In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Delmira Agustini, Sexual Seduction, and Vampiric Conquest by Cathy L Jrade
  • April Schmidt
Jrade, Cathy L. Delmira Agustini, Sexual Seduction, and Vampiric Conquest. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012. Pp. 264. ISBN 978-0-300-16774-0.

In her original and insightful study Delmira Agustini, Sexual Seduction, and Vampiric Conquest, Cathy L. Jrade contends that the erotic imagery that defined Delmira Agustini’s poetry can best be read as an expression of her poetic aspirations. Agustini appropriates the erotic language of modernismo, using it to symbolically conquer the male poetic other, whom Jrade equates with Rubén Darío, the influential head of the modernista movement, as well as Agustini’s [End Page 791] personal artistic idol. Jrade supports this interpretation through detailed readings of each of Agustini’s four books of poetry, devoting a chapter to each one and demonstrating how this impassioned involvement with both Darío and modernismo evolved and deepened over the course of her work.

Jrade devotes the first chapter of the book to situating Agustini in her historical context, a time when modernista writers were portraying women as passive objects, exemplified by the princess of Darío’s “Sonatina,” and women writers were struggling to find their own voice. Jrade uses critical works, such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic and Robert Polhemus’s Lot’s Daughters, to explain Agustini’s endeavor to rewrite the male language of literary paternity as an erotic discourse through which she is able to seduce the male poetic other and to bear literary fruit. The second chapter focuses on Agustini’s first book of poetry, El libro blanco (Frágil), in which she begins appropriating Darío’s themes and imagery and reshaping them to reflect her own perspectives on life and art. This first book is dominated by artistic preoccupations and only in the final section do the poems begin to take on what would become Agustini’s hallmark eroticism. In poems such as “Íntima,” the persona has ceased to be merely a follower, envisioning herself instead as a sexual and literary partner, capable of fusing with the poetic other to produce offspring. As Jrade demonstrates in the third chapter, Agustini had become more aggressive and assertive by the time she wrote her second book, Cantos de la mañana, employing daringly erotic and vampiric imagery to express her desire to seduce and conquer the poetic male other and to appropriate his poetic artistry. Agustini’s third book, Los cálices vacíos, carries on the parallel between sexual desire and poetic aspiration, with poems such as “Otra estirpe” describing a sexual/poetic union capable of producing a new poetic discourse. However, as Jrade contends in the fourth chapter, this book also sees Agustini moving further away from Darío’s influence, suggested by frequent images of loss or of an absent lover. This new direction in Agustini’s poetry is epitomized by one of her most iconic poems, “El cisne,” in which the swan (a recurring emblem of both Darío and modernismo) lies as if dead in her lap, while Agustini takes the swan’s legacy upon herself. The fifth chapter focuses on Agustini’s final book, Los astros del abismo (more widely known as El rosario de Eros). Perhaps influenced by her failed marriage, this book is more somber than Agustini’s previous work, and Jrade sees the title as reflecting her realization that poetic aspirations are like distant stars and that by reaching for them she risks falling into an abyss. This book portrays not only the demise of modernismo, but also frequently foreshadows the death of the persona herself, as is evidenced in “Mis amores,” where both the persona and the poetic other sink into the shadows, leaving their “child,” memory, behind to mourn them. Jrade concludes the chapter and the book by discussing Agustini’s influence on two other poets of the period, Gabriela Mistral and Alfonsina Storni, as well as on later female poets, such as Olga Orozco and Alejandra Pizarnik. She also argues for a more rhetorical and less literal reading of Agustini’s work, something she feels is more often accorded...

pdf

Share