On his tour of the villages, the Island Athenaeum held a literary encounter on April 23 and 24, 2022. The writers spent the night at the San de la Cruz Spirituality Center, La Torre, in La Vega, together with their leader and founder of the Interiorist Movement in 1990, Mr. Bruno Rosario Candelier. In the activity, some of the works of three Dominican writers were studied: the poet Juan Carlos Mieses, born in El Seybo, the narrator César Arturo Abréu Fernández, from La Vega, and Bruno Rosario Candelier, born in Moca.
Remembrance of the Siboney Awards
The afternoon was beginning and Bruno Rosario Candelier and Juan Carlos Mieses evoked those times when both coincided with their works awarded by the Siboney Awards, a time when winning was not the main objective, but rather the sincere presentation of a literary work built with love, fervor , discipline and awareness of what the language in which it is erected means and the effect that it will have on those who come into contact with it. Thus began to flow the air that exalted the spirit of the interior designers in that literary room.
The Island Imagination (Siboney Essay Award, 1983), by Bruno Rosario Candelier, was presented by Andrés Ulloa, who stated that «The insular imagination (Myths, legends, utopias and ghosts in the Dominican narrative) It is a book of critical thought made up of four essays, a substantial analysis of four prominent narrators in the country (Juan Bosch, Sócrates Nolasco, Virgilio Días Grullón and Manuel Mora Serrano)». Andrés Ulloa stated that «The common thread is imagination as an inventive and creative value of which Don Bruno makes an initial analysis that goes from the etymological to the comparative and revealing, and affirms that literary creations have three inspirational origins: real reality, based on the real-objective; the marvelous, in the objective-imaginary; and the one that results from the mixture of the two previous ones, the real-wonderful one».
The work of Juan Carlos Mieses was approached Urbi et orbi (Siboney Prize for Poetry, 1983), and was in charge of Miguelina Medina: «This work by Juan Carlos Mieses has a deeply spiritual connotation invoked in the title, Urbi et orbi, which is the essential meaning of the work”, he said. He explained that “Urbi et orbi” is a “Latin phrase, or locution that literally means ‘to the city [de Roma] and to the world’ and is used in reference to the papal blessing that extends to the whole world”, according to what is read in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts. He said that “the author of this work is imparting a blessing to his city and to the world, and it is also a cry: ‘to the city [de Santo Domingo] and the world.” Medina highlighted “the historical-existential context of the author that gave rise to this work, and that is that “for eighteen years he had abandoned writing, and after this period” of time he wrote, with all that accumulated energy, this work awarded by Siboney.
The presentation of Flagellum Dei (Siboney Prize for Poetry, 1985), also by Juan Carlos Mieses, was made by Bruno Rosario Candelier, who testified that, after being awarded in 1983 by the Siboney Awards, both writers participated again in the contest in 1985 and coincidentally both won these awards in the same denominations, poetry and essay: Juan Carlos Mieses with the work Scourge of God and Rosario Candelier with mythopoetic creation. Rosario Candelier affirmed that Juan Carlos Mieses in his work Flagellum Dei it has “assumed the data of historical reality, of the inner reality of consciousness (or of the transcendent reality of the Cosmos) and has converted them into the substance of aesthetic and symbolic reality.”
He stressed that “what a people suffers at one point in its history, the other peoples of the world end up suffering at another stage of their historical course, because as the author of this work anticipates in his epigraph, “the nostalgia and dreams that used to belong to others, now, in a certain indecipherable way, are also ours” (Flagellum Dei, p. 7)”.
Presentation of the novel The Eagle and the Nightingalesby César Arturo Abréu, by Bruno Rosario Candelier
The morning of Sunday, April 24, began with the study of the work of César Arturo Abréu, The Eagle and the Nightingales, from the hands of Bruno Rosario Candeleir, who described this writer as “an edifying beacon of the vegan intelligentsia, a symbol of the culture, history and literature of the Vega Real and a graceful worshiper of the word, as well as a speaker of emotional inspiration and narrator of historical, local and national themes»: «He is one of the intellectuals who has reactivated the artistic, religious and literary flourishing of his hometown», he highlighted. He recorded that César Arturo Abréu “came into the world in the Concepción de la Vega Real, on January 18, 1940 and, from a very young age, has had a prolific political, professional, educational, social and cultural performance.”
“Using the novel to channel his intellectual, moral, aesthetic and spiritual appeals is one of the creative attributes of this admired man of letters, engineering, Dominicanness and spirituality,” explained Rosario Candelier. He said that “the cultivation of history entails an investigation of the events of the past that forged the idiosyncrasy of a people in its social, anthropological and cultural physiognomy, as César Arturo Abréu has addressed in several of his works, articles, essays and booklets. ». He added that “the cultivation of the novel entails the exercise of narration in the light of stories that make up the platform of an operational framework of events, environments and characters that give life to a wealth of experiences, conflicts and avatars within a community”. She stressed that «César Arturo Abréu, with that conviction, backed by a solid intellectual background and his cultural baggage, uses his flowery verb to channel his creative vocation».
«In this novel we find the coherent and timely application of the narrative techniques of novels, such as linear and retrospective narration, the confluence of real and evoked shots, introspection in the minds of the characters, among other procedures opportunely linked to dialogues , narratives and descriptions, as well as the application of expressive resources, such as metaphors, epithets, comparisons, prosopopeias and personifications, to illustrate stories and adventures in the narrative framework through the aesthetic and symbolic formalization of what attracted the narrator’s attention and unleashed his literary talent.
He stressed that the “beautiful description attracts the reader’s attention, since the author is also motivated by the use of splendid words alluding to the sensory data of the environment: “It was raining heavily and a mist surrounded the tops of the pines that, in a whimsical way, sprouted from the clay soil of the hill known as El Puerto, one of the many that stood in the way from Jarabacoa to La Vega. Crossing its highest part was inevitable to reach Bayacanes, populated by a few shacks, and from there head towards La Vega.” (César Arturo Abreu, The Eagle and the Nightingales, Santo Domingo, Sanctuary, p. 13)”. He explained that “in the first chapter, the narrator locates the place, the protagonist and the time of the story, the beginning of the 20th century in Jarabacoa, with the characters who carry out the first events.”
words of thanks
Cesar Arturo Abreu He stated: «I appreciate the attention you have expressed to me, and I hope that this effort we make, continuously, is not in vain, and that it has no other interest than the commitment we have with our ancestors. As you have heard, we vegans have cultural roots that come from far away, and we have to try to revitalize them and be bearers of that deference that the Holy Spirit has shown us Dominicans. Because he has always been with us. And I say this, we are talking here about an Interior Design project, which I know that you have a high connection, as Bruno says, with the Almighty, and I believe that I can maintain that permanent connection, so that those ideas that come to me. Let me make a confession: if I don’t write, I don’t sleep; you have an urgency that makes you explode».
Of Juan Carlos Mieses: «I value the diligent and enthusiastic leadership of Don Bruno Rosario Candelier in this organization of writers. A book, after it is published, belongs to many people, not only to the author, since it is the reader who ends up writing his particular book. I just want to share with you some of the aspects that I like the most about poetry, such as, for example, its intimate relationship with things and with everyday realities, with those everyday things, of which Rubén Darío spoke, and that no, because they are simple, they cease to be amazing: a leaf, a grain of sand, a tear.
«Whether we like it or not, poetry is always about life, in its inconstant and surprising aspects, its passing and its end. This life, like art and poetry, like humanity itself and everything that exists, is a continuous rebirth. The Iliad, for example, never stops reinventing itself through history because while it narrates an ancient war, in a time when the gods shared with mortals and show us the codes, values and passions, it also narrates , in a way, the outbursts and conflicts of the women and men of the future».
Literary meeting of the Insular Athenaeum in La Torre, La Vega