Teresa de la Parra

In his excellent essay on the Venezuelan novelist Teresa de la Parra (Paris 1889- Madrid 1936), Arturo Uslar Pietri quotes from one of her letters to a friend. The excerpt (translated into English) is:

"Do you know, Carias, that since I've been sick, a 'slave to the snows,' I do nothing but think of Caracas with an infinte sweetness? She seems so beautiful to me from here and I wish so much I could return!"

Uslar Pietri discusses how de la Parra became very focused on the influence of Caracas on her soul during her later years. Again, I come to this correspondence between my own experience of Caracas and that of many Venezuelan writers. The idea that an entire universe exists in that valley. My continual devotion and love for that inimitable, enthralling city. Despite its daily horrors.

Uslar Pietri quotes her again in his essay (my translation):

"I think that over there, in our countries, we live poisoned by disharmony. We are injected with false culture from Europe and North America, which has been poorly assimilated and which gives all of us a type of dangerous barbarism. My novel, Ifigenia, is suffused with that spirit. I wish I could write the reverse of Ifigenia."