/ARTS WEEKLY/ VENEZUELA: Voice is Thread Uniting Women Writers

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Marquez

CARACAS, May 25 2004 (IPS) - The texts of 66 Venezuelan women writers, of poetry, narrative, plays, essay and reportage, have been united in an anthology, "El hilo de la voz" (The Thread of the Voice), which could become the main reference point for women’s literature in this country.

Edited by writers Ana Teresa Torres and Yolanda Pantin, the collection includes the poem "Anhelo" (Longing), by Maria Josefa de la Paz y Castillo, because it is "the only documented literary testimony of a Venezuelan women in the 18th century."

The book also contains a socio-historical essay by the editors about the "female condition" in Venezuela throughout the 20th century.

Biographies and bibliographies portray the personal and professional histories of each of the authors, whose w ritings in many cases had been practically lost because they were originally published in such limited editions.

"El hilo de la voz" opens with Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936), considered a "founding" woman writer, author of "Ifigenia" and "Memorias de Mama Grande" (Memories of Big Mama), and closes with young poets – fresh from Venezuelan literary workshops – Carmen Verde Arocha, born in 1967, and Eleonora Requena, a year younger.

The book, running more than 900 pages, was published by Angria Ediciones and Fundacion Polar, with sponsorship from the U.S.-based Rockefeller Foundation.

The idea behind the project, particularly in a country that is known for its many literary anthologies, arose from interest in providing a theoretical context to women’s literature in Venezuela, explain the editors.

The anthology "has several purposes… to fill a void in the dissemination of Venezuelan women’s literature is one. But it is also a compilation of a kind that didn’t exist before, because it covers the entire 20th century and all genres. It is intended to be a useful research reference," co-editor Torres told IPS.

Furthermore, with the essay on the situation of women during various decades of the 20th century in Venezuela, "we tried to insert the writers in their historic moment, in their traditions and in the rupture that they each represented," added Torres.

Although Torres and Pantin underscore that beginning in the 1980s "a fundamental change" in the situation of Venezuelan women took place, both recognise that "there still subsists a tradition of the predominance of men in literature, to whom critics continue to pay more attention."

"Literature is power. It is one thing to teach girls to recite, like before, as if it were something decorative, and another to receive the power of the word and that it is written. Because the word, in the end, is dangerous," said Pantin.

"El hilo de la voz", said sociologist and fellow Venezuela writer Joaquin Marta Sosa, is an "important work, not only because it fills a void, an absence in publication, but also because what the women authors write has to do with a certain method."

"There is a fundamental reason why so many anthologies are published: Venezuelan literature is top rate, and that makes it highly ‘anthologisable’. Furthermore, anthologies are a way to establish territories of identification; they set limits between the high-level production and the rest. They serve as a way to clear out secondary or artificial elements," Marta Sosa told IPS. In addition to his poetry, the sociologist put together the book "Poets and Poetics of Venezuela: 1876-2002", itself an anthology.

"It is necessary to underscore the power and the individuality of the female literary voice, which in Venezuela is evident. The women writers not only add quality to our literature, they add another gaze and another sensibility. Women’s literature in Venezuela is much more confessional and explicit then men’s. Male writers are more modest and chaste," he said.

It is a characteristic "very much pertaining to Venezuelan literature," he said, "both in its scope and its resonance. The difference between the female and male voices in modern literature from Spain, Portugal or the United States is not so marked."

Anthology co-editor Pantin is author of the poetry collections "Casa o lobo", "La cancion fria", "Los bajos sentimientos" and "La epica del padre", among others. The stand-out novels by Torres include "El exilio del tiempo", "Dona Ines contra el olvido" and "La favorita del senor".