Teresa Wilms Montt

In the Stillness of Marble Teresa Wilms Montt

Originally published in Spain in 1918, and here translated into English for the first time by Jessica Sequeira, In the Stillness of Marble is a set of thirty-five prose poems by the Chilean writer Teresa Wilms Montt directly addressed to a dead lover named Anuarí, who in reality was Horacio Ramos Mejía, a nineteen-year-old man who killed himself in front of her after his love was unreciprocated. At once tragic and personal, visionary and transgressive, these pieces, in their vital intimacy, read not only as letters to the dead, but also as incantations or prayers, expressing the passion, spirituality, and intensity of a woman who lived a tumultuous, rebellious life and refused to conform to the expectations of her time and surroundings.