❖ Poetics of Transfiguration

Bags packed and with festive send-offs in the ports of Chile, Peru, and Cuba, Gabriela Mistral left for Mexico in 1922. She was later to find that her commission, which was to have lasted a short while, turned instead into an affair of a lifetime. 1 Even though she stayed in Mexico for eighteen months, the countryside, people, and language became a place and imaginary space to which Mistral constantly returned in her poetry and prose, in her political conversations, and in letters to friends. 2 Mexico became a literary sojourn, an ‘invitation au voyage’, that allowed her to discover the limits of her identity as well as her language. As her Mexican friend Palma Guillén recalled, Gabriela Mistral’s passion for Mexico never left her: Amó a México, con un amor hecho de conocimiento y de esperanza: mejor propagandista y mejor defensor no ha tenido México ni de dentro ni de fuera. El nombre de México, más tarde, estaba siempre en sus labios. El recuerdo de México, después de su paso a nuestra tierra, va y viene constantemente en sus poesías. Supo de nuestro país tanto como nosotros mismos y, acaso, más que muchos. [She loved Mexico with a love filled with understanding and hope. Mexico had no better champion or supporter within or outside its borders. Later, the name of Mexico was always on her lips. The memory of Mexico after her stay here, comes and goes in her poems. She knew as much as we did about Mexico, perhaps even more than most.] 3