About Delmira
Delmira’s Biography
Revolutionary poet Delmira Agustini lived intensely, loved passionately, and perished tragically in turn-of-the-century Montevideo. Despite her conservative surroundings, during her brief twenty-seven years of life she managed to publish three books of increasingly erotic poetry.
Delmira, cosseted from birth by her bourgeois parents, started penning verses at the age of ten. She became a little idol in her home, where Mamá maintained an absolute silence while la nena was writing. Schooled at home by her mother, Delmira occasionally managed to escape her vigilance. She could reveal her bohemian, sensuous self to two close friends: María Eugenia, iconoclastic poet, and Andre Giot, a wealthy and liberated homosexual. At the age of twenty Delmira had her first, brief love affair, which opened up her poetic explorations to love and eroticism.
During the ensuing six years, she suffered from terrifying mental instability, as well as increasing doubts about her relationship with Enrique, her tradition-bound suitor. Although Enrique could not understand Delmira's poetry, his steady passion for her provided a peace and stability that Delmira desperately craved. She too loved Enrique with passion, although once married, they were seldom compatible except in bed.
A month before her marriage to Enrique, Delmira met and became enamored of the Argentine politician and writer Manuel Ugarte, a dazzlingly attractive Don Juan who also admired and desired Delmira. Longings for Manuel created the torment of her wedding night with Enrique, and the nightmare of the fifty days of marriage that followed, from which Delmira fled home to Mamá, sobbing that she could not bear such vulgarity. As she initiated divorce proceedings, Delmira was comforted by her long time friend María Eugenia, who coolly mocked the repressive social norms feeding Delmira's agony. The torments of Delmira's life found release in ever more profound and original poetry. She also sought solace by making love with Enrique at his flat, while seeing and corresponding with other lovers, among them, Manuel Ugarte.
After nine months of anguish, the crazed and jealous Enrique shot Delmira and then himself. Delmira's voice was silenced forever at the age of twenty-seven.
"For the first time in the history of the Spanish language appeared a woman poet reveling in all the glory of her female self" (Rubén Darío, Nicaragua, 1913)
Excerpts of her poetry
The Vampire
In the depths of the sad afternoon
I called forth your pain... to feel it was
Like feeling your heart! You turned so pale—
Even your voice, and your waxen eyelids...
My Wings
I once had...
two wings
Two wings,
Full of the miracles of life, death,
and illusion.
Two wings,
Like two firmaments
With storms, calms and Stars...
My Lovers
Today they have returned.
By all the paths of the night
They have come to weep in my bed.
There were so many, there are so many.
I know not which are alive, nor which have died.
I'll weep and mourn so as to mourn them all.
The night soaks up the tears like a black handkerchief...
The Ineffable
I am dying a strange death... It’s not Life,
Nor Death, nor Love that destroys me;
I am dying of a great thought, mute like a wound...
Have you never felt the strange torment
Life
To you I come in my hours of thirst
As to a mountain spring –
Cristal clear , fresh, gentle, colosal...
And the bitting fiery serpents always perish
In the powerful soft current...
Your Hands
Hands from life
Hands from my dreams
Tender hands that caressed me
Gentle hands that healed me
Warm hands that melted me
Strong hands that held me
Delicate hands that explored me
Searching hands that found me
Hands full of desire
Hands that brought me my destiny...