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, mainly due to the fact that it was produced 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 narratives in both first and third person is frequent. The writer's favorite themes are those related to loneliness, dementia, madness and fear.
In an interview she gave in 2008, the author expressed: “… I write, but I don't write compulsively… I am ruminating”, perhaps for this reason that her work is not abundant. His most prominent titles have been Psalms under the moon, Profile of loneliness, Shattered time Y Petrified trees.
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Amparo was born on February 21, 1928 in the city of Pinos, Zacatecas, into 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.
In 1935 he moved with his family to San Luis Potosí, where he studied primary and secondary school. The writer supplemented her training by reading the books her father had. In his younger years, Dávila demonstrated his talent for writing by publishing his first poetic work, which he entitled Psalms under the moon (1950).
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 him professional growth and in 1959 his work came to light Shattered time, a book made up of twelve stories.
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.
In 1964 the story work Concrete music it was added to the list of publications of Amparo Dávila; 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 Shattered time Y Concrete music; the publication included all the narrations of both titles.
The last years of Amparo Dávila's life have been spent in her native Mexico, accompanied by her eldest daughter Jaina. His last poetic work was published in 2011 and four years later he was awarded the Fine Arts Medal.
The literary style of Amparo Dávila is characterized by the use of a 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 his 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 his 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 notorious.
- Psalms under the moon (1950).
- Profile of loneliness (1954).
- Meditations on the edge of sleep (1954).
- Poetry collected (2011). In this poetic work was included The body and the night (1967-2007).
- Shattered time (1959). It was composed of the following stories:
- "Fragment of a diary".
- "The guest".
- "The fifth of the lattices".
- "A ticket to anywhere".
- "End of a fight".
- "The cell".
- "High kitchen".
- "Miss Julia".
- "Death in the forest".
- "Moses and Gaspar".
- "Mirror".
- "Time shattered".
- Concrete music (1964). It was made up of the following stories:
- "Concrete music".
- "The garden of the tombs".
- "Arthur Smith".
- "Breakfast".
- "Behind the gate".
- "Matilde Espejo".
- "The burial".
- "Tina Reyes".
- Petrified trees (1977). Composed of the following titles:
- "The wheel".
- "The square patio".
- "Garden party".
- "The night of the broken guitars".
- "The last summer".
- "The letter".
- "Oscar".
- "Stockholm 3".
- "The pavilion of rest".
- "Hug".
- "Petrified trees".
- Shattered time and concrete music (1978). This edition was made up of all the stories from these works.
- Death in the woods (1985).
- Collected stories (2019). Included With the eyes open, unpublished work.
It was the first book of stories by Amparo Dávila, and consisted of twelve stories. As in most of this author's works, the mysterious and the uncertain were present, surprising endings also predominated, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions..
Some of the most outstanding stories were:
- "Mirror".
- "The cell".
- "The guest".
- "Moses and Gaspar".
- "Miss Julia".
This story was about the mental health problems that a mother had, which were narrated by her son, who was one of the main characters. Fear was present in each scene as the patient saw in the mirror of her hospital room a series of faces that she did not recognize.
“… That night, the first night I spent in the hospital with Mom, we had baked mutton and mashed potatoes, applesauce and coffee with milk and biscuits for dinner…
I looked into the mirror. There the image of Miss Eduviges was reflected, tall, very thin, almost bony. On her kind face, framed by silky brown hair ... The mirror reflected that image for a few minutes, exactly faithful ... ".
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 their 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.
“I will never forget the day he came to live with us. My husband brought it back from a trip… I couldn't help crying out in horror when I saw it for the first time. It was grim, sinister. With large yellowish eyes, almost round and without blinking, that seemed to penetrate through things and people ... ".
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".
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 he had a terrible dream in which the heart of his beloved Luciano lay in his 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. Madness mixed with reality without clarifying what really happened.
“When Carmen came down for breakfast at seven thirty, according to family customs, she was not yet dressed, but covered in her navy blue cloth robe and her hair was messy..
“But it was not only this that caught the attention of the parents and the brother, but his haggard and haggard face like that of someone who has had a bad night or suffers from an illness. He said good morning automatically and sat down at the table, almost falling on the chair ".
The main character in this story was called Marcela and she was a 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 turned into a frog and went 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 having been infected with that strange madness.
"Sergio's hand takes hold of a pair of scissors and nails, sinks, tears ... the desperate croaking begins to become weaker and weaker as if he were submerging himself in a dark and dense water, while the blood stains the floor of the room".
"The flutes groan
in the hands of the air
and in vain the breezes
they whip the crystals.
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 ... ".
“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 it 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 can't forget ".
"White time
empty without you
with you in memory
memory that invents you
and recreates you.
Blue time
the dream in which 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 ... ".
- "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 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 palpated, 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 fabric represents chaos, total confusion, the formless, the unspeakable ... but it would undoubtedly be a beautiful suit".
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