To continue the series of Venezuelan notables of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I would like to speak to you today about one of the most valuable women in Venezuelan literature, who was a milestone not only for the subject matter she raised in the first part of the last century, but also for bringing feminine thought to our letters, which were more dominated by men. That woman's name was Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo, better known as Teresa de la Parra.

While it is true that before Teresa de la Parra other Venezuelan women had already made their first incursions into Venezuelan literature, such as Sor María de los Ángeles, who composed her poems in a Caracas cell, or Virginia Gil Hermoso who made romantic narrations, or María Navarrete and Rosina Pérez who also dared to make several narrations, she was the first narrator who with her work not only made a name within the country, but outside it.

Due to the work of her father, who was consul of Venezuela, Teresa de la Parra was born in Paris in 1889. In 1890, the family returned to Caracas, although most of the time she spent in the hacienda El Tazón outside the capital. In 1900, after the death of her father, Teresa de la Parra's family, now presided over by her mother, decided to move to Spain. In the European country, Teresa does the elementary studies that the women received, which served so that the women were good housewives and faithful wives. Once this formation was over, Teresa de la Parra returned to Caracas in 1907, and then left again for Paris in 1915. In the 1920s she returned to Venezuela again, to consecrate herself as a writer.

It must be said that her literary beginning was in 1915, when under the pseudonym Fru-Fru, Teresa de la Parra published two stories: "An Indian Gospel: Buddha and the Leprosy" and "Lotus Flower: A Japanese Legend" in the newspaper El Universal. In 1920 she was published in the magazine Actualidades, directed by Rómulo Gallegos, her "Diario de una caraqueña por el Lejano Oriente", which is a fiction based on the letters sent by her sister during her travels. That same year, de la Parra published "Mama X" in a national short story contest sponsored by the newspaper El Luchador and won a special prize. In view of her success, José Rafael Pocaterra, editor of the magazine Lectura Semanal, invited her to publish "Diario de una señorita que se fastidia" in this magazine.

Like some of the best writers in the world, Teresa de la Parra only needed two great works that gave her the recognition of criticism and the respect of her colleagues: Memorias de Mamá Blanca and the insurmountable Ifigenia. As I mentioned earlier, these two novels are accompanied by a rich epistolary and lectures on The Influence of Women on the Formation of the American Soul given in Havana, Bogotá and Caracas. But it is Iphigenia, a novel with which she participated in a literary contest in Paris, sponsored by the Instituto Hispanoamericano de la Cultura Francesa and with which she won the first prize, and which was initially entitled Diario de una señorita que se aburría, her masterpiece, translated into other languages and praised by writers M. de Unamuno and J. R. Jiménez.

One of the most outstanding things about Ifigenia, an epistolary novel with a mixture of an intimate diary and published in 1924, is that it is the first Venezuelan novel that shows sensitivity, thought and feminine character. In this novel the naïve and feminine protest that Teresa de la Parra could feel against the destiny that denied her the right to make her life, choose her man and express her thoughts is evidenced.

In this regard, there is written evidence that Teresa de la Parra led the life that suited a lady of good Caracas society: attending receptions at embassies and frequent Hispanic American writers, although some bet that she lacked life experience and experience in love. However, there are letters that talk about the relationship of friendship and love she had with the Ecuadorian diplomat and writer Gonzalo Zaldumbide, which has been documented in a nurtured epistolary and with which she never married. And there is also mention of the other great friendship that she had, with the Cuban writer Lidya Cabrera, whom she met in 1927 during a trip to Cuba and who would accompany her until her death.

In the words of Arturo Uslar Pietri, another great Venezuelan writer to whom we will dedicate a few lines later, the conversation with Teresa de la Parra was a delight and she was a charming woman. He says of her:

She was a very determined woman in time and space. She was such an intuitive woman, so alien to man, so primitive and refined, so religious and natural, so sensual and sentimental, so soft and so strong... She was a lady: that monstrously delicate and complex being. That baroque flower.

Source

In 1929, Teresa de la Parra returned to the American continent to give her famous lectures and then returned to Europe. Shortly after returning to the old continent, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She is treated in a hospital in Leysin, Switzerland. She left in 1935 and went to Paris. But the disease was already very advanced, so she began her final journey: Barcelona, the last visit to Paris, the sanatorium of Fuenfría, the last months in Paris. In 1936, 23 April, she died at the age of 46. In 1949 her remains were transferred to Caracas to the family tomb.

Although much has been said about Teresa de la Parra's nostalgia for Europe when she was in Venezuela, some studies bet that because of her long letters and the author's project to make a book about Simón Bolívar, she spent her last days yearning for her hacienda in Caracas, the climate of her country, her friends and her people.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_de_la_Parra
https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/p/parra_teresa.htm
Written by: @nancybriti

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