Brannon de Samayoa Chinchilla, Carmen (1899–1974)

Carmen Brannon de Samayoa Chinchilla (pseud. Claudia Lars; b. 1899; d. 1974), Salvadoran modernist writer. The daughter of an Irish-American father and Salvadoran mother, Lars grew up on a finca (farm) in Sonsonate. She was educated by nuns in Santa Ana and exhibited a literary inclination from a very early age. In her youth she fell in love with the Nicaraguan poet Salomón de la Selva, who introduced her to the world of European romantic literature and served as her mentor. However, her father disapproved of the match and sent her to live with relatives in New York. Upon her return to El Salvador, Lars fell in with a group of modernist and humanist writers known as the Generation of the 1930s, which had assembled around Alberto Masferrer's newspaper La Patria and included Serafín Quiteño and Salarrué. Lars immigrated to San Francisco in 1944, where she experienced the drudgery of working in a biscuit factory. In 1974 she returned to El Salvador. The theme of the mysteries of life and the cosmos dominates her major novels and poems. Lars is considered one of the first great modern female literary figures of Hispanic America.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Claudia Lars, Estrellas en el pozo (1934); Canción redonda (1937); Donde llegan los pasos (1953); Tierra de infancia (1958); and Obras Escogidas (1973).

Juan Felipe Toruño, Desarrollo literario de El Salvador (1958), pp. 325-328.

Matilde Elena López, "Prólogo" to Obras Escogidas (1973).

Luis Gallegos Valdés, Panorama de la literatura salvadoreña (1981), pp. 225-238.

Additional Bibliography

Bosteels, Bruno, and Tina Escaja, eds. Delmira Agustini y el modernismo: Nuevo propuestas de género. Rosario, Argentina: B. Viterbo Editora, 2000.

Lars, Claudia. Poesía completa. Ed. Conmemorativa del centenario de su natalacio. San Salvador: CONCULTURA, 1999.

                                             Karen Racine