Delmira Agustini (Uruguay)
1886-1914
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1886, Delmira Agustini became one of the most noted poets of Uruguay and spokesperson in Latin American letters for the energy of female consciousness. Combining traditional Spanish metrics with works that include carnal and religious elements similar to those used by the great Spanish mystic writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Agustini used her work as a vehicle for spiritual transcendence.
She began to publish poems already in her early youth, writing a society
column under the pseudonym of Joujou. She soon attracted the attentions of some
of the cultural intellectuals, but they were perhaps more drawn to her beauty
and youth than to her poetry, something which would haunt Agustini throughout
her life.
In 1907 she published her first book of poetry, El libro blanco,
which was well received by writers and critics. Three years later she published
Cantos de la Mañana, which closed with the reviews of her previous book,
many of which consisted of metaphors of the day suggesting the author's
virginity and inspiration, terms which Agustini herself did not disavow.
Within this fetishistic atmosphere the poet came to be called "la
Nena," the baby, and was represented in the public mind as living in a
private sphere of restrictive society while writing what some critics described
as "sexually obsessed" and "heated" lyrics.
In 1913 she was working on two new collections of poetry, Los cálices
vacíos (The Empty Chalices) and El rosario de Eros (Rosary of
Eros)—collections which she considered her most mature to date—when she married
Enrique Job Reyes. Within a month, Agustini left him, returning to her parents'
home.
In July of 1914, Reyes discovered her in a clandestine sexual encounter,
and shot her in a downtown Montevideo hotel room, killing her before he himself
committed suicide.
Influenced by both Nietzsche and the Uruguayan poet Julio Herrera y Reissig, Agustini wrote a poetry of both elegance and sexual bravery, drawing a wide range of admirers including Rubén Darío, who advocated her work.
BOOKS OF POETRY
El libro blanco (1907); Cantos de la Mañana (Montevideo: O. M. Bertani, 1910); Obras Completas-Tomo I-El roario de Eros (Montevideo: Maximino García, 1924); Obras Completas-Tomo II-Los Astros del Abismo (Montevideo: Maximino García, 1924); Poesías completas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1944)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Selected Poetry of Delmira Agustini:
Poetics of Eros (Carbondale: Southern Illilnois
University Press, 2003); A Flock of Scarlet Doves (Stockton, Minnesota: Sutton
Hoo Press, 2005)
Another Race
Eros, let me lead you, Blind
Father...
And at your almighty hands I ask
for his prodigal body arrayed in fire
covering mine, pale among petals of
damask!
Today the electric corolla I unfurl
offers the attar of a garden of
Wives;
for his vultures in my flesh, their
fee,
I give up a whole cote of pint
doves.
Give my feverish stem to the twinned
cruel serpent
of his embrace...Absinthe and honey
spent
in me for his utter veins and from
his mouth...
I am one ardent furrow stretched
where the seed of another race will
flourish
feeding madness and beauty both!
—Translated from the Spanish by
Karl Kirchwey
The Miraculous Ship
Provision a ship for me like a great
idea...
Some will call her The Shadow;
others, The Star.
She need not lie at the mercy of
hand or cat's paw;
I want her conscious, untameable and
fair!
What will drive her is the rhythm of
a bloodstained heart
of superhuman Life; in her I will
feel strong
as if in the arms of God. Whatever
seas and what-
ever quarter the wind her prow ill
temper with a cinder's sparkling.
I will freight her with all of my
sadness, and without a fix
will spin like the lotus flower's
broken calyx
across the liquid horizon of the
sea...
Ship, sister soul: toward what
unseen land,
what deep soundings or things
unimagined
will we hear?... Already living and
dreaming make me die...
—Translated from the Spanish by
Karl Kirchwey
English language copyright ©1993 by
Karl Kirchwey. Reprinted from Stephen Tapscott, ed. Twentieth-Century Latin
American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1996)
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