Fernando González (writer)

González lived during the beginning of the 20th century (1895–1964), a time of change, political turbulence and revolutions in industry. He was born seven years after the new political agreement of a more conservative constitution (1888) that gave great influence to the

Early life

Fernando González Ochoa was born in

In 1915 he became a member of

In 1921 he became Judge of the Superior Tribunal of

González went to Venezuela in 1931 to meet dictator Juan Vicente Gómez. He considered Gómez a sprout of Libertador Simón Bolívar and they became friends. The dictator was the godfather of one of the sons of González and he dedicated a work to him, "Mi compadre".

Diplomatic activity: Consul in Italy

González was nominated by President Enrique Olaya Herrera as consul of Colombia in Genoa, Italy in 1932. He went with his family to Europe and that same year Le Livre libre, a publishing house of Paris, published his book Don Mirocletes. About that work Manuel Ugarte wrote a letter to him from Nice saying:

"When your book arrived I had at the moment the visit of Gabriela Mistral and we read with delight some chapters. There is so much force of evocation, so profound irony in the irreverent commentary and so much grace in elegant style!"^[2]

From Spain he received two letters of José Vasconcelos on December 14 and 30, 1932. Vasconcelos wrote:

"You are thinking with freedom and that is what we need in America, which always they think in response to an attitude (...) The conferences are a delight, a bitter delight, with depth (...) Your page on the stamp of Ponce de León is wonderful, I was excited, I almost cried."^[2]

He received other letter of the Colombian writer José María Vargas Vila, who was exiled in Madrid. Vargas wrote to him:

"You have the vice to think and the virtue to say beautifully what you think; an Artist-Thinker, that is a rare product in our latitudes; you completely fulfil that model; I can not hide that what I love most in your books is the air of controversy that you can breathe in them; that little breath of combat is invigorating and toning; to live is to fight."^[3]

In 1933 the Italian police found his notes with criticisms of the regime of Benito Mussolini and Fascism. He was transferred to Marsella due to a petition of the Italian government. Those notes were the origin of his work El hermafrodita dormido (The Sleeping Hermaphrodite), a book with his experiences in the classic art museums of Italy. The book was published in Spain in 1934.

Bucarest Villa

In 1934 González returned to Colombia establishing in his town, Envigado, a small farm on which to live that he named "Bucarest Villa". There he started to publish the Antioquia Magazine until 1945.^[4] In 1935 the Arturo Zapata Printing Press of Manizales published his "El Remordimiento" (The Remorse), an essay in theology written in Marsella (France) and Letters to Estanislao Zuleta.

The former president of Ecuador, José María Velasco Ibarra, who was exiled in Colombia, visited González in Bucarest Villa in 1936 and they became very good friends. To Velasco he dedicated some chapters of Los negroides (The Negroid People) where González called Velasco the first "Politician-Thinker" of the Americas. By his part, Velasco called González in his work Conciencia o barbarie: exégesis de la Conciencia política americana (Conscience or Barbarism: Exegesis of the American Political Conscience), published first by the Atlantida Printing Press of Medellín, "the most original and deep of the South American sociologists".^[5]

In that year died in Madrid the Venezuelan novelist Teresa de la Parra with whom González had been friends since 1930 when she visited him in Envigado. It was also the year of Los negroides publication, an essay on New Granada (Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador), saying that it is the only American region where the merger of races will create an original culture for a unified man. Such merger is a principle of promises and appalling realities at the same time.^[5]

Otraparte Villa

He started in 1940 the construction of his house in Envigado that at that time he called La huerta del alemán (The Garden of the German), but the World War II would make him to change the name for Otraparte (Other Place). The villa was designed with architect Carlos Obregón, engineer Félix Mejía Arango and painter Pedro Nel Gómez. That year he published "Santander", an essay about General Francisco de Paula Santander. The writer Tomás Carrasquilla, his friend and the Colombian novelist he most admired, died.

In Otraparte he received the American playwright Thornton Wilder to whom he dedicated his work El maestro de escuela (The School Teacher). Wilder was in Colombia as a cultural ambassador of his country in South America and wrote about the Garden of the German: "It is more delightful than all Chapinero".

On April 9, 1948, Colombia shuddered with the killing of presidential candidate

"Today I met Jorge Eliecer Gaitán. He is a lively little mestizo, reader. He speaks and you put attention. How is he a man of action? I have known in my life three Don Juans: they never spoke about love. I have known two actives: they were silent. (...) How come to be that he made a political Party? In order to be listened. He is the will to talk made man; the instinct to talk made his face and all his body. He is the body of the man who talks."^[6]

In June 1949, after

"The Colombian people is above its class director; this one does not exist, but it is the cross-eyed abortion of what they call here university. Was it what inspired Gaitán to elaborate that sentence that he used to delight the multitudes: The people is superior to its leaders?"^[6]

In 1953 he was nominated consul of Colombia in Europe, but he stayed most of the time in

In September 1957 González returned to Colombia, to his Otraparte villa, remaining until his death in 1964. In 2006 President Álvaro Uribe approved Law 1068 to exalt the memory, life and work of the philosopher Fernando González and declared Otraparte Home Museum, in Envigado, as a national patrimony.

Thought

Fernando González is called the "Philosopher of Authenticity"^[8] and his thought is related to the experience of his life as a man. He used to say that we must live in the simple but bringing awareness of the essentials.^[9]

He thought about the Colombian man and, thus, the Latin American, their personality, fights and expressions. He called himself the "Philosopher of the Personality of South America". He wrote that the Latin American man might develop the individuality to arise from their anonymity. He criticized what he called the Latin American vanity that was without substance and invited to express the personality with energy, giving to life the highest value.^[9]

González thought his time as the decadence of the principle of freedom and individualism for an action of flocks following calves to worship (Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini). He longed for the man of the ancient Egypt, Greece and the Renaissance.

Works

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Henao Hidrón, Javier. Fernando González, the Philopher of Authenticity. Medellín: University of Antioquia and Biblioteca Pública Piloto, 1988. Spanish.
• Uribe de Estrada, María Helena. Fernando González: The Traveler who was seeing more and more. Medellín: Molino de Papel Publish House, 1999. Spanish.
• Revista Aleph, No. 166. Número monográfico dedicado a Fernando González, con participación de varios escritores.
• Arango, Gonzalo. "Fernando González". Manizales: Revista Aleph, No. 166, julio/sept. 2013, p.p. 34-36.
• Jaramillo, María Dolores. "Eduardo Escobar habla sobre Fernando González". Manizales: Revista Aleph, No 166, julio/sept. 2013, p.p. 15-33
• Restrepo, Alberto. Guide to read Fernando González. Medellín: Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and Universidad San Buenaventura, 1997.

External links

• Otraparte Cultural Corporation.