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Original article: Leímos el libro más triste de Marta Brunet sin saberlo

By Osvaldo Carvajal M., Lecturer in Literature and Doctorate in Applied Humanities, Andrés Bello University

Let’s conduct an experiment: if I asked you to name a book by Marta Brunet, which title is the first to come to mind?

I bet that, despite the current editorial boom surrounding her works, you thought of Cuentos para Mari-sol (1938). And therein lies the challenge: just as Gabriela Mistral is portrayed as the mother of Chile and a writer of nursery rhymes, the literary canon has pigeonholed Brunet as the spinster aunt who recounted stories to other people’s children…

Fortunately, for decades, researchers and academics have been dismantling that image, and we now understand that Brunet not only critically represented women’s positions in her works but also led an intense public, cultural, and political life… Oh, didn’t we know that? I’ll tell you all about it another time. For now, I want you to meet the Marta Brunet who loved and suffered as intensely as she wrote. So… let’s get to the story!

In 2012, while searching for documents that could help reconstruct Brunet’s role in her literary circle, I found a link to the imagist literary group. This was unusual since they were often seen as the “opposite” of the criollistas, with whom she was associated by critics after her debut as a novelist in 1923. A curious reference, indeed. Anyway, from that clue, I began searching for materials from each member of the group and stumbled upon a series of letters addressed to the poet and diplomat Juan Guzmán Cruchaga, supposedly from his first wife, Consuelo Nogues Fletcher.

Upon reviewing the material, I noticed that the letters weren’t signed by Consuelo but by someone named “Cuquita.” After examining their contents, it turned out that the sender was none other than… Marta Brunet (of course: Martuca, Cuca, Cuquita).

Until that moment, it was unknown to us, but Brunet had a love affair with Juan Guzmán Cruchaga that nearly led to the altar and sparked a scandal, as the poet was still married and in the midst of annulling his first marriage. And no, we don’t know this only from Brunet’s accounts: the literary critic Alone even wrote to Pedro Prado to comment on this “scandal of the week.” But that character deserves its own column… another time.

Returning to the matter at hand: the vital circumstances that led to these letters being written is that in 1928, Guzmán Cruchaga was appointed as Consul General of Chile in Oruro, Bolivia. At the time of his departure, Señor Don Gato and Señora Doña Gata (as Brunet refers to them) were sharing a life together in her apartment in Catedral. Therefore, Brunet’s feelings of longing fill much of these texts: she speaks of a small altar she has set up with his portraits, the social hostility judging her for loving a married man, and above all, her insecurities about whether the distance had weakened their relationship.

It’s worth noting her constant complaint that the long and beautiful letters she writes him are met with brief responses from her distant lover, delivered via cables or telegrams: this asymmetry hinted at a tragic fate… but it barely scratches the surface of how their relationship would ultimately conclude.

However, lest you think it’s all just gossip, the most fascinating aspect of these letters is that Brunet speaks not only of love to Guzmán Cruchaga but also of her creative processes, spiteful reviews, and editorial negotiations.

There’s one particularly revealing moment when she tells him that the editor Carlos Nascimento was demanding she transform her novel Bienvenido into a “sentimental romantic drivel.” Since she refused to comply, she unsuccessfully attempted to sell it to the magazine Atenea, but was forced to return to Nascimento, tail between her legs, and add those two chapters she had always disdained.

Thanks to those letters, we now understand why, when she compiled her Complete Works (1963) after winning the National Prize, she added the epigraph “For my mother, who wanted a pink novel”: Mariana was so upset that, in her moment of recognition, she felt the need to disassociate from what she considered the worst of her books, because she had been compelled to modify it.

We have one last point to consider (for today), which is perhaps the most poignant evidence of why it remains crucial to reread and declassify the archives of our female authors. In 2017, after the publication of the memoirs and letters of the painter María Tupper, a close friend of Brunet, we finally uncovered the story behind the title Cuentos para Mari-sol: following a devastating romantic breakup, in 1933, the author self-exiled to Viña del Mar to hide her pregnancy. Tragically, that child died just hours after birth. What was her name? Marisol.

Viewed this way, the book that the canon turned into the emblem of the “spinster aunt of stories” takes on another dimension: it is no longer a children’s work we read in school, but the testament of a woman who, once again, chose to rebel against everything and everyone to become a single mother.

Even after her loss, the author rebels against death and, through her stories, immortalizes that daughter she never stopped waiting for. Long live Marta Brunet and Marisol.

Osvaldo Carvajal M.

La entrada Discovering the Unseen Depths of Marta Brunet’s Somber Narrative se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.