Japan. Argentina. The Gobi Desert. Iceland. Mars. Old English. And infinite books: all that was Maria Kodama, and much more. The widow of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges died at the age of 86 in Buenos Aires, according to her, her personal doctor announced this Sunday.
“I wanted to go to Mars, but it’s very expensive,” Kodama told EL MUNDO in the last months of her life, when breast cancer was already a reality, but she had not lost an ounce of her ironic sense of humor.
Kodama, to whom Borges had left the mission of caring for and promoting her heritage as universal heir, was fired on Twitter by her lawyer and friend, Fernando Soto: “Your friend and your lawyer fire you. Now you will enter the ‘great sea’ with your dear Borges. May you rest in peace, Maria”.
Daughter of a Japanese and an Argentinean of German origin, Kodama was a well-known and recognized figure in her country, but also criticized. In her youth, Ella Kodama ran into Borges leaving a bookstore and never left him. Graduated in literature, her love for Anglo-Saxon languages ??brought them together. Kodama was an assistant, a confidant, and later a partner. When the writer was 85 years old, shortly before she died at 86 in Geneva, she married him.
His anecdotes are countless and surprising, anecdotes that Kodama remembered and used to recount with generosity and a mischievous and boastful smile. He especially enjoyed a success in Madrid, which featured Borges and the leader of the Rolling Stones.
Mick Jagger is on his knees at the Palace Hotel. Moved, he extends his hands to an old man as a sign of devotion.
– Master, I have read it, I have read all your works.
– Who are you, sir?
– Mick Jagger.
– Ah, one of the Rolling Stones!
– I can’t believe you know me, teacher.
– I know all your music thanks to Maria. And I’ll tell you one thing: for my birthdays I put on The Wall, because Happy Birthday seems stupid to me.
It is not yet clear who will take over from Kodama in terms of guarding the legacy of the author of “El Aleph”, but in the last months of his life, Borges’ widow said that name had already been decided. Kodama was happy guarding and spreading the legacy of Borges, published a revisionist book on Argentine history at the end of 2002 (“La divisa punzó”) and spent hours eating and drinking tea at his favorite restaurant in the elegant Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta “La Felix pot”.
“He reaped friendships and praise for his work and also detractors and controversies. Kodama avoided talking about death to refer to the death of his loved ones, he preferred a euphemism: departure,” recalled “La Nación” this Sunday.
Kodama fought multiple court battles to protect that legacy. Some he won, others he lost. He accused the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska of having published a false interview with Borges and prohibited the editor Jean Pierre Berners, of the legendary Gallimard publishing house, from publishing 120 recordings of dialogues with the writer.
A private teacher taught him English at the age of five, and that marked Kodama’s life.
“She read me books for adults and I was fascinated. And she read me one of Borges’ English problems, which she offers to the woman who loves her loneliness, her sadness, the hunger of her heart. What is the hunger of the I asked him. When you grow up you will know that the hunger of the heart is love. So every day I would get up and think, I don’t have a hunger for the heart, what will happen? And I didn’t understand… Every once in a while I thought , until at the age of eight or nine I already understood,” he recalled to EL MUNDO.
The hunger in Kodama’s heart was added to the hunger for knowledge. And of trips, like one that he made at the request of the Spanish writer Juan Goystisolo. Deeply marked by Iceland, like Borges, she Kodama also wanted to stay and live in the Gobi Desert, which she knew briefly. However, she had a much stronger experience in the Sahara.
“Juan Goytisolo, who lives there and knew Borges, made a wonderful exhibition in Morocco in homage to Borges at the Marrakech museum. He invited me to his house. After the beautiful reception at the museum I went with two men and I heard the name “Borges, Borges.” Goytisolo told me that they were telling people that a writer named Borges lives on the other side of the sea. I told him I wanted to go in a tent to the desert. I went with six relatives of Goytisolo’s secretary. I I brought six medical towels to wash you day and night, because there is no water there. I saw that they were not setting up tents. ‘No, madame,’ they told me. ‘We are going to sleep around yours with the mats and in the sleeping bags. One of us will always be sitting at the door. Please, ma’am, if you need to go to the bathroom under the stars, let us know and one of us will go with you. Because getting lost here is very easy, and if you get lost, dies. And Mr. Juan kills us.’ No, don’t worry, I told him. I never I’m going to forget about that wonderful experience. There I lived a wonderful, imposing sunset, with an indescribable feeling of joy, something was spinning inside me”.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
