¹ Enrique de la Casa, Juicios críticos sobre el maestro de la novela colombiana (Mexico, 1944), p. 8; Enrique de la Casa and Madge Howe, Tipos colombianos [adaptation of Tomás Carrasquilla's Latin American novel Frutos de mi tierra] (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah, 1948), Introducción.

² Arturo Torres-Ríoseco, The Epic of Latin American Literature, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946), p. 172.

³ Excerpt from Libro VII de bautismos, fol. 109, preserved in the parish church.

⁴ Baldomero Sanin Cano, Letras colombianas (Mexico, 1944), p. 202; and Torres-Ríoseco, p. 172.

⁵ The card-index of the Hospital de San Vicente in Medellín records the following details in regard to Tomás Carrasquilla: “Fecha de operación: Diciembre 14/1940 … Murió el cuarto día …” which coincides with a note on Carrasquilla's Cuadro de temperatura y pulso to the effect that “la última observación se registra el 18 en la tarde.”

⁶ Excerpt from Libro 50 de defunciones, Parroquia de N.Sra. de la Candelaria in Medellín.

⁷ Andanzas y visiones españolas (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1922), pp. 126-127.

⁸ E. de la Casa in La novela antioqueña (Mexico, 1942) says: “No tenemos más datos sobre la vida de Tomás Carrasquilla que los de una autobiografía muy somera” (p. 35).

⁹ First published in El Gráfico, Bogotá (I have been unable to establish the date).

¹⁰ The incident occurred in La Bastilla, Medellín, and was told to me by an eye witness, Luis R. Hurtado, owner of the Librería y Almacén de Música, Medellín.

¹¹ “De diez y siete reportajes que me han publicado solamente dos son exactos. Los demás son mentirosos” (excerpt from an interview with Orlando Perdomo, published in El Diario de Medellín, 29 April 1936).

¹² Letter to Max Grillo from Santo Domingo, 21 April 1898.

¹³ El Espectador de Medellín published the Autobiografía on 12 June 1915 with the following words of introduction: “Instado por el Semanario Ilustrado El Gráfico de Bogotá para dar sus impresiones personales a un reporter, el ilustre novelista antioqueño Tomás Carrasquilla se negó a la entrevista: pero más tarde envió a aquel periódico una autobiografía suya, que gustosamente reproducimos hoy.”

¹⁴ Letters to Max Grillo from Santo Domingo, 21 April 1898, and to his sister Isabel from Bogotá 16 June 1915.

¹⁵ The Obras Completas of Tomás Carrasquilla are about to be published by “EPESA” (Ediciones y Publicaciones Españolas, S.A.) in Madrid. The prologue is by Federico de Onís. The Obras are to include Carrasquilla's correspondence.

¹⁶ Letter to his mother Ecilda Naranjo de C., Santo Domingo from Medellín, 8 Aug. 1873; note contained on the “Informe sobre el aprovechamiento, aplicación y conducta de Tomás Carrasquilla, alumno de la Universidad de Antioquia,” issued in Medellin on 15 Nov. 1874.

¹⁷ It is the aspect which is most frequently mentioned in connection with Carrasquilla. Its discussion is generally based on his famous remark: “He leido de cuanto hay, bueno y malo, sagrado y profano, lícito y prohibido” (contained in the Autobiografía).

¹⁸ Letter to Francisco de Paula Rendón from Bogotá, 2 Dec. 1895.

¹⁹ Letters to Max Grillo from Santo Domingo, 21 April 1898, and from Sanandrés, 29 Oct. 1906.

²⁰ 1895/96. (References in letters combined with entries in the archives of the Biblioteca del tercer piso in Santo Domingo permit us to fix accurately Carrasquilla's first visit to Bogotá.)

²¹ “… Por lo que me dice Isabel, veo que también se han perdido mis cartas a ustedes, pues sólo por el correo pasado dejé de escribir. En cuanto a las de ustedes a mí ya se aclaró el misterio: se las ponían en el apartado a Tomás Carrasquilla H., hijo del glorioso doctor Juan de Dios …” (excerpt from a letter addressed to “Pacho, Amalia y la niña,” from Bogotá, 24 Dec. 1895).

²² In the section devoted to the work of Tomás Carrasquilla N. in the card catalogue of the library of the Escuela normal superior in Bogotá there appeared a card listing a pamphlet entitled Inmigración y colonización. The pamphlet itself was not to be traced in the library, but I located it in the Biblioteca nacional. Its author, of course, was Tomás Carrasquilla H., who submitted this report to the Ministry of Public Works in 1906.

²³ Sturgis E. Leavitt and Carlos García Prada, A Tentative Bibliography of Colombian Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1934), p. 16; Enrique de la Casa, Apuntes bibliográficos sobre el maestro Carrasquilla (Mexico, 1944), p. 13; Raymond L. Grismer, A New Bibliography of the Literatures of Spain and Spanish America (St. Louis, Mo.: John S. Swift Co., 1944), v, 1404; Margaret E. Grossenbacher, “Tomás Carrasquilla novelista de Antioquia” (an M. A. Thesis submitted to Columbia Univ., Aug. 1944), bibliography, p. 323.

²⁴ Tomás Cadavid Restrepo in his review of Enrique de la Casa's Apuntes bibliográficos sobre el maestro Carrasquilla says: “… en la página 13 figura sin citación de fecha ni de pie de imprenta, un escrito Maizópolis atribuido a Tomás Carrasquilla; grave error; él no escribió nada que tuviese tal nombre” (Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo, Año 1, Mayo-Agosto 1945, No. 2, pp. 399-400).

²⁵ Jorge Rodríguez, Maizópolis, Monografías de los distritos antioqueños, 1915, publicado y editado por El Correo Liberal, Medellín.

²⁶ A Library in Santo Domingo which Tomás Carrasquilla helped to found in 1893 and which, in open defiance of its name, is (and always has been) located on the second story of a building.

²⁷ To Max Grillo from Sanandrés, 29 Oct. 1906.

²⁸ E. de la Casa, Tipos colombianos, introducción.

²⁹ The Homilías (published in Alpha, Medellín, in 1906) certainly reflect the author's interest in “comentarios literarios.” Various essays as well as numerous references in his correspondence are additional evidence of this interest. Literary tertulias came to be one of the dominant factors in Carrasquilla's life.

³⁰ Letters to Bernardo Arias Trujillo from Medellín, 5 Nov. 1936, and to Max Grillo from Santo Domingo, 21 April 1898.

³¹ Letter to Francisco de Paula Rendón from Bogotá, 2 Dec. 1895. The galería includes such personalities as Rafael Pombo, Jorge Roa, Julio Flórez, José Asunción Silva, Max Grillo, and others.

³² Letter to Max Grillo from Sanandrés, 29 Oct. 1906.

³³ Letter to his sister Isabel from Bogotá, 16 June 1915.

³⁴ The MS. of Frutos de mi tierra, the pièce de résistance of the Biblioteca del tercer piso in Santo Domingo, was presented to the library by its author on his return from Bogotá in 1896. According to the acta recording a meeting of the library committee on 9 April 1896, a resolution was adopted “que para honor de Carrasquilla se conservara el ejemplar de la obra que él regaló con su autógrafo a la Biblioteca sin que saliera de los estantes.” The MS. of La marquesa de Yolombó is in the possession of the Medellin architect and man of letters Dr. Félix Mejía Arango, who is married to one of Carrasquilla's nieces. Dr. Mejía, to whom the novel is dedicated, very generously gave me access to the most interesting document. The one-page-fragment “El judío,” discovered by Dr. Mejía between the pages of the MS. of La marquesa de Yolombó and kindly presented to me by him, fully bears out my remarks about the Maestro's method of composition.

³⁵ Letters to Martin Moreno de los Ríos from Medellín, 12 March 1928, and to Max Grillo from Santo Domingo, 21 April 1898.

³⁶ It is the story of a poor Bogotá shoeshine boy who has a toy rifle given to him by a wealthy customer and who grows so deeply attached to it that, when his stepmother smashes the gun in a fit of temper, life has lost its meaning for him. It is a Christmas story and one of those child-studies in which the Maestro's pen seems to have been particularly fortunate.

³⁷ Cf. n. 15, above.

³⁸ Alonso Restrepo Moreno, well-known Medellín doctor and man of letters, devoted part of his regular weekly broadcasting time over La Voz de Antioquia to the cause of El rifle.

³⁹ In the course of the interview (referred to in n. 11, above) Orlando Perdomo asked the Maestro: “Qué fué lo primero que usted escribió?” and Carrasquilla answered: “No me acuerdo. De las primeras cosas fuá mi cuento El rifle one publicó hace pocos días El Tiempo de Bogotá con el título de El chino de Belén.”

⁴⁰ In his letters from Bogotá (1895/96) there are constant references testifying to his concern with “mi papá” Bautista's precarious state of health. Carrasquilla's sorrow at his grandfather's passing was genuine and profound.

⁴¹ In a letter to Isabel from Bogotá, 16 June 1915, he says: “ … ya sabes que entre tú y yo no hay ausencia,” and in a letter from Bogotá, 31 Dec. 1917, he says: “… ya entenderías que, encerrado en el silencio, vivía siempre contigo, hora por hora, minuto por minuto, en esa compañía de las almas que se quieren y se comprenden sin necesidad de actos ni de manifestaciones exteriores.”

⁴² A poor orphan who entered the Carrasquilla home as a seamstress, only to become soon a close personal friend. She later came to be treated as one of the family. In a letter to Max Grillo from Sanandrés, 29 Oct. 1906, Carrasquilla laments Amalia's passing in these words: “… perdía en agosto una hermana incomparable. No lo era por la sangre, pero por el alma, por la convivencia, por todos los lazos que vinculan en la vida. En la mía me hace mucha falta este ser tan noble y tan inteligente, que desde niño encontré en mi hogar, al lado de mi madre. Se llamaba Amalia Salazar y la envidio.”

⁴³ As one of Carrasquilla's oldest friends, Justiniano Macía (himself a man in his mid eighties), told me, the Maestro at one time used to have his lunch regularly at the house of two elderly ladies in Santo Domingo (relatives of Pacho Rendón), never paid them a cent, but apparently made a careful note of their expenses and finally surprised his hostesses by sending them furniture for their poorly-equipped house.

⁴⁴ The first edition of Salve Regina was published in 1903 in Medellín on the occasion of a charity function. The proceeds were donated by the author.

⁴⁵ When Tomás Carrasquilla was working for the Ministerio de obras públicas in Bogotá, he gave unselfish help to a colleague of his who was in desperate straits. In charge of the correspondence with the leper-village Agua de Dios, Nicolás Aristizábal, scion of one of the foremost Medellin families, had contracted the dreaded disease. He was so despondent that he might easily have resorted to extreme measures if Carrasquilla had not volunteered to live with him for some time and thus exerted a calming influence on the youth. Aristizábal finally followed Carrasquilla's prudent advice and went to Agua de Dios, where he was healed later on.

⁴⁶ “Su felicitación por la defensa de Laura la estimo en mucho …” (excerpt from a letter to María Jesús Alvarez de Villegas from Sanandrés, 25 Oct. 1906).

⁴⁷ Composed in Nov. 1905 in Medellín and published in Lectura Amena, Serie 7, Año ii, No. 28.

⁴⁸ A short story entitled Mirra (only the first part of which seems to exist, since the promised sequel cannot be found) was dedicated by him to Alfonso Castro “como público desagravio” (published in Alpha, March 1907). Pax et concordia published in El Diario, Medellin, on 4 Sept. 1931 apparently was to serve a similar purpose.

⁴⁹ As the leading figure of literary and domestic tertulias, the Maestro “pontificaba” while the others generally listened. He used to frequent with great regularity cantinas such as Chantecler, La Bastilla, Las Moras, and El Blumen, and took part in the famous Tertulias del Negro Cano (immortalized in Ciro Mendía's charming poem La Tertulia del Negro, which portrays to us the main participants in a few deft strokes of the pen). According to Dr. Mejía, the three aspects which are inextricably linked to make up the personality of Tomás Carrasquilla, are: a) the key-figure of the literary tertulias and critic of classical taste whose criterion had been fashioned by his wide reading, b) the writer of immortal master-pieces, and c) the domestic contertulio whose keen power of observation and inimitable gift of conversation could hold his listeners spellbound for hours.

⁵⁰ Letter to Isabel from Bogotá, 31 Dec. 1917.

⁵¹ Letter to María Jesús Alvarez de Villegas from Sanandrés, 25 Oct. 1906.

⁵² Letter to Martin Moreno de los Ríos from Medellín, 12 March 1928.

⁵³ Ernesto González summed up the Maestro's personality in these words, which bear out Dr. Mejía's comment referred to in n. 49, above.

⁵⁴ Homilía II, in volume containing Entrañas de niño, Simón el mago, Salve Regina, Homilías 1 and 2 (Medellín, Colombia, Librería de Carlos E. Rodríguez E. 1914), p. 227.