María Luisa Bombal

María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈɾi.a ˈlwisa βomˈβal]; Viña del Mar, Chile; 8 June 1910 – 6 May 1980) was a Chilean novelist and poet.

Quotes

House of Mist (1947)

English language readaptation of La última niebla (1934)

  • I wish to inform the reader that even though this is a mystery, it is a mystery without murder.
    He will not find here any corpse, any detective; he will not even find a murder trial, for the simple reason that there will be no murderer.
    There will be no murderer and no murder, yet there will be....crime.
    And there will be fear.
    Those for whom fear has an attraction; those who are interested in the mysterious life people live in their dreams during sleep; those who believe that the dead are not really dead; those who are afraid of the fog and of their own hearts... they will perhaps enjoy going back to the early days of this century and entering into the strange house of mist that a young woman, very much like all other women, built for herself at the southern end of South America.
    • Prologue
  • The story I am about to tell is the story of my life. It begins where other stories usually end; I mean, it begins with a wedding, a really strange wedding, my own. (beginning of chapter one)

The Shrouded Woman (1947 )

English language readaptation of La amortajada (1938)

  • As night was beginning to fall, slowly her eyes opened. Oh, a little, just a little. It was as if, hidden behind her long lashes, she was trying to see.
    And in the glow of the tall candles, those who were keeping watch leaned forward to observe the clarity and transparency in that narrow fringe of pupil death had failed to dim. With wonder and reverence, they leaned forward, unaware that she could see them.
    For she was seeing, she was feeling.
    • beginning of chapter one
  • Day by day, proud human beings that we are, we have a tendency to renounce our elemental roots, which accounts for the fact that women no longer appreciate their braids.
    Being rationalists nowadays, women in cutting off their braids ignore that in effect they are severing their ties with those magic currents which issue from the very heart of the earth.
    Because a woman's hair springs from the most profound and mysterious source, whence is born the first trembling seed of life-evolving therefrom to struggle and grow among many entangling forces, thrusting through the vegetal surface into the air and on upwards to the privileged forehead of its choice.
    • beginning of "Braids"
  • I am privy to much that is unknown.
    Of sea and earth and sky I know an infinity of small and magic secrets.
    This time, however, I will tell only about the sea.
    • beginning of "The Unknown"

Quotes about

  • For the majority of readers, Latin American fantastic literature operates under the tutelage of the great masters: Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez. However, although few are acquainted with their works, many women began experimenting with this genre well before their male counterparts and were the true precursors of the form, though their names remained on the shelves of oblivion, without the recognition that they deserved. , for example, wrote the fantastic nouvelle, House of Mist (1937) before the famous Ficciones (1944) of Borges...
    • Marjorie Agosín "Reflections on the Fantastic" Translated from the Spanish by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman. In Secret Weavers: Stories of the Fantastic by Women Writers of Argentina and Chile (1992)
  • Today, in Santiago, Chile, or Buenos Aires, in Caracas or Lima, when they name the best names, María Luisa Bombal is never missing from the list. This fact is even more notable when one considers the brevity of her work-which does not correspond to any determined "school" and which fortunately is devoid of any regionalism.
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