Gabriela Mistral's poem La flor del aire is the second in a group titled "Historias de loca" ("Madwoman's stories"); it comes right after La muerte-niña. The speaker of the poem finds some sort of female entity in a meadow, and this entity asks to fetch flowers of specific colours, including, in the end, flowers without colour.
Below is a translation with added stanza numbers for ease of reference:
[I] I found her by my destiny,
standing in the middle of the meadow,
governor of those who pass by,
of those who speak to her and see her.[II] And she said to me: "Go up the mountain.
I never leave the meadow,
and cut off white flowers for me,
like snow, hard and tender."[III] I climbed the acidic / harsh mountain,
I looked for the flowers where they whiten,
among the rocks existing
half asleep and awake.[IV] When I came down, with my load,
I found her in the middle of the meadow,
and I went covering her frantically,
with a torrent of lilies.[V] And without looking at the whiteness,
she said to me: "You carry
now only red flowers.
I cannot cross the meadow."[VI] I climbed the cliffs with the deer,
and I looked for flowers of madness,
those that turn red and seem
to live and die from redness.[VII] When I came down, I gave them to her
with a happy trembling of offering,
and she became like the water
that a wounded deer turned blood-coloured.[VIII] But looking at me, sleepwalking,
she said to me: "Go up and carry
the yellow ones, the yellow ones.
I never leave the meadow."[IX] I went straight up the mountain
and looked for the dense flowers,
the colour of sun and saffron,
newly born and already eternal.[X] When I found her, as always,
in the middle of the meadow,
the second time I went to cover her,
and left her like the threshing floors.[XI] And still, mad with gold,
she said to me: -"Go up, my servant,
and you will cut the colourless ones,
neither saffron nor reddish."[XII] "The ones I love for the memory
of Leonora and Ligeia,
the colour of Dreams and dreams.
I am Woman of the meadow."[XIII] I was conquering the mountain,
now black like Medea,
without a slice of splendour,
like a vague and certain cave.[XIV] They were not in the branches,
they did not open in the stones
and I cut them from the sweet air,
scissors lightly.[XV] I cut them as if I were
the cutter who is blind.
I cut from one air and another air,
taking the air through my forest…[XVI] When I came down from the mountain
and went looking for the queen,
now she walked,
she was no longer white or violent;[XVII] She was leaving, the sleepwalker,
leaving the meadow,
and I following her and following her
through the pasture and the poplar grove.[XVIII] Loaded thus with so many flowers,
with aerial backs and hands,
always cutting them from the air
and with the air like a harvest…[XIX] She goes ahead without a face;
she goes ahead without a trace,
and I still follow her
among the branches of the fog,[XX] With these flowers without colour,
neither whitish nor reddish,
until my surrender on the limit,
when my Time dissolves…
I am looking for an interpretation of this poem. The questions I have about it include the following.
- What does this female entity stand for and what does the meadow, which she initially does not want to leave, stand for?
- Stanza VI: why are the red flowers "flowers of madness"?
- What do the wounded deer or stag in stanza VI and the deer in other stanza stand for?
- Stanza XI: what do the flowers without colour represent?
- Stanza XII: who or what does Leonora stand for?
- Stanza XII: who or what does Ligeia stand for? (Is there a connection with the mythological Ligeia or Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia?)
- Stanza XIII: why is the mountain now black?
- Stanza XIX: what does it mean that "she" walks without a trace?
