Maria Luisa Bombal

María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, June 8, 1910-Santiago, May 6, 1980) was a Chilean writer, awarded the Ricardo Latcham Prize in 1974, with the Chilean Academy of Language Award in 1976 and the Joaquín Edwards Bello Award in 1978. Although many intellectuals in the country asked that María Luisa receive the National Literature Award and national and international critics recognized its relevance for the literary development of the South American Region This was never granted.

Her work, relatively short in length, focuses on female characters and their inner world, through which they escape from reality. She also stood out for not being linked to any current of the time, consciously moving away from the avant-garde and criollismo. Her best known works are the short novels The last fog and The shroud.

Biography

First years in Chile

She was born on Paseo Monterrey, Viña del Mar and was the eldest daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca D'Anthes Precht, married in 1909. Her father, who was secretary of the Viña del Mar Regional Administration, passed away when she was nine years old.

Her mother read to her and her sisters stories from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen that she translated directly from German, so her first approach to literature came from Nordic sources.

She studied at the Colegio de Señoritas de los Sagrados Corazones (now a mixed school), run by French nuns in Viña del Mar, where she arrived at the age of five, forcing her parents to advance her admission because she had already learned to read. Sister Blanca Prieto, who taught her and her sisters, recalls that: "In reading I had first place in the course. The same in spelling. Since then, her aversion to mathematics was already evident. "I was never able to master the four operations", María Luisa herself once confessed.»

Her first writings were very early, poems written around the age of eight. During this time she began to study violin with Paco Moreno.

Study in France

María Luisa Bombal during her stay in Paris.

During the 1920s and after the death of his father, at the age of nine he moved to Paris with his mother and sisters, where he continued his studies at the College Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, a boarding school strictly Catholic and then to Sainte Geneviève College, also run by secularized nuns.

In 1928, at eighteen, she entered the Faculty of Letters at the Sorbonne University where she obtained a certificate in French literature that gave her the right to be a professor of French literature, a certificate she obtained with a thesis on Prosper Mérimée, rejecting her idea of continuing her studies in Hispanic literature because to enter the comparative literature program she was required to take Latin, a requirement that made her give up and for this reason she did not obtain a degree in Letters. One of her professors at said university was Ferdinand Strowski.

In addition, during this time he studied dramatic art in the courses of l'Atelier with Charles Dullin, abandoning some of his literature subjects, and secretly since at that time it was frowned upon. By then her mother had returned to Chile and her uncles took care of her: she lived in a boardinghouse but spent weekends with them, so Dullin used to use his school students as extras in representations of him. Bombal participated in one of them and was recognized by some of her family friends in the public, who informed her uncle, named Pepe. The day after hers, her own uncle saw her go on stage and forced her to leave the theater and stopped taking care of her. However, years later she would assure that what moved her to resign was that she truly did not consider having a vocation.

At l'Atelier he shares classes with Antonin Artaud and Jean-Louis Barrault. The latter, like Bombal, must study hidden from his family, who imagines him studying medicine.

In addition, he studied violin with maestro Jacques Thibaud.

He used to attend with his family, as his uncle's company, the lectures of the Les Annales society.

First return to Chile

He returned to his native country in 1931 at the age of twenty, aboard the transatlantic «Reina del Mar». In the port of Valparíso, disembarking, he met Eulogio Sánchez Errázuriz, a pioneer in civil aviation, descendant of two presidents from Chile and also heir to a significant fortune, the man with whom he would maintain a hidden sentimental relationship since, despite being separated, Sánchez was still married to another woman and that was not socially accepted.

Soon she connected with the country's intellectuals, such as Marta Brunet, a writer a little older than her and who introduced her to her first approach to the artistic world of Santiago, where she met figures such as Pablo Neruda and Julio Barrenechea. From this time he describes that he did not undergo the change because they were all very united with France. The impression that he arouses in the writers is unanimous: María Luisa Bombal has too much personality to be a woman, but she, free of prejudices - the "fire bee ” Neruda called her, because she was energetic and passionate -, she continues to freely participate in social gatherings in a downtown cafe or in a house.

That same year saw the fall of the dictator Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, and he was part, together with those intellectuals, of the parade that removed him from power, motivated by national sentiment about the death of Professor Alberto Zañartu. About this episode he later declares that:

That year came the fall of Ibáñez and paraded with them, because they killed a doctor at four in the morning, because there was a curfew... and the poor man was going to take care of a dying man. Then this huge demonstration was made and we all paraded, I was very young... That's what made Ibáñez give up, because she saw everything in Chile. Now I was aware without knowing what a dictatorship meant, but I saw that we lived like in prison... people lived very hostile, especially in Viña, like they had to withdraw the carabineros, that I saw... But my commitment was moral, not political. »

In 1932 with Marta Brunet he formed the "Compañía Nacional de Dramas y Comedias", directed by Luis Pizarro Espoz, which opens on November 4 at the Teatro Carrera, where María Luisa participates as an actress in A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde. Her performance is well received by critics, but there is something about her personality, a certain coldness or lack of flexibility in the interpretation of the characters, that she herself notices. She knows that she cannot dedicate her life to two passions and she chooses literature. She chooses to write.

The relationship with Eulogio Sánchez did not last long, and with a frustrated promise of marriage involved, he began to move away from her. Maria couldn't stand such a situation, she wrote him letters but he didn't respond. One day she, upset, attended a dinner at the house of her frustrated love, she went to the room where she kept her firearms, took one of her weapons and shot herself in the arm. She miraculously saved herself from it, carrying a scar as a souvenir. "He ruined my life, but I could never forget him," said María Luisa about her relationship with Sánchez years later.

Stay in Argentina and first works

She left for Argentina in 1933, taken by her friend Pablo Neruda to free her from this situation. She lived there in her house in Buenos Aires, where the poet served as consul. In the Argentine capital he met the most varied characters of the contemporary literary scene, during this time he counted among his group of literary friends Federico García Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Luigi Pirandello, Oliverio Girondo, Norah Lange, Conrado Nalé Roxlo and Alfonso Reyes, as well as philologists such as Amado Alonso, who lent him a typewriter from the Philological Institute while he had study sessions.

It is in the kitchen of Neruda's apartment where the writer finds her place to start her first novel. This is why Neruda gives it a new nickname "mongoose", "the name of an oriental animal that fits anywhere and is soft and discreet." It wasn't long before Neruda joined the other side of the table and readings and criticisms of their respective projects came together in that space. At that time, the poet was working at Residencia en la Tierra. Bombal acknowledged the influence of this book on her own writing, a prose that many critics have called poetic.

At the age of twenty-three, in 1934 he published La última niebla in Buenos Aires.

Everything seemed to be going very well, through García Lorca she met Jorge Larco, a painter who was in charge of decorating all the author's works, and whom she married on June 28, 1935, agreeing with him a facade marriage.

Meanwhile, María Luisa works on the writing of La amortajada and shares what she writes with Borges, with whom she used to go for walks, to the movies and to restaurants where they played tangos.

She publishes her review of the film Puerta Cerrada for the Revista Sur, persuaded by Victoria Ocampo. The reception of her review reaches the film's director, Luis Saslavsky, who asks her to write the script for her next film. She then decides to adapt María by Jorge Issacs, but the producers do not get the rights and what results is the script for La casa del recuerdo , freely inspired by the aforementioned novel.

During this time Angélica Ocampo, Victoria's sister, introduces her to Gabriela Mistral, who read it when she was in Brazil and sent for her while passing through Buenos Aires (284-285).

In January 1937, she began a divorce trial.

In 1938, María Luisa published La amortajada in Buenos Aires, under the Sur publishing house and directed by Victoria Ocampo.

Maria Luisa Bombal, 1941.

La casa del recuerdo opens in 1940, resulting in quite a success.

Second return to Chile and attempted murder

In 1940, after the premiere of Saslavsky's film, after a prolonged stay in Buenos Aires and after her first visit to the United States, María Luisa Bombal returned to Chile. A new romantic failure reactivates her first love grief and her obsession with the figure of Eulogio. On January 21, 1941 (Chilean Memory disagrees on the date), she walked slowly through the streets of downtown Santiago until she was in front of the door of the Hotel Crillón. There, she waited for Eulogio Sánchez, who, after eight years without seeing her, almost no longer remembered her. After facing him, she shot him, hitting him only in the arm. She was jailed, but she only served a few months' sentence (she was acquitted in October), since her wounded absolved her of all blame. Once acquitted, she traveled to the United States. When she was asked for the reason for her action, she stated: "By killing him I killed my bad luck, I killed my chuncho".

In 1942 he was awarded the "Municipal Novel Award" by The Shrouded One.

In 1942 he obtained a contract with the Chilean embassy of the United States in Washington to review the dubbing of American films and authorize their entry into Chile.

I have roots in the United States

Bombal in the United States, 1944.

In 1944, she moved to the United States, where she married the French Count Raphael 'Fal' Saint Phalle and Chabannes.

Daughter Brigitte is born.

Write "The Pestle and the Nightingale#34; and "The Braids".^{[citation needed]}

For a time, in 1945, he ventured into dubbing into Spanish, translating and subtitling together with the writers Ramón Sender and Ciro Alegría, an opportunity in which he dubbed the actress Judy Garland in the film The Clock (1945), and later did advertising for the Sterling brand.

In August 1946, he published The story of María Griselda in the magazine Norte No. 10, in the United States.^{[citation required]}

The English version of his book The Last Fog was very well received by the public and critics, who only asked for a longer novel. Thus, with the aim of positioning herself in the American market, with the help of her husband in her writing, she wrote the novel House of Mist, published in 1947 by Farrar Straus, a readaptation of her first novel. This novel was recently translated into Spanish in 2012 by Ediciones UC.

She knew Gabriela Mistral since her time in Argentina, but during this time she became a great friend of hers, who also lived in that country. He is also one of the first people to attend her funeral in Los Angeles, New York.

During 1967 he was working on the translation of House of Mist into Spanish, however, he never finished it.

In 1969 her husband died and she moved to Buenos Aires.

On August 26, 1973, he returned to Chile definitively.

Definitive return to Chile

Despite having lived for twenty-nine years in the northern country, he decides to return to Chile, re-establishing himself in his native Viña del Mar.

He met the writer Sara Vial, who was his great friend and confidant in 1972 when he was returning from the United States.

On September 22, 1976, he received the Academy Award for the good use of the Spanish language.

In 1976 he published his old unpublished novel La historia de María Griselda, with which he won the Libro de Oro award, given by the Association of Book Friends.

In 1978 the Ministry of the Interior issued a decree granting him a grace pension. That same year, on December 22, he received the "Joaquín Edwards Bello" Award, given to the literary values of the Fifth Region.

Last days

His last years were spent in the nursing home of Hector Pecht. She was immersed in alcohol, she constantly visited the hospital affected by liver crises. María Luisa Bombal died on May 6, 1980 in the city of Santiago de Chile, the victim of a massive hepatic coma at the El Salvador hospital.

Phrases such as "alone and abandoned in a cold pensioner bed, María Luisa Bombal died", however, in 2005, twenty-five years after her death, in a report for the In the digital magazine Mercurio Valpo, Claudia Campos interviewed her nephew, the then senator Carlos Bombal: «... he insists that this is the propitious moment to demystify once and for all the circumstances surrounding his death. The parliamentarian speaks: & # 34; We are tired of this myth about Aunt María Luisa who assures that she died abandoned. She was at all times assisted and supported by her family. There was my father, her first cousin, me, her sister Blanca, and her husband, who had traveled from Buenos Aires especially to accompany her, and nurses who cared for her hired to care for her day and night & # 34;. The senator continues: & # 34; I bite my rage when I read this version that is repeated over and over again, fueled in part by her friends and her people who surrounded her, who exploded this tale of a tormented woman who was alone. I forcefully say it: That was not so. Respecting her privacy and her disease that she suffered from, she was not alone in her last days."

The remains of María Luisa Bombal were cremated in a ceremony held at the General Cemetery. That day she wore a purple dress. Her daughter, Brigitte, is not present. Only days later, her aunt, Blanca, María Luisa's sister, managed to break the news to her.

Personal life

Family

Ancestors

• The Bombal family came from Argentina but emigrated to Chile because of the arrival of the dictatorship of Rosas; and by his mother possessed German and French ancestry, his family came from the Germans based in Valparaíso, and then moved to Viña del Mar. In fact, his great-grandfather was the first German consul in Santiago, the name Precht. His oldest maternal ancestors were French Hugonotes that migrated to Alsace. There is an anecdote about these ancestors because the same Bombal said that Amado Alonso always joked that the person who killed Antón Chéjov was a relative of his family.

Marriages

• His first marriage to the Argentine painter Jorge Larco was described by the Bombal himself as a hasty act. They were good friends and you know the proposal was her idea. For his part, Larco accepted, due to his homosexuality, the proposal to marry and form a marriage pour la galerie.
• She was married twenty-five years with Raphael of Saint-Phalle of French-American nationality, who was her second husband until his death in 1969. They had a daughter in common.

Immediate family members

• His father, Martin Bombal Videla, born in 1876 and died in 1919, of Argentine nationality. He had a heart disease, which was more or less controlled, but a pulmonary emphysema would end up with him. It was a day thing. Martin Bombal was 41 years old; Maria Luisa, only nine.
• His mother, Blanca D'Anthes Precht, died on June 14, 1976.
• He had two sisters only a minor year, the mellizas Blanca Bombal Anthes (now Blanca Bombal de Álvarez de Toledo) and Loreto Elcira Bombal Anthes, born in 1911. It is known that Blanca was based in Argentina during 1952.

• Brigitte Saint-Phalle (1944-?), her only daughter and only heir. He studied at Cornell University and graduated at the University of Chicago; he became a scientist and made his life in the United States. He's said to have a bad relationship with his mother. The same Bombal describes that they always fought and, according to Sara Vial, Brigitte never showed interest in approaching her mother. For his part, nephew Carlos Bombal has another perspective: "It's not how it was painted. Brigitte could not come to his mother's funeral, but he sent him a red dress that was like a robe that was the dress with which the aunt wanted to be buried and so it was." However, the critic and writer Lucia Guerra in her compilation edition of the author's complete works quotes the fact that the author possessed a trunk with unpublished works that were left in possession of the same Carlos Bombal to be personally delivered to Brigitte, which, until the date of the third reissue of the publication (2013), had not been collected by this one, while still unpublished the one that could be his posthumous work.

Notable relatives

• Alvaro Bombal Murúa (1905-1958), who was a lawyer; president of the Cultural Dissemination Circle of Valdivia (1936); general secretary of Universidad Austral de Chile (1954); and first dean of the Faculty of General Studies of the Universidad Austral de Chile (1955).
• Carlos Bombal Otaegui (1950-), is a lawyer, politician, ex-deputate and ex-senator of the Republic of Chile. nephew.

Language and identity

• Maria Luisa was a trilingual, spoke Spanish, French, and English. His mother tongue was Spanish and almost all of his published work wrote it in this language, but also from a very young girl he dominated French fluently given his passage through the school of nuns, even without accent, so much that in her stay in France she and her sisters took them by French. However, to write in English she needed the help of her husband. This reality was a relevant topic for the author, both in her career and for her identity, and therefore she deserves a few words:

"I started writing in French, that I considered my language, the means of expression I had conquered. The circumstances cause me to return to South America and my career, my expression Must have been in Spanish. Now, the circumstances pushed me into this country (United States) that has become my country (my husband is French-American, my American daughter) and it turns out that I have been forced to express myself in English. Third stage, the most difficult and painful, 'The Fire Test', I would say. »

Influences

Influence on his work

The author cites the novels Victoria by Knut Hamsun, a book that made a great impression on her as a teenager and deeply inspired her, and María by Jorge Issacs as another book that also impressed her, as well as Teodor Storve's novel Inmensee (The Valley of the Bees), which was one of the revelations of her adolescence, and the book she considered header The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, by Rainer Maria Rilke.

He also claimed to have a spiritual affinity with the authors Hans Christian Andersen, Selma Lagerlöff, and with the aforementioned Hamsun and Storve.

In the way of writing, he names Prosper Mérimée, on whom he wrote his thesis, as his most direct influence, but he also considers the work Genitrix by François Mauriac.

She was also a great reader of Paul Valéry, Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. Other of her readings contemplate Arthur Rimbaud and Goethe's Faust , as well as Thomas Mann, however the latter did not deserve praise, especially with regard to The Magic Mountain .

During her period in the United States, she reads the work of Willa Cather, which she names as one of her delights and recommends her as one of the greatest novelists who ever lived.

There are not a few scholars who have speculated about the influence on Bombal's work of other renowned writers with whom he became friends in his literary circle, among them Patricio Lizama, who describes: "The literary maturity reached by the Chilean writer cannot be separated from Borges, Neruda and Storni. Magical causality and its position in the literary field, the immobile journey and the funeral journey, the representation of women, are problems that Bombal appropriates and later articulates with her own stamp & # 34;.

Later influence

La amortajada (1938) was cited by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo as a major influence on his youth. Lucía Guerra, a scholar of Bombal's work, in María Luisa Bombal: Complete Works (2005) attributes reading this work as the main influence on the writing of her novel Pedro Páramo (1955), widely recognized as a precursor of the current of magical realism: "[t]he Mexican writer pointed out to José Bianco that La amortajada was a novel that had deeply impressed him in his youth", from which Lucía Guerra immediately infers: "despite the folkloric and political importance attributed to Pedro Páramo, the notion of dead characters and still hanging around life are an intertextual echo of María Luisa Bombal's novel". In fact, some scholars propose Bombal as the true originator of magical realism.

The final lines of La amortajada are quoted at the beginning of the novel Mapocho (2002) by Chilean writer Nona Fernández.

Work

Short novel

• The last fog (1934)
• The love (1938)

Novel

• House of Mist (1947, written in English) is the re-adaptation that Bombal made from his own novel The last fog, project that was originally supposed to be simply a translation and expansion of his first novel to be sold in the US market.
  • House of fog (2012) is the Spanish translation House of Mist by Lucia Guerra.

• The Shrouded Woman (1947, written in English) is the re-adaptation of Bombal's second novel.

Story

• New islands (1939)
• The tree (1939)
• Trains (1940)
• Secret (1941)
• The story of Maria Griselda (1946)

Poetic Chronicles

• Sea, sky and earth (1940)
• Washington, Squirrel City (1940)
• The maja and the russian (1960)

Script

• The House of Remembrance - In collaboration with Carlos Adén and freely inspired by the novel María de Jorge Issacs.

Other writings

• Film review Locked door (1939)
• In New York with Sherwood Anderson (interview) (1939)
• Opening of the Pauta seal (1973)
• Speech at the Chilean Academy of Language (1977)

Translation of his work into other languages

Richard Cunningham, her editor in the United States and husband of Lucía Guerra -one of the greatest international scholars of the author- was in charge of translating Bombal's works into English.

Other jobs

Dubbing

• Folding Supervisor to Spanish for films distributed in Chile (1942)
• Translator of English double and subtitle to Spanish for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films (1943-)

• As a bent actress:Judy Garland at The Clock (1945).

Advertising

• Sterling's Propaganda for Latin America: Aspirin and Magnesia Milk (1944 or 1945)

Posthumous work

• There is a trunk that Bombal said was her own chest of pirates, where the author kept manuscripts unpublished, such as a dramatic piece in English entitled The Foreign Minister (The Chancellor) and based on both the life of Masaryk and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydeand an unfinished novel about Cain and Abel, as well as letters from other important authors. His last known possessor is Carlos Bombal, who was entrusted to personally deliver the only daughter of Bombal. To date, it is unknown whether the chest came to the hands of Brigitte, however, that material has not yet been disclosed to the public.

In popular culture

Adaptations of his works

• The love (1971), television series of twenty episodes based on the homonymous novel, adapted by José Irarrázabal and directed by José Caviedes.

Unfinished projects

• Adaptation rights The last fog were bought for $125 000 in the United States by Paramount Pictures, however, a film was never filmed.

Adaptations of his life story

The story of María Luisa Bombal has been adapted to the cinema on two occasions:

• María Luisa in the fog (1999), directed by Leo Kocking, a Chilean film for television, semi-biographic and set in the 1940s, that freely travels the most controversial facts of life and the memories of the writer and fragments of his novel The last fogand where the author is interpreted by Erica Ramos.
• Bombal (2012), directed by Marcelo Ferrari, a Chilean film focused on the turbulent passages of her life, and in which the author is interpreted by Blanca Lewin.

National Legacy and Cultural Heritage

Monument to María Luisa Bombal in Viña del Mar, marble bust with high relief portrait by Francisco Javier Torres Rojas, and located in Calle Villanelo at the height of No180. Plazoleta María Luisa Bombal, Viña del Mar.

There is a public monument dedicated to him in Viña del Mar, the region of Chile where he was born, raised, and lived during his last days. A marble sculpture entitled María Luisa Bombal by the artist Francisco Javier Torres Rojas, located on Calle Villanelo at number 180. María Luisa Bombal square, Viña del Mar.

• The official website of the Heritage Unit of the Municipality of Viña del Mar incorporates the work in its catalogue in its section of Public Monuments, where it is mentioned as the National Literature Prize, however, that award was never received by the author.

Despite the recognized importance of the author for the country, one of the few testimonies of her life in Chile, such as the house in which she lived, is not protected under the National Monuments law since it was never declared a Monument Historical.

• About this, in 2005, in a report for the digital magazine Mercury ValpoClaudia Campos wrote:

«The house where Maria Luisa Bombal Anthes was born is still standing. At the bottom of the Monterrey passage, by Agua Santa, and signposted with number 52, is this stately building that has resisted the floods of progress and real estate fever. Surrounded by buildings, two-story residence and seventeen rooms... The building, which has had several owners since it was inhabited by the Bombal Anthes, is currently divided into two houses and has no badge to identify it. Nor do I give any indication that once there lived the tormented writer... Although the house passes through any other, the current occupants must often attend to the bell of any other stranger who arrives motivated by an isolated data. María Espinoza lives fifteen years ago in this case and tells that she has often opened the door to visitors who come asking about the house of the Bombal. "They always come and are foreigners, students of literature for what they explain to me. When I can let them pass, but it draws me the attention that is always people from other countries who come."

• In mid-2016 the property was held as Hostal and currently the property is a hotel, El Hotel Monterrey, which is published as follows: ''El Monterrey occupies one of the most important buildings in Chilean literature, as it was where María Luisa Bombal spent her childhood'.
• The resting place of the author's remains is the General Cemetery located in Recoleta, commune of Santiago, one of the largest and most beautiful fields of Latin America, which has 86 hectares that house the graves of more than two million people, including the forgers of our Nation. Bombal burial is located on Patio 17, Belisario Prats Street.

Several places in Chile bear the name of the author:

• In Lo Prado, commune of Santiago, there is Villa María Luisa Bombal, baptized with her name.
• The deadline for the homonymous public monument in Viña del Mar, was also baptized with its name.
• There are currently four educational establishments in the country that bear their name:
  • In Lo Arcaya 1850, Vitacura, is the Colegio María Luisa Bombal
  • In La Capilla, Cerro Navia, you will find the N° 418 School, María Luisa Bombal.
  • In Osorno, Los Lagos Region, you will find the Maria Luisa Bombal Rural School.
  • In Valparaíso, there is Liceo María Luisa Bombal.

Publicly accessible historical sources

Several photographs that portray the author are in the possession of the Photographic Archive Collection of the National Historical Museum of Chile, mainly from the 40's, her time in the United States. While the National Library of Chile has a collection of plates of various origins (mostly from magazines or newspapers), which is digitized on the Memoria Chilena web resource site.

The National Library of Chile also has a sound cassette with an interview with the author conducted by Victoria Pueyrredon, digitized in Chilean Memory.