Nobel Prize Laureate: Gabriela Mistral

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Gabriela-Mistral-1941

Mistral’s works, both in verse and prose, deal with the basic passion of love as seen in the various relationships of mother and offspring, man and woman, individual and humankind, soul and God.

A dedicated educator and an engaged and committed intellectual, Mistral defended the rights of children, women, and the poor; the freedoms of democracy; and the need for peace in times of social, political, and ideological conflicts, not only in Latin America but in the whole world. She always took the side of those who were mistreated by society: children, women, Native Americans, Jews, war victims, workers, and the poor, and she tried to speak for them through her poetry, her many newspaper articles, her letters, and her talks and actions as Chilean representative in international organizations.

Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gabriela-mistral

But it is her poems on food that I most love as shown in these delicious samples:

Flour: Smooth flour, sliding more silently than water, can sift across a naked child without waking him.

Salt: The salt that bleaches the seagull’s belly and crackles in the penguin’s breast, and that in mother-of-pearl plays with colors that are not its own.

The Pineapple: A warrior fruit scared from the chest of an Amazon. And contained in this concise capsule, the whiff of a scent that can perfume a field. 

Writing tends to make me happy; it always soothes my spirit and bestows on me an innocent, gentle, childlike day. It is the feeling of having spent a few hours in my true homeland, in my habits, in my unfettered impulses, in full freedom. 

 

 

Here are some interesting facts about Gabriela Mistral:

  • Gabriela Mistral is her pen name. She was born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga in Vincuna, Chile. She acknowledged wanting for herself the fiery spiritual strength of the archangel  Gabriel and the strong, earthly, and spiritual power of the wind.

  • She was the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945)

  • In Paris, she worked with Marie Curie in the League of Nations.

  • Proceeds from her children’s book Tala were donated to a hostel for orphans of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1956 she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. A few weeks later, in the early hours of 10 January 1957, Mistral died in a hospital in Hempstead, Long Island. Her last word was “triunfo” (triumph). After a funeral ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, the body of this pacifist woman was flown by military plane to Santiago, where she received the funeral honors of a national hero. Following her last will, her remains were eventually put to rest in a simple tomb in Monte Grande, the village of her childhood.

Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gabriela-mistral

What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people, she once stated, and these words were also inscribed on her tomb.

 

32 thoughts on “Nobel Prize Laureate: Gabriela Mistral”

  3. She strikes me as an amazing artist and human being. I love that she has her own stamp. I love that there are a lot of female writers out there who are also activists, Carol!

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    • Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Susan. I greatly appreciate it. Gabriela Mistral rightly deserved the Nobel prize not only for her wonderful poems and prose but also because of her humanitarian commitment.

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  8. Wonderful feature, Carol…
    I didn’t know she was the first Latin American writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.
    I really enjoyed the reading and learnt while reading your words…
    Thanks for sharing. Happy weekend to you,
    Aquileana 😀

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  9. As far as I am concerned there came a time when I suddenly realised I enjoy food more than before and so I read about food, purchased books, became cooking TV show junkie…my love for food is controlled, though 😀 but I love reading pieces when writers pin characteristics to foods, make the food come alive as part of our surrounds, which in fact it is

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  10. merci pour ce poste dédiée à cette FEMME exceptionnelle! 🙂 Mistral is really “a lucky name” as Frédéric Mistral, the French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language received Prix Nobel de littérature, too! 🙂 btw, “le mistral”(in Occitan and Catalan) = a strong, cold and northwesterly wind that blows from southern France into the Gulf of Lion in the northern Mediterranean… 🙂

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  11. Hi Carol – I’m very much enjoying reading your Nobel winners series. Ashamed to admit I never heard of Mistral. Happily our library collections here have a good representation of her work so I’ll be investigating.

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  12. Mistral has never been on my radar before, thank you so much for leading me to her. What an amazing woman and the poetry is a knockout.

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