Fernando del Paso: “Mexico is a country in decline”
“My novels have a life, I tell you when it is exhausted”
Mexico mourns the death of one of their pens the most recognized of the TWENTIETH century: Fernando of the Step, award-winning in 2015 with the Cervantes Prize, and the author of four novels and dozens of works of poetry and theatrical performances that rose to the summit of the letters in Spanish. Throughout his literary career he received many awards, among which stand out: the National Prize of Sciences and Arts, in 1991, the FIL for Literature, in 2007 and the Premio Novela Mexico, in 1975.
According to the University of Guadalajara, which is put in contact with the son of the writer, the author, born in Mexico City on April 1, 1935, died in a hospital in the capital of the state of Jalisco at 09.06 local time.
Great intellectual and a lover of all areas of knowledge, Of the Step he began his training as a student of medicine, a career that finally left because “I couldn’t stand to see blood and guts”, as acknowledged by the author himself. After publishing his first work, ‘Joseph Wheat’ (1966), The Step lived for two decades between London and Paris on a diplomatic mission, although without neglecting his role more as a journalist proved producing radio programmes for the BBC and Radio France International.
In the literary, there were two works that will encumbraron professionally: ‘News Empire’ (1987) and ‘Palinuro de Mexico (1977). Of this last, Step always confessed that it was his work favorite because, in a way, it was almost autobiographical: “The character that I was and I wanted to be and the others believed that it was and also that I could never be even if I wanted to be.” His next public appearance was scheduled, as was usual, for the Fair of Guadalajara (FIL), which starts next November 24.
Small, fragile, joker, a little baroque, such as his novels, “a dandy energetic and combative that observes us from the distance”, as defined by the secretary of State for Culture office in 2016, José María Lassalle, The Step was defined when he received the Cervantes of his country: “it Is a respect to the letters, perseverance, sitting at the table, even if you think that you have nothing to say. It must be emphasized, that already is going to do something. And it is also the review of the writing, especially in prose, you have to revise until the text is, if not perfect, yes in such a way that expresses what you wanted to say.”
The way always wanted to convey in his novels “the meaning of History”, as a tribute to the past and to their protagonists, above all Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium, is short-lived emperor of Mexico between 1864 and 1867, as reflected in their News empire.
Also cultivated the genre, which debuted with Linda 67: the Story of a crime in 1995, five years after an acute myocardial weaken the health of the writer.
In his poetry include Sonnets from the journal (1958), From a To Z: Poems for children (1988), a Palette of ten colors (1990), Sonnets of love and daily (1997), Castles in the air (2002) or PoeMar (2004).
he Has also published essays such as The colloquium of winter, with Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez (1992), or Memory and oblivion, life of Juan José Arreola (1994); in addition to the plays The crazy Miramar (1988), Palinuro on the stairs (1992) and death is going to Granada (1998).
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