Nahui Olin: the body in the verse. The free writing of Carmen Mondragón Valseca

Abstract

This essay shows the importance of the literary work produced by Carmen Mondragón Valseca, known as Nahui Olin, in the mid-20th century in Mexico. The life and literary work of this writer display an extraordinary authenticity in which her body is an endless source of knowledge and expression of freedom. In the context in which the writing of Nahui Olin developed, the avant-garde and approaches of modern Mexico were also beginning to emerge. The author responded to these transformations with a passionate and sincere literary exercise. Carmen Mondragón escaped the explanatory gaze of psychiatric science, yet she seems to have been labeled a nymphomaniac. The collection of poems, Óptica Cerebral. Poemas dinámicos (1922) serves here as a bridge to verses that reveal the voice of a woman who found writing to be a means of communicating and understanding the mystery of the infinite.