This weeks reading Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral was a delight to read. I personally really enjoy poetry and the lyricism of her work, as well as the personal and hard-hitting themes made it fun to work through. Some things I noted with interest were the constantly reoccurring themes of fire and the ocean, as well as her appropriation of her own work. In the lecture it was mentioned that Mistral is now suspected to have very likely been lesbian and that she is now considered an LGBTQ+ role model or icon. This was surprising to me because before beginning the book and several times during I considered whether she might have been queer but found no true indication of it. Only “Martha and Mary” gave any indication of wanting to lead an intimate life with another woman but it was then revealed that they were siblings. The yearning for understanding through a sibling – someone that has grown up and existed in the same context as you, who sees the world through a lens as similar to one’s own as one is likely to find – also came up in “Electra in the Mist.” Being very close with my own sister, these were sentiments I could deeply identify with.
The fire and ocean come up repeatedly throughout the anthology in various forms, sometimes as being somewhat tamed, other times as having caused major destruction. This can be considered a reflection of the fundamental natural uncontrollability of women, and that attempts to do so lead to harm. On the other hand they are also described as beautiful and ever changing, much like many of the speakers in the poems.
Interestingly the anthology feels like it was written with the fact that the poems would be read in sequence and in context of each other in mind. This is not always the case in poetry collections. It would be really interesting to read or write a paper on the continuous themes and Greek figures, as well as the use of one of the first poems in the anthology repeated in part in one of the later works, almost as though there was one overarching speaker to the whole anthology and the individual speakers of the poem were a part of her, and that the overarching speaker had gone through some development or change from the beginning to the end of the anthology.
This was a great read, if a bit tricky at times. I kept getting hung up on the fact that it was a translations while reading because I wanted to know how the effect differed from the original text. I think that took away from the experience a bit. It was also difficult to stay focussed and take in the quickly changing tones and themes moving directly from one work to the next. It left little space for analysis and digestion.
Question: “East” and speakers and others travelling in said direction is mentioned repeatedly in several of the works here. What might this be indicative of?
I like that fiery image to talk about Mistral’s poetry: warm at times, other times hostile that doesn’t let you get too close. I find it very interesting, once again, to see how Nature in these poems shows another side. To do this, we must pay attention to the details that can go unnoticed, and Mistral has an enormous poetic capacity to re-signify many elements. Thank you for your careful reading of the poems.
Thanks for sharing with us, I enjoyed reading your post.
The naturalistic aspect of Mistral’s poetic discourse is impressive and always gives room for reconsideration. That too is a virtue of poetry when done well. I think as a secretive person, and as a poet, she united those two features of her being and left trails of interpretation for us to decide.
To answer your question, I’m not exactly sure what she means by traveling East but I wonder if it is about going against the grain as West is the hemisphere we live in and also the systematic ideals we pertain too. So traveling East may be going against the system or establishments of known ideas such as how a man and woman should be, sexual preference, etc. It could also be a calling to Europe, as the old continent, is a colonized turned quasi-natural calling for Latin American people.