Monuments,
by Leonor Henríquez

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        Some must be climbed, like the pyramids of Teotihuacán or Chichén-Itzá.

Others are explored with historical awe, like the Roman Colosseum or the Acropolis of Athens, and also with romantic curiosity, like the Taj Mahal.

But these I’m referring to were erected before my eyes since I was a child and came with me when I emigrated to Canada.

From my childhood library, they looked out at me, with their blues, golds, and yellows. There are fifteen monuments of enduring architecture in total.

This is an old collection of Nobel Prize-winning authors, published by the Aguilar publishing house. They have been sleeping on top of my current library for years, and this week, for reasons unknown, they invited me to explore them.

I approached with humility, knowing my literary limitations, without high expectations. I only wanted to caress their parchment-like and yellowed pages and perhaps catch a glimpse of some shining moment of these great authors.

So I did, wandering, without time, through some of the greats I remembered, like Yeats, Faulkner, Mann, Juan Ramón Jiménez, the one who said, “Platero is small, hairy, and soft, so soft on the outside, you’d think it was all cotton…”

I confess that many were unknown to me, and I have yet to explore them, like the Russian Ivan Bunin (Nobel Prize 1933) or the Swedish Verner von Heidenstam (1916), among others; such is my vast ignorance.

But what I’m getting at is the fascination I felt, not only rediscovering these treasures from my childhood, but also strolling through their avenues and discovering an expression of the ineffable, an inner revelation, radiance beyond concepts.

True monuments to that moment of joy that illuminates the reader’s soul.

I bow before the words that reflect the values ​​of those who grant the Nobel Price “to the greatest benefit to humankind.”

For now, I’m going to dedicate to polish myself, even if it means reading the prologues of each one and running my hands over the silky pages, to see if I learn something.

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