Una Ternura y una maternidad siniestras. La figura de la caída en las canciones de cuna de Gabriela Mistral a la luz de las teorías psicoanalíticas de Sabina Spielrein

The article argues that the fall of the child, in Gabriela Mistral’s “Canciones de cuna” (Ternura), expresses the maternal ambivalence between protection of the infant and the drive to control him, leading to a longing for the dissolution of both. Thanks to the theorizations of Sabina Spielrein, a pioneer of psychoanalysis who is being rediscovered recently, as well as of other more recent psychoanalysts, we explore not only the ways in which Mistral symbolizes the regression to the Maternal Thing and the salvific function of the poem, but, more generally, the interweaving between the “archaic” life of the psyche, and the poetic creation and enunciation.