Mistral, Gabriela (redirected from Lucila Godoy Alcayaga)

Mistral, Gabriela (gäbrēā`lä mēsträl`), 1889–1957, Chilean poet whose original name was Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She was a teacher in and director of rural schools in Chile before she attained wider acclaim as an educator. Mistral was noted for her revision of the Mexican school system under José Vasconcelos. Subsequently, she served as Chilean consul in various European and Latin American cities and represented her country at the League of Nations and the United Nations. The mystery of childbearing, the sorrow of a tragic love, and a burning desire for justice are recurrent themes of her fluent and lyric verse. The early Sonetos de la muerte [sonnets of death] (1915) is considered one of her finest achievements. Desolación (1922), Tala (1938), and Lagar (1954) are three of her major volumes. Selected Poems, translated by Langston Hughes, was published in 1957. In 1945, Mistral received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Latin American to be so honored.

Bibliography

See studies by M. C. Preston (1964) and M. C. Taylor (1968).

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Mistral, Gabriela

 orig. Lucila Godoy Alcayaga

Gabriela Mistral, 1941.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born April 7, 1889, Vicuña, Chile—died Jan. 10, 1957, Hempstead, N.Y., U.S.) Chilean poet. Mistral combined writing with a career as a cultural minister and diplomat and as a professor in the U.S. Her reputation as a poet was established in 1914 when she won a prize for three “Sonnets of Death.” Her passionate lyrics, with love of children and of the downtrodden as principal themes, are collected in such volumes as Desolation (1922), Destruction (1938), and The Wine Press (1954). In 1945 she became the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.