In pieces like the one immediately preceding “Heaven,” “I’m Off With the Lizard,” the translator shows her great skill as a poet (the key to translating a poem, after all, is to make a new poem in the target language). He became a part of outstanding authors including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Like this article? Many believe that nobody has encouraged people in love as much, that his verses are odes to the complex universe of love. Only Biography of Mario Benedetti (1920-2009) Uruguayan writer, born in passage of bulls (Tacuarembó, Uruguay) on September 14, 1920, and died on May 17, 2009 in Montevideo. He returned to his homeland 10 years later in what he dubbed his "unexile". Home » Uruguay » Mario Benedetti » Primavera con una esquina rota (Springtime in a Broken Mirror). And again, it felt hard to impregnate the characters, Santiago somehow seeming detached from his life as a political prisoner (Benedetti failed to bring his isolation to life in ways that many other novelists have) and many passages, especially those from their daughter Beatriz (who seemed far too knowing and calculated to actually be a young girl) adding little in dramatic tension or narrative development. His experience and its effect on him are glimpsed in autobiographical snapshots interspersed through the narrative of Springtime In A Broken Mirror , a spare but deeply felt book about the effect of imprisonment and exile on a family. We infer a metamorphosed Mario, one who returned to Uruguay unrecognizable to himself. As an old man who remained a faithful poet and revolutionary to the end, even in the painful last years of his life, he maintained that “maybe happiness is nothing more / than believing we believe the unbelievable.” And perhaps that is Benedetti’s lasting gift: His humane vision allows us to believe the unbelievable to be possible. more. It is Miguel who dominates the story, his words full of self-pity, he Please support our work! They both showed Benedetti as an inventive storyteller with some fine turns of phrasing, but they felt insular, their characters tied to the pages, rarely offering anything other than a pencil drawing of what their lives were like. Mario Benedetti was no longer the same when he wrote his novel Andamios. Springtime In A Broken Mirror and Who Among Us? story, with its Witness is a poetic chronicle of passage through the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, in which the poet’s personal life reflects the larger social, political, and historical changes of the world. Exiled in the 1970s during the military coup – his participation in the leftwing coalition Frente Amplio made this a foregone conclusion – his work is also tied with the political and social struggles that the country had faced. As you read this, he will be studying in Buenos Aires and, with luck, translating more of said author's work. In “Angel” he writes of the oppressed who talk of peace: “the horrid savvy shoeshine boy,” the “fourth-level clerk,” the “fool who believes in a flag,” and others who are “too innocent / too carefree / to realize peace depended on an angel / and now that angel has / a finger on the trigger.” The ambiguity here is powerful, forcing readers to make their own conclusions, since they aren’t told for whom the angel is fighting or at whom the angel aims. Back then it was a simple blog looking at underground culture in South America. Photo by Elisa Cabot. Originally published in 1984, Reflections on Exile captures Said’s and other intellectuals’ conditions of exile, as well as the implications of exile for those who experience it in the widespread modern condition of uprootedness. Exiled in the 1970s during the military coup – his participation in the leftwing coalition Frente Amplio made this a foregone conclusion – his work is also tied with the political and social struggles that the country had faced. Contributors Mario Benedetti. Witness ends with Benedetti’s recognition that his exile is an exile from the world, a world in which consumerism and capitalism seem to have gained the upper hand against the struggle for humanity. I felt frustrated by the narrative arc and the building of the core story. never quite knew why Alicia married him and not Lucas, and this has With the publication of Witness, one can only hope that another great Uruguayan writer will now gain a larger audience in North America. Born in Paso de los Toros, Benedetti was widely considered one of the best representatives of Spanish-speaking literary voices. But he came of age in … 49 records for Mario Benedetti. Author Mario Benedetti, 88, was battling intestinal problems and had been hospitalized earlier this month. Set during the military dictatorship it is the story of Santiago, a political opponent of the government being held in a Montevideo prison. MARIO BENEDETTI was born on September 14, 1920 in Uruguay. Benedetti, 88, was battling intestinal … It’s followed by Lucas’ own version of events, which is a drama in the emotions of the narrators. Benedetti was famous for his eclectic style, venturing into several genres and literary practices, from short stories to novels, poetry, essays, journalistic pieces, and even songwriting. Mario Benedetti, who innovated Spanish-language poetic interpretations in his vast oeuvre of poetry books, was forced into exile from his native Uruguay during the country’s civic-military dictatorship from 1973 to 1985. This novel does, for example, have some sort of a plot but it certainly is not plot-driven. I lived and worked in Montevideo for a spell, and spent a good bit of time exploring the interior, hanging around in the sleepy towns of Trenta y Tres and Tacuarembó for perhaps longer than was necessary – their relaxed pace of life seemed to chime with my own internal clock. Mario Benedetti's quotes about love are a gift for the heart. Born in 1920, he was a journalist, an essayist, a playwright, a novelist, and a short story writer. The North American Congress on Latin America is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. “Our torturers are generally catholic,” Benedetti tells us in the first stanza, but despite their belief in the Trinity and their cause, “when they die they don’t go to heaven / because murderers aren’t allowed there.” In the second stanza he describes the victims as “martyrs” and as possibly even “angels or saints,” “but they don’t go to heaven either / because to them there’s no such thing.” The poem delivers a sharp, poignant message about the ironic realities of the time, but it is relatively flat, with few poetic elements and little that would invite the reader to return to it. 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