that the cancer had reached her throat and that she refused to go through surgery again. On October 18, she took a train to Mar del Plata and stayed in a small hotel. She wrote Voy a Dormir (I Am Going to Sleep) on October 20. October 22, she sent the poem to the editorial office of "La Nacion". While the public read her poem she committed suicide by walking into the ocean and drowning.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile. He studied in Santiago in the twenties. From 1927 to 1945 he was the Chilean consul in Rangoon, in Java, and then in Barcelona. He joined the Communist Party after the Second World War. Between 1970 and 1973 he served in Allende’s Chilean Government as ambassador to Paris. He died shortly after the coup that ended the Allende Government.

from PoemHunter.com

We will read the following Neruda poems:

"Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu"

"Ode to Maize"
"Ode to the Potato”

Please feel free to share any comments about this poet or his poems in the comments section below.  Thanks!

Welcome!

This blog was created to aid the Pike Central High School English Academic Team.  (Yikes, that's quite a mouthful!)  Hopefully, with a forum to post information, share ideas, and organize review materials, our team will strengthen together.  Please see the sidebar for a list of our coach, captain, and members.  Also, please check back frequently for updated posts as we continue our journey through the literature of Latin America.