The Empty Chalices: the novel
The story is based on the life and poetry of Delmira Agustini, a revolutionary poet from Montevideo, Uruguay. Born in 1886, a repressive time for women, she managed to produce astoundingly original poetry until circumstances threatened to end her life at an early age... "The novel captures the passionate spirit infusing the poems that erupted from the tortured soul of Delmira…" (Pedro Correa, Author/Expert on Latin-American Literature, Granada, Spain, June 2003)
TO ORDER THE BOOK
USA
Online at www.allbookstores.com
Spain
Ediciones EUNATE
M. Nieves García Arano
Comercial Director
Pintor Crispín 12, 7-G
Pamplona
Phone/fax: 948/272352
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Uruguay
GUSSI
Yaro 1119
Montevideo-Uruguay
Phone: ( 598 2) 4133038/ 4136195
Prologue of the book
Stars from the Abyss
June 1914
Your Hands/Para tus manos
Hands from my 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...
Manos que sois de la Vida,
Manos que sois del Ensueño;
Que disteis toda belleza
Que toda belleza os dieron;
Tan vivas como dos almas
Tan blancas como de muerto,
Tan suaves que se diría
Acariciar un recuerdo;
Manos que me disteis gloria
Manos que me disteis miedo!
I have just returned home from Enrique’s room in his boarding house. The same scene as always… he holds me in his arms.We caress each other, seemingly so in love. Finally, I disengage myself from his arms.
I ask, “Are you leaving for Argentina, then?”
He wordlessly pulls a steamer ticket out of his pocket, and shows it to me.
“Next week, for sure?” I ask.
“Sí. Won’t you come with me? If only we could get away from Montevideo, from your mother’s control—be alone together— maybe we could work out our problems. Maybe we could live as husband and wife again.”
I start buttoning my cloak. “You know that won’t happen.
But, I love you. Always.”
“If you love me, then why do you want a divorce?”
“But I do love you. That’s why I keep coming to see you, making love to you. I don’t want to stay away from you.”
“You must be crazy. I must be crazy.”
I ask, “Is that why you’re leaving for Argentina?”
“What do you think?
I embrace him. “I will come again, before you leave, to say good-bye, sí?”
“Sí…”
–––––––––
I feel so full of anguish, wracked by a sense of foreboding.
I toss my diary and a few clothes into a suitcase and flee here, to Dr. Curbelo, at the Sanatorium in Minas, where Mamá and I have often taken refuge and submitted our selves to the doctor’s questionable cures. Four hours in a jolting train ride through the low green hills… Upon my arrival, Dr. Curbelo provides me with an initial dose of opium to soothe my unbearable anxieties.
Then he suggests I write down in my diary my recollections of the past; perhaps in them, I can find the clues to my present despair. I begin to search back in my memory, almost beyond memory, for the seeds of my destructiveness…