Sergio Pitol Deméneghi (1933-2018) was a Mexican writer, essayist, novelist, and short story writer. His literary work was prolific and he published more than forty books, in addition to multiple editions that he made as a translator. His work in the field of letters lasted until the end of his life..
One of the most prominent elements in Pitol's work was emotional expressiveness, to the point of transmitting great nostalgia to the reader. The development of his stories and novels comprised two stages: the first was marked by pessimism, while the second was more reflective and focused on the psychological and moral.
The best known titles of this intellectual were: Hell of All, Bukhara Night, The House of the Tribe, The Parade of Love and Tame the Divine Heron. Pitol received several awards and recognitions throughout his career, including the National Literature Award and the Miguel de Cervantes Award..
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Sergio was born on March 18, 1933 in Puebla. The writer was orphaned at an early age. He first lost his father when he was just four years old. After that tragedy the family moved to El Potrero, Veracruz, and misfortune came back to Pitol's life when his mother drowned in a river.
This undoubtedly marked Pitol's childhood, who had been in the care of relatives from the age of five. There he completed his primary and secondary studies, which were interrupted many times by the malaria he suffered until he was twelve years old..
The time he spent confined at home due to illness was spent reading authors such as Charles Dickens, Leon Tolstoy, William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and Pablo Neruda. When he finished high school, he went to Mexico City to study law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
After completing his university studies, he began teaching at UNAM and at the Universidad Veracruzana. In 1959 the fondness he felt for literature since he was a child led him to publish his first book of short stories., Fenced time. At that time he was a professor at the University of Bristol, UK..
Sergio Pitol began his diplomatic career in the 1960s, when he was barely twenty-seven years old. He served as a cultural representative of Mexico in several European cities: Budapest, Moscow, Prague, Paris and Warsaw.
During his stay in the Old World, he learned other languages, related to advances in literature, and kept writing. In 1967 he conceived There is no such place, his second work of stories. Later he studied and worked as a translator in Barcelona from 1969 to 1972.
The writer spent the last years of his life dedicated to his literary production and traveling through various countries working as a translator. Some of his most recent posts were: Trilogy of Memory, Icarus, An Underground Autobiography Y The third character.
For more than two decades he lived in Xalapa, Veracruz. As time went by, his health began to weaken and he suffered a stroke that caused several complications. He passed away on April 12, 2018 in Mexico at the age of eighty-five..
- Magazine award Adventure and Mystery in 1957, for the story Amelia Otero.
- Rodolo Goes Award by the National Institute of Fine Arts in 1973, for The ringing of a flute.
- The Word and the Man Award in 1980, for Asymmetry.
- Xavier Villaurrutia Award in 1981, for the story Bukhara Night.
- Colima Narrative Fine Arts Award for Work Published in 1982.
- National Prize for Literature in 1983.
- Herralde Novel Prize in 1984, for The parade of love.
- National Prize of Sciences and Arts in Linguistics and Literature in 1993.
- Mazatlán Prize for Literature in 1997, for the memory The Art of Fugue.
- Member of the Mexican Academy of Language since January 23, 1997.
- Doctor Honoris Causa by the Metropolitan Autonomous University in 1998.
- Juan Rulfo Award in 1999.
- Juan Rulfo Prize for Latin American and Caribbean Literature in 1999.
- Award Internazionale Bellunesi che Hanno Onorato the Province in Italia e nel Mondo in 2000, Venice.
- Francisco Xavier Clavijero National Award in 2002.
- Miguel de Cervantes Award in 2005.
- Alfonso Reyes International Award in 2015.
Pitol's literary style was characterized by the use of clean, well-crafted, and above all expressive language. His work was influenced by his personal experiences, hence the nostalgic traits. There were two stages that distinguished his work.
The author's first writings focused on memories, on the stories he heard from a child about his country and the different armed struggles that marked his history. While the second stage of his literary career was one of maturity, growth and reflection on the evolution of the human being.
- Fenced time (1959).
- There is no such place (1967).
- Of the nuptial meeting (1970).
- Hell of all (1971).
- Bukhara Night (nineteen eighty one). It was reissued three years later with the title: Mephisto Waltz. It was made up of:
- "The Venetian tale of Billie Upward".
- "Asymmetry".
- "Mephisto-Waltzer".
- "Night of Bukhara".
- Thrush Cemetery (1982).
- A body present (1990).
- A long trip (1999).
- Climates (1972).
- From Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf: six novelists in their texts (1975).
- The house of the tribe (1989).
- Juan Soriano: the perpetual rebel (1993).
- Addiction to the English: life and work of ten novelists (2002).
- From reality to literature (2003).
- The third character, essays (2013).
- The ringing of a flute (1972).
- The parade of love (1984).
- Floral games (1985).
- Tame the divine heron (1988).
- Married life (1991).
- Asymmetry: personal anthology (1980).
- The Venetian tale of Billie Upward (1992).
- Dreaming Reality: A Personal Anthology (1998).
- All the stories (1998).
- Carnival triptych (1999). It was made up of the following titles:
- "Tame the divine heron".
- "The parade of love".
- "Married life".
- Everything is in all things (2000).
- The tales of a life (2002).
- Collected Works II (2003).
- Collected works III: stories and stories (2004).
- The dark twin brother and other stories (2004).
- Collected Works IV: Autobiographical Writings (2006).
- The best stories (2006).
- Memory trilogy (2007). Made of:
- "Trip".
- "The Art of Fugue".
- "The Wizard of Vienna".
- Icarus (2007).
- The homeland of Latin American language, readings and writings (2013).
- The Art of Fugue (nineteen ninety six).
- Passion for the plot (1998).
- Trip (2000).
- The Wizard of Vienna (2005).
- A buried autobiography (2010).Memory: 1933-1966 (2011).
- Executive Personnel Management: How to Get Better Results from People (1960).
- Socialism in the nuclear age (1968).
- The good soldier (1971).
- Modern culture in Latin America (1971).
- Goodbye to all that (1971).
- The turn of the Screw (1971).
- Emma (1972).
- Heart of Darkness (1974).
- The volcano, the mezcal, the commissioners ... two letters (1984).
- Around the eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1985).
- You are worth your weight in gold (1989).
- The Aspern Papers (1998).
- Bostonians (2007).
- Daisy miller Y The Aspern Papers (2015).
- Dark evil (1966).
- Mortal jump (1969).
- The cities of the world (1971).
- The reckoning and other stories (1968).
- Love (1970).
- The gates of paradise (1965).
- Letters to Mrs. Z (1966).
- Contemporary Polish Short Story Anthology (1967).
- Mother of kings (1968).
- Argentine newspaper (1968).
- Cosmos (1969).
- Virginity (1970).
- Ocean liner (1971).
- Bakakaï (1974).
- Rondo (1991).
- The defense (1990).
- Stories (1997).
- A home drama (2008).
It was Pitol's first novel, which he conceived during the second stage of the development of his work, also known as "that of travel." As the author himself stated, it was a recognition of European writers: Herman Broch and Thomas Mann.
The main theme of this narrative was related to creation, both in painting and in literature and cinema. The rest of the story was complemented with small plots to lighten the analyzes that the writer carried out on the main approaches.
“There was silence for a few minutes. At last he dared to ask timidly:
-Is it a poem of yours?
-Do you think that I am easier to play than a flute? You great fool! Was this good for me having dragged you to Gilguld's Hamlet? Why three days later do you not recognize one of the most important monologues?
“A whistle. The train was about to leave. They ran. They barely managed to get the porter to open the door again to carry the suitcases. He saw Carlos disintegrate, suddenly engulfed by a cloud of steam. He looked up at the latticework on the ceiling; when he lowered it again, the cloud had disappeared and with it his friend ".
It was one of Sergio Pinol's best-known storybooks. It is also known by the title of Mephisto Waltz, after the edition that came out in 1984. The work was conceived during the years that he lived outside of Mexico, and with it he won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 1981.
The narratives of the titles that make up this work are related to travel, and in a deeper sense are linked to the destination, what is and what is desired. Loneliness and nostalgia also stood out in the stories. The book was made up of four stories:
- "The Venetian tale of Billie Upward".
- "Night of Bukhara".
- "Asymmetry".
- "Mephisto-Waltzer".
“Perhaps Gianni's displeasure at Billie Upward's account of the Mexican tribulations was the reason why one night, shortly before the end of the holidays, he took up the book again…
“It is difficult to decipher the intentions of the text. What was it? A fight between the possibilities of association and disintegration of consciousness? The journey of Alice, the protagonist, through Venice involves an incessant search ... ".
It was a novel by Pitol in which he combined various narratives to tell the story. There is a narrator who made known the experiences of a writer, while this one exposed those of Dante C. de la Estrella. The latter became the protagonist of his own experiences in Rome and Istanbul.
“It was none other than Istanbul where I met one of the greatest phonies in history. A living fraud who claimed to be called Marietta Karapetiz ... In places of worse than doubtful morals, she was known by the nom de guerre of Handyman Silk ...
"... of the most repulsive convivialities and the most unbridled orgies, and that nevertheless navigated the world displaying strict academic manners ...".
- “One is the books he has read, the painting he has seen, the music heard and forgotten, the streets traveled. One is your childhood, your family, a few friends, a few loves, a lot of annoyances. One is a sum diminished by infinite subtractions ".
- "Inspiration is the most delicate fruit of memory".
- "A book read at different times is transformed into several books".
- "I do not write for anyone, but for what I am writing, run the adventure afterwards and find, if you find them, your readers".
- "The only influence from which one must defend oneself is one's own".
- "I am convinced that even the inexistence of readers will not be able to banish poetry".
- "Everyone, both the chaste and the lascivious, have learned that suffering is the shadow of all love, that love unfolds into love and suffering".
- "A novelist is someone who hears voices through voices".
- “Since my beginnings, my writing has been surrounded by narrow limits: a few themes and characters, a limited time. I have not jumped to the present ".
- “An attribute of memory is its inexhaustible capacity to bring surprises. Another, its unpredictability ".
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