Narrative
El cántaro fresco
Not translated into English
Juana de Ibarbourou · 1920
Synopsis
Short poetic prose pieces on life in the Uruguayan interior, centred on Melo, the native town of the woman who writes. They show her bond with animals, water, the moon and the seasons, the stifling summers and the midday sun; her young son plays among the butterflies, crickets and cicadas; she weaves, watches over the child, rests in the shade of the arbour. She presents herself as the keeper of an intuitive knowledge of nature, which needs no learned explanation, and looks back on her childhood in the fields as a lost paradise.
Context
The book appeared in 1920, a year after the first verse collection that had launched its author's fame. Love takes second place in it and nature enters everyday life; critics praise its freshness and its tone of childhood confidences, without philosophical pretension, and read in it a “regreso al orden” after modernism. The journal Pegaso devoted a note to it in August 1920. It then served for decades as a reading book in schools, and the State entrusted its author with school textbooks in 1924 and in 1927.
Who it is for
A short book of poetic prose in Spanish, in a simple and concrete language; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Well received on publication, it was for decades a reading book in Uruguayan schools.
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