Gabriela Mistral

For other uses, see Gabriela Mistral (disambiguation).

Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral.
Born	Lucila de María Godoy Alcayaga
Cause of death	Pancreatic cancer
Resting place	Montegrande
Occupations	Poet, diplomat, teacher and educator
Era	20th century
Organizations	American Academy of Arts and Letters * Chilean Academy of Language
Notable work	Tala, Desolación
Movement	Modernismo
Children	no
Parent(s)	Juan Jerónimo Godoy Villanueva Petronila Alcayaga Rojas
Relatives	Juan Miguel Godoy, Yin Yin (nephew)
Signature

Gabriela Mistral, pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (Vicuña, April 7, 1889 – New York, January 10, 1957) was a Chilean poet, diplomat, teacher and educator.

Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945 for her poetic work. She was the first Ibero-American woman and the second Hispanic American person to receive a Nobel Prize.

Born into a family of modest means, Mistral worked as a teacher in various schools and became an important thinker on the role of public education; she went on to take part in the reform of the Mexican educational system. Starting in the 1920s, Mistral led an itinerant life, serving as consul and as a representative to international organizations in America and Europe.

As a poet, she is one of the most important figures of Chilean and Hispanic American literature. Her most notable works include Desolación, Tala and Lagar.

Biography

Origin and family

School-house in Montegrande.

A young Lucila with her paternal grandmother, Isabel Villanueva.

Gabriela Mistral was born in Vicuña on April 7, 1889, under the name Lucila de María Godoi Alcayaga. Today, on the street where she was born, the museum that bears her name was created in 1957. She spent her entire childhood in various localities of the Elqui Valley, in the present-day Coquimbo Region. When she was ten days old, her parents took her from Vicuña to the nearby town of La Unión (now called Pisco Elqui). Between the ages of three and nine, Mistral lived in the small locality of Montegrande. It was this place that Mistral considered her hometown; the poet referred to it as her "beloved village", and it was there that she asked to be buried.

She was the daughter of Juan Jerónimo Godoy Villanueva, a teacher and poet of Spanish descent, a native of San Félix, and of Petronila Alcayaga Rojas, also of Spanish descent. Her paternal grandparents, natives of the present-day Antofagasta Region, were Gregorio Godoy and Isabel Villanueva; her maternal grandparents were Francisco Alcayaga Barraza and Lucía Rojas Miranda, descendants of landowning families of the Elqui Valley. On her mother's side, Gabriela Mistral had an older half-sister, Emelina Molina Alcayaga, daughter of Rosendo Molina Rojas, who was her first teacher. On her father's side, she would have had another half-brother, named Carlos Miguel Godoy Vallejos.

Although her father left home when she was about three years old, Gabriela Mistral loved him and always defended him. She recounted that "rummaging through papers" she found some "very beautiful" verses. "Those verses of my father's, the first I ever read, awakened my poetic passion," she wrote.

Teacher training

In 1904, she began working as an assistant teacher at the School of Compañía Baja (in La Serena) and sending contributions to the La Serena newspaper El Coquimbo. The following year, she continued writing for it and for La Voz de Elqui, of Vicuña.

From 1908, she was a teacher in La Cantera and later in Los Cerrillos, on the road to Ovalle. She did not study to become a teacher, since she had no money to do so. She wanted to enter a normal school, from which she was excluded because of religious prejudice. In 1910, she had her knowledge validated before Normal School No. 1 of Santiago and obtained the title of "State teacher", which allowed her to teach at the secondary level. This earned her the rivalry of her colleagues, since she received that title through the validation of her knowledge and experience, without having attended the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile.

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, or Gabriela Mistral, arrived in Traiguén in Araucanía in October 1910, at the age of 21, to serve as a teacher at the request of the headmistress of the Girls' Liceo of Traiguén. On this subject, she wrote: "Fidelia Valdés put me into secondary education; she took me to Traiguén". In this town she served as interim teacher of Needlework, Drawing, Hygiene and Domestic Economy until the first semester of the following year; however, the reception was not what she had hoped for, as her colleagues questioned her—just as would happen in the other establishments where she served in Chile—for lacking systematic studies at the Pedagogical Institute. Mistral says in a piece of writing that she observed the problem of the distribution of indigenous lands and the lawsuits over them, and noted that "these people know how to love their land"; it was her first contact with the Mapuche. In Traiguén began her eleven-year journey devoted to Chilean education, in Antofagasta, Los Andes, Punta Arenas, Temuco and Santiago.

She was hired by the government of Mexico to lay the foundations of its new educational system, a model that remains almost unchanged in its essence, since only reforms have been made to it.

Beginnings

Decree of the Ministry of Education appointing Lucila Godoy headmistress of the Girls' Liceo of Punta Arenas in 1918.

The writings produced a month before Lucila Godoy arrived in Traiguén in October 1910 are press articles in which she advocates compulsory primary instruction, with strong criticism of the political world of those years; the social question was the main concern of the intellectuals of the time, along with the high expenditures made for the works and celebratory activities of the Centennial of Chile; a significant sector of the lower classes was going through socioeconomic problems, and the young Lucila Godoy was no stranger to these issues.

The Traiguén newspaper El Colono published on November 1 the poem "Tristeza" ("Sadness"), which sums up her feeling of rejection and, at the same time, the sentimental tragedy of her frustrated relationship with Romelio Ureta, who had committed suicide the previous year. She also wrote the poem "Rimas" ("Rhymes"), dated in that city on October 24, 1910, in which she expresses sadness over loss and the impossibility of a farewell. These verses are different from those published under the same title a year earlier.

That same year, Mistral began writing her famous Sonetos de la muerte. "In those years (1910–1911) I was unaware of what the French call the metier de côté, that is, the side trade; but one fine day it leapt out of me, for I began writing bad prose, even dreadful prose, leaping almost immediately from it to poetry, which, through my father's blood, was no foreign juice to my body. With the discovery of the second trade, the festival of my life had begun." In this period of reflection in Traiguén she chose poetry as one of her greatest personal achievements.

House where Lucila Godoy lived in the working-class Barrio Huemul

On December 12, 1914, she won first prize in the literature contest of the Floral Games, organized by the FECh in Santiago, for her Sonetos de la muerte.

From then on she used the literary pseudonym "Gabriela Mistral" in almost all her writings, in homage to two of her favorite poets, the Italian Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Occitan Frédéric Mistral. In 1917, Julio Molina Núñez and Juan Agustín Araya published one of the most important poetry anthologies of Chile, Selva lírica, in which Lucila Godoy already appears as one of the great Chilean poets. This publication is one of the last in which she used her real name.

She held the post of inspector at the Young Ladies' Liceo of La Serena. In addition, as a distinguished educator, she visited Mexico, the United States and Europe, and studied the schools and educational methods of these countries. She was a visiting professor at the universities of Barnard, Middlebury and Puerto Rico.

After having lived in Antofagasta in northern Chile, she worked in Punta Arenas in the far south of Chile, where she directed her first liceo: Gabriela Mistral had a mission in Punta Arenas: she was sent to one of the southernmost cities of Chile with a specific task, "the Chilenization of a territory where foreigners were superabundant" ... The assignment had been given to her by the Minister of Justice and Public Instruction of the government of Juan Luis Sanfuentes, namely Pedro Aguirre Cerda, and with that purpose she had received the post of headmistress of the Sara Brown Girls' Liceo. Despite playing a fundamental role in the Chilenization of the local population, she also lamented at the same time the extermination of the Selk'nam. Her mentor, and the one who transferred her to that southern city to take charge of Girls' Liceo No. 1, was the governor of the Magallanes Territory, General Luis Alberto Contreras y Sotomayor. Her attachment to Punta Arenas was also due to her relationship with Laura Rodig, who lived in that city.

She could not bear the polar climate. For that reason, she requested a transfer, and in 1920 she moved to Temuco, from where she set out for Santiago the following year. During her stay in Araucanía, as headmistress of the Girls' Liceo of Temuco, she met Neftalí Reyes (Pablo Neruda), who recalls that "she made me read the first great names of Russian literature, which had so much influence on me."

She aspired to a new challenge after having directed two liceos of very poor quality. She competed for and won the prestigious post of headmistress of Liceo No. 6 of Santiago, but the teachers did not receive her well, reproaching her for her lack of professional studies.

Desolación, considered her first masterpiece, appeared in New York in 1922, published by the Instituto de Las Españas, at the initiative of its director, Federico de Onís. Most of the poems that make up this book had been written ten years earlier while she was living in the locality of Coquimbito.

Gabriela Mistral in 1923.

On June 23, 1922, accompanied by Laura Rodig, she sailed for Mexico on the steamer Orcoma, invited by the then Minister of Education José Vasconcelos. She remained there almost two years, working with the most distinguished intellectuals of the Spanish-speaking world.

In 1923, a statue was unveiled in Mexico and her book Lectura para mujeres was published; in Chile the second edition of Desolación appeared (with a print run of 20,000 copies), and in Spain the anthology Las mejores poesías appeared, with a prologue by Manuel de Montoliú.

File:07 GABRIELA MISTRAL.ogg

Voice of Gabriela Mistral, recorded by Radio Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina).

After a tour of the United States and Europe, she returned to Chile, where the political situation was so tense that she was forced to leave again, this time to serve on the Old Continent as secretary of one of the sections of the League of Nations in 1926; that same year she held the secretariat of the Institute of International Cooperation of the League of Nations, in Geneva. In December 1925 the Consul General of Chile in Sweden, Ambrosio Merino Carvallo, proposed to the government Mistral's candidacy for the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature; she would finally receive the award 19 years later.

In 1924, she published Ternura in Madrid, a book in which she practiced a novel "school poetry", renewing the traditional genres of children's poetry (for example, lullabies, rounds and cradle songs) from an austere and highly refined poetics. Petronila Alcayaga, her mother, died in 1929, and for this reason she dedicated to her the first part of her book Tala.

Gabriela Mistral with the Colombian muralist Santiago Martínez Delgado, in 1930.

From then on, her life was a continuation of the tireless wandering she had known in Chile, without a fixed post in which to use her talent. She therefore preferred to live between America and Europe. Thus, she traveled to Puerto Rico in 1931, as part of a tour of the Caribbean and South America. On this tour, General Augusto Sandino, to whom she had given her support in numerous writings, named her "Benemérita del Ejército Defensor de la Soberanía Nacional" (Meritorious Member of the Army in Defense of National Sovereignty) in Nicaragua. She also gave speeches at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, in Santo Domingo, in Cuba, and in all the other countries of Central America.

From 1933, and for twenty years, she worked as consul of her country in cities of Europe and America. Her poetry was translated into English, French, Italian, German and Swedish, and has been very influential in the work of many Latin Americans, such as Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz.

Nobel Prize

She received the news that she had won the Nobel in 1945 in Petrópolis, the Brazilian city where she had served as consul since 1941 and where in 1943, at the age of 18, Yin Yin had committed suicide (Juan Miguel Godoy Mendoza, her nephew according to the official documentation, but whom she told Doris Dana, when she was already very weakened in her final days, was her biological son, whom, together with her friend and confidante Palma Guillén, she "had adopted" and with whom she had lived at least since he was four years old).

The motivation for awarding her this distinction was "her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world." She received the Nobel Prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy, on December 10, 1945, in a speech in which she stated: "Through a good fortune that surpasses me, I am at this moment the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice of the very noble Spanish and Portuguese languages. Both rejoice at having been invited to the communion of Nordic life, all of it attended by its age-old folklore and poetry."

At the end of that year she returned to the United States for the fourth time, then as consul in Los Angeles, and with the money won from the prize she bought a house in Santa Barbara. There, the following year, she wrote a large part of Lagar I, in many of whose poems the mark of the Second World War can be seen, and which would be published in Chile in 1954.

In 1946, she met Doris Dana, an American writer with whom she established a controversial relationship and from whom she would not be separated until her death.

In New York

Gabriela Mistral in the 1950s.

Main article: Doris Dana

Gabriela Mistral was appointed consul in New York in 1953, a post through which she managed to be with the American writer and graduate Doris Dana, who would later be Mistral's official recipient, spokesperson and executor.

In 1954, she was received with honors following an invitation from the government of Chile headed by Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. On that occasion she was accompanied by Doris Dana, whom the national press identified as "Mistral's secretary", and who was setting foot on Chilean soil for the first and last time.

In Santiago, which had declared a holiday, the authorities of the capital awaited her, while her open car was escorted by Carabineros patrols followed by huasos on horseback and outstanding schoolchildren from different schools carrying flags. Along her route, she passed under a triumphal arch made of fresh flowers at the corner of the Alameda and España—"The good sower sows singing", it read—; people threw flowers at her. In the afternoon, she was received at La Moneda by President Ibáñez, and the following day she was honored with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Chile.

She returned to the United States, "a country without a name", according to her, for whom New York was too cold; she would have preferred to live in Florida or New Orleans (she had sold her property in California), and she said so to Doris, to whom she proposed buying a house in both their names in one of those places, but in the end she settled in Long Island, in the mansion of Doris Dana's family, on the outskirts of the megalopolis: "But if you don't want to leave your house, buy me, I repeat, a heater and we'll stay here," she wrote to her in 1954.

Doris Dana at that time, aware that Mistral's existence was finite, began a meticulous record of every conversation she had with the poet. In addition, she accumulated 250 letters and thousands of literary essays, which constitute the most important Mistralian legacy and which was donated by her niece Doris Atkinson after her death in November 2006.

Death, posthumous tributes and legacy

La ciudad de Santiago a Gabriela Mistral, ceramic mural by Fernando Daza, located on the lower slopes of the south side of Santa Lucía Hill, created in 1971 and restored in 1997.

Mistral had diabetes and heart problems. She died at Hempstead Hospital in New York of pancreatic cancer, on January 10, 1957, at the age of 67, with Doris Dana present.

Doris Dana remained the executor of Mistral's work and avoided sending it to Chile until the poet was recognized in a manner befitting her world stature. She was even extended an invitation by the government of President Ricardo Lagos Escobar, which she declined.

In her will, she stipulated that the money produced by the sale of her books in South America should go to the poor children of Montegrande, where she spent the best years of her childhood, and that from sales in other parts of the world to Doris Dana and Palma Guillén, the latter of whom renounced that inheritance for the benefit of the poor children of Chile. This request of the poet had not been able to be carried out because of Decree 2160, which diverted the funds to publishing houses and intellectuals. This decree was repealed, and the income from her work reaches the children of Montegrande in the Elqui Valley.

Doris Dana's niece, Doris Atkinson, donated Mistral's literary legacy to the Chilean Government—more than 40,000 documents, kept in the archives of the National Library of Chile, including the 250 letters chosen by Zegers for publication.

Her remains arrived in Chile on January 19, 1957, and lay in state at the Central House of the University of Chile where they remained until January 21. They were then buried in Montegrande, as she had wished. She once mentioned that she would like a hill in Montegrande to be named in her honor; this was achieved on April 7, 1991, on what would have been her 102nd birthday, when Fraile Hill was renamed Gabriela Mistral.

The Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center, in downtown Santiago.

The poet and scholar of her work, Jaime Quezada, has edited a series of posthumous books with writings by the Nobel laureate: Escritos políticos (1994), Poesías completas (2001), Bendita mi lengua sea (2002) and Prosa reunida (2002).

The Organization of American States established in 1979 the "Gabriela Mistral" Inter-American Prize for Culture, "with the purpose of recognizing those who have contributed to the identification and enrichment of the culture proper to America and of its regions or cultural individualities, whether through the expression of its values or through the assimilation and incorporation into it of universal values of culture." It was awarded for the first time in 1984 and for the last time in 2000. In addition, there are a number of other prizes and contests that bear her name.

A private university founded in 1981, one of the first in Chile, also bears her name: the Gabriela Mistral University. In 1977, the government of Chile established in her honor the Gabriela Mistral Order of Educational and Cultural Merit.

On November 15, 2005, she received a tribute in the Santiago Metro commemorating sixty years since she received the Nobel Prize. A boa train covered with photographs of the poet was dedicated to her.

Almost every important city in Chile has a street, square or avenue named in her honor with her literary name.

In December 2007, a large part of the material held in the United States by her first executor, Doris Dana, arrived in Chile. It was received by the Chilean Minister of Culture Paulina Urrutia, together with Doris Atkinson, the new executor. The compilation, transcription and classification has been done by the Chilean humanist Luis Vargas Saavedra, who at the same time has prepared an edition of the work called Almácigo.

On October 19, 2009, the Diego Portales Building was renamed the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center. The President of the Republic, Michelle Bachelet, promulgated Law 20386, published on October 27, 2009, which changed the name of the building to Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center, "in order to perpetuate her memory and honor her name and her contribution to the shaping of the cultural heritage of Chile and of Hispanic American letters."

In 2015, the University of Chile inaugurated the Gabriela Mistral Museum Room, in the Central House of this institution, which highlights three milestones of her relationship with the University: the recognition of her status as a teacher in 1923; the creation of the Doctor Honoris Causa degree for her in 1954 (she was the first to receive it); and the wake for her remains in the Hall of Honor in 1957. The room exhibits audiovisual material, paintings, first editions of her works, and photographs.

The Gabriela Mistral Regional Library of La Serena was inaugurated on March 5, 2018 by President Michelle Bachelet, who emphasized that it "relates harmoniously to the Casa de Las Palmeras", a place the poet bought in 1925 "dreaming of reproducing the Mexican model of rural schools, and which today is a fundamental landmark of the Mistralian route".

The president of the Central Bank, José De Gregorio, presented in 2009 the new 5000-peso banknote bearing Mistral's face.

Numismatics

Mistral's image has appeared on the 5000 Chilean peso banknote since July 1981. In September 2009 a new banknote of the same value was put into circulation, with a retouched image of Mistral.

Personal relationships

Gabriela Mistral kept her personal life strictly private, which has provoked much discussion about her personal and romantic relationships. Mistral remained single all her life, an uncommon fact for a woman of her time, and therefore a large part of her relationships have been interpreted through her literary work or her letters.

At the age of 15 she had a platonic love for Alfredo Videla Pineda, a wealthy man more than 20 years her senior, with whom she corresponded for almost a year and a half.

In 1906, while she was working as a teacher in La Cantera, she met Romelio Ureta, a railway employee for whom Gabriela felt great affection. Many scholars of the poet's life have regarded Ureta as "the great love" of her life. The relationship had a tragic end when Ureta committed suicide in November 1909. Mistral wrote Sonetos de la muerte inspired by her feelings after Ureta's death. These verses catapulted her to national prominence after she won the Floral Games of 1914. Although for a time Ureta's death was interpreted as having been caused by his relationship with Mistral, she herself dismissed this and considered it nothing more than "fanciful gossip". Ureta reportedly committed suicide when he found himself cornered after taking money from the cash box of the railway where he worked in order to help a friend, and being unable to return it.

The Floral Games also led Gabriela to strike up a relationship with the writer Manuel Magallanes Moure, who was a judge at the event. Impressed by Mistral's talent, Magallanes began sending her letters, and the epistolary relationship between them turned into one with deeper feelings. Mistral destroyed most of the letters, considering that they could eventually be regarded as a kind of adultery (since Magallanes was married), but some copies that he kept reflect Mistral's forbidden love for the writer, as she rejected his suggestions of arranging a meeting.

I adore you, Manuel. All my living is concentrated in this thought and in this desire: the kiss I can give you and receive from you. And perhaps—surely—I can neither give it to you nor receive it...! At this moment I feel your affection with such great intensity that I feel incapable of the sacrifice of having you by my side and not kissing you... I am dying of love before a man who cannot caress me...

— Gabriela Mistral

Yin Yin (1925–1943), nephew of Gabriela Mistral, whom she raised as a son.

The letters also reflected Mistral's low self-esteem, as she considered herself ugly, deformed and complicated. "I was born bad, hard of character, enormously selfish, and life exacerbated those vices and made me 10 times hard and cruel." The epistolary relationship lasted almost seven years; only in 1921 did they meet in person in Santiago, a moment at which the spell was broken and the relationship cooled. Both remained in contact as friends until 1923, when Mistral left the country. In her farewell letter, Mistral confronted him: "You could not love my old age, my ugliness... Your pride, very visible, drove you away from me."

In 1925, Juan Miguel Godoy, her nephew (son of Carlos, her paternal half-brother), was born. Mistral, who at that time lived in France, received custody of her nephew and raised him as her own son together with her Mexican secretary, Palma Guillén. Better known as Yin Yin, he was one of the most influential figures in Mistral's life. His life, however, came to an abrupt end after moving from Europe to Petrópolis, Brazil. Yin Yin was never able to get used to his new surroundings and was harassed by his classmates. In 1943, he committed suicide at the age of 18 by ingesting arsenic, which was a hard blow for Gabriela Mistral and began one of the darkest periods of her life.

Gabriela Mistral and Doris Dana

Gabriela Mistral with Doris Dana, in 1949, visiting the Chilean ambassador in Mexico.

One of the most controversial topics regarding Mistral, both while she lived and after her death, was the matter of her possible lesbianism. In her private diaries written between 1945 and 1946, which were published in 2002, she rejected the comments about her supposed lesbianism and indicates that it would have been one of the reasons why she stayed away from Chile during her last years.

Of Chile, need I say anything. Why, they have even hung that silly lesbianism on me, and it wounds me with a cautery I cannot describe. Have you ever seen such a falsehood? […] One does not wish to return to places in the world where people make a detective novel out of one's own affairs. I am no paragon; nor am I anything extraordinary. I am a woman like any other Chilean woman

— Gabriela Mistral (c. 1945), in Bendita sea mi lengua (published in 2002).

In the most intimate sphere there are documents that reflect a very intimate relationship with women. The most debated relationship is the one she maintained with Doris Dana. The two met in 1949, after communicating by letter since 1948. They remained inseparable until the poet's death in 1957. In her will, Dana was named executor, and she guarded the poet's legacy for more than fifty years.

It was the young American woman—who at that time was 28 years old—who approached the poet, three decades her senior and already consecrated with the Nobel Prize. She wrote to her at her residence in Santa Barbara, California. The pretext was the publication of a volume on Thomas Mann that included a translation by Dana of a text by the Chilean poet. The tone is one of respect, almost of veneration:

My dear Maestra:

I have taken the liberty of sending you, on behalf of New Directions Press, the copy of "The Stature of Thomas Mann" intended for you.

Had it been possible, I would of course have preferred to enjoy the privilege of placing this book personally in your own hands.

In an age riddled with commercialism, a volume such as this is worthy of such grace and dignity.

I write you this letter to express to you, within its limits, the deep gratitude I feel for the high privilege of having translated into English your powerful and strong essay, "The Other German Disaster"

The correspondence between the Chilean poet and the New Yorker is compiled in the book "Niña errante". The volume includes only some twenty letters written by Doris Dana and more than two hundred by Mistral. Both speak of an attraction at first sight. Throughout the correspondence a passionate relationship takes shape, at times capable of obsessing the poet.

Less than a year after the correspondence began, Mistral addresses her as "love", at times identifying herself with the masculine gender. At times she is desperate over the evasive behavior of Dana, who used to go away for long periods to New York, the city where she lived, sometimes without leaving an address or sending news.

On April 14, 1949, Mistral wrote to her:

Love: I was telling you in my letter of today the 14th that I have had several nights of bad sleep. I sleep from two or three in the morning until seven. But I want to talk to you again today. (I have just sent you a telegram. These boors would not accept payment for the reply.)

I understand nothing of what has happened, my love. I only suspect that my letter about the Artasánchez family has made you suffer a great deal. And that either that or the airplane has done harm to your heart.

How stupid the one who loves you most has been, my Doris! Forgive me, my life, forgive me! I won't do it again! And you will keep control of yourself, and have faith in your poor little one, who is a clumsy, vehement being poisoned by his inferiority complex (that of age).

Sleep, my love, rest. I will try to be less brutal and foolish. I owe it to you to wash myself of these defects. I owe you happiness for all I have received from you.

At the beginning of the 21st century, research began on the subject of Mistral's lesbianism and her relationship with Dana, who in her last years flatly denied having had an intimate or sexual relationship with Mistral. The American professor Licia Fiol-Matta wrote in A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral that Mistral was "a closeted lesbian" and that her work contrasted with "the posthumous consecration as a celibate, saintly, suffering and heterosexual national icon." These assertions were criticized by Mistral's circle, while at the same time the Gabriela Mistral Foundation in 2001 refused the writer Juan Pablo Sutherland permission to include certain verses by the poet in A corazón abierto, an analysis of homosexuality in Chilean literature.

When Dana died in 2006, the correspondence she had maintained with Mistral was made public thanks to permission granted by Doris Dana's heir, her niece Doris Atkinson. The work Niña errante was published in 2009 with transcription, prologue and notes by Pedro Pablo Zegers, curator of the Writer's Archive of the National Library. In it, some letters reflecting the intimate relationship between the two women are reproduced for the first time, including passionate and spiteful passages.

Doris Dana, 31 years younger than Mistral, explicitly denied in her last interview that her relationship with the writer was romantic or erotic, and described it as the relationship between a stepmother and her stepdaughter. Dana denied being a lesbian, and in her opinion it is unlikely that Gabriela Mistral was a lesbian.

Since you left I do not laugh, and some dense, dark substance I cannot name accumulates in my blood. I cannot yet know, my love, what will happen to me over the sixty days of our separation.
I am living the obsession, love. (...) I did not know how deeply that—what we lived—has dug into me, how much I am burned by that awl of fire, which hurts just like a burning ember on the palm of the hand.

— Gabriela Mistral to Doris Dana

As homosexuality has gained acceptance in Chile and more letters reflecting Mistral's work have been released, progress has been made in regarding Mistral as a lesbian, and in the impact of this on both her work and her legacy. In 2010, the documentary Locas mujeres by María Elena Wood was released, which delved into the relationship between Gabriela Mistral and Doris Dana. It has also been discovered that in 1935 she lent her house in Madrid for the meetings of the Sapphic Circle of Madrid, whose members included, among others, the tribadist writers Victorina Durán, Rosa Chacel, Elena Fortún and Matilde Ras.

In 2015, when the civil union agreement was promulgated, allowing same-sex couples to formalize their relationships before the Chilean State for the first time, President Michelle Bachelet used some verses by Gabriela Mistral to illustrate the advance of the new law. "Our Gabriela Mistral wrote to her dear Doris Dana: "We must take care of this, Doris, love is a delicate thing". And I recall it today because through this law what we are doing is recognizing, from the State, the care of couples and families and giving material and legal support to that bond born of love," said Bachelet, which surprised the Gabriela Mistral Foundation.

Awards and honors

• 1914: Prize of the Floral Games for "Sonetos de la muerte" (Chile).
• 1945: Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1946: Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (France).
• 1946: Enrique José Varona Medal (Cuba).
• 1947: Doctor "honoris causa" from Mills College of Oakland (California).
• 1950: Serra Award of the Americas.
• 1951: Doctor "honoris causa" from Columbia University (New York).
• 1951: National Prize for Literature of Chile.

Among the many honoris causa doctorates she received, notable ones include those of the National University of Guatemala, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Florence, to name a few, in addition to the one awarded to her by the University of Chile upon her return to her homeland in 1953.

Works

Bust of Gabriela Mistral in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Monument to Gabriela Mistral, in Viña del Mar (Chile).

• Sonetos de la muerte (1915). Santiago: Primerose.
• Desolación (1922). New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos.
• Lecturas para mujeres destinadas a la enseñanza del lenguaje (1923), with a prologue by Palma Guillén. Mexico: Departamento Editorial de la Secretaría de Educación de México. 1st edition in Chile, April 2018, Editorial Planeta Sostenible.
• Ternura. Canciones de niños: rondas, canciones de la tierra, estaciones, religiosas, otras canciones de cuna (1923). Madrid: Saturnino Calleja.
• Nubes blancas: poesías, y La oración de la maestra (1930). Barcelona: B. Bauza.
• Tala (1938). Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur.
• Antología (1941), selection by the author. Santiago: Editorial Zig-Zag.
• Los sonetos de la muerte y otros poemas elegíacos (1952). Santiago: Philobiblion.
• Lagar (1954). Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico.
• Recados, contando a Chile (1957), selection, prologue and notes by Alfonso M. Escudero. Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico.

Contributions:

• Ecos (Thursday, March 23, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 894
• Página de mi alma, dedicada a mi madre (Thursday, April 20, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 902
• De mis tristezas, para mi hermana (Thursday, July 13, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 925
• Flores negras, para el album de Lolo (Thursday, August 10, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 934
• Ensoñaciones (Sunday, October 1, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 947
• Voces (Thursday, July 9, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 958
• Carta íntima (Thursday, November 30, 1905) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 964
• La instrucción de la mujer (Thursday, March 8, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 988.
• Al final de la vida (Sunday, March 11, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 989.
• Adiós a Laura (Thursday, July 5, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1019.
• Página de un libro íntimo (Sunday, September 2, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1026
• Filosofía moderna (Thursday, September 13, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1029
• El tiempo (Thursday, September 27, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1031
• Saetas igneas 1° parte (Thursday, October 11, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1034
• Saetas igneas 2° parte (Sunday, October 14, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1035
• La patria (Thursday, October 18, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1036
• El olvido (Thursday, November 1, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1040
• La envidia (Sunday, November 4, 1906) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1041
• Habla la anciana experiencia (Thursday, April 1, 1090) Vicuña: La Voz del Elqui, No. 1299

Posthumous editions:

• Desolación, Ternura, Tala y Lagar, compiled by Palma Guillén; Mexico City: Porrúa, 1957.
• Motivos de San Francisco, selection and prologue by César Díaz-Muñoz Cormatches. Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico, 1965; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal.
• Poema de Chile, text revised by Doris Dana; Editorial Pomaire, 1967; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal
• Poesías completas, with a prologue by Esther de Cáceres. Madrid: Aguilar, 1968.
• Magisterio y niño, selection of prose pieces and prologue by Roque Esteban Scarpa. Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1979; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal.
• Elogio de las cosas de la tierra, selection and prologue by Roque Esteban Scarpa. Editorial Andrés Bello, 1979.
• Lagar II. Santiago: Ediciones de la Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (Biblioteca Nacional), 1991; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal.
• Antología mayor, 4 volumes (1: Poetry; 2: Prose; 3: Letters; 4: Life and work), edition and general chronology by Luis Alberto Ganderats. Santiago: Lord Cochrane, 1992.
• Gabriela Mistral en 'La Voz de Elqui'. Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, Museo Gabriela Mistral de Vicuña, 1992; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal.
• Gabriela Mistral en «El Coquimbo». Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas Archivos y Museos, Museo Gabriela Mistral de Vicuña, 1994; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal.
• Gabriela Mistral: Escritos políticos, selection, prologue and notes by Jaime Quezada. Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994.
• Poesías completas, with a preliminary study and chronological references by Jaime Quezada. Santiago: Andrés Bello, 2001.
• Bendita mi lengua sea. Diario íntimo de Gabriela Mistral (1905-1956), edited by Jaime Quezada. Santiago: Planeta/Ariel, 2002; downloadable from the Memoria Chilena portal.
• El ojo atravesado. Correspondencia entre Gabriela Mistral y los escritores uruguayos, edition, selection and notes by Silvia Guerra and Verónica Zondek. Santiago: LOM, 2005.
• Gabriela Mistral: 50 prosas en «El Mercurio»: 1921-1956, prologue and notes by Floridor Pérez. Santiago: El Mercurio/Aguilar, 2005.
• Moneda dura. Gabriela Mistral por ella misma, compiled by Cecilia García Huidobro. Santiago: Catalonia, 2005.
• Esta América nuestra. Correspondencia 1926-1956. Gabriela Mistral y Victoria Ocampo, edition, introduction and notes by Elisabeth Horan and Doris Meyer. Buenos Aires: El Cuenco de Plata, 2007.
• Gabriela Mistral esencial. Poesía, prosa y correspondencia, selection, prologue, chronology and notes by Floridor Pérez. Santiago: Aguilar, 2007.
• Gabriela y México, selection and prologue by Pedro Pablo Zegers. Santiago: Red Internacional del Libro, 2007.
• Gabriela Mistral. Álbum personal. Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos; Pehuén, 2008.
• Almácigo, unpublished poems; edited by Luis Vargas Saavedra. Santiago: Universidad Católica de Chile, 2009.
• Niña errante. Cartas a Doris Dana, edition and prologue by Pedro Pablo Zegers; Lumen, Santiago, 2009.
• Hijita querida, edition, selection and prologue by Pedro Pablo Zegers; Dibam/Pehuén, Santiago, 2011.
• Epistolario americano, correspondence with José Vasconcelos and Radomiro Tomic, as well as Ciro Alegría, Salvador Allende, Alone, Eduardo Frei Montalva, Pablo Neruda and Ezra Pound, among others; Santiago: Das Kapital Ediciones, 2012.
• Baila y sueña. Rondas y canciones de cuna inéditas de Gabriela Mistral, 13 lullabies and 18 unpublished rounds compiled by Luis Vargas Saavedra, who discovered them in 2006, when Doris Atkinson invited him to see a series of unpublished manuscripts in South Hadley; Santiago: Universidad Católica, 2012.
• Caminando se siembra, unpublished prose, selection by Luis Vargas Saavedra. Santiago: Lumen, 2013.
• Poema de Chile, new version with edition, research and prologue by Diego del Pozo, which adds 59 poems to the 70 in the one prepared by Doris Dana in 1967. Santiago: La Pollera, 2013.
• Por la humanidad futura, political anthology of Gabriela Mistral. Research, edition and prologue by Diego del Pozo. The book recovers unpublished political texts, as well as others that had not previously been compiled, in addition to speeches and interviews. Santiago: La Pollera, 2015.
• 70 años del Nobel, citizens' anthology, with illustrations by Alejandra Acosta, Karina Cocq, Rodrigo Díaz, Pablo Luebert and Paloma Valdivia; National Council of Culture and the Arts (CNCA), 2015 (downloadable freely and legally from the CNCA).
• Sol del trópico, with illustrations by the painter Mario Murúa; Planeta Sostenible, 2016.
• Cuentos & Autobiografías, unpublished texts revised and compiled by Gladys González. Valparaíso: Ediciones Libros del Cardo, 2017.
• Pasión de enseñar (Pensamiento pedagógico), Editorial UV, 2017.
• Manuscritos. Poesía inédita, 29 unpublished poems revised and compiled by Verónica Jiménez. Santiago: Garceta Ediciones, 2018.
• Las renegadas, anthology of 88 poems made by the writer Lina Meruane, Lumen, Santiago, 2018
• Bendita mi lengua sea: Diario íntimo, compiled by Jaime Quezada, Catalonia, 2019.
• Toda culpa es un misterio, mystical and religious anthology of Gabriela Mistral. Research, edition and prologue by Diego del Pozo. The book recovers mystical and religious texts. Santiago: La Pollera, 2020.

Musical settings of her poems

• ¿En dónde tejemos la ronda?, album by Charo Cofré, 1985.
• Amado, apresura el paso, album by Ángel Parra, 1995.
• Song: La Pajita, version by Javiera Parra, album by Inti-Illimani Histórico, 2009. First version on an album by Inti-Illimani, 1981.
• Mi niña golondrina, album by Zinatel.
• Mi niña golondrina, album by Illapu, 2014.
• Oración al Cristo del Calvario, set to music by Cristóbal Fones SJ, from the album Tejido a Tierra: Canto Creyente desde las Entrañas, 2008.

Bibliography

• Barraza, Isolina (1978). Gabriela Mistral y su sobrino (ASP) (in español). Vicuña. Retrieved August 4, 2013.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Díaz Cuevas, Gonzalo (2015). RE vuelta Mistral: full text on the E-Book Portal of the University of Chile
• DIBAM, Biblioteca Nacional (1989). "Gabriela Mistral: a cien años de su nacimiento, 1889-1989" (ASP) (in español). Retrieved August 4, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Duchens, Myriam, and Silvia Castillo (2007). Chilenos del Bicentenario. Gabriela Mistral/Pedro Aguirre, Nº 11 (in español). Santiago: Editorial El Mercurio. ISBN 978-956-311-131-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Rubio, Patricia (1995). Gabriela Mistral ante la crítica: bibliografía anotada (ASP) (in español). Santiago: DIBAM, Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
• Samatán, Marta Elena (1969). Gabriela Mistral: campesina del Valle de Elqui (ASP) (in español). Buenos Aires: Instituto Amigos del Libro Argentino. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
• Sepúlveda Llanos, Fidel (1995). "Gabriela Mistral: una ecología estética". Aisthesis (in español) (28).
• Sepúlveda Llanos, Fidel (1996). "Gabriela Mistral: aportes a una estética del folclore". Taller de Letras (in español) (special issue).
• Teitelboim, Volodia (1991). Gabriela Mistral pública y secreta (in español). Santiago: Ediciones BAT. p. 334. ISBN 956-7022-17-8.
• Universidad de Chile (1957). Revista Anales de la Universidad de Chile: No. 106 (1957) Número especial Homenaje a Gabriela Mistral: full text available on the journal's website.
• Vassallo, Eduardo (2005). Gabriela Mistral: La sangre como lengua que contesta (ensayo) (in español). Editorial Cuarto Propio. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
• Vassallo, Eduardo (2017). Gabriela Mistral: Estreno crítico (ensayo) (in español). Ediciones Alterables. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
• Von dem Bussche, Gastón (1957). Visión de una poesía (ASP) (in español). Santiago: Ediciones de los Anales de la Universidad de Chile. Retrieved August 4, 2013.

External links

• Gabriela Mistral on the Memoria Chilena portal (in Spanish).
• Legacy of Gabriela Mistral, donated by Doris Atkinson to the National Library, digitized and put online (in Spanish)
• Gabriela Mistral at the BVMC (in Spanish)
• Gabriela Mistral at the Centro Virtual Cervantes (in Spanish)
• Biography of Gabriela Mistral at the Nobel Foundation (in English)