AMPARO DÁVILA: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE, WORKS AND PHRASES - BIOGRAPHIES - 2024

Amparo Dávila (1928) is a Mexican writer, short story writer, and poet whose work has been framed in the well-known Generation of half a century, as it was produced mostly in the 1950s. She is one of the most recognized intellectuals of the Aztec territory.

Dávila's work is unique due to its fanciful and strange characteristics. In his writings, the use of narrations in both first and third person is frequent. The favorite themes of the writer are those related to loneliness, dementia, madness and fear.

Amparo Dávila in a tribute to his figure. Image taken from:

In an interview she gave in 2008, the author stated: “… I write, but I don't write compulsively… I am ruminating”, perhaps for this reason that her work is not abundant. Her most prominent titles have been Psalms under the Moon, Profile of Solitudes, Shattered Time and Petrified Trees.

Biography

Birth and family

Amparo was born on February 21, 1928 in the city of Pinos, Zacatecas in the bosom of a cultured and traditional family. Although the data on his relatives are scarce, it is known that his father was fond of reading. She was the third of four siblings and the only one to survive. The others died as children.

Dávila Education

In 1935 he moved with his family to San Luís Potosí, where he studied primary and secondary school. The writer supplemented her training by reading the books her father had. In her younger years, Dávila demonstrated her talent for writing by publishing her first poetic work, which she titled Psalms under the Moon (1950).

Training in Mexico City

Shield of San Luis de Potosí, place where the writer spent part of her life. Source: Yavidaxiu, via Wikimedia Commons

The nascent writer went to the country's capital in 1954 to study at the university. Starting in 1956 and, for two years, he worked as an assistant to the writer Alfonso Reyes. This activity gave her professional growth and in 1959 her work Destroyed Time came to light, a book made up of twelve stories.

Personal life

Amparo Dávila began a relationship with the artist and painter Pedro Coronel during his stay in Mexico City. The couple married in 1958 and their daughter Jaina was born that same year. Later, in 1959, she gave birth to her second daughter named Lorenza.

Other activities of Dávila

In 1964 the work of short stories Música concreta was added to Amparo Dávila's list of publications; that same year she divorced Pedro Coronel. Two years later, he got a scholarship at the Centro Mexicano de Escritores to continue with the development of his literary production.

In 1977 the writer published Petrified Trees, a work made up of eleven stories. With that book, Dávila won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize on that same date. A year later, a joint edition of Torn Time and Concrete Music came out; the publication included all the narrations of both titles.

Last years

The last years of Amparo Dávila's life have been spent in her native Mexico, accompanied by her eldest daughter Jaina. Her last poetic work was published in 2011 and four years later she was awarded the Fine Arts Medal.

Style

Palace of Fine Arts, an institution that recognized Amparo Dávila. Source: Xavier Quetzalcoatl Contreras Castillo, via Wikimedia Commons

Amparo Dávila's literary style is characterized by the use of clear and precise language, almost always deep and reflective on aspects of life. The author focuses her work on mystery, fantasy and the strange. The main theme of her writings was related to loss, suffering, sadness and madness.

In the stories of this author, time is an important factor, especially in the field of personal relationships. In her texts the weight of the hours that are lost in a complicated love relationship, and those that are invested to find a partner, is felt. It is necessary to mention that in Dávila's stories the female participation is very noticeable.

Plays

Poetry

"The guest"

It is one of the most attractive and interesting stories developed by Amparo Dávila, due largely to the mystery that he added to it. Through a main narrator, the author recounted the fear of a family at the husband's decision to accommodate a strange being in her home that generated madness in the environment.

In a deep and symbolic sense, the host was a kind of animal that reflected the destruction of married life after the frequent absence of the husband. Confusion comes to the reader when the protagonist begins to devise a plan to end the strange yellow-eyed element.

Fragment

Concrete music

In this second book of stories, the Mexican writer focused on the actions of the female characters. The main theme he developed was madness as a synonym for lack of control, incapacity and irrationality. Of the eight stories that made it up, the most outstanding were the following:

- "Tina Reyes".

- "Behind the gate".

- "Breakfast".

- "Concrete music".

" The breakfast"

It was a story of crime, nightmare and madness where the main protagonist was a young woman named Carmen who led a normal life. But everything changed when she had a terrible dream in which the heart of her beloved Luciano lay in her hands.

Nerves took hold of the girl, so her parents tried to help her with some medications to calm her down. The end came unexpectedly when the police are looking for Carmen for a crime that happened. The madness was mixed with the real without clarifying what really happened.

Fragment

"Concrete music"

The main character in this story was called Marcela and she was the victim of her husband's infidelity. In the midst of disappointment and despair, the woman convinced her friend Sergio that every night her husband's lover would turn into a frog and would go into his room to disturb his sleep and make him lose his sanity.

Seeing the depressing state she was in, Marcela's good friend became obsessed with the presence of the frog woman. The story had a dramatic change when Sergio decided to end the existence of the person who tormented his friend, all after being infected with that strange madness.

Fragment

Fragments of some poems

"The flutes groan"

"The flutes groan

in the hands of the air

and in vain the breezes

the crystals whip.

The heart of the stone is so hard!

Desolate clay,

the weight of the stars

lacerate your fragile epidermis

and shatters, ashes and sobs

the rose of light.

I want to think, believe

and yet…

they are absent of tenderness

evening eyes

and cry alone

the wild beasts in the mountains… ”.

"Toast"

“Let's remember yesterday and drink for what it was;

so it is no longer.

Raise the glass and toast what was life

and it was death;

so one day was present and now it is past…

I only have flame-colored wine;

the bonfire of their loves

was left behind in the past.

Fill the cup and drink;

let's drink from the past

that I cannot forget ”.

"Polychrome of time"

"White time

empty without you

with you in memory

memory that invents you

and recreates you.

Blue time

the dream that I dream of you

the clear certainty

to find in you

the promised land.

Green time

beyond hope

I await

the certainty of your body.

Red time

I feel your body

and it spills

a river of lava

between the shadow.

Gray time

nostalgia for your voice

and your look

absent from your being

evening falls… ”.

Phrases

- "It is not enough to know that love exists, you have to feel it in your heart and in all cells."

- "We are two castaways lying on the same beach, in as much of a hurry or none as the one who knows he has eternity to look at himself."

- “I don't believe in literature based on pure intelligence or imagination alone. I believe in experiential literature, since this, the experience, is what communicates to the work the clear sensation of the known… what makes the work last in memory and feeling ”.

- “As a writer I am quite anarchic. I don't listen to rules or anything ”.

- “Words, finally, as something that is touched and felt, words as inescapable matter. And all accompanied by dark and sticky music ”.

- "… It is not the silence of enigmatic beings, but that of those who have nothing to say."

- "The endless moment was deserted, without spectators to applaud, without shouting."

- "There is no possible escape when fleeing from ourselves."

- “I speak for you for all this and much more; for you who opened closed windows and helped me by the hand to travel through the most bitter and painful season ”.

- "… this cloth represents chaos, total bewilderment, the formless, the unspeakable… but it would undoubtedly be a beautiful suit."

References

1. Espinosa, R. (2005). Amparo Dávila: a teacher of the story. Mexico: La Jornada Semanal. Recovered from: día.com.mx.
2. Amparo Dávila. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
3. Ancira, L. (2013). Collected stories. Amparo Dávila. (N / a): Of Letters and Meows. Recovered from: letrasymaullidos.blogspot.com.
4. Amparo Dávila. (2019). Mexico: Encyclopedia of Literature in Mexico. Recovered from: elem.mx.
5. Davila, Amparo. (S. f.). (N / a): Writers Org. Recovered from: writers.org.