“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”
Jane Austen
painting is from Benjamin Jean Joseph Constant (1845-1902)
Contemplation
Oil on canvas
TERESA WILMS MONTT POET FROM CHILE (Viña del Mar, 1893 – París 1921): She was born in a wealthy family, daughter of Federico Guillermo Wilms Montt and Brieba, and his wife Luz Victoria Montt and Montt. Given the social context of that time, her primary instruction was given to her by governesses and particular teachers.
When Teresa turned 17, she got married with Gustavo Balmaceda Valdés. In the following years (1911 y 1913) she gave birth to her daughters, Elisa and Silvia Luz. Almost right after the wedding, the problems between Gustavo and Teresa started, mainly due to how much the husband felt aggravated by his wife’s personality, who frequently attended to literary gatherings, and followed the anarchist ideals, and free masonry. Gustavo reacted sheltering himself in the gambling and alcohol; Teresa, on her side, sheltered herself in her friend and Gustavo’s cousin, Vicente Balmaceda Zañartu (whom she will refer on the future at her diaries as Jean).
After numerous marital conflicts, moving from one city to another and letters from Vicente Balmaceda addressed to Teresa, Gustavo Balmaceda convened a family trial, which contaminated her confinement in the convent of Preciosa Sangre, which she entered on October 18th of 1915, and escaped from it on June of 1916 setting off for Buenos Aires, helped by Vicente Huidobro. During her stay in the convent, she started a journal, in which she wrote her feelings about the loss of her daughters, being separated from Vicente Balmaceda and the motivations for her first suicide attempt on March 29th, 1916.
In Buenos Aires, she contributed to Nosotros magazines, in which also did contributed Gabriela Mistral and Ángel Cruchaga Santa María, among others. She also published her first work “Inquietudes Sentimentales”, a collection of fifty poems with surrealistic threads, that enjoyed an amazing success among the intellectual circles of Buenos Aires society. the same happened to “Los Tres Cantos”, work that explored eroticism and spirituality.
Two years after this work and after traveling to Barcelona and New York, she came back to Buenos Aires and published “Cuentos para Hombres que Todavía son Niños”. In it she evoked her childhood and some vital experiences, in tales of great originality and fantasy. “En la Inquietud del Mármol” was published in Barcelona and constituted a lyric toned elegy, made of 35 fragments, which central leitmotif was death. Written on first person, she focused her interest on the mediating role of love between life and death.
She continued traveling across Europe, visiting London and Paris, but always being a resident of Madrid. In 1920 she was reunited with her daughters in Paris; but after they were separated she become gravely ill. In this crisis, she consumed a large dose of Barbital , and she died on December 24th 1921.
In the last pages of her diary, she wrote: “To die, after feeling everything and being nothing…”.
Source count of the Moon
“I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that- everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.”
Suicide note from Virginia Woolf for her husband Leonard Woolf
28 March 1941
On that day Virginia filled her pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
… And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson ~ Hope
FEELING OF IMMORTALITY
Please stop, I need silence inside
Be quiet, there is so much noise
No longer is it possible to live
Words are floating away from me
Dragged along with the ocean tide
My body and soul are kept in piece
While walking along this seashore
Feelings are drawn away from me
Picked up by the unpredictable tide
Gone forever dragged into the deep
New waves keep arriving onshore
The water looks so tender and soft
But at the same time so very cruel
I am much aware of my vulnerability
So small am I in the presence of you
Why did you always need control
You have drowned my personality
And the water continued to call me
Always these same waveless voices
Why didn’t you just let me drift away
A meander of tears escaping my eyes
This desperate heart of mine is leaking
Flooding my remorse and bitter feelings
A pool which colors are nothing but dark
Slowly vaporized by the heat of hatred
The sand sticks to my feet as if a warning
But its no use I am encouraged to walk on
This luring abyss is dangerously present
A constant flux of changes but I hesitate
Before me the sun disappears at horizons end
I realize I am just focused on my own pain
Words no longer reach my sinking heart
But the emotional wound is cut too deep
I am desperately seeking my own relief
Do I honestly think this is not the end?
Monique Lucy Weberink
January, 2012
