Delmira Agustini

Background

Delmira Agustini was born on October 24, 1886, in Montevideo, Uruguay in the family of Santiago Agustini Barrios and María Murtfeld Triaca. Her father was Uruguayan and mother was Argentinian.

Education

Agustini's mother had been a teacher before marrying, and she tutored Delmira at home, supporting her prodigy daughter’s writing with an atmosphere of quiet solitude.

When the family moved to another town close by, Agustini traveled by train to Montevideo for classes in painting, French, and piano.

Career

Agustini published her first book of poetry El Libro Blanco in 1907. Agustini’s poetry was filled with passion and symbolic sex. Her second book Cantos de la mañana was released in 1910. Agustini’s third book Los Cálices Vacíos was published in 1913, a year before her death. She commented, “While my previous books were sincere and produced with little premeditation, these Cálices Vacíos, brought forth in a beautiful moment of exalted perception, are the most sincere, the least premeditated and the most beloved”. In 1914 after marriage and divorce, alone again, Agustini wrote El Rosario de Eros which was published only in 1924.

Achievements

• Augustini gained a wide recognition in Latin America as a female modernist poet. The erotic character of her works made her to stand out of other female poets of her time.

Works

More photos

• poetry

  • El Libro Blanco

    (This is the first book of lyrical modernist poetry by Del...)

    1907
  • Cantos de la manana

    (Second book of poetry by Uruguayan poet Delmira Augustini.)

  • Los Calices Vacios

    (Third book of poetry by Uruguayan poet Delmira Augustini.)

    1913
  • El Rosario de Eros

    (The last collection of poetry by Delmira Augustini.)

Personality

Agustini’s letters to her fiancé were childish and sometimes signed “Baby, Delmira and I”, that could have been a sign of some personality split. Agustini met and corresponded with poet Ruben Dario finding him “a soul of depth that could understand her”. One of the letters to Ruben said, “I don’t know whether you have seen insanity face to face and struggled with it in the anguished loneliness of a hermetic spirit. There is, there can be, no sensation more horrible”. Fox-Lockert explored the possibility that Augustini was two different women — Baby, who would have been happy in the marriage, and the poet “who needed nights for composing and for her poetic trance.”.

Quotes from others about the person

• “Agustini’s critics have seized upon this correspondence as evidence that she had a dual personality. Some of them see in her a lifelong urge to disguise herself in order to play games with those who loved her.” Lucia Fox-Lockert
  
  “The time had come when she would be able to make herself whole, join her fantasy world to the real world.” Lucia Fox-Lockert
  
  “Agustini exemplifies a conflict of the divided self - in her case the division was between the poet and the woman.” Lucia Fox-Lockert
  
  She vacillated between being “an obedient daughter and proper young woman,” and a poet with all her “rebelliousness, her passion and her desire for freedom.” Lucia Fox-Lockert
  
  Agustini’s poetry “is still read and appreciated for her robust individualism and her courage to reveal the intimate secrets of her fantasy.” Lucia Fox-Lockert

Connections

In 1908 Delmira met Enrique Job Reyes, a non-intellectual farm auctioneer, and a long relationship developed that led to marriage some years later. Agustini married Enrique Job Reyes in 1914 and left him after less than two monts of marriage on grounds of “vulgarity”. Agustini began seeing poet Ricardo Mas de Ayala. Her husband had been seeking help from friends to intercede on his behalf, but Agustini would not return to him. Job Reyes killed Agustini, then himself, with a pistol.

Father:

Santiago Agustini Barrios

Mother:

María Murtfeld Triaca

husband:

Enrique Job Reyes

References

• Serás mía o de nadie: La verdadera muerte de Delmira Agustini (Spanish Edition) eBook: Diego Fischer: Kindle Store Serás mía o de nadie is a spanish language biographic book about Delmira Agustini.
  2016
• Cómo leer a Delmira Agustini: Algunas claves críticas (Spanish Edition) eBook: María José Bruña Bragado: Kindle Store Cómo leer a Delmira Agustini: Algunas claves críticas is a Spanish language critic book on the poetry of Delmira Augustini.
  2010
• Dependence, Independence, and Death: Toward a Psychobiography of Delmira Agustini (Latin America) Dependence, Independence, and Death: Toward a Psychobiography of Delmira Agustini depicts the life of Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) based on her poems and other writings. These works give evidence of two constructs related to a psychological conflict in her life. The first is a dependence/independence dichotomy, thematized as a polarized love relationship between speaker and Other, who can represent two individuals or dual aspects of the poet’s self. The second involves the poet’s fascination with death, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when she is murdered by her ex-husband at the age of twenty-seven.
  2009
• Modern women poets of Spanish America: The precursors, Delmira Agustini, Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, Juana de Ibarbourou In this work author studies poetic works and heritage of Delmira Augustini based not only on her poetry, but also on the works of her precursors and followers.
  1945