Teresa de la Parra

Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo (born 5 October 1889 in Paris, died 23 April 1936 in Madrid), known by her pseudonym Teresa de la Parra, was a Spanish-language writer who lived in Venezuela and Europe.

Quotes

• I take as my masters in the expression of the modern novel Anatole France, Alphonse Daudet, Maupassant, Catulle Mendés, and Valle Inclán. I consider them my masters because I believe they have influenced me the most.
  • said to the Colombian journalist Uribe Muñoz, English translation quoted in "Mama Blanca's Memoirs and the Author Remembered" by Velia Bosch in Mama Blanca's Memoirs : Critical Edition (1993)

Mama Blanca's Memoirs (1929 novel)

translated from the Spanish into English by Harriet de Onis and Frederick H. Fornoff

• Mama Blanca, who on her death bequeathed me fond memories and some five hundred sheets of linen paper written in her fine, wavering English handwriting, was no relation of mine. Those pages, written toward the close of her life, and which I cherish tenderly, have the humble, monotonous simplicity that characterized her domestic existence, and, unbound, bulky, were fastened together at the back with a narrow silk cord whose color time and the touch of my fingers and those of the departed had blurred. It was not kinship that bound me to Mama Blanca, but mysterious spiritual affinities that in the commerce of souls weave the brief or enduring web of sympathy, friendship, or love, which are separate stages in that supreme joy of mutual understanding. (beginning of "Foreword")

• I could say to you sternly: 'Go thou and sin no more,' except that I don't hold with upbraiding sin too severely. If it were forbidden, its absence might leave the world an arid desert, for what would life be worth without the grace of forgiveness and tolerance?" (from Forward)

• ...your silent forgiveness was a great offense, and it would have made for far better relations between you and your six little girls if from time to time you had shown your disappointment in word and act. That resignation of yours was like a huge tree that you had felled across the pathway to our hearts. ("Blanca Nieves and Company")

• ...his image was to become clearly impressed on us in its every detail like a bust carved on one of those medallions hidden in the bottom of a trunk, and which are brought out and gazed upon with loving eyes at long intervals. (from "Here Comes Cousin Juancho")

• As I set down these words, two big tears roll down my cheeks, wrinkled as much by the rictus of sorrow as by the lines laughter has imprinted on them over the years. One of these tears is for the irreparable loss of the dear departed. The other, for the infinite sorrow it gives me to know that above the cherished ashes, always triumphant, always terrible, like an angel of vengeance with a flaming sword, barring the gate of all that is pleasant, we are left, not with grace and wit but, for our sins, with emphasis. ("Here Comes Cousin Juancho")

• The weaknesses, the shortcomings, or imperfections of my soul, like those of most, are numerous, I admit. They have encircled me, gay and unabashed, all my life long, like a flock of sheep its shepherdess. Instead of my leading them, I have allowed them to lead me over the years, submissively and willingly. Thus they have grown attached to my person, and not one has strayed away; they are all here. (beginning of "Vicente Cochocho")

• "Glory is only for those who seek her," a sage once remarked. ("Vicente Cochocho")

• Who ever remembers to thank the sun for shining or water for quenching one's thirst? ("Vicente Cochocho")

• Nobody is a prophet in their own country. ("Vicente Cochocho")

• His soul did not know the meaning of hate. Belonging, as one might say, to the vegetable kingdom, he accepted without protest the iniquities of man and the injustices of nature. Submerged in the water, or clinging to the stones, insult him as they might, he went on impassively yielding his fruits and his flowers, good plant that he was. ("Vicente Cochocho")

• [She] had returned to Trinidad. Nobody scolded us any more. There was no longer anyone to salt or season the insipidness of life with prohibitions. Our whims that were born strong and numerous, without a watchful hand to prune them, smothered us in melancholy. (from "Aurora")

• Like others older and wiser than us, we were ignorant of a truth that is never really learned - a truth I have not yet been able to keep in mind more than five minutes - which is that the most enticing change, the most alluring travels, in their monotonous variety reveal to us only one transcendent, cruel new thing: our utter human misery and our blithe ignorance of it, an ignorance forever lost in which living was so sweet. (from "Aurora")

• The truth is bitter. I swallowed it in silence. ("Aurora")

Ifigenia (1924 novel)

translated from the original Spanish into English by Bertie Acker (1994)

First Part: A Very Long Letter Wherein Things Are Told As They Are in Novels

• At last I'm writing to you, dear Cristina! I don't know what you must have thought of me. When we said goodbye on the station platform in Biarritz, I remember that I, full of sorrow, sighs, and packages, told you while I hugged you, "I'll write soon, soon, very soon!" (beginning)

• I know how to lie very well when I talk, but I don't know how to lie when I write, and since I didn't want to tell you the truth for anything in the world, because it seemed very humiliating to me, I had decided to say nothing. But now I've decided that the truth to which I refer is not humiliating, but instead is picturesque, interesting, and somewhat medieval. Therefore, I have resolved to confess everything openly, trusting you are capable of hearing the pain that cries out in my words.

• Receive...this portion of my spirit, and don't forget that here from my solitude, sunken in the silence of its "closed orchard," it waits in turn for you to come.

Second Part: Juliet's Balcony

• Oh! It's so strange how little influence our convictions have on our behavior! I believe that in general our convictions are made to be applied to the conduct of other people, because that is when they appear in all the splendor of their integrity: solid, well-rooted, and unbreakable. On the other hand, when it has to do with ourselves, as in the present case, our opinions or convictions instantly take on the flexibility of wax, and they accommodate and mold themselves wonderfully to the most capricious accidents of our conduct. The great majority of people, endowed as they are with a certain conciliatory spirit, admirably explain away such mysterious discrepancies, with reasons or excuses. Thus, thanks to eloquence and logic, the two inseparable sisters--conviction and conduct—are held in a perpetual embrace of perfect harmony. Unfortunately, I absolutely lack the imagination to establish these agreements and it frequently happens that I find myself, as I do today, in flagrant contradiction.

• You may take me to San Nicolás...but you can only imprison my body there; you'll never imprison my spirit, never, because every day it will fly up to the branches, it will perch for hours and hours on the telephone lines, it will fly over the hills, it will dart over ravines and rivers, it will hop across the rooftops, and it will come to sing like a sparrow in the eaves of Mercedes's patio. There, at night, from eight o'clock to eleven, with its invisible eyes, it will see everything it wishes. And perhaps soon, very soon, when you least expect it, those weak sparrow's wings will fly away with my body, too, because I'll get married. C3?

• Creo que la antipatía es un sentimiento caprichoso y superficial que en el fondo no existe ni tiene razón de ser. En realidad casi nadie es antipático. Si se considera a las personas muy de cerca y se penetra con bondad en la esencia de su psicología, acabamos por admirar sus cualidades y tolerar sus defectos...
  • I think that antipathy is an impulsive and superficial feeling that really doesn't exist or have any reason to exist. Actually, almost no one is unlikable. If you evaluate people by getting to know them and if you penetrate the essence of their psychology with kindness, you end by admiring their good qualities and tolerating their defects, as in the physical world we tolerate rain, heat, spots on the wall of the room we live in, or the hard pillow on our bed. It's all a question of time and patience. In my opinion, this is one of the most tangible proofs that man is a social animal, born to live in the company of his own kind. (chapter 5)

• For many days I've been waiting for it, this horrible news, and yet, when I heard it, I experienced the strange shock of a vibrant and perennial pain, always new and always sharp. It is plastered on my heart, and it hurts me so much, so very much, that I would like to die at once or I'd like my soul to die in my body, so that it at least could rest in the unconsciousness of idiocy or madness. My pride is the only pillar that sustains me. Sometimes I bless it for being great and strong, and other times I reproach it for insatiably monopolizing all the strength of my body and spirit. (beginning of chapter 7)

• ...again I wonder with anxiety and fear what great and terrible thing is this love that always awaits us, and stalks us everywhere with open claws. Oh! Love! Love! Why ask the swaying of the hammock? I have already felt it! It is this subterranean and silent tragedy that everyone treats with indifference, as one might ignore the macabre torment of someone buried alive. Why deceive myself? I have experienced it! It is a live coal, always sizzling and glowing; it is this painful burn that makes me feel the awful agony of the flesh, and makes me think with anxiety and infinite nostalgia about the sweet silence of the void! (chapter 7)

Third Part: Toward the Port of Aulis

• I who for two years or more anxiously awaited the coming of love, I who waited for it on bended knee as if for the archangel of the Annunciation, now that it has come to me, now that I behold it up close and face to face, its brilliancy has blinded my pupils and the majesty of its grandeur crushes me... (chapter 1)

• I can no longer resist the absolute necessity that I feel of expressing the following aphorism, whose truth overflows from my soul: "Love does not exist." Yes, unhappily, love, flowery love, exalted love is--nothing! Like so many other pious lies, its dazzling lustre is only the lustre of a mirage that glows from afar in this arid desert of our lives. Since I have discovered this cruel truth, I profoundly despise human existence, and I would prefer a thousand and one times over to have been born a rock, a lake, or a chasm-all things which, being eternal, immobile, and grandiose, have the advantage of never getting bored and of not having the ridiculous pretension of aspiring to love, which as I have already said, is no more than a utopia, an Eldorado, and a will-o'-the-wisp. (chapter 2)

Fourth Part: Iphigenia

• I am writing to forget my fear . . .

• But, oh! this immense anxiety, where does it come from, dear Lord?. . . It must without a doubt come from lack of sleep and from the dreadful tension that dwells in my alert and trembling heart, as it listens to the footsteps of death, which walks, always near, and always, always, without arriving! . . . (chapter 3)

• How true it is, as Gregoria says, when she sets forth her fatalistic doctrines and explains, "What is going to come, starts walking and walking, and its steps are counted, and it arrives when you least expect it, even if you try to dodge." It's true. Gregoria is right! (Chapter 5)

• [His] lips can't appear in my mind because they have remained on my mouth, and I feel them there, clinging and burning, as if I were feeling a wound, the kind burning embers leave on your skin! In vain, for more than two hours as I've been writing, I've brushed my mouth with the back of my cold hand. I've tried to tear [his] burning lips from mine. They horrify and frighten me, but no matter what I do, I can't get them off my mouth. They are stuck, stuck tight, like scars made by hot coals, scars that will be there eternally! (chapter 5)

• Oh! The silent conformity of those who live when their souls are dead! Oh! The silence of those who are resigned, who walk in the great caravan, and walk, carrying a burden of mystery on their shoulders, never asking how long they must walk, nor where they are going, nor for what reason. Life, the cruel and bloodthirsty captain of the great caravan, lashes us with her whip of hours to force us to carry the burden down the road, and to leave it wherever she says, "here"! (chapter 9)

• How far away, how far, I see your thousand little lights fading, little fireflies of love, mystic lamps, a legion of twinkling, distant stars that, like an impossible sky, will always shine above the profound darkness of my resignation and my chains! (chapter 9)

• Oh, no, no, the horrible torture of that morning, whose light my eyes never should have seen. That cruel torture, even though my memory retained many of its details, I wouldn't be able to describe it now with words. Words can't say! Words don't know! (chapter 9)

• ...I thought about the iniquitous injustice with which our shares are distributed in the great fair of life. All the happiness for some, all the pain for others. I thought too about the invisible force that fatally guides our destinies, and with my face always hidden under the tear-drenched pillow, I condensed that complex absurdity into a single word, and I murmured many times, desperate and defeated, "Oh! Life! Life!"

• Oh! Highest gratification of souls that intangibly yield themselves, having never felt the impure touch of the body! Oh! Perverse voluptuousness, profound voluptuousness of bodies destined to writhe with pretense in the repugnance of kisses that do not touch the soul! Oh! The sublime lie of silent suffering! Sacrifice! Object of my affection! Ruler that desires my whole life for yourself! At this august hour of acute awareness, with my eyes fixed on the dead pristine dress lying on my little chair, I have tried to decipher the mysteries that rule my destiny, and I only see your name arise, floating in the symbolic foam of lace. Your name! Your name is Sacrifice! Oh, but wait, wait, for now, in ecstacy, enlightened by your name, on the symbolic froth of lace, at last I am reading the beauty of my destiny.

from letters

unless otherwise noted, translated from the original Spanish into English in Teresa de la Parra: A Literary Life by RoseAnna Mueller

• I made María Eugenia Alonso the antithesis of myself. I gave her qualities and defects I don't have, so no one would confuse me with her. María Eugenia Alonso is a synthesis, a living copy of several women I've seen close up, who suffer in silence and to whom I wanted to give a voice. (1932)

• it's only after we've heard the bitter voice of censure and reproach that we can appreciate, by contrast, the sweetness that comes of understanding. (March 5, 1927)

• In Venezuela, diatribe is nonexistent, since there is no opposition. Irony is deformed and exaggerated and reduced to the category of insult. True irony, like charity, begins at home and should smile benevolently and should be perfumed with indulgence. Irony is different than cruel and vulgar mockery. (1927)

• Those who think they know their native land well because they have never traveled outside it are mistaken. Through travel we get to know our own native land better. (1927)

• I've come to the conclusion...that the best restorations are those brought on by nostalgia and illuminated by sweet melancholy; these will live on eternally noble in the divine grace of memory. (1926)

• My rebellious spirit keeps me from following too many academic rules and I will not bow to the Academy's (La Real Academia Española) dictatorship, since I am more interested in the sound of words, rather than in necessity, our mother, and usage, our brother. (1925)

• Lyric poetry bares the soul and needs great purity and modesty or it risks becoming comical. (1925)

• the soul would suffice and I could do without the body (To Gonzalo Zaldumbide, August 1924)

• I like poets and writers who stimulate my dreams, these are the true masters of the soul. (to Clemencia Miró)

• I have said and still say that the dirtiest jobs are coal and politics. One almost always gets one's hands soiled.
  • English translation quoted in "Mama Blanca's Memoirs and the Author Remembered" by Velia Bosch in Mama Blanca's Memoirs : Critical Edition (1993)

to Eduardo Guzman Esponda

• I always preferred the humble and cool woods, where I could run away from all that. My feet know how tiring that road can be, and my poor unskilled hands, though active, are tired with having to wring the necks of the squawking birds of eloquence.

• Since the beginning of time it's been this fear, that secretly teaches maidens to smile, to silently make the arrangements for funerals and wakes, discreetly plan weddings, and with her blessing she gives the bride a deep peace that smoothes the past and colors the roses in the dark destinies that were accepted, rather than chosen.

• The real objective of my book was to show our mysterious duality and the terrible conflicts that surprise us- between what we are and what we think we are. And the final painful question posed to the reader- Who is the real me; the me who thinks or the me who acts? I tried to come between Iphigenia and the reader, letting the reader know that she doesn't know herself. The only well-written part of Iphigenia is the part not written, what is said without words, so that the reader's benevolence could read in a whisper what the critic would read in a shout.

• ...like María Eugenia Alonso the sensitive and the temperamental (women and artists) have two "I's" within our souls, different and contradictory and seldom in accord: the one that speaks through the mouth of reason and the one motivated by reasons reason doesn't know. The first is geometric, logical and ruled by the ego and leads to success and when it prevails, the world judges us to be intelligent. The other is mad, sublimely mad, with the madness of great sacrifice and outlandish generosities, the mysterious "unknown guest" who sows disorder, mocks our wise tutor the ego, and buries our lives, like a gray stone stuck to a large building of societies constantly undergoing construction.

Quotes about

• The novel is a tender and sensitive account of a girl growing up in the austere seclusion demanded by the moral code in South America during the first quarter of the twentieth century...I find it an honor to introduce her and her world to English readers. In spite of the inevitable shortcomings of this translation, María Eugenia is sure to win the hearts of those who peek into her diary!
  • Bertie Acker, from the Translator's Note in Iphigenia

• I have to confess that for the most part, what has been written and fallen into my hands gives a false impression of Iphigenia's author as a femme du monde concerned with her beauty night and day, body and soul, always "ponche de leche" as they said in Cuba during colonial times when they never missed a social event. That is to say, a superficial, self-sufficient Teresa dressed in the latest fashion, a snob who was nothing at all like the woman we knew close up: elegant, of course; very feminine, who knew that she was beautiful; and there was the mirror who reassured her of that at all hours of the day; but simple, enchantingly modest, too intelligent to give in to vanity.
  • Lydia Cabrera, quoted and translated into English in Teresa de la Parra: A Literary Life by RoseAnna Mueller

• the admirable author of Ifigenia
  • Rómulo Gallegos, from a dedication of one of his books quoted in "Mama Blanca's Memoirs and the Author Remembered" by Velia Bosch in Mama Blanca's Memoirs : Critical Edition (1993)

• Rómulo Gallegos when he writes sings, wails, curses, hails, exalts, José Rafael Pocaterra offers slices from a vivisection, denounces, uncovers tumors and decay of the soul. Teresa tells, in an intimate diary, in an intimate language, in white, transparent letters, the sentimental, psychic, emotional life of the women of Spanish blood at the beginning of the century, without any sociological, political, or psychological intention. Her admirable stylistic mastery is based on simplicity, narrative efficiency, fidelity to speech and to feelings. An immense pruning of adjectives to reach the multiform yet natural noun. People's interior life determined by an environment, a history, and norms that constitute the glimpsed depths, precise in their imprecision, alive yet never specified by the author, delineated, accentuated, studied, described. A narration of interior events whose importance remains in subjectivity. But that same distance grants the stories of Teresa de la Parra their universality and global transparency. The tree never blocks the view of the forest. And the forest is simply life, living, to be alive.
  • Juan Liscano, from "Testimony" English translation included in Mama Blanca's Memoirs : Critical Edition (1993)

• "I feel like an unbound book whose pages are in complete disorder," wrote Teresa de la Parra, the year she died, to the Cuban anthropologist Lydia Cabrera, the beloved "Cabrita" with whom she shared many years of her life. Nowadays, when I think of Teresa de la Parra, that is, I think, the image of her I prefer the image that has come to replace the glossy society portrait of the Revue de L'Amérique Latine: the scattered pages, the unfinished manuscript asking to be deciphered, offered up for my conspiratorial reading, for my collaboration.
  • Sylvia Molloy, Foreword to Mama Blanca's Memoirs : Critical Edition (1993)

• as I re-read de la Parra's first novel I found that the Venezuelan writer had more in common with Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and Katherine Mansfield [than Virginia Woolf]. Like Austen, de la Parra wrote about polite society and its preoccupation with class, manners and making good matches for its daughters. Both authors use gentle humor to poke fun at contemporary manners, and both are not above showing their heroines as less than perfect, naïve at first, and unable to see their imperfections. Ultimately, they learn how to get on in their societies...
  • RoseAnna Mueller, Teresa de la Parra: A Literary Life (2012)

• Teresa de la Parra died quietly at a time when Venezuelans didn't stop to think how important she was to the pure cultural tradition of this country. Going beyond the times and fashions, Teresa is distinguished as one of our classic writers. In a very proper Spanish, with the perfect natural tone of a good conversation, she collected the most interesting and nostalgic part of the Venezuelan soul. If we had more taste and less pedantry in our educational system, Teresa would be read everywhere, to teach us the language we should all want to speak.
  • Mariano Picón Salas, from "Estudios de literatura venezolana," translated into English in Teresa de la Parra: A Literary Life by RoseAnna Mueller

• ... de la Parra conveys the intensity of Iphigenia's rebellious voice, the range of her intelligence and the degree of her sexual obsessiveness. But [she] also anticipates Simone de Beauvoir's warning that brains and sexual liberation don't matter at all without a firm economic base.
  • Barbara Probst Solomon, used as blurb for English translation of Iphigenia

External links

• GoodReads page