In a text entitled “Visión de Chile 1920-1970” published in 1980, a work in which various Chilean intellectuals summoned to give an expert look at the Chile of that period, fundamentally on historical, institutional, economic, legal, social, and cultural. From culture writes the intellectual and voracious reader Jorge Edwards. The intellectual points out a before and after for Chilean literature at the end of the 19th century, placing the civil war that occurred in Chile in 1891 as a milestone. Edwards cites as an example some works such as “Los transplantados” by Alberto Blest Gana, in where the daily practices of the Chilean oligarchy and its constant flirting with the ways and practices of French high society are shown. He also mentions the novel by Luis Orrego entitled “Through the storm” a work that, as a kind of military civic story, narrates the background of that bloody time in our country. Edwards highlights the literary Chile of those first decades of the 20th century, also prolific in historical monographs, in an effort to highlight the personalities that marked that time in the context of the turn of the century and with the celebration of the first centenary of the country. In this literary theme, the work referring to Arturo Alessandri Palma by Ricardo Donoso or the text by Carlos Vicuña Fuentes called “The Tyranny of Chile” stand out. In creation, the work “Vientos Contrarios” by Vicente Huidobro stands out, or “Golondrina de Invierno” by Víctor Domingo Silva among others. Although my specialty is far from being literature, it is a daily exercise to read, by mere drive, by need to know, to study or by the noble desire and academic longing to achieve what today is called “cultural capital”. Books are exciting, they have the ability to envelop and allow you to travel with your imagination to non-existent or unexplored worlds.
When it comes to books, the one who best knows their history in our country is Bernardo Subercaseaux, who, similar to the style of the French historian Roger Chartier, systematized a titanic work regarding the origin of the book in Chile, his work, which gathers precedents from the colony to the celebrated patriotic bicentennial of 2010, gives an account in little more than 300 pages of the publishing activity in this land, where the ideas but also the arrival of the printing press have given it such a significant character that the book has, despite the technological advances in devices with electronic ink, in this country it is still preferred to read on paper. Subercaseaux points out in his research that the book has existed since the colony, but it was not until 1842 with the founding of the University of Chile, when a structure was established for what would be the impression of those guiding ideas, with this we point out not only the book but also newspapers and magazines. At that time, Chile projected a series of cultural milestones, not only in literature with the figure of José Victorino Lastarria, but also in painting with the arrival of Johann Moritz Rugendas and Raymond Monvoisin, among other intellectuals. A woman who stands out is the British Mary Grahamm, who two decades earlier, in 1822, installed a printing press in Lord Cochrane’s tent with the aim of printing proclamations for the Chilean people. Another woman of significant relevance at that time is Carmen Arriagada from Chillana, who through a relationship through dozens of letters with the painter Rugendas, inaugurated the literary genre of the epistolary.
Advances in technology, the importation of paper, ink and printing machines by the Chilean state generate a greater demand for reading. As a sample image is the iconic painting painted by Cosme San Martin in 1874, titled “reading”, in which a family can be seen sharing this hobby that, for the time, was a small bourgeois luxury, since the book has a high cost, but there are also few who know how to read, although in that painting, San Martin illustrates a woman reading in front of what would supposedly be her parents and siblings, without a doubt here it is reflected that once upon a time reading, because it is an activity of Extremely important, it had to be done as a family. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, not everything was luxury, at that time a more popular reading activity began to spread, I mean the so-called “popular lira”, this circulated in Chile approximately between 1870 and 1930, the The objective was to disseminate hymns to the human and the divine, poetry and other news written in tenths. The popular lira was sold in the main centers of high attendance, such as markets, fairs, railway stations, among others. A characteristic that has currently attracted the attention of various researchers was the characteristic image made in xylography and stamped on a third of the sheet, this image had the objective of being able to communicate to an audience that did not know how to read, but that could at least get closer in part to what is written through these images, which is why today it draws the attention of researchers as it is a thread that allows us to approach the customs of Chile a hundred years ago from another path.
Printing techniques have varied greatly in these almost one hundred and eighty years since the systematization of the publication of books, newspapers and magazines. But a significant change occurred a little over 50 years ago with the inclusion of editorial design, a discipline that assigned the fundamental characteristic to the book, thus making it a unique experience not only from the semantic dimension, but also from the openness to consideration. of the reading public, a factor of which, until the first half of the 20th century, little had been considered. But in view of the necessary extension of the theme related to editorial design, we will leave it for a future presentation.
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2023-06-27 23:34:09
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