A pessimist committed Ernesto Sabato, the other side of the tunnel
The author of "On Heroes and Tombs' dies in Santos Lugares, near Buenos Aires, two months after turning 100 years old - was the political consciousness against the dictatorship
GALLEGO-DIAZ SOLEDAD
Ernesto Sabato, Argentine writer author of On Heroes and Tombs and the tunnel, but also tormented and terrified man who chaired the National Commission on Disappeared People (CONADEP) died at dawn Saturday, two months before reaching 100 years. Sabato, who would today be a tribute to the Feria del Libro de Buenos Aires, suffered from bronchitis could not overcome, as announced by his companion, Elvira González Fraga. The wake will be held in the village of Holy Places, 40 kilometers from the capital Buenos Aires, where he had his home.
Alfonsin was delivered in an unforgettable event for the Argentine
'On Heroes and Tombs "was placed among the greats of literature
The report,' Never again 'became known as' Report Sabato'
chaired the National Commission on Missing Persons
today was going to receive a tribute at the Feria del Libro de Buenos Aires
In recent times was practically confined to his home
Sabato was a popular writer, read remarkably Argentina in the 70 and 80, although in recent times was practically held and withdrawn at home: never again make a public appearance since 2004. "For the Argentines like to take down the icons and that also happened to Sabato," said Maria Rosa Loja, coordinator of the critical edition of On Heroes and Tombs, published in 2008. "It is true that the Argentine literature gave a bit back, maybe for his own figure, controversial, and difficult character, but also for their political positions, unclassifiable, which placed him in a complicated place," he says. Sabato was above all himself, "he summarizes.
"First, the tunnel, which has an almost detective story, but you know the name of the murderer from the first page, and then, On Heroes and Tombs, which speaks of the past and present history of the country, were once large bestsellers, a very seductive reading for thousands of kids, "says Lojo. "Sabato told the Argentines on who they were. Why was such a hook. On Heroes and Tombs is a long novel, with great capacity for synthesis, which, written shortly after Peron's fall, refers several times to build the country." Descending
Italian father and an Albanian mother, Sabato is considered one of the greats of American literature not only for his novels, including Abaddon the destroyer, but also for its extensive essays on the human condition. He won the Cervantes Prize in 1984, at which time he made a speech in which he described Don Quixote as "a mere mortal, tender helpless wanderer, the man who once said that freedom as well as for honor, you can and must risk one's life. " Sabato
also had a wandering life, marked by the literature and its peculiar political commitment, which led to the end of his life to declare closer to "anarcho-Christian" Tolstoy and the active community of his youth. The writer began his career as a physicist, in Zurich (Switzerland), but very quickly began his literary activities and his friendship with the South Group, where he met Victoria Ocampo and Jorge Luis Borges, who always maintained an adversarial relationship but gave origin, in 1976, a beautiful book entitled Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges. It was at this time that he married Matilde Kusminsky, with whom he had two children, and lived with him until his death in 1998.
His first novel, The Tunnel (1948), an acute psychological test, full of irony, but also of bitterness and pessimism that mark all his later work, he provided an immediate recognition not only in Argentina but international. His second work, On Heroes and Tombs, including his shocking report about blind, confirmed as a highly original author, despite their everyday language, easily accessible and placed him among the greatest writers in English. "This is the work I attempt to give a full version of my reality. In all of my reality, about heroes and tombs, about hope and despair about life and death, good and evil," he said in an interview.
Sabato's strong character, his egotism and his taste for controversy, the source of many anecdotes, made him a controversial figure in Argentine letters, but never discussed his outstanding literary importance. "I do not know why, but I was always a specialist in becoming enemies," Sabato himself confessed in a speech in 1996.
His life and his work not be understood without his role as a fighter for human rights and its commitment to the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, although in the early months of the coup he participated in a dinner with General George Videla, also attended by Jorge Luis Borges. Sabato was shocked to learn of the continued killings and human rights abuses who stars in the dictatorship and, as pointed out yesterday the journalist Magdalena Ruiz Guinazu, "signed all the petitions that could claim the appearance alive who had been kidnapped. "
After the dictatorship, Ernesto Sabato was commissioned by the first democratic president, the radical Raul Alfonsin, to head the newly created CONADEP. The research team of the Commission gathered testimony and carefully documented 8,960 disappearances and the existence of 340 illegal detention and torture. The report, never again, but also known simply as Report Sabato, Alfonsin was delivered in a memorable event for the vast majority of Argentines, 20 September 1984 and led to the prosecution and conviction of the heads of the military juntas of the dictatorship, Videla including himself, who were sent to jail. Sabato opposed to the laws of Punto Final and subsequent pardons granted by the Peronist Carlos Menem.
writer for a long time suffered from severe depression which led him one day, visiting Spain, to answer those trying to cheer him up: "You understand nothing. I wake up every morning, and I realize I'm Argentine . He spent his last years without writing but painting, his second artistic vocation, she always knew reconcile with the literature.
"The reason is ineffective for existence," he said. I did not want to be pigeonholed into any literary trend: "I have to literature the same relationship can be a guerrilla with the regular army. "
Ernesto Sabato said often that he believed in man," although "he would add," that we face the most sinister animal. "The Life is so short and so difficult business of living, when one begins to learn, we must die, "complained .
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