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Critical Essay by Robert Graves
SOURCE: "Juana de Asabaje," in The Crowning Privilege: The Clark Lectures 1954-1955, Cassell & Co., 1955, pp. 166-84.
In the following essay from 1955, Graves categorizes Cruz as a woman of poetic genius and compares her to other great female poets.
Every few centuries a woman of poetic genius appears, who may be distinguished by three clear secondary signs: learning, beauty, and loneliness. Though the burden of poetry is difficult enough for a man to bear, he can always humble himself before an incarnate Muse and seek instruction from her. At the worst this Muse, whom he loves in a more than human sense, may reject and deceive him; and even then he can vent his disillusion in a memorable poem—as Catullus did when he parted from Clodia—and survive to fix his devotion on another. The case of a woman poet is a thousand times worse: since she is herself...
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This section contains 3,661 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |
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