Alfonsina Y El Mar Piano
Emigdio Binet
Storni was born on May 29, 1892, in Sala Capriasca, Switzerland. Her parents were Alfonso Storni and Paola Martignoni, who were of Italian-Swiss descent. Before her birth, her father had started a brewery in the city of San Juan, Argentina, producing beer and soda. In 1891, following the advice of a doctor, he returned with his wife to Switzerland, where Alfonsina was born the following year; she lived there until she was four years old. In 1896 the family returned to San Juan, Argentina, and a few years later, in 1901, moved to Rosario because of economic issues[vague]. There her father opened a tavern, where Storni did a variety of chores. That family business soon failed, however. Storni wrote her first verse at the age of twelve, and continued writing verses during her free time. She later entered into the Colegio de la Santa Unin as a part-time student.[3] In 1906, her father died and she began working in a hat factory to help support her family.[3]
In 1907, her interest in dance led her to join a traveling theatre company, which took her around the country. She performed in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, Benito Prez Galds's La loca de la casa, and Florencio Snchez's Los muertos. In 1908, Storni returned to live with her mother, who had remarried and was living in Bustinza (Santa Fe Province). After a year there, Storni went to Coronda, where she studied to become a rural primary schoolteacher. During this period, she also started working for the local magazines Mundo Rosarino and Monos y Monadas, as well as for the prestigious Mundo Argentino.[citation needed]
In 1912 she moved to Buenos Aires, seeking the anonymity afforded by a big city. There she met and fell in love with a married man whom she described as "an interesting person of certain standing in the community. He was active in politics..."[3] That year, she published her first short story in Fray Mocho.[3] At age nineteen, she found out that she was pregnant with the child of a journalist and became a single mother.[3] Supporting herself with teaching and newspaper journalism, she lived in Buenos Aires where the social and economical difficulties faced by Argentina's growing middle classes were inspiring an emerging body of women's rights activists.[4]
Storni was among the first women to find success in the male-dominated arenas of literature and theater in Argentina, and as such, developed a unique and valuable voice that holds particular relevance in Latin American poetry.[4] Storni was influential, not only to her readers but also to other writers.[5] Though she was known mainly for her poetic works, she also wrote prose, journalistic essays, and drama.[5] Storni often expressed controversial opinions.[3] She criticized a wide range of topics from politics to gender roles and discrimination against women.[3] In Storni's time, her work did not align itself with a particular movement or genre. It was not until the modernist and avant-garde movements[6] began to fade that her work seemed to fit in. She was criticized for her atypical style, and she has been labeled most often as a postmodern writer.[7]
In the rapidly developing literary scene of Buenos Aires, Storni soon became acquainted with other writers, such as Jos Enrique Rod and Amado Nervo. Her economic situation improved, which allowed her to travel to Montevideo, Uruguay. There she met the poet Juana de Ibarbourou, as well as Horacio Quiroga, with whom she would become great friends. Quiroga led the Anaconda group and Storni became a member[12] together with Emilia Bertol, Ana Weiss de Rossi, Amparo de Hieken, Ricardo Hicken and Berta Singerman[13]
During one of her most productive periods, from 1918 to 1920 Storni published three volumes of poetry: El dulce dao (Sweet Pain), 1918; Irremediablemente (Irremediably), 1919; and Languidez (Languor) 1920. The latter received the first Municipal Poetry Prize and the second National Literature Prize, which added to her prestige and reputation as a talented writer.[4] she also published many articles in prominent newspapers and journals of the time.[14] Later, she continued her experimentation with form in 1925's Ocre, a volume composed almost entirely of sonnets that are among her most traditional in structure. These verses were written around the same time as the more loosely structured prose poems of her lesser-known volume, Poemas de Amor, from 1926.[15]
After the critical success of Ocre, Storni decided to focus on writing drama. Her first public work, the autobiographical play El amo del mundo was performed in the Cervantes theater on March 10, 1927, but was not well received by the public. However, this was not a conclusive indication of the quality of the work; many critics have observed that during those years Argentinian theater as a whole was in a state of decline, so many quality works of drama failed in this atmosphere.[16] After the play's short run, Storni had it published in Bambalinas, where the original title is shown to have been Dos mujeres.[17] Her Dos farsas pirotcnicas were published in 1931.
After a nearly 8-year hiatus from publishing volumes of poetry, Storni published El mundo de siete pozos (The World of Seven Wells), 1934. That volume, together with the final volume she published before her death, Mascarilla y trbol (Mask and Clover), 1938, mark the height of her poetic experimentation. The final volume includes the use of what she termed "antisonnets," or poems that used many of the versification structures of traditional sonnets but did not follow the traditional rhyme scheme.[19]
Jose Maria Delgado wrote to Horacio Quiroga and recommended that he travel to Buenos Aires to get to know Storni and talk about her poetry. They began to go to the cinema together with both of their children and had an opportunity to go to a meeting in a house on Tronador street, where many great writers of the age met to play games. One of these games consisted of Storni and Quiroga kissing opposite sides of Quiroga's pocket watch at the same time. As Storni's lips approached the watch, Quiroga moved it out of the way and the two kissed, angering Storni's mother, who was also present at the party.
Storni accompanied Quiroga to the movies, to literary meetings, and to listen to music: both were fans of Wagner. Frequently, they traveled to Montevideo and took pictures where the two looked happy. They went on the trips together because Quiroga was assigned to the Uruguayan consulate and was always accompanied by a female intellectual.
This relationship ended in 1927 when Quiroga met Maria Elena Bravo and started his second marriage. It is not known if Quiroga and Storni were lovers, since the two did not address the nature of their love very much. What is known is that Storni saw Quiroga as a friend who understood her, and she dedicated a poem to him when he died by suicide in 1937, only a year before her own death.
In 1935, Storni may have discovered a lump on her left breast and decided to undergo an operation. On May 20, 1935, she underwent a radical mastectomy.[3] In 1938 she found out that the breast cancer had reappeared.[3] Around 1:00 AM on Tuesday, 25 October 1938, Storni left her room and headed towards the sea at La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina and died by suicide. Later that morning two workers found her body washed up on the beach. Although her biographers hold that she jumped into the water from a breakwater, a popular legend is that she slowly walked into the sea until she drowned. She is buried in La Chacarita Cemetery.[20] Her death inspired Ariel Ramrez and Flix Luna to compose the song "Alfonsina y el mar" ("Alfonsina and the Sea").[21] Argentine composer Julia Stilman-Lasansky used Storni's text for her composition Cuadrados y Angulos.[22] In 2009 Juan Mara Solare composed a cycle of songs with texts by Alfonsina Storni: Viejas palabras (which consists of the songs Viaje, El sueo, Cuadrados y ngulos and Qu dira la gente? plus three short piano interludes in between the songs).
In this radiant concert, soprano Mariana Flores pays tribute to the women of Latin America, depicting their loves, pains and joys in music, through popular songs from Argentina, the Cujo wine region and elsewhere. Quito Gato, who is also behind the arrangements, accompanies her on piano and guitar, alongside Romain Lecuyer on double bass. For the two fellow Argentines, this recital is an opportunity to introduce audiences to some of the most beautiful popular songs from their homeland from the 20th century onwards, including Dorotea la cautiva and Alfonsina y el mar.
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Jorge Parodi from Argentina in piano and Swiss musicians, Aniela Eddy (violin), Susanne Chen (bassoon) and Amanda Bollag (soprano) performing a new song cycle on poems by Alfosina Storni by composer Claudia Montero
Ana Mora is a musician, teacher, and current doctoral candidate in arts at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL). She is also a piano professor at the Universidad de las Amricas Puebla (UDLAP). Mora is interested in promoting the repertoire of contemporary music with a gender perspective. Her research focuses on experimental sound practices in Latin America by artists who identify as women and non-binary individuals, as well as the relationship between art, science, and technology.
Hosted by the UNC Institute for the Study of the Americas and the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, Tres Vidas (Three Lives) is a live music theatre work for singing actress, piano, cello and percussion, based on the lives of three legendary Latin American Women: Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Salvadoran peasant activist Rufina Amaya, and Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni. The event will be November 5, 7:00 p.m. in the Moeser Auditorium, Hill Hall, UNC-Chapel Hill campus. It is free and open to the public!
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