Latin American Literature

After World War I, Latin American writers began to gain international recognition. As a result, these writers started to shift the focus in their works from regional preoccupations to more universal themes. They also experimented with new literary forms. Modernism, especially had an impact on Latin American poets. Love, the family, and social protest became popular subjects, especially with the Uruguayans Delmira Agustini and Juana de Ibarbourou and the Chileans Mistral and Neruda.

Marisol and Marisombra

Neruda has admitted that the poems in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair were inspired by his relationships with two women during his student years in Santiago. Two distinct women emerge in the poems in this collection—a mysterious girl in a beret and another young woman. Although he does not identify the women by name in the poems, later in an interview he referred to...