It was 63 years ago, on December 27, 1959, when Alfonso Reyes said goodbye to the world. For having been a poet, ambassador, narrator, playwright and essayist, he inspired and amazed all the Mexican writers of the 20th century, creators from other latitudes and thinkers from all over the world. (You just read the words that Jorge Luis Borges wrote to you: “Kings, the indecipherable providence / that administers the prodigal and the sparse, / gave some of us the sector or the arc, / but to you the total circumference.” )
Difficult to approach Reyes by the long road of the 24 volumes of his Complete Works; complicated, when just one of his compositions assails us and questions us without remedy. Overwhelming, looking for every line he wrote, and absurd to revere him because he was part of the Youth Association, he was an incomparable teacher and, because of him, El Colegio de México exists. Don’t be afraid, dear reader, to get close to Reyes, all you have to do is open one of the books he gave us.
Born in Monterrey in 1889, Alfonso was the son of General Bernardo Reyes, hero of the French Intervention and supporter, like almost no one in the North, of General Porfirio Díaz. Alfonso, since he was a child, showed inclinations and skills very different from those of his father. Art and the military lived in peace, under the same roof and each one in his corner. Alfonso soon realized that talent was largely not the fault of a muse, but insistence and will.
“I write: that’s all. I write as I live. I write as part of my natural economy. Later, the pages are classified into books, imposing an objective, impersonal, artistic, or artificial, order on them. But the work flows from me in an undifferentiated and continuous flow.
Reyes graduated as a lawyer at the age of 23, was secretary of the National School of Advanced Studies and founded the chair of History of the Spanish language and literature. But his studies stopped for a horrible moment: the day of his father’s death, murdered just on the first day of the Tragic Ten. The date gave a title to one of his works: “Prayer for February 9″a painful journey through the open wound caused by the disappearance of General Bernardo Reyes.
However, not even the duel could with his genius. Poetry, short stories, essays, anthologies, studies, articles, notes and even a kitchen minute book would multiply in paragraphs and pages.
Reyes was the hinge between a Mexico of ancient rebellions and the modernity that was coming undone. She taught him Spanish as her mother tongue, but she had to acquire the habit of others. (“Sometimes I regret speaking in Spanish – said – heard from the other shore must be something incomparable, full of snaps and lashes, a terrible cavalry charge with open vowels, through a bristling field of consonants stuck like stakes).
Always remembering Goethe’s phrase “Remember to live”, Don Alfonso always enjoyed good food, good wine, gatherings, friends at home and endless conversations. He said that sometimes life is so bitter that it makes him want to eat, and between sarcastic and melancholic he told about all the dishes he had eaten while traveling and living in Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Germany and traveling around the world. whole. “We desperately need them to tell us stories. Much like eating, he thought, because they help us organize reality and illuminate any chaos that arises. Literature, food, and any act of eating require time, planning, strategy, and knowledge. And man is nourished not only to ensure his growth and development but also for pleasure. Much more enjoyable if the food has a high taste quality, is fresh, has a beautiful color, perfect texture, indicated for the moment, and is beautifully presented.”
Exactly like that –deliciously and seasoned – He wrote about the December holidays. in his tale Christmas escape, no Christmas carols or spheres. He presents us with a very well seasoned dish where he writes the following:
“Let the golden wine jump out, sprinkling the turkey and the nougat. Joy of the coral mucus and the bristly and galano broom when –anachronistic eclogue, not even Greek– the army of turkeys, led by a nameless shepherd, breaks through the rows of cars in our cities! The shop windows stick out their chests and shine with temptations. People storm the trams, fill their hands with little packages. And the pecan-flavored turkeys crowd in amazement in the middle of the four corners like an indecisive islet of brown and red.
And for the New Year – which does not take long – his wonderful storyDinner” where the main character starts at the end and runs, fleeing in terror from a meeting as enigmatic as it is terrifying.
Reyes wrote until the end of days. On the last page of his Diary, after wondering if he would die of erudition, only one line: “They killed me.”
We only know one thing: that he is not dead, he just left. And he left us so many gifts to open that the holidays will last forever.
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