MY LITERARY VISITS (CONCERNS AND LEARNING: 1960-1968)

MY LITERARY VISITS (CONCERNS AND LEARNING: 1960-1968)

            Gabriel González Camoyano
            Antonio González Muñoz
            Germán Caos Roldán
            Pilar Paz Pasamar
           José Manuel García Gómez
            Ignacio Rivera Podestá
            José González Barba



    
     
1. DON GABRIEL GONZÁLEZ CAMOYANO

       In those days of the early sixties, on the Island of San Fernando there was a poet, already older, who was considered the singer of the Virgen del Carmen, the estuaries, the floodgates, the salinas, the enclosures. In that Island where the novena to the Patron and the military parades of July 18 were so resonant, Don Gabriel was synonymous with a more or less official poet.

       After being the winner of the Natural Flower of the Floral Games in 1948, Don Gabriel, as he was popularly known, was the poet par excellence of a city of fifty thousand inhabitants at the time, with his military attributes live as was the Navy , the Marine Corps and the Army Quarter in Camposoto. All the dependencies, like the whole Island, surrounded by water, between the pipes and the bay.

       Going back to Don Gabriel, as I already told you in the book Memoria reverdecida, published by Publicaciones del Sur in 2002, it was une surprise for his wife, Emilia Mengíbar, director of the Polytechnic, on Calle Real, opposite Calle Comedias, that first-class school letters that I attended from the late forties to nine hundred and fifty-four,¡. She was stupefied when in the early sixties, I repeat, one afternoon, I opened the door and told him I wanted to see Don Gabriel to throw a look at my first poetry.

        Lady Emilia could not believe that such a mischievous child would give a beginner a poet.
       

        Her husband treated me with less surprise and made me go to his writing workshop. For the first time I saw an authentic desk table that you can only see in the cinema and in the books; a light mahogany table with its drawers and above, on the back, as a backrest, about a quarter of a height, a replica for writing tools.

       To my back, a piece of furniture about one meter and thirty, approximately, a bookseller, to arrange a book at a certain moment.

       In those snatches of conversation he asked me if I had brothers. I told her that a sister older than me. He asked me again if I was emancipated. I made a strange face and confessed that I did not understand it. Then she told me if she was married ... Don Gabriel told me about Don Servando Camúñez, a doctor and a Cadiz poet living in San Fernando, who was also the director of the Lobo Library in the town hall, a position he later had, now deceased, Servando.

       After a few years, I realized that I was visiting a poet who lived anchored in nineteenth-century readings: Núñez de Arce and Zorrilla, and also Rubén Darío were his poetic references, when he should have had concomitants of style with poets who would later form the famous generation of 27, but the literary novelties would not reach San Fernando at that time of isolation of all or almost all the poets of the periphery.


       I have for me that he was a happy poet with his collaborations in several newspapers of his best era. Juan Luis, the husband of his niece Julia, told me that he had suitcases full of newspaper clippings and magazines in which he put his poems as links of his literary enthusiasm. His casinos on the island, where he read poems of island themes invited by the members, as well as the Centro Obrero, his Lobo library and his visits to the conventual church of El Carmen, were his concerns. His great pain was the death of his wife. He had no children in his marriage. His affections were directed towards his niece Julia, her husband and daughters.


       Let's go back to the day of the first visit. I told him that I knew about poetry because I had some feminine magazines from the Sissi collection at home, which began to be published in 1958. Inside, a column contained a poem, and that was all my literary food . I did not want to allude to a novel that was at home among the novels that my sister exchanged in a corner of the store, large, almost grocery store, and that was titled Roja y gualda, by a certain Ricardo León. I showed him my poems and he stopped on a lyre in which I used a word that caught his attention. It was a heptasílabo verse that said: "marávica dulcezura". He told me that that word did not exist because it did not appear in the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Language and that for that adjective we already had that "wonderful" dictionary. I did not answer by telling him that wonderful had one more syllable, and already the verse was octosyllabic. But he was right. He ended up advising me to continue writing, but, above all, reading classical poets, who are the ones who teach, according to your advice.
  
      I remember that he gave me a carefully edited and dedicated sheet ("To the young poet Juan Mena, with my breath") with a lira of his entitled: "Alborada a la Virgen del Carmen", awarded in the Floral Games of the Evening of 1948, It started, as I remember: "The morning / morning of the Virgin of Carmel has already dawned. / Who will image your image, / as she took as model / the smile of God for her face?".

        Thirty years later, one afternoon, strolling down Calle Real with the poet from Calle Ancha on the Juan José García Sánchez Island, he told me, in anger and in secret, that he had participated in those Floral Games and, as the jury saw that no poetry was up to the demands of the prize, since it could not be declared deserted, Don Gabriel was quickly commissioned to write a poem to be awarded, given the urgency of the event.

        Returning to the sixties with the context of the visit. After a while, I think that at the end of that same year, Lady Emilia died and I went to give her condolences, without poems in my hands.

       I continued, behind the windows of my mother's shop, watching him go back and forth from the convent church, but avoiding greeting him because of shyness or inopportunity.

        When Germán Caos published my first three sonnets in the "Isla" Bulletin, I dedicated them to him; that was in September of 1962, when the Bulletin fulfilled the first ten years of its foundation.

       In 1966, Germán Caos reissued three other poems in the Bulletin. This time it was heptasílabos verses and white endecasílabos, descriptive and softly loving.

       I stumbled upon Don Gabriel between his house and the church in San Francisco one afternoon and, to my surprise, he congratulated me on that recent publication, but he told me nothing of the three sonnets to the Puente de Zuazo that he dedicated to him in September 1962. Possibly he would forget I understood that I was older. He died the following year, when he was about to turn seventy-four, as a result of an inguinal operation, according to Juan Luis.

3. GERMÁN CAOS ROLDÁN

       I have already told how Antonio González Muñoz told me about Germán Caos R. and he recommended me to publish the three sonnets at Puente de Zuazo.

        I knew Germán, as they say, by sight. I lived in the other corner next to mine, in a single house, which was accessed by steps with half-height walls with tiles. I said that I knew him because every afternoon of working days, he got off a bus from La Constructora, along with other colleagues, on the sidewalk called Carpinteria del Muerto; opposite side of his house and mine. It reached the sidewalk of the Togores gate and crossed the road.

       Some Sundays he saw him at the twelve o'clock mass or at the conventual church of Carmen, with his wife, Manola, who also went with Elvira, his spouse, the novelist Luis Berenguer, who in that year of 1967 had published El world of Juan Lobón.

        About Luis Berenguer, I remember that in one of the Tertulias de Educación y Descanso, he, Germán and I went, at the request of his organizer Pepe Segura, jury of the prizes that were granted in each one of those gatherings, consisting of a gold medal, another silver and another bronze. I still have the photo in which I am reading the poem. Behind is the place and the date: "Club Náutico de Cádiz, 1967. Reading the poem" El pan ". This poem was still very rooted in social poetry, against which I was already struggling to move to issues closer to those that shortly after would bring the poets called Novels. In fact, I belonged by age to his, let's call him, promotion of 68 or 70.

        I also remember that Luis brought Germán and me to San Fernando in his car, after eleven o'clock at night. The three of us lived on Calle Real, minutes from each other.

        Like Pepe González Barba, Germán was an animator of the island's culture, and the delegation of that city council put their trust in them so that the literary and artistic concern in our city would never diminish, as Don Gabriel did with his readings. poetics So, in the lectures and lectures in the Lobo Library, in the Circle of Arts and Crafts, in the Artisan Circle, in the Workers' Center, in the Cultural Week of La Salle and in the House of Culture, Germán with those men who went out of their way to encourage the island soul, had a constant but discreet role.

       I was in his house on Calle Real twice and I remember we made some comments about readings. I was then reading a book of religious orientation whose title I do not remember anymore, but it was about differences between Catholicism and Protestantism ... Germán, who was a good psychologist, came to tell me in conclusion that this was not my thing; that mine was poetry, imagination, creation, without neglecting, of course, faith. This observation of Germán coincided with another that made me a Carmelite, Father Agustín, and whose almost categorical affirmation was very explicit: I had no religious vocation.

        I brought Germán poems to him so that he could edit them in the Isla Bulletin, which he made only every month. In that publication Germán took great pains in its writing and format, and its contents were the beats of the social heart of the Island of San Fernando, to which Germán loved, in spite of its Galician origin of close ancestors and whose Celtic factions I could deny. His father passed every day through the door of my mother's spite, as well as his brother Francisco, member of the Isleña Photographic Association, and with whom I had a certain friendship later on.

        Towards the beginning of the seventies Germán moved to the neighborhood of San Ignacio and I spent a summer afternoon in the new home in order to take poems to the Bulletin and exchange impressions about books with him. He collaborated for those times in the weekly magazine Mirador de San Fernando with articles in which he poured out his literary concerns and his social opinions interspersed always by his natural kindness. On that same date of foundation of the Weekly Collection Two friends he edited Four stories of men.

       In 1995, Publicaciones del Sur published an Anthology of his literary work.

       Born in 1928, Germán Caos died in 1997, as a result of a heart attack.

5. JOSÉ MANUEL GARCÍA GÓMEZ

        It was by reference of Pilar Paz Pasamar so I knew the existence of José Manuel García Gómez. A little after the visit I made to her, on Sundays in Diario de Cádiz appeared with her name a page dedicated to contemporary poetry, especially the generation of 27 and Andalusian poets of the second postwar period. Some comments and an anthological sample served as information and delight to the reader.

        Now, it was not only the allusion of the Jerez poet and its literary page that encouraged me to the visit of the Cadiz poet, but the mentions that were made in the Tertulia de Educación y Descanso -which were conducted by Pepe Segura- of the poets who already enjoyed a certain renown in the contours of the bay. I remember that Paco Malia Varo, a poet from Barbate, said of José Manuel that he represented "chemically pure poetry" for his "knowledge of the trade".

        Impressed by this background, in May of 1966, one Sunday afternoon I took the Carterilla for Cádiz and went to Cervantes Street, where Ignacio Rivera told me in a social gathering that was held in San Fernando, had his home the poet founder of the magazine Caleta. It was not necessary to knock on a door and ask where José Manuel García Gómez lived. I saw him come with a colleague of work or collaboration in the Diario de Cádiz.

        I introduced myself. He did not know me at all, because I had not published a single poem in the magazine Torre Tavira, which was the one that made known beginner poets of Cadiz.

        He invited me to go up to his house, I think a first floor of a house on Cervantes Street, old town of Cádiz, two steps from the artistically speaking wonderful square of San Antonio.

       He showed me his library and we started talking. There was an older couple that I thought were his parents, but he was already married and his wife, I remember, was called Catalina. I told him what was going on and I left in his hands a kind of book with the small pages that I patiently filled with poems after poems. He was leafing through it and stopped every now and then in some verses that would call him, I suppose, attention. He smiled at me and told me that he stayed with him to read it quietly. We agreed that I would return after six months. He lent me an anthology of contemporary Spanish poetry, which in no way resembled that provided by Pilar Paz Pasamar, who stayed in the Generation of '27, including poets before that movement.
I returned to the year and returned the anthology and he returned the manuscript book of my poems, giving me an encouraging comment.

       At the beginning of the year 1968, I sent him my first published book: Inherited loneliness. From then on we became friends and he asked me, I think on two occasions, a poem for the magazine that he founded together with some friends called Caleta. He was born in 1930 and died in 1994.

6. IGNACIO RIVERA PODESTÁ

       I met Ignacio Rivera Podestá at Lady Anuncia's casino, in San Fernando, in March or April of 1966, in a reading of the Education and Rest Tertulias, directed by Pepe Segura. There I also met another Cádiz poet called Leonardo Rosa Hita. In that gathering we talked about hot springs all related to the poetry and literary life of Cádiz. I told him that I already knew Pilar Paz Pasamar. He told me about one José Manuel García Gómez, poet and soul of the literary concerns of his hometown.

        He invited me to a visit to his house on General Luque Street, adjacent to the very popular San Francisco street.

        One morning I called him on the phone and we stayed for the following Saturday at his house. I went up to a first and there, on the side of the dining room, a room served as a library, which, in addition to books of poetry, offered to the curious look I do not know how many magazines he received often. From those magazines he gave me a call Backlight. It contained literary bases published by the Catalan publisher Carabela. To that contest of books I sent inherited loneliness, poems that were finalist and that I was proposed for publication.

        Ignacio Rivera directed a magazine called Torre Tavira, in addition to some sheets with the name of Torre Tavira Supplements, the latter were self-publishing, but the magazine collaborated free of charge and, in addition, he sent it to the collaborators. He invited me to swell the payroll of those who left their poem in the magazine as a sign of adherence to that effort that the public does not recognize, or belatedly recognizes. In the Supplements I edited An elegy from the south in 1971. I only had to cross Ignatius Street to go to the printing press where I printed the magazine Torre Tavira and the Supplements.

But let's go back to the previous years, those in which I was treating Ignacio, a man in love with poetry and with a peaceful and friendly disposition.

        In one of our meetings in the Tertulias de Educación y Descanso, where I also met Juan Antonio Sánchez Anes, Manuel Arjonilla, Diego Navarro Mota, Concha Carriedo, Paco Malia Varo, Manuel Fernández Vaca, Vicenta Guerra Carter, Concha Sievert, painter ..., among others, I asked him to lend me a book that I saw on a shelf of his attractive library, and it was Poesías de José Ángel Buesa, of the famous Laurel Collection. I had read poems loose of the Cuban poet in the youth magazine Sissi, where I really gave myself, fortunately, in the face of poetry, in a happy encounter that would last all my life, like the one who says the woman of his dreams with cursillo. Ignacio, jealous of his books, lent it to me and I promised to return it to him very soon, as it was.

       I saw him several times on my way to Cádiz and we continued treating each other with the usual cordiality. He was born in 1929 and died in 2010.

7. JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ BARBA

          I knew Pepe González Barba but I never talked to him. I had seen it in several places on the island, always where in places where culture was present. Someone told me that when a person of certain renown or what is said a character visited our city, the delegation of culture of the municipality charged him to take the visitor to know the most important monuments or highlights of our town.

       So, after that relationship with the most cultivated soul of our citizen environments, his identity was already pleasing to me and it was my desire to cross some impressions with him.

       The occasion I put on a tray the book that I had just published in Barcelona: Inherited loneliness. I think I remember that this meeting could have been in the first months of 1968, when Pepe came to me in the middle of Real Street and congratulated me on the edited book. I told him that I had been a finalist and that gave him more admiration. I promised to give him a copy and he offered me his house to take him away and thus talk more calmly.

        I climbed the steps that led to his door one afternoon. On one side of a room divided into two parts was Pepe, before a piece of furniture that was a bookseller and desk, let's say his refuge, the sacred space where he wrote the articles for Mirador de San Fernando, a weekly newspaper in which he collaborated. And also to receive the friends and to unite a chat with them. From that moment on, I was one of those friends. He introduced me to his parents, already very long-lived and to his wife, Matilde. They were also at home their god children: Angelita and Pepito. In that family heat Pepe joked with that of Don José, his father, Pepe and Pepito.

        I gave him my dedicated book and he expressed emotion and gratitude for it.

        He was showing me books from his shelves as a curiosity and it was one of those books that caught my attention the most. These were old-fashioned Verses, by a poet called Servando Camúñez, a doctor and poet who lived between the two centuries. I later wrote an article to this book as a review. I also read from the books that I borrowed from one of Greek poets that I remember with nostalgia of those days.

      We continue treating you from those days with great cordiality.

      Three years later, together with two of his cousins, we formed the couple Amparo Gordillo and Manuel Baturone and Rafael Duarte, whom I met in that same year of 1971, a gathering that we celebrated in the basement of the Holy Cave, called the Church. Higher. That did not last long but it was enough for friendship to strengthen its ties.

        A year later Pepe and I would be co-workers in a library that was built on Gravina Street. Pepe was the manager of the House of Culture and María Dolores García Pastor and I were in charge of setting up the library.

        I do not doubt that behind this work surprise was the benevolent hand of Pepe and the approval of the then mayor Mr. Rafael Barceló Gasset. The gratifying work that I undertook was a lever of encouragement to begin the studies of Hispanic Philology that I did and to those that I gave in the time that I was in those, for me, dear and unforgettable cultural dependencies. Pepe González Barba was in charge of the Casa de la Cultura manager for several years, helmsman who always led her to a good port.

 

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