With an invitation to explore and return to the original poetic heritage of Gabriela Mistral, the book Matriarca, by Ediciones Biblioteca Nacional, was presented, which rescues typed and uncorrected poems by the Nobel Prize winner, together with texts with amendments and manuscripts from her hand and letter.
The presentation of the work was held this Wednesday, March 22 in the Ercilla Room of the National Library and was attended by Peter Paul Zegersdirector and mistralian specialist; Gustavo Barrera Calderon, poet and researcher of the work; and Magda Sepulveda Erizacademic from the Catholic University of Chile and Thomas Harriswriter and head of National Library Editions.
Matriarca brings together a set of poems from the legacy of Gabriela Mistral, whose selection concentrated on texts elaborated and corrected in a kind of final version of the poems. Although, as is well known, in Gabriela Mistral’s creative process there were never finished poems and always works in the process of change.
The director of the National Library highlights that the work “constitutes a work not only of poetic sensibility, but also of pure research, of paleography, but above all, a work that once again values our Nobel Prize winner and that tries to nobly the rescue of a poetry that was left in progress, in a state of workshop, and that today can be made known in a clearer and more orderly way and that will allow us to get to know and recognize the true value of Mistral’s poetry ”.
Matriarca brings together poetic texts from the legacy that Doris Atkinson, Doris Dana’s niece, donated to the National Library of Chile in 2007, and whose content after a long process of cataloging and digitalization is available to everyone at the National Digital Library, a platform where Starting next May, this work will also be available for download.
