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Adolfo Bioy Casares He died on March 8, 1999. He was 84 years old. He knew it in life, because everyone said it: he was and is one of the most important writers in Latin America. And will continue to be. 25 years after his death, a question arises: Who was this narrator, husband of Silvina Ocampoclose friend of Jorge Luis Borges and winner of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1990 and the Konex de Brillante in 1994?
He was born in a golden cradle, on September 15, 1914 in Buenos Aires, in a patrician house in Recoleta. Among his ancestors was the Spanish colonizer Domingo Martínez de Irala although he also carries in his blood a remote Guaraní mestizo origin that he shared with many heroes of the time of Independence. Only son, in addition. He was fortunate to be able to dedicate himself exclusively to literature. He did it with dedication. The first story of him, Iris and Daisy, he wrote it at eleven. He studied Law, Philosophy and Letters, but he did not finish any degree. Somewhat disappointed by the university environment, he became self-taught.
I read and read without stopping—not only Spanish, but also English, French and German—I had the time to do it. But something else: passion for reading.
There is a breaking point in his work that specialists call maturation. Between 1929 and 1937 Bioy published several books (Prologue, 17 shots against the future, Chaos, The new storm, The homemade statue, Luis Greve, dead) but disowned them. “They’re horrible,” she said, and banned reissues. She decidedly wanted to start over. She shuffled the cards and dealt again. Thus came an early masterpiece, Morel’s inventionin 1940, the year he married Silvina Ocampo.
“It doesn’t seem like an inaccuracy or hyperbole to me to call it perfect”wrote Jorge Luis Borges in the prologue. Is there a better argument to read it?
The protagonist is a man, a fugitive on a Caribbean island. He begins to write a diary when he sees a group of tourists arriving. Although he considers this presence a miracle—because he has been alone for so long—he fears that they may catch him and turn him over to the authorities. Hidden in the trees, he spies on them and finds that they are not what they seem to be. Then, in the early first half of the 20th century, the idea of the hologram appears. The novel is engaging, read in one sitting and provokes philosophical reflections in any reader.
That same year he took on a new and ambitious project: Anthology of Fantastic Literature. “Old as fear, fantastic fictions come before letters,” Bioy begins in the prologue to this anthology that he built together with Silvina Ocampo and Jorge Luis Borges (the following year they did the Argentine poetic anthology).
The interest here, in this book, is science fiction but seen from a more general angle, hence the term fantastic literature. This is how he built a panorama of the genre, incipient in Latin America but already consolidated in the world. There are stories by these three Argentine authors, but also by Lewis Carroll, Jean Cocteau, GK Chesterton, Elena Garro, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe and H.G.Wellsamong others, as well as more Argentines: Julio Cortázar, Leopoldo Lugones, Macedonio Fernández and Jose Bianco.
The irruptions of creative fantasy, the inexplicable, the mysterious, the supernatural… everything here is a gem. Bioy polished it like no one else, and brought it to an audience eager to read new things.
He was 18 years old when he met Borges, fifteen years older than him. It was in Villa Ocampothe House of Victoria Ocampo of San Isidro, a meeting place for the most emblematic international figures of culture.
One day, among so many intellectual crowds, both boys stood aside for a bit to talk. Perhaps they were tired of so much cordiality, or the topics that were being debated at that moment caused them deep boredom. “Don’t be shit, attend to the guest”Victoria challenged them quietly when she saw them. Borges did not tolerate the comment and left offended. Bioy decided to accompany him because, of course, he had not pleased her at all. On the trip back to the city, they talked about everything. From that day on, friendship was born.
This is how one of the most famous duos in Argentine literature was created. Together they did a lot: collections of stories (Six problems for Don Isidro Parodi, Two memorable fantasies, A model for death), film scripts (The Orilleros, Invasion) anthologies of fantastic stories (the aforementioned Anthology of Fantastic Literaturealso Short and extraordinary stories), the collection The seventh circle (translations of the best English-language crime novels) and the creation of two pseudonyms where both were merged: H. Bustos Domecq and Benito Suarez Lynch.
Bioy wrote non-stop. He wrote down everything and had a diary that was published in 1994 under the title Memories. And among those notes, a large number referred to his friend: anecdotes, details, observations… everyday approaches to the man behind the genius. In 2006 they were published as Borges, an immense volume of more than sixteen hundred pages. Before she died, everything had been prepared and corrected, she was not able to publish it. Today that book is vital for Hispanic literature.
“There is no greater mistake than calling writers intellectuals”Bioy writes, what Borges says, in a conversation they had in 1969. Another, in 1955: “All these literary controversies are like effusions of blood in the theater: no one dies afterwards.”
With Silvina Ocampo She married in 1940. It could also be said that together they were much more than a couple that culminated, after more than 50 years of romance, with the death of the writer. And they were much more than a romantic book-producing machine. Much more than a long-lasting, complicit marriage that raised a daughter, Marta, who died days after Silvina, at 39 years old. Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo They were a society that read as few in the world have read. Your great library with more than 17 thousand books prove it.
Readers, first. And consequently writers. They wrote a single book together. A novel titled Those who love, hate in 1946. There, in those pages typed in four hands, the story of the doctor is told Humberto Huberman, a homeopathic doctor, who arrives at the solitary hotel in Bosque de Mar to spend a few days of rest, without suspecting that a murder will occur there. A strong storm forces all guests to stay there for four days and four nights. The murderer is among them and they are all suspects. A police officer with black trim.
Bioy is also known for his stories. For many he is one of the best storytellers of Latin American literature. The women’s hero, published in 1978, is perhaps the best example. But there is no doubt that his novels managed to transcend: Pig War Diary (1969) and Sleep in the sun (1973), for example. As you can see, his work takes many forms and paths. Genders are not obstacles to her, on the contrary, she entered each of them with gallantry and determination. Twenty-five years after his death, reading it again is essential. Not to validate the anniversary, but to verify that his good prose and his plot twists are still at the forefront today. Read it for the simple fact of enjoying a good read. What Bioy enjoyed so much throughout his life: literature.
[Fotos: Eduardo Comesaña/Getty Images; Télam S. E.]
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