Most of the great stories, epic and transformative, transcendental and revolutionary but always very human, start from necessity in the face of imposition, rebellion or exile in defense of ideals. Almost everything that is worth telling happens when the human being takes that leap over the abyss to clearly see that everything feels more relevant with the support of the possible conquest. You cannot live more than one life, as I already pointed out kundera in his way of describing our existence as a sketch for an empty work. But contradicting the Czech genius a bit, there remains the testimony of the great adventurers in the face of imposition, and even tragedy, as the way of living with such intensity that it seems that one lives at least twice.
And to this he has put nothing more and nothing less than Isabel Allende, recovering his compatriot Neruda, who, upon seeing the bay of Valparaíso with the thousands of Spanish exiles near their new destinations to be built, transcribed the vision as: "that long petal of sea and snow."
It is what has the epic of survival. The arrival in Valparaiso in 1939, from Spain practically defeated by Franco, supposed a finished mission for the poet. More than 2.000 Spaniards concluded a journey towards hope there, freed from the fear of authoritarianism that was beginning to emerge between the coasts of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Those chosen for Allende's narration are Victor Dalamu and Roser Bruguera. With whom we start the departure from the small French town of Pauillac aboard the mythical boat Winnipeg.
But not everything is easy, the necessary escape from your origins produces uprooting wherever you go. And despite the good reception in Chile (with their reluctance in certain sectors, of course), Victor and Roser feel that unease of life lost thousands of kilometers away. The lives of the protagonists and the future of a Chile that was also experiencing its tensions in a world condemned to World War II, a conflict in which Chile would end up getting wet, impelled by pressure from the United States. The Chile that already suffered its own in the First World War, still devastated by the earthquake of that same 1939.
The role of the exiles was short-lived and they soon had to find a new life for themselves. The hindrance of the loss of origins always weighs down. But once the new site is found, the same begins to be seen with a strangeness that can break to either side.
You can now buy the novel Largo Pétalo de mar, the new book by Isabel Allende here: