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Mistral Gabriela 1889 - 1957 (68)

You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.


QUOTES

The Teacher's

Prayer

Lord, you who taught, forgive me that I teach; forgive me that I bear the name of teacher, the name you bore on earth.

Grant me such devoted love for my school that not even beauty's flame will detract from my faithful tenderness.

Gabriella Mistral was an important Chilean poet, educator and diplomat. She was born on 7 April 1889, in Vicuna, Chile. Her father was an indigenous Native American who, along with his farm work, he used to compose and sang spontaneous lyrics. Gabriella studied and became a teacher. A tragic event at the age of 23, the suicide of her fiancee, inspired her to write a series of poems published in 1914 entitled "Sonnet of Death". She worked as a teacher and continued to write poems which she published in magazines and newspapers. In 1922, her poems were collected in a collection and were published under the title "Despair" with great success.

That same year, the Minister of Education asked her to write children's poems. She then worked for the Ministry of Education in various fields. In 1926 she was sent to Geneva and worked as secretary of the education section of the United Nations Society while in the 1930s she was general inspector of the rural schools of her country. She then worked as a diplomat on various missions. In 1945 she was honored with the Nobel Prize "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". She died on January 10, 1957.