The Instituto Cervantes receives the legacy of the Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti

The Diplomat The Cervantes Letter Box has received the legacy of one of the most relevant writers of Latin American literature, the Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti (1909-1994), precursor of the great emergence of the Latin American novel. Books, letters, handwritten texts, a telegram, articles and editions of works from different periods in various languages have been kept since last Thursday in box number 1408 of the Institute's old vault. The director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero, participated in the event; Dolly Onetti, musician and widow of the writer; Pilar Reyes, director of the literary division of the Penguin Random House Publishing Group, and the journalist Hortensia Campanella, director of the Mario Benedetti Foundation and editor of the complete works of Juan Carlos Onetti. Onetti's family legacy consists of Chinese translations of the novels 'The Brief Life' and 'The Shipyard' and the Greek translation of the short novel 'The Well'. Likewise, among the documents bequeathed, the text for a telegram addressed to Rafael Alberti in which he wished him to receive the Cervantes Prize, letters to the Uruguayan writer Hugo Fontana, to his Italian translator Enrico Cicogna and to his mother-in-law - whom he reproached with humor that never told him “that Dolly didn't know how to cook” -, to his great friend the playwright Carlos Maggi or to the Uruguayan journalist Hugo Alfaro (which is accompanied by the poem ¡Balada del ausent'e, second and last poem by Onetti). Also included is the article 'Son and father of the jungle' about the work of his compatriot Horacio Quiroga, in which, contrary to what was usual, Onetti does not spare his praise for the storyteller. For its part, the Cervantes has donated the works 'Juntacadáveres', 'Time to embrace (unfinished novel)', 'The masks of love', 'The shipyard' and an issue of the magazine 'Cuadernos hispanoamericanos' dedicated to Onetti, a magazine that The author himself affectionately described it as 'the brick' due to its length and which placed it “as a reference figure for writers who represented the dynamics of Spanish literature,” according to García Montero. Onetti settled in Spain in the mid-seventies, as the director of Cervantes explained: “His political attitude led him to clashes with the Uruguayan authorities and Spain was lucky enough to have him settle here, where his merit was immediately recognized: he was a reference because it represented the true commitment to the literary vocation.” For the director of the Institute, “Onetti is one of the greats of our literature and he does not need this honor, but institutions like the Instituto Cervantes do.”

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