Vision of the Muse in "Canción de la verdad sencilla" and "Veinte poemas de amor"

Abstract

The woman poet of the post-Romantic period, like her later counterparts, found herself at a crossroads regarding the figure of the muse. For centuries, the male poetic tradition had defined this mythological topos as feminine, absent and other. Emerging from the shadow of this legacy, a woman poet could either turn outward and transform an embodiment of her inspiration onto nature or a masculine beloved (consequentially propagating the dichotomy of self-other), or fold inward, to sing her body and herself, and run Sie risk of alienation from a predominantly male literary audience. Faced with a limited female poetic tradition and a sometimes hostile critical patriarchy, woman poets such as Gabriela Mistral and Sara de Iba?ez were often forced (either consciously or un-consciously) to compromise their styles in order to reach their readers. Others poets such as Delmira Agustini and Alfonsina Storni often assumed the role of the femme fatale and composed biting criticisms of their conservative environments. Harold Bloom maintains that all poets must confront the ghosts of their predecessors and surpass the anxiety of influence by misreading their role models. Still, Bloom's model is spoken in the distinctly masculine terms of Freud's