María Luisa Bombal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

María Luisa Bombal (Viña del Mar, 6 July 1910 – 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and proto-feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim.

Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to London, England, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America.

After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, until 1971 when she return to South America, where she lived first in Argentina, and then in Viña del Mar, Chile, where she remained until her death in 1980. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal met again Jorge Luis Borges who visited Chile as he accepted a doctorate honoris causa by the University of Chile ruled by a delegate of the dictator Pinochet. Borges made then an infamous apology of the military dictatorships ruling Chile and Argentina at the time. However, Borges repented later of his apology of those dictators -whom he qualified of 'kind, gentlemen' and 'saviours of their countries'- arguing that he was misinformed and mislead by his immediate collaborators who hide from him the atrocities committed by those dictatorships.

Bombal works include: