Sunday Wisdom #28: Gabriela Mistral: Mother to a thousand children

When Gabriela Mistral was Lucila Alcagaya, she taught at the little village school in Monte Grande, Chile.

Although she was never a mother, her deep love, affection, and motherly feelings for children remained with her till the last day of her life.

Mistral’s collection of songs titled?Ternura??or Tenderness,?published in 1924, mirrors those tender thoughts for the little ones.?

On 15 November, 1945, Gabriela became the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was only the fifth woman in the world to do so.

While reading her Nobel Prize citation, Hjalmar Gullberg said that Mistral “has become the great singer of mercy and motherhood.”

Mistral’s poems seldom followed the rules of poetry. Rhythm, meter, syllables, stanzas weren’t a part of her armoury.?

Yet, the love and enmity, bitterness and euphoria, hope and despair she experienced all through her life resonated in her words as naturally as they came.

Admittedly, her poems aren’t easy to recite. The style is turbulent, the structure occasionally up and down, the tone, at times, a little harsh.?

This is what she herself had to say about her own poetry:

Poetry simply exists within me, and on my lap; it is the thirst of a submerged childhood. Although the result is bitter and hard, the poetry I make cleanses me of the world’s dust and even the inscrutable, essential vileness similar to what we call original sin.”?- Gabriela Mistral

But, all those don’t matter when you’re a mother to all of Latin America - when the nation mourns your death for three days.?And, when hundreds and thousands of your children gather to bid you a tearful adieu.

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