The History of Literature Podcast

Episode 741: Gabriela Mistral
Host: Jacke Wilson
Release Date: October 16, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Jacke Wilson dives deep into the life and legacy of Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American—male or female—to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Wilson explores the context that forged her unique voice: humble beginnings in rural Chile, an enduring connection to nature, lifelong commitments to education and social advocacy, fierce emotional depth, and a poetic vision straddling mystical spirituality and visceral sorrow. Mistral’s story is one of struggle, global impact, heartbreak, and triumph—a tale both intensely personal and universally resonant.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mistral’s Origins and Early Influences

• Background: Born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga in 1889 in a remote Andean valley in Chile, surrounded by rugged farmland and mountains.
• Formative Years:
  • Deep connection to nature and spiritual introspection.
  • Early exposure to poetry and religion through her family.
    • Father: a poetic, free-spirited schoolteacher who abandoned the family early but imparted a love for poetry.
    • Grandmother: fostered her knowledge of the Bible, especially the Psalms.
  • Faced poverty and struggled to access education; accused unfairly at school and blocked for ‘pantheistic’ beliefs and advocacy.
• Self-Determination:
  • Worked outside official channels to become an educator: "She became a teacher’s aide as her older sister had done... passed an examination... and she was able to get a teaching certificate that way, which opened the doors..." (19:00)

2. Philosophical & Religious Identity

• Deep Franciscan Catholicism:
  • Admired simplicity, humility, service to the marginalized—“St. Francis was like the opposite of a megachurch televangelist... That's the tradition Gabriela Mistral comes from.” (09:30)
• Eastern Philosophies:
  • A period of embracing Buddhism; saw it as the “mother of Christianity” and valued its "emphasis on the poor and rejection of attachment to material things" (35:30).

3. Pathway to Poetry & Pseudonym

• Choosing a Name:
  • 'Gabriela Mistral' fuses reference to two poets (Gabriele d'Annunzio & Frederic Mistral) with strong symbolic meaning: the Archangel Gabriel’s fiery spiritual power and the 'Mistral', a powerful wind (15:45).
• Early Writing:
  • Her poetry early on is deeply rooted in nature, spirituality, and compassion for the downtrodden, as seen in her own recollections of Monte Grande and her “family of trees and plants” (17:30).

4. Teaching and Advocacy

• Education as Vocation:
  • Relentlessly advocated for rural/poor children, women’s education, and workers:
    • "She would spend her day in the schools... then organized classes in the evenings for workers... And somehow, even while doing all this, she managed to write articles advocating for better education for girls and women." (22:00)
• Poetry’s Purpose:
  • Wrote poems specifically for children and the classroom, blending artistic beauty with educational mission.

5. Personal Life and Emotional Depth

• Tragedy and Loss:
  • Endured heartbreak, including the suicide of her first love (Romelio, a railway worker) and abandonment by a second lover.
• Ambiguity of Relationships:
  • Rumored romantic connections to both men and women; often labeled a kind of “nation's mother”—a solitary, sacrificial figure (25:00).
• Themes of Sorrow:
  • “If [Pablo] Neruda wrote 20 love poems and a song of despair, maybe Mistral is closer to 20 songs of despair and one love poem, or almost love poem.” (25:45)

6. Desolation and Major Works

• Desolación (Despair):
  • Landmark collection in five sections: Life, School, Children, Pain, Nature, with later additions.
  • The "Sonnets of Death," relating to Romelio’s suicide, won her acclaim.
• Late-night Solitude and Suffering:
  • Emphasized in readings such as “Fog thickens eternal... The wind at my house makes its round of laments…” (sampled at 30:35).

7. Mentorship and Intersections

• Mentoring Pablo Neruda:
  • In Temuco, she encouraged a teenage poet—Ricardo Neftalí (later Pablo Neruda):
    • “She thought he was talented and gave him books... Well, Ricardo later became better known as Pablo Neruda.” (33:15)
• Religious and Philosophical Syncretism:
  • “She believed a couple of things, some of which were more, let’s say, aspirational than actual... Europe has amnesia, she wrote, referring to forgetting spiritual values found in Buddhism.” (35:45)

8. Global Travels, Later Years, and Nobel Prize

• Leaving Chile:
  • Exiled, embraced internationalism: Mexico, US, Europe, Puerto Rico, etc.
  • Helped reconstruct Mexico’s rural education system and wrote extensively for newspapers.
  • Personal grief continued—parental deaths and the controversial death of her beloved nephew.
• Nobel Prize:
  • First Latin American laureate, awarded in 1945.
  • Nobel speech hailed her as the “spiritual queen of Latin America” (55:00), lauding her transformation of personal heartbreak into universal poetry.

9. Poetic Highlights and Readings

“Ecstasy”

• Explores religious and erotic ecstasy, blurring spiritual and carnal experience.
  • “‘Now, O Christ, seal my eyelids, Let ice on my lips be spread. All the hours are superfluous, all the words are said...” (40:45)

“God Wills It”

• A poem of searing, vengeful heartbreak, likened to a ‘curse’—"God will not give you the light unless you walk by my side... God will not let you sleep except in the hollow of my hair..." (46:10)
• Host’s comparison to the intensity of Stevie Nicks singing “Silver Springs”:
  • “Imagine if Stevie... just said facts and dropped the mic. That’s kind of like this, right?” (45:00)

“Drinking” and “Slow Rain”

• Poems probing the visceral and emotional connection to land, people, and memory.
  • Example: “I remember people’s gestures. They were gestures of giving me water in the valley of Rio Blanco...” (53:45)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I was happy until I left Monte Grande, and then I was never happy again." – Jacke quoting Mistral (18:30)
• “The little girl who spoke to animals and who spoke to her fellow humans in rhyme was the woman whose verse spoke for a nation and a people and the world.” (65:15)
• “She lived a life like a poet should, with all the requisite physical and spiritual heartbreaks and triumphs and joys, enduring more sacrifice and sorrow than most of us are asked to endure.” (64:50)

Important Timestamps

• 09:30 – Discussing Franciscan values & Mistral’s spiritual tradition
• 15:45 – Origin of the pseudonym "Gabriela Mistral"
• 19:00 – Mistral’s fight for education and entry into teaching
• 22:00 – Her passion for teaching, advocating for the poor and women
• 25:45 – “20 songs of despair and one love poem”—on Mistral vs. Neruda
• 30:35 – Reading from “Fog thickens eternal…”
• 33:15 – Mentoring Pablo Neruda
• 35:30 – Embracing Buddhism and its influence
• 40:45 – Reading: “Ecstasy”
• 45:00 – Host’s comparison to Stevie Nicks; transition to “God Wills It”
• 46:10 – Reading: “God Wills It”
• 53:45 – Readings: “Drinking” and “Slow Rain”
• 55:00 – Nobel Prize speech excerpt
• 64:50 – Reflections on Mistral's legacy

Legacy & Conclusion

Mistral died in 1957 at age 67; Chile declared three days of national mourning. Her legacy has outlasted political rebrandings and interpretations: a fiery, complex, human poet, not merely a symbol of resignation or order. Today, her face appears on Chilean currency—a fitting reminder of her spiritual admonition to value more than material wealth.

Jacke closes by affirming Gabriela Mistral’s enduring power: “She had enough restlessness and seeking to make us appreciate the questions she asked and the truths she found. And poetry was there for her through it all.” (65:00)

Further Listening/Reading

• For more about the podcast or to support the show: historyofliterature.com
• The full texts of Mistral’s works are widely available in English and Spanish.