Stories by Julio Garmendia

The Stories of Julio Garmendia, collected here, represent a break with respect to the predominant literary current of the time. They show the author’s detachment from the forms and themes of criollismo and modernism.
The work of Julio Garmendia can be considered as one of the first manifestations that announce a change in the literature of Venezuela. Garmendia anticipates the voices of avant-garde artists.
Until then, Venezuelan literature was anchored in social drama and indigenismo. It took some time for new literary precepts, which had fantasy and imagination as pillars, to begin to occupy a space in the country’s narrative.
This selection of Stories by Julio Garmendia shows his temperament as an atypical writer. An author reluctant to belong to any literary caste, who bequeathed us one of the most own and innovative styles of the time.

“It is generally assumed by the vulgar, and even learned and discreet people, that to go to hell one has only to be evil and commit a long series of nonsense. But this is nothing more than a candid simplicity of our vanity. To go to hell it is necessary to have very high merits, to possess many titles and to have done great things. However, I do not think this is a reason for fools and drones to rejoice, saying: “If those who constitute the admiration and pride of mankind do not go to hell, how can we, who were never the pride or admiration of anyone, deserve it? Praised, therefore, be God, who placed humility and insignificance in our hearts, thus opening to us in the gloom of life the path of eternal clarity.” It would be better if you thought, poor souls, and thus walk less mohinas, at the hour of your death, that if so great things must be done to deserve hell, how much greater must be those who can win us heaven! As for me, work cost me to cross the gate of hell, and I had to use a thousand oaths and tricks to persuade those who kept it that I did not aspire to remain long in their dominions, much less to settle in them.
So much zeal caused me surprise, because I had been thinking that the gates of hell were open to the whole world, and more to us inhabitants of the earth. The appearance of a man, I thought, will surely be an extraordinary event there, and it will not yet be so difficult to be taken for some demigod. And in such a way was this belief rooted in me, that on several occasions I struggled to revolt, not knowing the conduct that in the presence of demigods the devils observe.”

Fragment of the work