Biography of Jose Emilio Pacheco
La Biography of Jose Emilio Pacheco He tells us that this great writer is the son of María del Carmen Berny Abreu and José María Pacheco Chi. José Emilio Pacheco Berny was born on Guanajuato Street 183 in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City on June 30, 1939, living there for a large part of his childhood, and then moving to the city of Veracruz where he lived with his grandparents.
His initiation into literature was due to two fundamental aspects, the first was the discovery of a large family library, and the second, the experience with Professor Moreno Tagle, whom he met when he was approximately fifteen years old and who was the one who guided him in his first readings and in the fact of knowing Mexican literature.
However, his passion for literature began at a very young age, when at the age of 8 he attended a musical adaptation of Don Quixote de la Mancha, directed by Salvador Novo, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City; and according to his own words, that show revealed to him that the language in which he was born «can be for those who know how to use it, something similar to the music of the show, the colors of the clothes and the houses that illuminate the stage».
According to Biography of Jose Emilio PachecoHe married Mexican journalist and writer Cristina Romo Hernández in 1962, with whom he fathered two daughters: Laura Emilia and Cecilia. Cristina Romo Hernández has distinguished herself by writing countless children's stories and has won important and renowned awards, including the National Journalism Prize.
The writer José Emilio Pacheco died on January 26, 2014, at the age of 74, at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition in Mexico City, due to cardiac arrest. José Emilio Pacheco had been hospitalized the day before after suffering a fall and tripping over the books stored in his study after finishing writing his column "Inventario" for the weekly magazine "Proceso," hitting his head hard. "He went peacefully," said his beloved daughter Laura Emilia Pacheco. He goes down in history as one of the greats of Latin America, along with other writers such as Chavez Nogales.
literary influences
Furthermore, the Biography of Jose Emilio Pacheco brings us closer to his favorite authors. In his free time he devoted himself to reading works by authors Julio Verne, Oscar Wilde, Manuel Payno, Amado Nervo, Jorge Luis Borges, Alfonso Reyes and Rubén Darío, not to mention the visits made by a series of prominent writers such as Jose Vasconcelos, Héctor Pérez Martinez, Juan de la Cabada, Juan José Arreola, among others, to his parents' house, where the child José Emilio never tired of listening to them and learning from them, and their experiences.
As a child, his grandparents gave him the novel Quo Vadis, and he created a children's version of it to go beyond where its author had left off, demonstrating how far he could continue what others started.
From that moment on, José Emilio's biography continued to explore the world of poetry, chronicles, novels, short stories, narrative, translation, and literary criticism during the following years of his life, appearing alongside the great Latin American poets such as Carlos Monsiváis, Eduardo Lizalde, Sergio Pitol, Juan Vicente Melo, Juan García Ponce, Salvador Elizondo, and Sergio Galindo, among others.
He began writing in his teens, publishing articles in student newspapers and magazines at the Preparatory School called 'Proa' in 1955. Between 1956 and 1958, he wrote for 'Diario de Yucatán' and 'Diario del Sureste' in Mérida. At the Faculty of Law, he wrote the student publications 'Índice' (1957) and 'Letras Nuevas' (New Letters), the latter of which was dedicated to the Philosophy and Literature section of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
He was part of the bohemian and cosmopolitan vision of his generation, addressing themes such as childhood and fantasy worlds, history and cyclical time, even the city and death itself. His fiction is notable for its debates about life in the modern world and for its use of contrived language, which is difficult to understand in his literature and artistic production.
His studies
The data Biography of Jose Emilio Pacheco They reveal to us that he studied Law and Literature at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and there he started working at the magazine Medio Siglo, abandoning his studies at the age of 19 to dedicate himself completely to literature.
He formed the direction of the Ramas Nuevas supplement of the Estaciones magazine and the editorial staff of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) magazine. He also served as editor-in-chief of the supplement México en la cultura.
He also directed the university student library and has been a member of the Colegio Nacional since 1986. He worked as a researcher in the Department of Historical Studies at the INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History), where his work focused on the reconstruction of Mexican cultural life from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth centuries. This work influenced José Emilio Pacheco to broaden his perspective on life, reflected in many of his works. This work led to various anthologies, many of which have been translated into different languages.
He was a professor at various universities in Mexico, at the University of Maryland (College Park) and the University of Essex, among others in the United States, Canada and England.
The passage of time, life, and death form the backbone of his works. His poetic and narrative work, meanwhile, is based on the extreme purification of ornamental elements. To this end, he introduces themes such as the loss of childhood and emotional relationships. His social and historical concern and commitment to his country are evident in most of his works.
His articles and essays are characterized by being based on literature, addressing political and social issues. His verses are written in everyday language that makes them deceptively simple, and his poetry often turns ironic.
Works by Jose Emilio Pacheco
A common feature of his works is the constant renewal and re-evaluation, since he considered literature as dynamic and changing. José Emilio Pacheco perceives literature as something that moves, that changes, which led him to reread, improve and reconsider his own works, in a desire for self-criticism. His conception of rewriting encompasses the dialogue with previous texts.
At the Cervantes Prize award ceremony, he commented: "read a lot, write a lot, publish a little", in fact, his books, which are few, are an example of difficult simplicity, he never stopped correcting himself. For what he considered endless writing, a work that is constantly corrected not only by its author, but also by contact with its readers.
José Antonio Pascual Rodríguez, a member of the Cervantes Prize jury and representative of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), referring to José Emilio Pacheco, expressed the following:
“An exceptional poet of everyday life, with a depth, a freedom of thought, an ability to create his own world, an ironic distance from reality when necessary, and a use of language… that is impeccable”
José Emilio Pacheco described translations with the term approximations, for him making a translation was a creative task that he did with that intermediation, it was not just transferring from one language to another, but also using creativity.
In addition to approaching texts for adults, he dedicated himself to translating as a complementary activity, texts with the intention of reaching children, having as his own experience the knowledge that literature was reached from a very young age. As an example of these texts we have "Alice for children" by Lewis Carrol, "The book of riddles" by Mónica Beisner, "Circos" by Vicente Rojo, and "The mirror of echoes" by Jesus Cisneros.
José Emilio Pacheco stands out for using direct and simple, humble and normal words in his works, which differed from the figurative language used by the other great poets of the time. His verses do not have any type of idle ornament, and they are exposed in a colloquial language, which makes them extremely simple.
Love becomes an element always visible in its different stages, both in his poetic work and in the narrative; for example, in his book "Battles in the desert" he narrates love at the beginning of adolescence, as in "At the beginning of pleasure", including erotic themes in some of his poems.
He participated in different cultural magazines and supplements, such as "La cultura de México, siempre!", directed by Fernando Benitez, whom he considered his guide and best friend, contributing to his career acquiring great quality and becoming recognized.
For decades, he worked as a contributor to the Mexican weekly magazine of opinion and political and social analysis, Proceso. And in the Excelsior newspaper, in its cultural supplement, Diorama, he excelled in his column, "Inventory." Initially a miscellaneous column, it gradually became a monograph, with literature and its authors as its recurring theme. "Inventory" became one of José Antonio Pacheco's most surprising and creative works, and one of the main reasons he was awarded and recognized with the National Journalism Prize in 1980.
Below we'll detail his works, specifying the genres: poetry, short stories, novels, articles, translations, and anthologies. This list is chronological.
Poetry
Poetry was undoubtedly his genre, with the extreme purity of ornamental elements being a primary characteristic of his poetic work, written in everyday, simple language that was understandable to any reader. He always emphasized his social and political commitment to his country, consistently highlighting themes of life, death, and the passage of time. Furthermore, many of his poetic works are filled with irony, dark humor, and parody.
For José Emilio Pacheco writing was his being. “The language in which I was born constitutes my only wealth”, he said in 2010 when he was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Prize. According to Pacheco's vision, the poet is the critic of his time and a metaphysician concerned with the meaning of history, history and criticism must go hand in hand. He is convinced that writing has a popular character, that it lacks a specific author and belongs to everyone.
In his work "Don't Ask Me How Time Passes," he introduces irony and critical irreverence as his main characteristics, marking a significant shift in his poetic work. His work "You Will Go and You Won't Return" reflects a special interest in denouncing injustice, as it is a work of social significance.
According to Biography of Jose Emilio Pacheco, the famous writer of Mexican literature has left us the following works as a poetic legacy:
- The Elements of the Night (1963)
- The Rest of the Fire (1966)
- Don't Ask Me How Time Passes (1969)
- You'll Go and You Won't Come Back (1973)
- Adrift Islands (1976)
- Since then (1979)
- The Works of the Sea (1983)
- I look at the earth (1987)
- City of Memory (1990)
- The Silence of the Moon (1996)
- The Wandering Sand (1999)
- Last century (2000)
- Sooner or Later (Poems 1958-2009) (2009; complete poetry, FCE)
- Like the Rain (2009)
- The Age of Darkness (2009)
- The Mirror of Echoes (2012)
Tales
His stories stand out for being containers with few ornamental details and also for their brevity. José Emilo Pachecho gives us the opportunity to read among his stories:
The Distant Wind (1963)
Among the stories written by José Emilio Pacheco is "The Distant Wind," written in 1963, which depicts children learning to survive in an unfavorable and absurd environment, and adolescents experiencing the passion of first love and the shame of being scorned. This work conceals the rejection, violence, and threat that appear when least expected.
The Pleasure Principle (1972)
For its part, The Pleasure Principle is made up of five short stories and a short novel, where love and sexuality are revealed in an environment of perversity, falsehood, and depravity. The rest of the stories reveal friendship, hate and dependency, being able to be considered as extraordinary stories of an inadmissible reality, which despite changing every day, basically remains the same.
The Blood of Medusa and Other Fringe Tales (1956 and 1984)
The blood of Medusa was not conceived by José Emilio Pacheco as a book, but rather it is the grouping of the stories written in the first years of his career, those published in his early years in little-known magazines, and some more that are not known. they had collected.
Novels
- You Will Die Far Away (1967)
- The Battles in the Desert (1981)
Morirás lejos is a novel and therefore it is hypothetical, it is presented as a bold experiment that handles different narrative levels, which shows the story of a man who goes to the park every day and could be a vigilante who observes the actions of eme, a man who hides in one of the neighboring houses and who, as he suspects he is being spied on, watches the other closely trying to verify his intentions.
It is unknown whether Eme is a Nazi criminal, nor whether the other has finally located him in a long pursuit that spans years. This present invokes the Roman Empire's war against the Jews and the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, progressing to the expulsion from Thessaloniki, the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, and culminating in the extermination camps where Nazi Germany mechanized genocide.
Battles in the Desert is a masterful short novel that tells a sweet and bitter story of an impossible love, filled with nostalgia, with a common and ordinary terror that the protagonists preferred to believe was something phantasmagorical and extraordinary, involving aspects such as the loss of childhood, social and political corruption, the beginning of modern Mexico and the country's desperation.
Recent
To describe «Inventario», there is nothing better than making a verbatim quote from the prologue by Juan Viloro in the second edition of it:
Foreword by Juan Villoro to the second edition
From 1973 to 2014, for four decades, the weekly column "Inventory" was an unavoidable reference for understanding culture in Mexico. The immense erudition of José Emilio Pacheco allowed his readers to approach both Mexican and universal literature, history and the most significant cultural events. Pacheco sought to understand events by linking them to broader contexts, often in unexpected ways.
"Inventory" became from the first years a new literary genre, a space where everything fit and where everything was connected with everything in always agile, exciting and intelligent texts, where history and literature constantly crossed and where they often met. I had the feeling of being before crucial moments.
In the “inventory” genre, imagination and information, a sense of humor and the finest texts about the great poets of history, from Sappho to Juan Gelman, naturally coexisted. Many of his themes returned in new "Inventories": the French Intervention, the liberals of the Mexican nineteenth century, López Velarde, Darío, Borges, Paz, modernism, Vasconcelos, the murder of Obregón as a setting for fictional characters.
Pacheco always wanted his “Inventories” to be collected in a book, but never all of them. This selection follows his instructions and covers the many facets of this column. These three volumes include a third of the published texts and give a clear account of his well-deserved prestige. Inventory. Anthology is the most long-awaited book by José Emilio Pacheco.
- Inventory I. Anthology. 1973-1983 (2017)
- Inventory II. Anthology. 1984-1992 (2017)
- Inventory III. Anthology. 1993-2014 (2017)
Translations
- Four Quartets, by TS Eliot
- What It Looks Like by Samuel Beckett
- Imaginary Lives, by Marcel Schwob
- Deep, by Oscar Wilde
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Anthology
Anthology of Modernism (1884-1921) (1970). Mexico City, UNAM: José Emilio Pacheco compiled in "Anthology of Mexican Modernism" the texts that forever changed the meaning of the word poetry. These texts feature calligrams, initial Mexican haikus, and the first erotic verses, highlighting the country's urban, village, and natural landscapes.
This anthology is marked by the exploits of literature and not by politics. Poems by Manuel Gutierrez Nájera and Ramón López Velarde, including poets from the modernist constellation such as Francisco Gonzalez León, Father Alfredo R. Placencia, Manuel José Othón, Luis G. Urbano, and Salvador Díaz Mirón.
film and music
José Emilio Pacheco's works have been successfully performed in film, music, and radio, transcending the boundaries of literary circles. In 1972, "El Castillo de la pura," directed by Arturo Ripstein, and scripted by José Emilio Pacheco, featured the following actors: Claudio Brook, Rita Macedo, Arturo Beristáin, Diana Bracho, María Rojo, Gladys Bermejo, among others.
In 1987 an adaptation to the novel "The battles of the desert" was produced, called "Mariana, Mariana" directed by Alberto Isaac, and guided by Vicente Leñero, with the participation of the actors Luis Mario, Gerardo Quiroz, Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Aarón Hernán, Saby Kamalich, and Elizabeth Aguilar.
Then, in 1992, a musical lyric based on the story of the book "Las Batallas en el Desierto" is made, called "Las Batallas" presented in the single Café Tacuba of the homonymous group.
In 1995, the Nuevo León Symphony Orchestra, Season of Young Values, released a symphonic work for tenor called "El descanso del fuego" (The Rest of Fire), and the symphony orchestra by the Monterrey composer Gustavo A. Farías García, which included poems from the book of the same name by José Emilio Pacheco.
In the years 1961-1964, a weekly program of conversations and commentaries on literary news is carried out on Radio Universidad UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) called "Between books" with the participation of Carlos Monsivais, Rosario Castellanos, Juan Vicente Melo, and Sergio Pitol.
Between 1961 and 1969, "Cine verdad" was published, a chronicler of the weekly film magazine, a cultural publication of Mexican cinemas. Gabriel García Márquez, Julieta Campos, Carlos Fuentes, Luis Suárez, and Juan Dutch participated.
And finally, in 1968, the album with a prologue by Eduardo Lizalde was released to the public, with the Voz Viva de México, from UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico).
Awards
It is worth noting that José Emilio Pacheco has received fewer awards and recognitions than he deserves in his category, as he is a discreet and very conservative writer. However, his career has earned him prestigious and very important awards, which we list below:
- His first Prize was Magda Donato 1967 for You will die away
- Aguas Calientes National Poetry Award 1969 for Don't ask me how time goes by
- He was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 1973 for The pleasure principle
- Doctor Honoris Causa of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (November 16, 1979)
- In addition, he won the 1980 Mexican National Journalism Award for Cultural Dissemination.
- Malcolm Lowry 1991 for his career (Literary Essay)
- National Prize for Sciences and Arts in the Area of Linguistics and Literature 1992
- José Asunción Silva for the best book of poems in Spanish published between 1990 and 1995
- Mazatlan of Literature 1999
- He was awarded the José Donoso Ibero-American Prize for Letters in 2001.
- He also received the Octavio Paz International Prize for Poetry and Essay 2003
- Ibero-American Poetry Ramón López Velarde 2003
- Alfonso Reyes International Award 2004
- He was awarded the 2004 Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize.
- Poetry Federico García Lorca 2005
- Honorary member of the Mexican Academy of Language (May 23, 2006)
- Queen Sofía Award for Ibero-American Poetry 2009
- They also awarded him the 1808 Medal, awarded by the government of the Federal District (June 25, 2009)
- Gold Medal for Fine Arts, awarded by the Ministry of Public Education of Mexico (June 28, 2009)
- Cervantes Prize 2009
- Honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (September 11, 2009)
- He also received an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Campeche (March 3, 2010).
- Honorary doctorate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (September 23, 2010)
- Alfonso Reyes Award 2011, from El Colegio de México
Among his famous phrases:
«I chose to be a writer and at this point I am still an apprentice
who knows nothing of his work and for whom each page
is again the first and may be the last»
Conclusion
A reader since childhood, José Emilio Pacheco belongs to the last generation who experienced the world through radio. His friendship with Carlos Monsiváis dates back to his university days, as well as his first contributions to various magazines, including Medio Siglo and Estaciones. In 1958, his collection of short stories "La sangre de Medusa" (The Blood of Medusa) was published; later in the 60s, the poetry collections "Los elementos de la noche" (The Elements of the Night), "El descanso del fuego" (The Rest of Fire), and the emblematic work of his lyrical output, "No mepreguntes cómo pasa el tiempo" (Don't Ask Me How Time Passes) appeared.
The publication of the novel «You will die far away» dates back to this decade, which has been said to be one of the best narrative works of the time. Titles such as «You will go and you will not return», «Islands adrift», «Zoology album», «The silence of the moon», or the endearing novel «The battles in the desert» and the stories collected in «The beginning of pleasure" and "The distant wind" make José Emilio Pacheco not only a prolific author but one of the voices that masterfully reflects a nostalgic Mexico, a city that rests on the collective conscience of the passengers of the XNUMXth century.
But his works transcend narrative and poetic boundaries, as evidenced by his work as an editor, columnist, essayist, and literary historian. His work as a translator is also worthy of mention, aspects that make José Emilio Pacheco one of the great masters of Mexican literature.
The literary career reflected in José Emilio Pacheco's biography has been recognized with the most important awards, such as the Javier Villaurrutia Prize, the Aguas Calientes Poetry Prize, the National Prize for Literature and Linguistics, and the José Asunción Silva Prize for the best book of poems in Spanish published between 1990 and 1995, to name a few. He spent most of his life in a total and unlimited dedication to literature, to the preservation of Mexican memory, and to the enrichment of culture.
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