Carmen Febres-Cordero de Ballén (1829–1893) was an Ecuadorian writer and poet.[1][2]
Biography
Carmen Febres-Cordero was born in Guayaquil in 1829.[a][5][6] She was the daughter of lieutenant colonel Joaquín Francisco Febres Cordero and of Maria de Jesus Montoya. She had four brothers.[7]
In 1853, she married Aurelio Ballén de Guzmán. They had three children.[8]
There are few known poems by this author, but they are all said to be of merit.[9] According to Manuel Gallegos, they were written in her adolescence.[6] She improvised the verses with a well-measured metric, her talent being well-cultivated.[5] Examples of her works include, "A mi esposo ausente" (To my absent husband), that Jose Bernardine Suárez considers most notable, "A una flor" (To a flower) and "A mi madre" (To my mother), also quite outstanding, "Himno" (Hymn) and a poem dedicated to her friend Ángela Caamaño, which appeared in several poetic anthologies of the time, such as La guirnalda literaria (The literary garland) (1870) or Parnaso ecuatoriano (1879).[6][10] In her poems, Febres-Cordero expresses tenderness and passion, but she also succumbs to the weight of disappointments.[11] She collaborated with various newspapers such as La Esperanza, along with other authors such as Dolores Sucre and Rita Lecumberri,[12] in the liberal El espejo,[13] created in 1871, and in the magazine El Álbum in 1880.[2]
Febres-Cordero settled in Chile at least since 1879,[6] and died in Valparaíso in 1893.[5]
A street in the city of Quito is named in her honor.
Notes
^Other sources indicate that she was born in 1832,[3] or possibly July 16, 1830.[4]
References
^Calderón, Alba; Paz y Miño, Germania. "La pintura social como medio de acceso al campo artístico de tres mujeres en el Ecuador de la década de 1930" (in Spanish) p. 23. Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2017.
^AADD (1984). Mujeres: antología (in Spanish). Departamento de Publicaciones, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad de Guayaquil. p. 134. Retrieved 25 August 2021.