Claudia Lars

Margarita del Carmen Brannon Vega, known by her pseudonym Claudia Lars (Armenia, December 20, 1899-San Salvador, July 22, 1974), was a Salvadoran poet. Her work is considered to have a refined lyricism and stands out for its mastery of metrics.

Early Years

Claudia Lars' bust In Armenia, Sonsonate. Claudia Lars (1899-1974), was a writer, journalist, editor, editor, editor, translator and political exile.

His parents were Irish-American engineer Peter Patrick Brannon and Manuela Vega Zelayandía from El Salvador. During her childhood she was a friend of Consuelo Suncín, who would marry Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He began his education in his own home, in charge of the educator Mercedes Mendoza, and later studied at the Colegio de La Asunción in the city of Santa Ana. In his adolescence, at the age of 17, and thanks to General Juan José Cañas, he achieved that a booklet of poems of his authorship was published under the name Sad Mirajes. No copy of it is preserved. Likewise, she began a sentimental relationship with the Nicaraguan poet Salomón de la Selva in 1919, but her parents broke the relationship and sent the young woman to the United States, where she met Le Roy Beers, her first husband. In the country she taught Spanish at the Berlitz School in Brooklyn.

Travel and publications

Carmen Brannon Vega, known for her pseudonym of Claudia Lars. She impregnated love in her poetic work with lyric delicacy and perfection. His works have come to be with those of Gabriela Mistral and Juana de Ibarborou, with whom he maintained a good friendship.

Claudia Lars promulgated countless texts in the American Repertoire: 98 collaborations from 1921 to 1948.

Claudia Lars returned to El Salvador with her husband in 1927 after Mr. Beers had been appointed consul of the United States, and that same year the writer gave birth to their only son, Leroy Beers Brannon. At the same time, she socialized with the intellectuals of the time, among them Salarrué, Serafín Quiteño and Alberto Masferrer. She began using the pseudonym Claudia Lars in 1933. She published the book Stars in the Well in 1934 and also participated in lyrical radio programs for children. Similarly, she collaborated on the Children's Page of El Diario de ayer the day before and the day before.

At the beginning of the following decade, Claudia Lars won second place in the Floral Games of the Novembrina Fair in Guatemala, held in 1941, thanks to her work Arcángel Sonnets. Some of his creations would also be published, such as La casa de vidrio (Santiago de Chile, 1942), Romances de Norte y Sur (1946), Sonnets and City under my voice (1947), winner of the contest commemorating the IV Centenary of the title of City of San Salvador. In these years, Lars, as cultural attaché of the embassy of El Salvador, left for Guatemala in 1948, where she met her second husband, Carlos Samayoa Chinchilla, whom she would divorce in 1967. Before getting married, she worked packing peaches in the United States. United, translating comics for Walt Disney and collaborating for Salvadoran anti-fascist newspapers.

Narrative

Claudia Lars stands out for her lyricism and for an impeccable mastery of metrics and a style evolving towards maturity in the field of poetry.

Marked influences of Claudia:

"Influences: Inolvidable and tempranera, that of Amado Nervo, the mystical... Later, Francis Thompson and Christina Rossetti. Later, that of Gabriela Mistral (in my motherly and childish themes) and perhaps, in some compositions or inspirations, that of Juan Ramón Jiménez. I'm not saying with this that these poets are guessing behind my verses. I just want to say that out of them, mine—with its own color and movement—show the small spring of the invisible and maternal water that is hidden in the depths of the earth..."

Last Years

1973 This afternoon, the rector of the UCA, Jesuit Luis Achaerandio, gives her a doctorate honoris causes the writer Claudia Lars in her own room house, because she is prostrated by terminal cancer

Valero Lecha claudia lars circa 1950

Back in El Salvador, he worked in the Editorial Department of the Ministry of Culture (currently Directorate of Publications and Printing) where he directed the magazine Cultura. Publications from this period were: Where the steps arrive (1953), Escuela de pájaros (1955), Fable of a truth (1959) and the memories Land of childhood.

Other works of his won awards in the following years, such as Sobre el ángel y el hombre, second place in the 1962 National Culture Contest, and Del fino amanecer, first joint prize at the Quezaltenango Floral Games in 1965. Likewise, a compilation of his work was prepared by Matilde Elena López under the name Selected Works. Before her death, she obtained a doctorate Honoris Causa from the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, and she was also distinguished with the José Matías Delgado Order.

Posía última would be published posthumously, printed by Editorial Universitaria, and David Escobar Galindo also produced His best poems , published by the Publications Department in 1976. In 1999, to commemorate the centenary of his birth, the National Council for Culture and Art published two volumes of his Complete Poetry, compiled by Carmen González Huguet.

Some works

Tomb of Claudia Lars in the cemetery of the Ilustres in San Salvador.

• Stars in the Pozo (1934).
• Round song (1937).
• The glass house (1942).
• North and South Romances (1946).
• Sonnets (1946).
• City under my voice (1946).
• Where the steps arrive (1953).
• Bird school (1955).
• Fables of Truth (1959).
• Bearland (1959).
• Presence in Time (1960).
• Sunflower (1962).
• About the angel and man (1962).
• The fine dawn (1964).
• Our pulsating world (puntes sobre una nueva edad) (1969).
• Selected works (1973).
• Last chance (1974).