ADSactly Literature - A gift for Francisco Massiani
A gift for Francisco Massiani
Hello, kind readers
As the week and month of April began, the news of the death of one of the great Venezuelan writers, Francisco Massiani, became known. Massiani is the author of one of the most widely read novels in Venezuela and which has the achievement of being part of the few Venezuelan novels that have had thousands of reprints and that are read in schools and high schools: Piedra de Mar. While Piedra de Mar is his best-known novel, his work as a storyteller also deserves recognition and admiration.
In each of his works, the tone, the characters, the spoken language stand out. There is in each of the stories a narrative stripped, experiential and direct, with themes such as adolescence, frustrated love, suffering. One of his most popular stories is A Gift for Julia, where, as in Piedra de Mar, the youthful theme persists, the love affair, the confrontation of adolescent characters with their sorrows, mistrust, uncertainties, but also with their irreverence.
A gift for Julia tells the story of Juan, an introverted boy who is in love with Julia and meets her in a cafeteria to give her a gift about her birthday. As Julia is a girl who has everything, Juan wants to give her something special, that she doesn't have and that can unite them more, so it occurs to him to give her a chick. In the first part of the story, we see that Juan arrives at Julia's house and presents us not only the panorama in which he is involved, but also the other two outstanding characters of the story: Julia, an interested girl, and Carlos, a kind of antagonist that Juan seeks to overcome and of which he speaks very badly. In the second part of the story and perhaps the most important, we see a sweaty and nervous Juan, in a cafeteria, with a chicken in his jacket pocket, unable to give it to Julia who flirts, is superficial and doesn't understand why he has been quoted in that place. The end of the story is perhaps a tragic or comic poem, depending on who reads it.
I remember the first time I read this story in the University, in the Introduction to Literature class. The teacher, to whom I owe my way of approaching poetry, made us see the proposal in the language used by the narrator, the candidness of the characters and the greatness of the author, but very especially invited us to see ourselves reflected as young people. That class went between laughter and participation, opinions and anecdotes, curiosities and answers, many of the things that literature seeks to awaken.
I also remember that class left me excited, electric, tired as if I had danced a long time and to good music. I did not doubt it, after leaving the room I went to the University bookstore and bought Piedra de Mar. With that class, Massiani, that teacher and my career came to life before my eyes. With that experience, I began to perceive the immense influence that some people and some books have on u As in every good relationship of reader and book, reader and author, my relationship became admiration. Now as a teacher, I seek to awaken in my students, every time we read Massiani, the passion I felt and still feel when I read one of his works. I try to make them understand that literature is not taught, that it rather teaches us life and that in some of its lines we can find ourselves.
Regarding the death of this great Venezuelan writer, many writers of the new generation, such as Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, Héctor Torres, Roberto Echeto and Enza García, have confessed the influence of Massian literature in their initiation as readers and writers. With this post I wanted to do the same thing: to record the first time, when I was a teenager, that I was moved by literature.
I have always believed that there is no better, more sincere and eternal gift than admiration. May these lines serve as a tribute and respect for the great Francisco Massiani. Honor to whom honor he deserves.
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Written by: @nancybriti
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Thank you!
Excelent tribute to Messiani. I read his work a bit late, I would say, but still I was able to appreciate the simplicity of his narrative approach.
I read it because one of my daughters was assigned the novel as a school work and she wanted me to help her analize it.
I have fond memories of the novel because it allowed me to have great times with my daughters discussing some issues in and outside the novel. Issues that mattered to her, but about which I was oblivious.
Had I read it as a teenager, the work might have had a greater impact.
We tend to grow cynical about teenage affairs and concerns as we grow old.
The death of the poet Francisco Massiani is a pity. There are writers so dear, so close, that one would like to have them always there, to know that they accompany us, even if we don't see them often.
With "Pancho" Massiani, as he was nicknamed, it goes like with Rulfo: with his novel Piedra de mar and his short story "Un regalo para Julia" he went on to the history of literature, not by mere convention, but because the readers confirmed it that way.
Massiani managed to make literature speak directly to that difficult audience, the teenager or the young person, with a simple but very sensitive language, with the reflective force of life. That is why he is loved and will be read for a long time.
Cheers for the poet! Thank you for so beautiful and sense post, @nancybriti.
A great loss, the death of Francis Massiani. The day I heard the news I also wanted as a tribute to re-read Piedra de Mar and I perceived it differently than I had done years ago, it is good to retake readings and taste them from another perspective.
A work worth reading at any stage of life.
@nancybrity, undoubtedly a great tribute to another of the great Venezuelan writers through this cultural window that is @adsactly.
A beautiful and heartfelt tribute to our admired Francis Massiani, @nancybriti. The most beautiful memories of when I first read Piedra de mar and then the most beautiful experiences with my young students reading it in class. A great loss the physical disappearance of Massiani, but indisputably, his work and his memory will remain in time. Thank you @adsactly for spreading.
I have never read Massiani's work. but of course there is always high respect for writers who can be global. An honor for his services in the development of literature and influencing subsequent authorship. It even becomes a reading for students at school. This shows that his writing career benefits the community.
Reading these excerpts from the story on a gift for Julia, I feel as an effort to open the tongue to speak. An attempt to break the introverted nature of oneself. Moreover, faced with the desire to express feelings, certainly not an easy thing. isn't this very realistic and many we encounter in everyday life? And you say it very interestingly.
thank you @nancybriti
Thank you @adsactly
Thank you Steemit
Warm regard from Indonesia
Gracias por tomar un tiempo, para dedicarle al escritor Francisco Massiani, soy venezolano y vivo estado Miranda Los Teques.