During her long walks through Zaragoza when she was little, if the grandfather of Irene Vallejo, she found a banana peel on the floor, she picked it up, threw it in the trash can and said: «See? Someone could have broken their leg falling with it. It won’t happen because we’ve picked it up, but you’ll never know because the good is not noticeable». He also checked that the manhole covers were well anchored, that the construction scaffolding was well secured and watered the trees from your street during the city’s torrid summers.
When he returns there, Vallejo notes with satisfaction that the trees he was watering are the tallest in the area and she is convinced that the care of his grandfather They are behind that foliage. A bit like ‘Infinity in a reed’. Because the author defends that everything she has written is, deep down, a projection of that lesson and, five years after the publication of her essay, it has reached more than a million people.
The anniversary celebration coincides with the recovery of ‘The inventor of travel’ (Siruela), a story for all ages based on the Greco-Roman classic by Luciano de Samósata ‘True Stories’. At the origin of both, Pedro, their son, who was born with a serious illness and spent the first months of his life in the ICU of the Children’s Hospital of Zaragoza.
Vallejo wrote both during that difficult period and, as a contrast, he sought to make them intrepid and travelersin space and time: «As I felt at that moment very chained to the hospital (for many years I did not leave it for more than half an hour), as compensation I needed that book to ride, move, be like a network of stories and characters whose lives I was trying to live vicariously. The same thing happens with ‘The Inventor of Travel’, which is a whole host of adventures, travel and humor written at a very dark moment in my life,” he explained during a meeting with the press.
Samósata’s version was conceived to give the welcome to the world to his son. “I thought: ‘What can I give him?’ Well, what I think I’m best at doing: writing a story,” recalled the author, who has also recently recovered ‘The legend of the gentle tides’ in the same Siruela collection. In addition to the inspiration, Pedro is part of the story, since the illustrator José Luis Cano includes at the end of the story an illustration that reflects his time in the incubator among the clouds. «Simulate the dreams contained in this book. It is full of characters, trips, adventures, inventions and a reflection on fictions dedicated to children about why we make up stories, what they mean. They are lies, yes, but special ones, intended to be played and, surprisingly, they help us explore certain truths,” he recalls.
Care activist
The care, of which she confesses to be a true activist, takes on a new dimension here. Neither her essay nor her delicate version of the classic would exist without the attention that both she and her son received from public health. First, he was able to take on the project with relative peace of mind that his son was in good hands. And also inspired his approach definitive: «My research at the university had been directed more towards the literary canon, the book market, how they began to spread, what we know about the first readers… But life gushes into books and, when they are In the hospital, I began to think, just like they were taking care of us, in those people who care and they make everything else possible from a secondary position and, generally, in the shadows. Then the book took a turn toward book saviors».
In ‘Infinity in a Reed’ there are Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, yes, but also a large number of stories featuring those characters. Those who “take care of books, hide them when they are chasedwhen the powerful censorthose who save them from the bonfires, those who copied them in the monasteries, those who have learned books like ‘Fahrenheit’ by heart and then rewrite them when better times arrive, who have invented… All that humanity in books “He came in because I was in that context.”
Now that she is living in a brighter time, she does not want to forget that spirit and is determined to stop the promotion of ‘Infinity in a Reed’ next year to shape a new bookwhich already has enough outline, about «the relationship between creativity, health and humanitys».
Through his writing, Vallejo turns these invisible heroes into protagonists, reminding us that the true greatness of a society not only lies in its glorious feats, but in those simple and selfless acts that, like stories, have the power to transcend and to inspire generations.
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