When I was a young girl, I
used to have some “Required Reading” books along my school years. As you know
these were books that students had to read in order to have a test about them.
Some of them turned up to be very interesting while others became an absolute
torture. These were times when teenagers were not regarded as a potential
danger for the society, thus we didn’t use to visit psychologists and the
merest sidelong glance was enough to make us shut up. Fortunately I loved
reading and I could bear the task more happily than the great majority of my
class. However we had to read some books than I cannot imagine students reading
in the current context…Kafka and his neurotic Metamorphosis, some chapters
of Galdos’ Episodios Nacionales and Pio Baroja’s El árbol de la Ciencia .
In those days García Márquez was far from
being among the “divinely ordained”, so I was not as lucky as Estrella …. “It was at High School when I read him for
very first time and although the reading was compulsory
I finished the book the same afternoon that it fell into my hands “. The thing is that I discovered “Gabo” in another
way. A group of youngsters were part of an amateur theatre group called “La
Caña”, and José Martin Recuerda used to come to Motril to watch our rehearsals.
One day he gave us a present and it was
precisely El Otoño del Patriarca . I had never read García Márquez but
it was “the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.
What I liked most of his work
was the simplicity to express emotions. He was true with himself, to his way of
seeing reality in a clear and honest way. These magic, these apparently absurd
elements were taking a natural part in a realistic environnement. At some time
I learnt that it was called “magic realism”. Gabriel García Márquez has passed away but he
was such a brilliant writer that, generously, shared his experiences with us.
This is an extract from “Cien Años de
Soledad” that I find particularly beautiful, full of an amazing simplicity…
Deslumbrada
por tantas y tan maravillosas invenciones, la gente de Macondo no sabía por dónde
empezar a asombrarse. Se trasnochaban contemplando las pálidas bombillas eléctricas
alimentadas por la planta que llevó Aureliano Triste en el segundo viaje del
tren, y a cuyo obsesionante tumtum costó tiempo y trabajo acostumbrarse. Se
indignaron con las imágenes vivas que el próspero comerciante don Bruno Crespi
proyectaba en el teatro con taquillas de bocas de león, porque un personaje
muerto y sepultado en una película, y por cuya desgracia se derramaron lágrimas
de aflicción, reapareció vivo y convertido en árabe en la película siguiente.
El público que pagaba dos centavos para compartir las vicisitudes de los
personajes, no pudo soportar aquella burla inaudita y rompió la silletería. El
alcalde, a instancias de don Bruno Crespi, explicó mediante un bando que el
cine era una máquina de ilusión que no merecía los desbordamientos pasionales
del público.
