Felix Francisco Casanova Martin (1956-1976) was a Spanish writer and poet, a native of the Canary Islands. Despite his short life, he managed to leave behind a host of works that reflected his talent and passion for letters, especially poetry. Music was also an essential part of his existence.
Félix Casanova was a virtuoso since childhood, at the age of twelve he had already begun to write his first verses. He was an avid reader, sometimes impulsively. His literary skills were perhaps inherited from his father, the poet and physician Francisco Casanova de Ayala.
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Félix was born on September 28, 1956 in Santa Cruz de la Palma, Tenerife, into a family of doctors and artists. His parents were Dr. Francisco Casanova and the pianist María de la Concepción Martín Díaz. He had a brother named José Bernardo.
Félix Casanova received a quality education, which he combined with reading and music. When he moved to Tenerife in the sixties, he began to read authors such as Arthur Rimbaud, Fernando Pessoa, Albert Camus, Walt Whitman, among others..
His passion and knowledge of music led him to form a rock band called Hovno, in the early seventies. After completing his university studies, Casanova began to study Hispanic philology at the University of La Laguna, although he only managed to study three years.
The beginning of the seventies meant creativity and production for the young poet. With the birth of the alternative rock band, contact with the media began, so he did not hesitate to make public the lyrics he wrote with his friend, the musician Ángel Mollá..
Felix's pen became more agile; in 1973 he was awarded the Julio Tovar Prize, awarded in the Canary Islands, for his poetic work The GreenHouse. The following year, success smiled again when he won the Pérez Armas Award for his narrative work. Vorace's Gift.
The life of Félix Francisco Casanova was short-lived. However, the years that he lived allowed him to do what he loved, while leaving his footprints forever. The young poet died of a gas leak at his home on January 14, 1976, when he was just 19 years old..
Casanova's literary work was characterized by the use of a cultured language, but also deep, perhaps typical of passions and adolescent impetus. His original, creative and avant-garde style made his writings quickly become receptive..
Although the poet began to write as a teenager, he also gave his works maturity and reflection. Both his prose and his lyrics counted with precision and coherence in the development of themes related to life, existence, loneliness and the desire for freedom..
- Hypnosis space (1971).
- The sink (1972).
- Nine suites and one antisuite (1972).
- Invalid the rules (1973).
- I would have or would have loved (1974).
- The GreenHouse (1974).
- Vorace's Gift (1975).
- Forgotten memory (1976).
- A suitcase of leaves (1977).
- Bottleneck (1976).
- Boom of the cornered cat (1979).
- Skin buttons (1986).
- The forgotten memory. Poetry from 1973 and 1976 (1990).
This work was a kind of diary written by a Casanova who was just beginning to taste the honeys of life. In it he expressed his loves and passions, his concerns and obsessions, they were a series of verses in a lyrical and also symbolic language of an audacious and mature poet.
At the end of the work the poet developed two stories, short stories characterized by their overflowing creativity and wit. Casanova had the ability at his young age to bring reality to the features of surrealism.
“In syndromes, more than water, there is blood. This had not been calculated at first. From lifting a finger to lifting a stump ... What could it have been? I don't know. Therefore, I will have to open forks in the path that I proposed: the poems of water, and the poems of blood ... Now I believe in something more hurtful, more penetrating ... ".
“Do you, my dear winter air?,
you don't yawn like the chess king
waiting for his beheading
reading the romantics? ".
It was a novel written by Casanova that, even in prose, had a lyrical language. The narration was in the first person, by its protagonist Bernardo Vorace, who undertook the task of making his daily life known, his present, but always with the interest of discovering aspects of his past.
The author developed his main character as a person with low rational level. At the same time, Vorace felt drowned living in a hostile world, with painful experiences. He sought the idealization of life, and in frustrated attempts he wanted to kill himself, in the end he was left alone.
“I cannot help but laugh at this new failed attempt or cry as only I have cried. I choose to silence my thoughts and sleepwalking. The demon raised the curtain. I must destroy all those who know my weaknesses, all vestige with the past ... ".
"Dawn and dusk
at the same time
honey isn't this the way
what would you like to live in?
in my head there is an album
yellowed photos
and I'm completing it with my eyes,
with the slightest noises
trapping odors in the air
and in every dream that I dream ...
I drink you in every glass of water
that quenches my thirst,
my words are clear as little children ...
You must know that sometimes
I am like an endless burial,
always sad and blue
going up and down the same street ... ".
The fate of Félix Casanova was not long enough to give him more life. However, his prose and lyrical work were deep and coherent enough that they are still being published today, as testimony of a passionate and prematurely brilliant poet..
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