Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), real name Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, was a Chilean poet, educator, humanist, and diplomat. In 1945 she became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world". Her portrait also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note.

Wisdom & Quotes

• The poet is an untier of knots, and

Love without words is a knot, and it
Drowns.

• Speech is our second possession, after the soul - and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.
• Of the enemies of the soul - the world, the devil, the flesh - the world is the most serious and the most dangerous.
• I have all that I lost

And I go carrying my childhood
Like a favourite flower
That perfumes my hand.
- Lagar (Wine Press)

• I have a faithful joy

And a joy that is lost.
One is like a rose,
The other, a thorn.
The one that was stolen
I have not lost.
- 'Richness' Tala (Felling)

• In the secret of night,

My prayer climbs like the liana,
...
My prayer is, and I am not.
It grows, and I perish.
I have only my hard breath,
My reason and my madness.
I cling to the vine of my prayer.
I tend it at the root
Of the stalk of night.
- The Liana

Abdiliaahi Muuse