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Ernesto Sabato (Spanish:[ˈsaβaðo]; June 24, 1911 – April 30, 2011) was an Argentinenovelist,essayist,painter, andphysicist. According to theBBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America".[2] Upon his deathEl País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature".[3]
At the request of PresidentRaúl Alfonsín, he presided over theCONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who sufferedforced disappearance during theDirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the titleNunca Más (Never Again).
Ernesto Sabato was born inRojas,Buenos Aires Province, son of Francesco Sabato and Giovanna Maria Ferrari, Italian immigrants fromCalabria. His father was fromFuscaldo, and his mother was anArbëreshë (Albanian minority in Italy) fromSan Martino di Finita.[5] He was the tenth of a total of 11 children. Being born after his ninth brother's death, he carried on his name "Ernesto".[6]
In 1924 he finished primary school in Rojas and settled in the city ofLa Plata for his secondary education at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. There he met professorPedro Henríquez Ureña, an early inspiration for his writing career.[7] In 1929 he started college, attending the School of Physics and Mathematics at theUniversidad Nacional de La Plata.
He was an active member in theReforma Universitaria movement,[8] founding "Insurrexit Group" in 1933 – of communist ideals – together with Héctor P. Agosti, Ángel Hurtado de Mendoza and Paulino González Alberdi, among others.[9]
In 1933 he was elected Secretario General of theFederación Juvenil Comunista (Communist Youth Federation).[10] While attending a lecture aboutMarxism he met Matilde Kusminsky Richter, aged 17, who would leave her parents' house to live with Sabato.[11]
In 1934 he started to doubt Communism andJoseph Stalin's regime. TheCommunist Party of Argentina, which had noted this, sent him to theInternational Lenin School for two years. According to Sabato, "it was a place where either you recovered or ended up in agulag orpsychiatric hospital".[12] Before arriving at Moscow, he traveled toBrussels as a delegate from the Communist Party of Argentina at the "Congress against Fascism and the War". Once there, fearing not coming back from Moscow, he left the congress to escape to Paris.[12] It was there where he wrote his first novel:La Fuente Muda, which remains unpublished.[10][12] Once back inBuenos Aires, in 1936, he married Matilde Kusminsky Richter.
During that time of antagonisms, I buried myself withelectrometers andgraduated cylinders during the morning and spent the nights in bars, with the delirious surrealists. At the Dome and in the Deux Magots, inebriated with thoseheralds ofchaos and excess, we used to spend many hours creatingexquisite cadavers.
In 1939 he transferred to theMassachusetts Institute of Technology . Once in 1940 he came back to Argentina intent on leaving physics behind. However, serving an obligation to those responsible for his fellowship Sabato started teaching at theUniversidad de La Plata for Engineering admission, andrelativity andquantum mechanics for post graduate degrees. In 1943, due to an "existential crisis", he left science for good to become a full-time writer and painter.[12]
At the Curie Institute, one of the highest goals for a physicist, I found myself empty. Beaten up by disbelief, I kept going because of inertia, which my soul rejected.
In 1942, working forSur magazine reviewing books, he was put in charge of the "Calendario" section and participated in "Desagravio aBorges" inSur nº 94. He also published articles inLa Nación and a translation ofThe Birth and Death of the Sun byGeorge Gamow. The following year he published a translation ofThe ABC of Relativity byBertrand Russell.
In 1945, his first book,Uno y el Universo, a series of essays criticizing the apparent moral neutrality of science and warning about dehumanization processes in technological societies, was published; with time he would turn towards alibertarian andhumanist standing. That same year he was awarded a prize by the municipality ofBuenos Aires for his book and the honor wand of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores.
In 1948, after being rejected by several Buenos Aires editors, Sabato published inSur his first novel,El túnel, apsychological novel narrated in the first person. Framed inexistentialism, it was met with enthusiastic reviews byAlbert Camus, who hadGallimard publish a French translation. It has been further translated to more than 10 languages.[14] Others who enjoyed the book includedThomas Mann.[1][4]
France's literary industry named Sabato's bookAbaddon, el Exterminador (The Angel of Darkness) the best foreign book of 1976.[1]
His eldest son Jorge died at the age of 56 on 10 February 1995 in a car accident.[15] In 1998, Sabato's wife died.[16]
In 1999 he acquired Italian citizenship in addition to his original Argentine nationality.[17]
Sabato died inSantos Lugares on April 30, 2011, two months short of his 100th birthday.[18][19] His death was the result ofbronchitis, according to his companion and collaborator Elvira González Fraga.[16] The Spanish newspaperEl Mundo said he had been "the last surviving Argentine writer with a capital W".[3]
1956:El caso Sabato. Torturas y libertad de prensa. Carta abierta al General Aramburu (The Sabato Case. Tortures and Liberty of Press. Open Letter to General Aramburu)
1956:El otro rostro del peronismo (The Other Face of Peronism)
1963:El escritor y sus fantasmas (Translated by Asa Zatz in 1990 asThe Writer in the Catastrophe of our Time.)
1963:Tango, discusión y clave (Tango: Discussion and Key)
1967:Significado de Pedro Henríquez Ureña (Significance of Pedro Henríquez Ureña)
1968:Tres aproximaciones a la literatura de nuestro tiempo: Robbe-Grillet, Borges, Sartre (Three Approximations to the Literature of our Time:Robbe-Grillet,Borges,Sartre)
1973:La cultura en la encrucijada nacional (Culture in the National Crossroads)
1976:Diálogos con Jorge Luis Borges (Dialogues with Jorge Luis Borges) (Edited by Orlando Barone)
1979:Apologías y rechazos (Apologies and Rebuttals)
1979:Los libros y su misión en la liberación e integración de la América Latina (Books and their Mission in the Liberation and Integration of Latin America)
1988:Entre la letra y la sangre. Conversaciones con Carlos Catania (Between Letter and Blood. Conversations with Carlos Catania)
1998:Antes del fin (Before the End)
Antes del fin is an autobiography in which he recounts his life and the influences on his political and ethical opinions. Sabato discusses the ill effects of globalization and the exalting of rationalism and materialism. There are also several tender passages about his school experiences in the 1920s (when there was moreidealism, Sabato says), about his deceased wife and son, Matilde and Jorge, and about the struggling workers he meets on the streets ofBuenos Aires.
Bacarisse, Salvador (1980).Abaddón el Exterminador: Sábato's Gnostic Eschatology, in Contemporary Latin American Fiction, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh 1980 (pp. 88–109).
(in Spanish) Bacarisse, Salvador (1983).Poncho celeste, banda punzó: la dualidad histórica argentina. Una interpretación de Sobre héroes y tumbas de Ernesto Sábato in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Madrid Enero-Marzo 1983 Números 391 393.
Conde, David (1981).Archetypal Patterns in Ernesto Sabato's Sobre héroes y tumbas.
Foster, David William (1975).Currents in the Contemporary Argentine Novel: Arlt, Mallea, Sabato, and Cortázar.
Francis, Nathan Travis (1973).Ernesto Sabato as a Literary Critic.
Oberhelman, Harley D. (1970).Ernesto Sabato.
Petersen, John Fred (1963).Ernesto Sabato: Essayist and Novelist.
Predmore, James R. (1977).A Critical Study of the Novels of Ernesto Sabato.
Price Munn, Nancy Elaine (1975).Ernesto Sabato: Theory and Practice of the Novel, 1945–1973.
(in Spanish) Wainerman Gonilsky, Luis (1978 [1971]).Sábato y el misterio de los ciegos.
