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He was Creator Emeritus of the National System of Art Creators since 1993.
Tribute to Fernando del Paso at the Palace of Fine Arts next Friday
November 14, 2018Novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, draftsman and painter, Fernando del Paso (Mexico City, April 1, 1935) died on Wednesday, November 14, at his home in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco.
Secretary of Culture of the Government of the Republic, María Cristina García Cepeda, announced that next Friday, November 16, a tribute will be paid to the writer at the Palace of Fine Arts, following an agreement with his family.
The head of Culture informed that on Thursday, November 15, she will attend with the representation of the President of the Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto, the homage that the University of Guadalajara will offer to the author.
García Cepeda pointed out that Fernando del Paso's work stimulates young people, new generations, and that "the best tribute that can be done to him is to continue reading the great legacy that he left us, we still have the excellence of his work".
In her Twitter account, María Cristina García Cepeda, wrote: "My deepest condolences for the death of Fernando del Paso, a great man of letters of our country. Cervantes Prize, National Prize of Sciences and Arts in Linguistics and Literature, and FIL in Romance Languages. A supportive embrace to his family, friends and the literary community".
In another twitt, she said: "What we could never measure was our love because it was infinite", this phrase by Fernando del Paso defines his own literature: a universe of words that earned him awards and recognitions, and above all, thousands of readers in different languages".
Although he wanted to be a doctor when he was very young, Fernando del Paso's aversion to blood led him to study economics and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In addition to writing, he worked as a publicist, program producer, translator and broadcaster for the BBC in London and Radio France International, and a diplomat in France. In November 2015 he was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize for Literature in Spanish Language, and on April 23, 2016 he received it at the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
"I worked for a number of years with all dedication and conscience in my work, wanting it to be prominent and outstanding, and now it seems to be, so I am very flattered and satisfied. I greet my readers and thank them for their dedication and enthusiasm, and I’ll see if I can write again," said the author of News from the Empire in an interview with the Department of Culture in 2016, celebrating his 81st birthday.
Fernando Del Paso lived for 14 years in London; in 1985 he moved to Paris, where he continued as a radio speaker, in addition to being cultural advisor to the Embassy of Mexico in Paris and consul general of Mexico in France. In Mexico he has also been an academic.
Recognized as one of the most important Mexican writers, he published almost twenty books, but his three great novels stand out: José Trigo (1966), Palinuro de México (1977) and News from the Empire (1987), which place him as one of the fundamental narrators in Latin American literature; with his crime novel Linda 67. A story of a crime (1995) he also managed to stand out in a literary genre he had not explored before.
He discovered his literary vocation when he was 10 years old, and he began doing several readings without interruption. "The vocation manifested itself with a poem to my mother and since then, literature has been more important to me than drawing and painting. Music is not my field of expertise," he said at the time in another interview.
Since he was little he showed interest in drawing and painting, but he did not achieve the success he had hoped for, however, he did not give up and continued with drawing as a complement to his writing.
For Fernando del Paso, writing is an act of loneliness and anguish; drawing is a time of placidity. Left-handed to draw and right-handed to write, Del Paso began to make doodles and pen drawings, which he has exhibited in galleries in different parts of the world.
Also author of poetry, theater, short stories and essays, this prolific writer has been recognized, awarded and honored for his novels in which the most solid roots of fiction are the historical facts, for him "literature is a recreation of life and in this country can not only mean recreation but also freedom and hope”.
Hugo Gutiérrez Vega referred to Fernando del Paso as "one of the essential voices of contemporary Mexican and universal literature, the three great novels José Trigo, railroads; Palinuro de México, Cristero war; News from the Empire, the adventure of Maximiliano and Carlota, the triumph of the Reformation. These three novels are truly exemplary, as Cervantes would say, exemplary in all senses, because in addition to their formal perfection, they include fundamental moments of Mexico's life and its spiritual climate.
In 1966, Fernando del Paso received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for his first novel, José Trigo, which deals with the 1958-1959 railroaders' strike, but is above all a vast homage to popular language and word games, a circular narrative that allows the reader to begin without following a chronological order.
Almost a decade later he published Palinuro de México, which earned him the Rómulo Gallegos International Prize and the Prize for the Best Foreign Novel published in France. A story about the events of the Student Movement of 1968 and the irreverent attitude of the young people of that time.
Translated into French, French critics said about Palinuro de México: "Homer's and James Joyce's Ulysses are like close relatives of this immense poem about love, death and the human body”. Del Paso has recognized in it his favorite novel for its high autobiographical content but warns: "I am not Palinuro, he is the character that I wanted to be and the others believed that I was but I could never be, although I wanted to be".
Published in 1988, New from the Empire is considered a brilliant historical novel from Latin America and the best Mexican novel of the 20th century. The story tells the tragic adventure of Maximilian and Charlotte of Habsburg in Mexico, but more the personal melodrama of Maximilian, Charlotte and Juarez, the novel is deep inside the historical melodrama of France and Mexico.
For 10 years, Fernando del Paso researched reports, documents, letters and works in several languages in order to build the most accurate novel about the second Mexican empire.
News from the Empire, with its almost 700 pages, became the most requested book on the shelves of bookstores in the year of its publication.
In that interview with the Department of Culture in 2016, he recalled how he worked on that novel: "A good part of News from the Empire was written in Mexico. I used to wake up at 5 a.m. and get to work very comfortably. I poured water on my face, drank a cup of coffee with bread, and began to work, from 5 to 8 or 9 a.m., then around 10 a.m. I had a little more breakfast and continued working. And when I run the Octavio Paz Ibero-American Library at the University of Guadalajara I went to work and in the afternoons and evenings I used to read, if I went by bus I began to read.
During the tribute paid to him in 2015 at the Palace of Fine Arts celebrating his 80th birthday, the then head of the Department of Culture, Rafael Tovar and de Teresa, recalled the years they both shared in Paris as diplomats and their literary exchanges while Del Paso wrote News from the Empire:
Among the marvelous texts we shared, the one that is, for me, one of the supreme novels of Mexican literature appeared as a Sun: News from the Empire. The book enlivened our conversations about European history of the 19th century and the basic texts of those years (...)
"The passion I feel for this book dates from the first moment Fernando del Paso tested me to see if I was really interested in the subject, so he read the first chapter to me. Months passed and one morning he entered my office and said: 'Rafa, I want to read you something', and he began: 'I am María Carlota Amelia Victoria Clementina Leopoldina, Princess of Nothingness and Emptiness, Sovereign of Foam and Dreams, Queen of Chimera and Oblivion, Empress of Lies: Today the messenger came to bring me News from the Empire, and told me that Carlos Lindbergh is crossing the Atlantic in a steel bird to take me back to Mexico'.
"They were the last words of the last chapter of the novel and he said to me: 'Yesterday I finished it'. It was an unforgettable moment: I could not say a word and I only approached to give him the most fraternal of hugs," Rafael Tovar and Teresa related.
Del Paso has been a traveler that since childhood, when he began to read Emilio Salgari and Julio Verne, the trip became a great illusion. "Throughout my life I have been able to travel and live in several countries, they are illusions that I have been able to satisfy," he said at the time in the interview.
At the beginning of 2016, the first work of the poet Fernando del Paso, Sonetos del amor y de lo diario, published in 1958, was republished by El Colegio Nacional in book-object format, as it included a drawing by the writer.
The verses of Sonetos del amor (Sonnets of Love) y de lo diario became known when Fernando del Paso was 23 years old and stand out for their sense of humor, critical exercise and handling of eroticism.
In poetry he also published De la A a la Z (1988), Paleta de diez colores (1990), Castillos en el aire (2002) and PoeMar (2004). His essays include Memoria y olvido, vida de Juan José Arreola (1994); in 1999 the UNAM published his Cuentos dispersos.
In drama, he wrote: La loca de Miramar (1988) Palinuro en la escalera (1992) and La muerte se va a Granada, (1998) -a play in verse about Federico García Lorca- in which he recognised his joy at the enthusiasm of the critics and the recognition of the readers for his work.
Fernando del Paso was an honorary member of the National Council of the Seminary of Mexican Culture, as well as an Emeritus Creator since 1993 of the National System of Art Creators, and a member of El Colegio Nacional since 1996. He was a Fellow of the Mexican Center of Writers, 1965; of the Ford Foundation, 1969 and 1970, and of the Guggenheim Foundation, 1971 and 1981. He joined the Academy as a corresponding member in Guadalajara in 2006.
He received, among other recognitions, the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize 1982 for Palinuro de México; Medicis Prize 1985-1986 for the Best Foreign Novel published in France; Radio Nacional de España Prize 1986 for the best literary program in Spanish for Carta a Juan Rulfo; Mazatlán Literature Prize 1988 for News from the Empire; National Prize of Sciences and Arts 1990; National Prize of Sciences and Arts in 1991; Prize of Literature of the Cultural Parliament of Mercosur, 2005; Prize Mexico City, 2005; Prize FIL of Literature 2007. In 2015 he was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize for Literature in the Spanish Language.
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