10 Examples of Self Portrait

The self portrait it's a literary resource which consists of the description what a person does about himself based on his own appreciation. It's about a description type which is subjective, since the author selects and highlights the traits that define him from a personal point of view and exemplifies them in the form of narration (both in prose like in poetry). For example: My name is Rolando, I am thirty years old, I am tall and I consider myself a merciful person.

There are two types of self-portrait, which usually appear combined:

• physical self portrait. It is that description that focuses on the physiognomy of the author. For example: I have light blue eyes and, despite the fact that I am balding, I have a few light brown hairs.
• Moral or psychic self-portrait. It is that description that focuses on the characteristics of his personality, his feelings and his spirit. For example: Many tell me that I have a strong character because I get angry often; however, I am like this because injustice bothers me and I consider myself a fighter for the causes that represent me.

The self-portrait is a self-description that is usually written in the first person singular (although there are those who use the third person singular) and usually uses many qualifying adjectives of people. The literary self-portrait par excellence is the autobiography, as it covers aspects of the author's life from a subjective and personal perspective.

It should be noted that the concept of self-portrait can be attributed to different fields in addition to literature, such as photography or painting.

• See also:subjective description

Figures of speech present in the self-portrait

Since the self-portrait is the description of a person (which coincides with the author of the text), it usually uses the following rhetorical figures:

• prosopography. It is the description of the physical features of a person, of the external appearance of it.
• Etopeia. It is the description of psychological and character traits of a person, as well as her customs.
• Portrait. It is the combined description of the two previous points, in which both the physical and psychological characteristics of the person are described.
• Cartoon. It is a type of description in which the most outstanding physical and psychological features of the person are presented in an exaggerated way.

How do you write a self portrait?

When writing a self-portrait it is necessary to present the information in a certain order, to facilitate its reading. To do this, the following scheme can be followed:

• Introduction. First, make a general introduction (name, nickname, age, etc.). For example: I am Martina Rivas, but my friends and family, except my mother, call me “Martu”, and I am 18 years old.
• Physical features. Second, look at the physical characteristics and create a list of the superficial features that stand out the most (height, type and color of hair, appearance of the face, style of clothing). Present them in narrative form. For example: I'm short, barely five feet, I have big brown eyes and I wear pink glasses. I have curly dark hair, which is why many admire my hair. But what they like most about me is my style: I'm very refined when I dress, because I usually wear dresses with crazy prints, which I design together with my friend Pía.
• psychological traits. Third, create a list of psychological characteristics (character, way of acting, feeling, thinking) and combine them in a text, adding qualifying adjectives. For example: I consider myself an outgoing and very sociable person (I talk and talk non-stop!). I am very enthusiastic and creative, and I generate projects and undertakings that I write in my diary so that, when the opportunity arises, I can carry them out.
• hobbies. Fourth, list the tastes: vocation, meals, hobbies, sports, music. For example: I am a very believer person… in my natal chart! I love studying everything related to Astrology. And, of course, I'm from Pisces with a moon in Leo. I also love reading crime fiction from the mid-nineteenth century, especially Agatha Christie's fiction.
• Space. Finally, add a space or environment that provides images and sensations to the reader. For example: I like to spend the summer on the beach, although last vacation I traveled with my uncles to the mountains. Although if you have to imagine me in a space where I am my true self, it is in my room, full of posters of my favorite singer (Taylor Swift) and a bookcase that goes from floor to ceiling. That is my refuge.

Examples of literary self-portrait

1. Self-portrait of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

This one you see here, with an aquiline face, brown hair, a smooth and unobtrusive forehead, cheerful eyes and a curved but well-proportioned nose; silver beards, which weren't golden for twenty years, big mustaches, small mouths, neither small nor small teeth. grown up, because he is only six, and those poorly conditioned and worse off, because they have no correspondence with each other. others; the body between two extremes, neither large nor small, the color bright, before white than brown; somewhat stooped on the back, and not very light on his feet; I say this is the face of the author of The galatea and of Don Quixoteof the stain, and of which he made the Journey of Parnassus, in imitation of that of César Caporal Perusino, and other works that are out there astray and, perhaps, without the name of their owner. He is commonly called Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

He was a soldier for many years, and five and a half captive, where he learned patience in adversity. He lost his left hand in the naval battle of Lepanto from an arquebus, a wound that, although it seems ugly, he considers beautiful, for having received it in the most memorable and high occasion that past centuries saw, nor do they expect to see future ones, militating under the victorious flags of the son of the thunderbolt of war, Carlo Quinto, of happy memory.

1. Self-portrait of Guillermo de Torre (fragment)

But how am I?
See the friendly paintings 
Gallien thinks me a Pierrot 
Barred a two-dimensional figure 
Delaunay sprays me in colors 
Vázquez Díaz finds the thoughtful reverse of my medal 
And Norah goes deeper into the boxwood 
the lines of my passionate smile 
all me superimposed 
to an urban fair landscape 

Constellation of leitmotivs 
in the zodiac of my adolescence 

the Girandola 
the propeller 
and the vertex 
Circuit of my evolutions:
From the baroque to the jovial 
A syncope of esdrújulos 
speed up my mental life 
A whistle of locomotives 
and a transoceanic perfume 
they throw their arms around my neck 
The high tide rises to my mirror 

I would like to start life everyday 
practice aesthetic-actional simultaneity 
and press every morning 
the spring of disparate horizons 
I love the bodelerian populated solitude 
and elegance always fresh in the buttonhole 
After the comic interlude 
and the preliminary tack:
non-structural construction 

a wind of stars 
move my tie and my nostalgia 
(In the intervals 
with a burlesque gesture 
expert player 
throw on the headless 
the beaker of my lexicon) 
My best friend the mirror 
A goal always in the height 

and a pluricord love 
of the tangential woman 

Provisional iconography?

1. Self-portrait of Manuel Machado

This is my face and this is my soul: read.
Tired eyes and a thirsty mouth...
The rest, nothing... Life... Things... What is known...
Skulls, love affairs... Nothing serious,
A bit of madness, a bit of poetry,
a drop of the wine of melancholy…
Vices? All. None… Player, I haven't been;
I do not enjoy what I have gained, nor do I feel what I have lost.
I drink, for not denying my land of Seville,
half a dozen chamomile canes.
Women… —without being a tenor, not that!—,
I have one who loves me and another who I love.

I accuse myself of not loving but very vaguely
a portion of things that people love…
Agility, tact, grace, dexterity,
more than will, strength, greatness...
My elegance is sought after, sought after. I prefer,
Hellenic and pure smell, the "chic" and the bullfighter.
A glimmer of sunshine and a timely laugh
I love more than the languor of the moon.
Half gypsy and half Parisian -says the vulgar-,
with Montmartre and with the Macarena I commune...
And before such a poet, my wish first
it would have been to be a good banderillero.
It's late… I'm rushing through life. and my laugh
It is cheerful, although I do not deny that I am in a hurry.

1. Pablo Neruda Self-Portrait

For my part I am or I think I am hard-nosed,
minimum of eyes, little hair on the head,
growing abdomen, length of legs,
wide soles, yellow complexion,
generous of loves, impossible of calculations,
confused of words, tender of hands,
slow to walk, stainless at heart,
fond of stars, tides, tidal waves,
beetle admirer, sandwalker,
clumsy of institutions, Chilean in perpetuity,
friend of my friends, dumb of enemies,
nosy among birds, rude at home,
shy in salons, repentant aimlessly,
horrendous administrator, mouth surfer
and herbalist of the ink, discreet among the animals,
lucky with clouds, market researcher,
dark in the libraries, melancholic in the mountain ranges,
tireless in the woods, very slow in answering,
witty years later, vulgar throughout the year,
resplendent with my notebook, monumental with appetite,
Sleeping tiger, calm in joy,
Night Sky Inspector, Invisible Worker,
messy, persistent, brave out of necessity,
sinless coward, sleepy of vocation,
Kind of women, active due to illness,
poet by curse and fool of capirote.

1. Self-portrait “Brief description of myself”, by Cuarteto de Nos

I'm one meter eighty one
I have a blue chair
In my room there is a trunk
And I like almond
I wake up in a daze
my mother is stubborn
Although I was never in prison, I was close.

I'm from Aries, brown hair
Something stingy and I don't collect anything
I keep my clothes organized
I get bored on Christmas Eve
If I sneeze I don't make noise
And I don't speak with my mouth full.

I can say that I am of few friends
But of my enemies, I don't know how many I harvest
I have a deviated right eye
They say I'm good, even if I'm not baptized.

1. self portrait in poems and antipoemsby Nicanor Parra

Consider guys
This mendicant friar's coat:
I am a teacher in a dark high school,
I have lost my voice doing classes.
(After all or nothing
I do forty hours a week).
What does my slapped face tell you?
Truly it inspires pity to look at me!
And what do these healing shoes suggest to you?
Who grew old without art or part.

In terms of eyes, three meters
I don't even recognize my own mother.
What happens to me? -Any!
I have ruined them doing classes:
The bad light, the sun,
The poisonous wretched moon.
And all for what!
To win an unforgivable bread
Hard as the face of the bourgeois
And with the smell and taste of blood.
Why were we born as men
If they give us an animal death!

1. Self-portrait "The Liberal" by Antonio Machado

My childhood are memories of a courtyard in Seville,
and a clear orchard where the lemon tree matures;
my youth, twenty years in the land of Castile;
my story, some cases to remember I do not want.

Neither a seducer Mañara, nor a Bradomin have I been
—you already know my clumsy dress dressing—,
but I received the arrow that Cupid assigned me,
and I loved how hospitable they can be.

There are in my veins drops of Jacobin blood,
but my verse springs from a serene spring;
and, more than a man to use that he knows his doctrine,
I am, in the good sense of the word, good.

I adore beauty, and in modern aesthetics
I cut the old roses from the orchard at Ronsard;
but I do not love the makeup of the current cosmetics,
nor am I a bird of those of the new gay-singing.

I disdain the ballads of hollow tenors
and the choir of crickets that sing to the moon.
I stop to distinguish the voices from the echoes,
and I only hear, among the voices, one.

Am I classic or romantic? I don't know. leave would like
my verse, as the captain leaves his sword:
famous for the virile hand that wielded it,
not by the learned craft of the prized forger.

I talk to the man who always goes with me
—whoever speaks only hopes to speak to God one day—;
my soliloquy is talk with this good friend
who taught me the secret of philanthropy.

And in the end, I owe you nothing; You owe me what I have written.
I go to my work, with my money I pay
the suit that covers me and the mansion that I live in,
the bread that feeds me and the bed where I lie.

And when the day of the last trip arrives,
and when the ship that never has to return is leaving,
You'll find me on board light,
almost naked, like the children of the sea.

1. self portrait in Songs of life and hope, by Rubén Darío (fragment)

I am the one who yesterday just said
the blue verse and the profane song,
in whose night a nightingale had
that it was light lark in the morning.

I was the owner of my dream garden,
full of roses and lazy swans;
the owner of the turtledoves, the owner
of gondolas and lyres on the lakes;

and very eighteenth century and very old
and very modern; bold, cosmopolitan;
with strong Hugo and ambiguous Verlaine,
and a thirst for infinite illusions.

I knew about pain since my childhood,
my youth... Was my youth?
Her roses still leave me their fragrance...
a fragrance of melancholy…

Colt without brake my instinct was launched,
my youth rode a colt without a brake;
she was drunk and with a dagger at her belt;
if he did not fall, it was because God is good.

In my garden a beautiful statue was seen;
it was judged marble and it was raw meat;
a young soul dwelt in it,
sentimental, sensitive, sensitive.

And shy before the world, so
that locked in silence did not come out,
but when in the sweet spring
it was the time of the melody (…).

1. self portrait a word from you by Elvira Lindo

I don't like my face or my name. Well the two things have ended up being the same. It is as if I find myself happy within this name but I suspect that life threw me into it, made me into it and there is no other who can define me as I am. And there is no escape. I say Rosario and I am seeing the image that is reflected in the mirror every night, the big nose, the eyes also big but sad, the mouth well drawn but too thin. I say Rosario and that's where my whole story is contained, because my face hasn't changed since I was little, since I was a girl with an adult name and with a serious expression.

1. Self portrait of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I could barely stand on the bars of the crib, as small and fragile as the Moses basket. This has been a frequent source of discussion and ridicule from relatives and friends, who find my anguish that day too rational for such a young age. And even more so when I have insisted that the reason for my anxiety was not disgust at my own miseries, but the fear that my new jumpsuit got dirty […] and because of the way it remains in my memory, I think it was my first experience of writer.

Interactive exercise to practice

Follow with:

• crinography
• chronography
• narrative elements
• topographical description