La Jornada: Mario Iván Martínez, to the rescue of the thirst for knowledge and the taste for books

In times of artificial intelligence, screens and inexhaustible information, Mario Iván Martínez went back 500 years in his new book to wonder what Leonardo da Vinci could say to a child of the 21st century.

The answer does not appear in The Mona Lisa nor in the sketches of flying machines. It is much earlier: in the childhood of a child who learned to look at the world with wonder.

“What I intend here is to rescue the thirst for knowledge,” Martínez explained in an interview with The Day. “Our children and young people see a lot and digest little in the face of the bombardment of what is disposable.”

That Leonardo who is not yet a painter, inventor, anatomist, musician or architect stars Of children, inventions and brushes: The childhood of Leonardo da Vinci.

Illustrated by Juan Gedovius and published by Alfaguara, a Penguin Random House imprint, the fifth volume of the series dedicated to the childhoods of famous people reconstructs the artist’s early years through what Martínez calls “plausible fictions”: episodes supported by historical research that imagine decisive moments of his formation.

The writer starts from a decisive biographical event in the life of the Italian polymath. Being a natural son recognized by his father, he was not obliged to continue the family tradition and practice as a notary. That circumstance, he added, allowed him to dedicate himself to a wide diversity of interests.

Before arriving at Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop, Leonardo learns to look at the world in Vinci’s fields. His uncle Francesco, known as Checco, takes him to observe the clouds, study the movement of water and wonder how birds fly.

“With Francesco he went to the countryside to observe the clouds, understand the movement of the waters and understand the way in which the bird makes flight. I emphasize the joy that daily discovery provides, which reminds you that you are alive and does not abandon you to astonishment,” Martínez said.

That enthusiasm reappears when the boy tries to explain how the remains of a whale got inside a cave. “It is about deducing, thinking, imagining and launching the engines of imagination and discovery.”

The book’s passages arose from extensive research on Leonardo da Vinci, which included the biography of Walter Isaacson and the texts of Giorgio Vasari, although Martínez insists that his purpose was never to write a treatise.

“For mere data there is Wikipedia. My job is to create a story; extract those fictional events that allow me to tell a story.”

With this premise, it recreates family conversations and everyday scenes that bring the historical figure closer without breaking with the documented facts. There appears a young Sandro Botticelli, nicknamed the friendly Little barrel, a resource with which he lightens the solemnity that surrounds the figures of the Renaissance.

Another of these scenes shows the teenager who, while his classmates wait for the food, is distracted by drawing bones and cartilage before placing the pieces of meat in the boil. Since those years, a curiosity has emerged capable of diverting his attention towards a new discovery.

In Martínez’s opinion, science and art are part of the same search. “Leonardo constantly blurs the borders between science and art. For him they remained in communion, without the possibility of divorce.”

In another of the imagined passages, the young artist buys the birds locked in cages in the market and summons family and friends to release them in the main square.

“This metaphor of the bird functions as an emphasis on the need I had to be free: freedom in the search for knowledge, personality and discovery.”

Towards the end of the book, this idea takes shape in the birds that young Leonardo buys to later open their cages.

“It is through play and discovery that one establishes the delicious love of books. We want them not to be seen as a school scourge, but as a source of pleasure for life,” said Mario Iván Martínez (Mexico City, 1962).

The illustrations by Juan Gedovius accompany the story with images that, in the writer’s words, are “still images in motion.” After more than two decades of collaboration, he assures that the illustrator takes his proposals, “reworks them, rethinks them and surprises me.”

For the first time, the collection includes an audiobook with a cast. Mario Iván Martínez participates only as a narrator; Emiliano Iniesta and Jesús Abimael play Leonardo during childhood and adolescence.

Completing the cast are Luisa Huertas, Pilar Villanueva, Carlos Pascual, Manuel Acosta, Carlos Balderrama, Arturo Ríos, Diego Jáuregui, Rodolfo Ornelas and Luly Rede.