Mario Benedetti Farrugia[1] (Spanish pronunciation:[ˈmaɾjoβeneˈðeti]ⓘ; 14 September 1920 – 17 May 2009),[2] was a Uruguayanjournalist, novelist, and poet and an integral member of the Generación del 45. Despite publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages, he was not well known in the English-speaking world.[3] In the Spanish-speaking world, he is considered one of Latin America's most important writers of the latter half of the 20th century.[4]
Plaque at the Suns of the Paseo de los Soles, Montevideo, Uruguay
Benedetti was born 1920 in Paso de los Toros in the Uruguayan Tacuarembó Department to Brenno Benedetti, a pharmaceutical and chemical winemaker, and Matilde Farrugia, who were of Italian descent.[5] Two years later, they moved to Tacuarembó, the capital city of the departamento, and shortly after that, his father tried to buy a chemist's but was swindled and went into bankruptcy,[6] so they moved and settled in Montevideo, the capital city of the country, where they lived in difficult economic conditions.[7] Mario completed six years of primary school at the Deutsche Schule Montevideo, where he also learned German, which later allowed him to be the first translator of Franz Kafka in Uruguay. His father immediately removed him from the school when Nazi ideology started featuring in the classroom. For two years afterwards, he studied at Liceo Miranda, but for the rest of his high-school years he did not attend an educational institution. In those years he learned shorthand, which was his livelihood for a long time. At the age of 14 he began working, first as a stenographer and then as a seller, public officer, accountant, journalist, broadcaster and translator.
He trained as a journalist with Carlos Quijano, on the weekly newspaper Marcha.[8] From 1938 and 1941 he lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He worked in different professions on both banks of the Río de la Plata river, for example, as a stenographer.[9] In 1946 he married Luz López Alegre.
He wrote for the weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha from 1945 until it was forcibly closed by the military government in 1973, and was its literary director from 1954. In 1957, he traveled to Europe and visited nine countries as a correspondent for Marcha weekly magazine and El Diario newspaper.[11]
Exile, 1973–1985
For 12 years, from 1973 to 1985, when a civic-military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Benedetti lived in exile. He first went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then to Lima, Peru, where he was detained, deported and then given amnesty. He went to Cuba in 1976 and the following year to Madrid, Spain.[6]
His exile was made particularly trying by the fact that his wife had to remain in Uruguay to look after both of their mothers. In 1980, he moved to Palma, Majorca.
For his poetry and novels Benedetti won numerous international awards. In 1986, he was awarded Laureate Of The International Botev Prize. On 7 June 2005, he was named the recipient of the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize. La Tregua, first published in 1960, has been translated into more than 20 languages and inspired the 1974 film The Truce. His poetry was also used in the 1992 Argentine movie The Dark Side of the Heart (El lado oscuro del corazón), in which he read some of his poems in German.[12]
In 2006, Mario Benedetti signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States.
In the last ten years of his life, Benedetti suffered from asthma and, in order to avoid the cold, spent his winters in Madrid where it was summer, though as his health deteriorated he eventually remained in Montevideo. In 2006, his wife Luz López died, ending more than six decades of matrimony.
Before dying, he dictated to his personal secretary, Ariel Silva, what would become his last poem:[13]
Mi vida ha sido como una farsa
Mi arte ha consistido
En que esta no se notara demasiado
He sido como un levitador en la vejez
El brillo marrón de los azulejos
Jamás se separó de mi piel
My life has been like a fraud
My art has consisted
In its not being noticed too much
I've been like a levitator in my old age
The brown sheen of the tiles
Never came off my skin
—(Fragment)
He died in Montevideo on 17 May 2009. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year. His remains are buried at the National Pantheon in the Central Cemetery of Montevideo.[14]
Short story collections
Esta mañana (1949)
Montevideanos (1959)
La muerte y otras sorpresas (1968)
Con y sin nostalgia (1977)
Geografías (1984)
Despistes y franquezas (1989)
Buzón de tiempo (1999)
El porvenir de mi pasado (2003)
Novels
Quién de nosotros (1953)
La tregua (1960). The Truce: The Diary of Martín Santomé, trans. Benjamin Graham (Harper & Row, 1969); also trans. Harry Morales (Penguin, 2015)
Gracias por el fuego (1965). Adapted as a film directed by Sergio Renán in 1984.
El cumpleaños de Juan Ángel (1971). Juan Angel's Birthday, trans. David Arthur McMurray (1974)[15]
Primavera con esquina rota (1982). Springtime in a Broken Mirror, trans. Nick Caistor (The New Press, 2018)
La borra del café (1992)
Andamios (1996)
Poetry
1945: La víspera indeleble ("Indelible Eve"), his first published book[16]
Gregory, Stephen William George (1999) The collapse of dialogue: Intellectuals and politics in the Uruguayan crisis, 1960-1973 Thesis, Modern Language Studies, University of New South Wales. OCLC44284108, abstract
