Teresa de la Parra

Teresa de la Parra (Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo) was born in October 5, 1889 in Paris, daughter of Venezuelan Ambassador in Berlin, Rafael Parra Hernáiz and Isabel Sanojo de Parra.

Related Topics:
October 5 - 1889 - Paris

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At the end of 19th Century, Venezuela is still a young country, which independence from Spain is only less than 80 years old. Citizens still have to suffer the recent consequences of economic and politic anarchy, several civil wars and dictatorial institution established for a long time. In this chaotic context, different concerns arises in the voice of young thinkers. Does actually a Venezuelan nation exist? Is the country a well defined entity, different from others in Latin America? Does it have and identity, a soul? Up to what point is it not a Spain colony anymore, even culturally? How could the country be far away of the incipient imperialist menace, in every aspect, even cultural, from the up North powerful neighbor?

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These questions mean the beginning of an intense intellectual life in Venezuela, and are added to Latin America voice. Modernism makes its way in the subcontinent. So do different literary movements which search an answer. Americanism, Nationalism and others become the most accepted by then, because of their thesis: encouragement in front of the national and exclusion or even contempt in front of the foreign values. A solidarity feeling arises among Latin nations and, paradoxically, there is a marked need to be different from each other.

Related Topics:
Americanism - Nationalism

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Far from intellectual young people excited lives, Caracas is resting: little, peaceful, daughter of the colony. Venezuela still lives from its soil production. Society appreciates simple habits, noble work, faith in God, irreproachable moral, respectable families.

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Ana Teresa belongs to one of them, so she spends part of her childhood in her father?s hacienda, Tazón, surrounded by nature, having a healthy and free life. Her father death changes dramatically her life and her sisters? one, when the girls are taken by their mother to study in the Sacred Heart School, in Godella, Spain. Under fervent religious precepts, they receive a solid education, proper of high class young ladies.

Related Topics:
Sacred Heart School - Godella

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An exquisite Ana Teresa arrives to Caracas at the age of 19. Her education does not have an echo in a little city where nothing has changed since her departure. In contrast with European cities, she finds the humility of red roofs, narrow streets and a landscape still dominated by nature. This is the frame for a bigger surprise: the same semicolonial society still lasts, so its monotonous habits and the limitative expectation reserved for women of her class. As the place as its people mean a big shock against the writer?s education and sensibility.

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She spends her first years in Caracas between this heavy social environment and her hours doing long reading. They have a double function: help her to escape from a situation she does not like at all, and under her conscience, complete her education and, over all, her critic spirit.

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By then her fantastic stories are published in the newspaper El Universal, so her Diary of a Caraqueña in the Far East in the magazine Actualidades. Her story Mama X gets the first prize in a contest celebrated in a city of the country?s interior. This story, besides her Diary of a young lady who writes because she is bored, published in the magazine La Lectura Semanal is nothing but the beginning of her first big work.

Related Topics:
El Universal - Diary of a Caraqueña in the Far East

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Her novel ' marks a change in Venezuelan literature. However, it is not published for the first time in this country. Teresa de la Parra works in the major part of this novel between 1921 and 1922, in the middle of Juan Vicente Gómez's dictatorial government. When she writes it, she shows an innate talent to build archetypes. She knows how to draw unforgettable characters ?authentic portraits of Caracas society by then, being as precise as to be maliciously close to caricatures. Moral rules strictness by then is well represented by characters as Abuelita, Tía Clara and César Leal. The ambitious type of people, common at that time because of the corruption in national administration, is well expressed in characters as Gabriel Olmedo and Tío Pancho, who also reflect moral freedom given to men, in contrast against the passive role assigned to women.

Related Topics:
Venezuelan literature - 1921 - 1922 - Juan Vicente Gómez

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In the eye of the hurricane, is María Eugenia Alonso. Who is this well educated, intelligent and young lady, so vanishing conscious about it? It is tempting to point an alter ego as the first answer. In any case, this is the character Teresa de la Parra uses to illustrate a common and silent drama. María Eugenia fights a destiny that seems to be impossible to escape from, the same for every single and educated woman by then: a marriage. A correct one, according to social convictions, approved by her family, but not necessarily by her. For that time a woman was not supposed to stand out as a man did: her unique role as a female was to be mother and wife. What were the possibilities for an intelligent and educated woman to evade marriage without losing her respectability?

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Above being a hard critic of society, ?Iphigenia?? is a novel of an exquisite prose. It would not be an exaggeration to compare Teresa de la Parra?s writing with Proust?s fluent one. There is a constant rhythm in the author?s words each time she offers the reader descriptions full of colors and details. She escapes from the common places of Americanism and Nationalism, dying movements by then, about to strangle literature evolution in Latin America. Without using the same formulas, Teresa de la Parra succeeds to pick up colony times? beauty and nostalgia in a deep conflict against the changes brought by modernity and its new values, in order to convert the whole in a very personal testimony, full of delicate nuances. Her spirit?s subtlety replaces male long arguments for little gestures, details, words ?barely brushstrokes in the novel, which acquire now a dialectic meaning, becoming at the same time speech and metaphor of the silent impact of change and history on everyday life. As if this is not enough, the exposition of her personal ideas is impregnated with humor and a subtle irony that mark the writer?s style in all her work.

Related Topics:
Proust - Latin America

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Iphigenia?s tone, thematic nature and social-historic context contributed to make it a cause of controversy among some social and literary circles in Venezuela and Colombia. Juan Vicente Gómez? government denies the financial aid to support edition issuing, this is why Teresa de la Parra decides to travel to Paris. Modernism is an alive movement in France; it is there where Baudelaire and Rimbaud have been the guide to other artists. Paris is full of cafes where there is place for very long discussions about traditional values against modern ones in art. This city is visited by Latin artists, writers and intellectuals who soon become author?s friends: Simón Barceló, Zérega Fombona, Ventura García Calderón and Gonzalo Zaldumbide, among others.

Related Topics:
Venezuela - Colombia - France - Baudelaire - Rimbaud - Simón Barceló - Zérega Fombona - Ventura García Calderón - Gonzalo Zaldumbide

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Winner of the annual award given by Casa Editora Franco-Ibero-Americana in Paris in 1924, Teresa de la Parra finally obtains her work published and a 10.000 French Francs prize. ?Iphigenia?? becomes then a categorical success among Parisian intellectuals and readers. Not much later it is translated into French. Two years after multiple trips and works -which include conferences in Nations Society and exquisite answers to her opponent critics, the writer starts her big second work.

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?Souvenirs of Mama Blanca? ?published in 1929, is a lovely introspection into her childhood years, mixed with fiction up to very ambiguous limits, undefined until today because her researchers are not able to identify them yet. The Tazón four girls? spirit is alive through the hacienda Piedra Azul six girls? one. Of course this book does not mean any scandal. On the contrary, it is morally ?correct? and makes her deserve some indulgence from the ones who criticized ?Iphigenia?? nature before. ?Souvenirs of Mama Blanca? is a much easier book to write and distribute. It is a nostalgic view to her own past and a lifestyle condemned to be lost to let modernity come in, which richness would have been disappeared if Teresa de la Parra had not picked up the scenes she immortalizes in her pages.

Related Topics:
?Souvenirs of Mama Blanca? - 1929

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The author herself assures in her letters that there is no ?Iphigenia?? scent in this book, since there is no protest speech, revolutionary ideas or social critic. ?Souvenirs?? is the sweet leniency with which Teresa looks at the past of a country unable to find its own identity yet. Once again, through her characters, Teresa uses her words as a brush to paint the singularity of a little hacienda and makes this world to cover a beauty of universal value.

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Authors have been writing much about Teresa de la Parra?s literature and life parallels, where reality and fiction are so subtly intertwined. However, her work is not only made by her stories and novels. Success takes this exceptional woman to be a famous lecturer. Her more important speeches take place in La Habana and Bogotá; this last one is very meaningful about her personal ideas of female role in the Latin American society through History and the present times she has to live.

Related Topics:
La Habana - Bogotá

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After her arrival to Paris, writer?s life consists on countless trips and an intense social life. These are years of celebration, beauty, maturity and plenty. She still writes many letters to her intellectual friends in several countries. She is admired and loved in literary circles everywhere. It is in this times when she starts embracing her project about Simón Bolívar?s biography, maybe inspired by his death centenary. However, her idea is interrupted by the tragic diagnosis of tuberculosis.

Related Topics:
Simón Bolívar - Tuberculosis

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Teresa de la Parra wanders in several European sanatoriums, meanly in Switzerland and Spain, where she never finds a cure. These are years for introspection, tied up to the rest her ill demands. In these times she has her deepest reflections about her philosophical and literary ideas, and she studies her own work and life evolution through the years. The longest and most beautiful letters even written to her family and friends, and her intimate diaries, come from this time and must be considered as part of her literature.

Related Topics:
Europe - Switzerland

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