SOURCE: “Nocturne (Nocturno),” in Gabriela Mistral: The Poet and Her Work, translated by Helene Masslo Anderson, New York University Press, 1964, pp. 113–22.

In the following essay, Arce de Vasquez offers an explication of Mistral's “Nocturne”, arguing that the poem traces a course from the bitterness of betrayed passion to resignation and an ascetic focus on the predominance of death.

An analysis of Gabriela Mistral's work will always present serious difficulties to anyone who attempts to study it rigorously. The one who undertakes such a task will not be able to ignore the intimate relationship between the themes of the poetry and the life of the poet. From the data contained in the published biographies, he will have to separate, very delicately, what is true from what is a product of the imaginative enthusiasm of her biographers. Even when reading Gabriela's own accounts of her life, he will have to...