By Lida Prypchan
Introductory Note:
What is a literary critique for you? Is it, perhaps, an objective opinion with established foundations? Or is it, instead, an opinion stained with subjectivity? For me it is the latter: a personal opinion and, therefore, subjective.
Content:
Guillermo Loreto Mata is a Venezuelan writer who one day asked himself: Has everything already been written? What could I do with all these ideas on a number of issues that I have been passionate about since I was young? He seriously proposed finding a way to express his concerns, but the issue was how to do it in an original way, like no one had done before. As expected, the solution was simpler than what he thought. It was two centimeters away from his sight, from his eyes: asking, answering oneself in the form of questions, and so, I suppose, he created his book. Professor Loreto must have asked many people, after he finished his book and published it, what they thought of it. However, only he has that answer within himself. Many might have denied the importance of this book and if he considers that to be good, that it serves a function, that is enough. I say this because I have been praised for my worst articles, while the best ones have been trampled on, and this is precisely why I say that all that matters is whether one is or is not satisfied with what one wrote at a specific time.
G. Loreto Mata makes of his book a real philosophical treatise: he deals with death, happiness, friendship, enmity, sorrow, love, hate…
Ultimately, we discover a lot with his questions, which is logical. Death is addressed a lot, the irony of death, religion, namely God, and sadness. Some of his questions denote a lot of sadness, but later he attempts to downplay them with a question that annuls the previous one. I think that is a way to throw us off: so that at first we say that we know him, and at the end we doubt this premise.
Now I want to ask something of you, Professor Loreto, before I am struck with sadness. Could you answer these questions? Because we not only need you to interrogate us with your book, but we also need you to give us answers. The questions are: What is the purpose of your book? Why so much sadness in some of your questions? Why then downplay them with another question? What is it that fundamentally motivates your life? What is love to you? What do you think of solitude? In your book, you ask many questions about suicide: Are you passionate about the subject, terrified or do you think that life is a progressive and forced suicide?
He is very concerned about children, which is seen when he asks: What do those children think of us? Tell me: What do you think of education in Venezuela? What do you think about “education beginning at home”?
And please answer me, finally: Does that melancholy felt by great men, men who are sensitive, have a cure?
