Friends, family and artists remember the validity of Dolores Campos-Herrero, protagonist of the Canary Islands Day of Letters
Rivers of ink flowed like blood and the memory of Dolores Campos-Herrero to pay tribute this Monday to the protagonist of the Canary Islands Day of Letters 2022, and to literature imbued with everyday life and the liveliness of its spirit. The thread of the day threaded numerous activities dedicated to the dissemination of her immense legacy, which culminated with the great institutional act that she brought together her relatives, with the interventions of her sisters Marisol and Chus Campos-Herrero; friends and public authorities, such as Ángel Víctor Torres, President of the Government of the Canary Islands, and Juan Márquez, Deputy Minister of Culture, at the Guiniguada Theater.
The name of Dolores Campos-Herrero is incorporated into a list of literary recognitions founded in 2006 and that, with the exception of Mercedes Pinto and Rosa Mª Alonso in 2009 and 2010, respectively, marked an unequal canon in the island lyric panorama until, in the last four years, it has finally begun to balance out with the adherence of leading writers such as Pino Ojeda, Josefina de la Torre and Natalia Sosa Ayala.
«It has rained again and the window has been filled with sighs», declaimed the actress Lili Quintana in her first reading of the texts by Campos-Herrero, extracted from the work Other Sundays (2003). Under the title All the Lolas I met in Dolores, her words in the air were intertwined with the chords of the musician and composer Yul Ballesteros, and were accompanied by the dance steps of the artist Cristina Pérez.
And there were more and more words: from the interventions of her sisters to those of the writers and, however, friends of the honoree projected on the big screen, like her colleagues Alexis Ravelo or Santiago Gil. The authorities also dedicated a few words to the "woman made of ink", as the poet Ángel Sánchez baptized her, who recalled that the journalist and writer was defined by her constant evolution between the artistic circles of the Islands and the routine of a society in constant transformation. This duality also marked the agenda of the previous day with a series of events in which the value of the work of the author from Tenerife was transmitted to the public and whose recording is available on the YouTube and Facebook channels of Join the Culture of the Vice Ministry of Culture.
The beautiful and banal
Within the styles that Dolores Campos-Herrero played in her writing, there were common features such as irony, everyday life or the rereading of meanings. These reflections were shared by the philologist Blanca Hernández, the writer Yurena González and the poet and journalist Aida González Rossi during the morning of this Monday at the Municipal Library that bears her name in front of the students of the IES Pérez Galdós, one more step for the real implementation of the authors in educational curricula.
Some colorful armchairs to talk about literature. This is a picture in keeping with the personality of the artist, who, in the words of the speakers, "was a meticulous observer of reality." The journalistic vein was glimpsed in how she «she made use of trivialization and gave her a place with which she managed to create her own universe», highlighted Aida González. To do this, she armed herself with fine humor in order to get rid of the solemnity of the canon and offer a speech that moved away from the infantilization that surrounds that treatment. "She deepens the critical issue and provides a literary framework that helps sweeten the form of this crude reality that we live and denounces her texts," they agreed.
This feminist perspective went further. In the search for identity, in the renunciation of romantic love and heartbreak, the rediscovery of what beauty and solitude imply, or the portrait of details as a universal gesture. “Dolores is thinking from an identity”, so diverse that she decided to treat each of her characters with respect, whatever her origins. "Dolores' literature is a tree in which a two-line text can be a novel," Hernández stressed. For this reason, the roots extend and connect with other firms, among them, those of Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Ella Dalloway or in recent Laura Fernández and Tina Suárez.
Without the possibility of reaching the future, the author carefully contemplated the evolution and emergence of the digital before it reached its peak. Skilled at reading the seams of change, she blogged about it and analyzed the relationship between individuals and digital screens. "Fiction served him to analyze our relationship with technology and, above all, its abuse, he saw the threats of danger that could lead to loneliness, individualism or dehumanization," commented Yurena González.
Or, on the contrary, the union of different people who want to change the reality they live in, as Campos-Herrero did, "with it, we know that the material of writing is in us, anyone can create their inner literary universe."
His words in three voices
The poems and briefs of Dolores Campos-Herrero took on a life of their own in the voices of the poets Elsa López, Pablo Sergio Alemán and Aida González Rossi in a recital in tribute to the protagonist of the Canary Islands Day of Letters 2022, this Monday afternoon, in the Columbus House. «When you read aloud and in communion, you don't read the same as when you read alone at home, because everything changes. And that is one of the fascinations of literature", said an emotional Elsa López, one of the best reciters in the Canary Islands, who interspersed different memories and nods to the unique features of Campos-Herrero, such as the passion of both for the stories of witchcraft. "She was a bit of a witch," she smiled. | N.N.
