Antonio Skarmeta

Esteban Antonio Skármeta Vranicic (Antofagasta, Chile, November 7, 1940) is a Chilean writer, winner of the 2014 National Literature Award. Considered one of the greatest figures in Latin American literature, he is internationally known for his texts made into movies, such as Ardiente paciencia, from which two films were made: one with the same title (1983) and another, more famous, called Il Postino —or Neruda's Postman— (1994); the novel El baile de la Victoria with the same title in the cinema (2009) and the piece El plebiscito inspired the script of the film by Pablo Larraín No (2012).

Biography

The son of Antonio Skármeta Simunović and Magdalena Vraničić, he is of Croatian descent. He attended basic education in various establishments, including the San Luis de Antofagasta School, while his secondary studies were carried out at the National Institute of Santiago.

Skármeta studied Philosophy at the former Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the University of Chile under the direction of the Spanish thinker Francisco Soler Grima, a disciple of Julián Marías and José Ortega y Gasset. His thesis dealt with the thought of the latter ("Ortega y Gasset (language, gesture and silence)", 1963). Following Soler's line, he was also interested in the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger.

In 1964 he obtained a Fulbright scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies in the United States, where he obtained a master's degree from Columbia University, New York (his thesis was on the narrative of Julio Cortázar). He traveled with his first wife, Cecilia Boisier, whom he had married that same year. Two children were born from the marriage with this Chilean painter, Beltrán (in 1966, upon his return from New York), a personal adviser and writer, and Gabriel (1968), a musician.

The two-year stay in the United States was very fruitful: he got used to the theater, film and music scene in Manhattan and studied theater with Paul Kozelka, from the Actor's Studio. There he also writes some stories set in North America that will form the basis of his first works of fiction.

Shortly after returning, he began working as a theater director at the Artistic Group of the Pedagogical Institute (CADIP), became a professor of Philosophy at the National Institute and published his first book of short stories -El entusiasmo, 1967-. Later he will teach in the old Faculty of Philosophy and Education of his alma mater . He first is in charge of the chair of Axiology (in the Department of Philosophy); Teaching assistant at that time was Jorge Acevedo Guerra, also a disciple of Francisco Soler Grima. He then he occupies a chair of General Literature (in the Department of Spanish).

During those years he worked sporadically on television and was part of a literature program on the University of Chile channel called Libro abierto and received his first major award: the Casa de las Americas 1969 by Naked on the Roof.

A left-wing intellectual, Skármeta was a member of the Movement of Popular and Unitary Action (MAPU) in the years of Popular Unity. After the military coup, the writer left the country together with the filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. His first stop was Argentina, where he lived for a year in the Barrio de Olivos and where he published his third book of short stories: Tiro libre (1974). He then left for West Germany, where he received in 1975 the scholarship of the Arts Program of the German Academy for Academic Exchange, thanks to which he was able to write his first novel I dreamed that the snow was on fire . Starting in 1979 he worked for three years as a professor for Screenplay at the German Film and Television Academy in West Berlin.

In 1981 Skármeta became romantically involved with the Berliner of Polish origin Nora Preperski, whom he would marry after returning to Chile, where Fabián Skármeta was born in September 1989.

It is in Germany that he built the story of Neruda's postman: first for German radio and then as a script. It is the development of the film of the same name that the author had released in 1983. The story appeared as a book under the title Burning Patience, in 1985, but after the triumph of the Michael Radford film it was renamed Neruda's postman. This work has been enormously successful, it has been translated into some thirty languages, adapted for cinema, theater and radio: "There are more than a hundred versions in the world," says Skármeta. The Mexican composer Daniel Catán created an opera based on it (he wrote the libretto himself) which premiered at the Los Angeles Opera under the title Il Postino with Plácido Domingo as Neruda and Cristina Gallardo-Domas as Matilde.

He returned to Chile in 1989, after a long exile of almost 16 years. The following year he founded the Heinrich Böll literary workshop at the Goethe Institute in Santiago, where a large part of the new generations of writers have passed. In 1992 he created and hosted the television program El show de los libros , broadcast by TVN.

In May 2000, during the presidency of Ricardo Lagos, he was appointed ambassador to Germany, a position he would hold until February 2003.

In addition to having taught at the University of Chile, he has also taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and at Colorado College.

On September 7, 2015, he was elected a member of the Chilean Academy of Language to occupy chair no. 20, which was vacant after the death, the previous year, of Óscar Pinochet de la Barra. on May 9, 2017; «Pedaling with San Juan de la Cruz. Presence in my work of the literary tradition of the Spanish language », he titled his incorporation speech.

He suffered from stomach cancer, for which he was successfully operated on in 2016 Pedro Bahamondes Ch. «Antonio Skármeta: “Now I know for sure that the idea of death does not terrify me”», La Tercera, 05.06.2017; access 07.05.2017</ref>

Skármeta and cinema

Passionate about the seventh art, Skármeta has written several scripts, directed at least two films and acted in five. In 1973 he wrote the first screenplay-Victoria -for the German director Peter Lilienthal, who directed the eponymous film which won a prize at the Baden-Baden Television Film Festival in 1974. The scripts for other Lilienthal films are also his: Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (1976); La insurrección (1980), which would later become the novel of the same name; and Der Radfahrer von San Cristóbal (1988), based on the story of the same name. He also wrote I see this country from afar (1978), a film by Christian Ziewer about a family of Chilean refugees in Germany; Die Spur des Vermißten (1980), by Joachim Kunert; Seine letzte Chance (1986) by Alexander von Eschwege; Neruda all the love (1998), by Chilean documentary filmmaker Ignacio Agüero and Brisa de Navidad (1999), by Mexican director Carlos Carrera.

In addition to the works adapted for the screen that have been mentioned here, they have also been taken to the cinema Burning Patience —by Skármeta himself in 1983 as director and screenwriter under the same title, by Michael Radford with the name of El cartero in 1994, awarded with many international prizes— and by Rodrigo Sepúlveda in 2022 under the title of Burning patience. El baile de la Victoria was made into a film in 2009 by Fernando Trueba and the piece El plebiscito, the starting point for the film No (2012) by Pablo Larrain. Brazilian Selton Mellon shot O filme da minha vida (The movie of my life, released in 2017), based on the novel A family man.

Works

Story

• The enthusiasm, editorial Zig-Zag, Santiago, 1967; downloadable from the portal Memoria Chilena, contains 8 stories:
  • «The Cinderella in San Francisco»; «The young man with the tale»; «The trot»; «Among all things the first is the sea»; «Blue days for an anchor»; «Nupcias»; «Public relations» and «Look where the wolf goes».
• Nude on the roof, Casa de las Américas, Havana, 1969; in the last editions it contains the following stories:
  • «The cyclist of San Cristobal»; «To the sands»; «A lap in the air»; «Final of the tango», «Pajarraco», «Basketball» and «Nude on the roof».
• Free range, stories, 21st Century Editors Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1973; divided into three parts, contains the following texts:
  • I: «Pescado»; «The Last Train»; «One to One»; II: «First Preparatory»; «Enroque»; «Balada para un fat»; «The Cigarette»; III: «Paris»; «Professional».
• Boyfriends and lonely, stories, 21st Century Editors Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1975.
• Freedom of movement, Random House Mondadori, 2015; contains 11 texts:
  • «When you are twenty-nine years old»; «Chispas»; «The goalkeeper of the mountain range»; «Borges»; «Timetable»; «Executive»; «Ephemer»; «A Colombian Christmas»; «The Lover of Teresa Clavel»; «Corazón parteío»; and «Oktoberlied»

Novel

• I dreamed of snow burning, editorial Planeta, Barcelona, 1975.
• Nothing happened., Pomaire, Barcelona, 1980.
• InsurrectionNorth Editions, Hanover, USA, 1982.
• Burning patience1985; after the success of the film, it reissues as Neruda's mailman; in 2018 Lumen published the novel as album book, with illustrations of Raquel Echenique
• Matchball, Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1989 (rebated in later editions as The speed of love; e.g.: Janes Square, 1997).
• The poet's wedding, Debate, Madrid, 1999.
• The trombone girl, Debate, Madrid, 2001.
• The Victory Dance, Planet, Barcelona, 2003.
• A movie father, Planet, Barcelona, 2010.
• The days of the rainbow, Planet, 2011.

Theatre

• The search1976
• Nothing happened., 1977
• The stain1978
• The composition1979
• Eighteen karats, theater, premiere on 25 June 2010 at the International Festival of Naples Theatre.

Children ' s literature

• The composition, story for children, 1998 (originally Skármeta wrote at the end of the 1970s a version for the radio, and then the story was published in Le Monde; Ekaré Editions published it in Caracas in 2000 with illustrations by Alfonso Ruano and South American produced an edition illustrated by María Delia Lozupone in 2006.
• The goalkeeper of the mountain rangeMexico, CIDCLI, 2012.

Other

• Neruda by Skármeta, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2004.

Selects, compilations, anthologies

• The cyclist of San Cristobal, storytelling, 1973
• Boyfriends and lonely, storytelling, editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1975.
• Cinderella in San Francisco and other stories, editorial Andrés Bello, Santiago, 1990; anthology containing 8 stories:
  • Fish; La Cinderella en San Francisco; To the sands; Nupcias; One by one; Look where the wolf goes.; The call and Man with the key in the mouth.
• One by one: full storiesSouth American, Buenos Aires, 1996.
• Personal anthology, San Juan, editorial of the University of Puerto Rico, 2009.

Awards and recognitions

• Fulbright (1964)
• Casa de las Américas Award 1968 by Nude on the roof .
• Scholarship Berliner Künstlerprogramm of DAAD (1975)
• International Prize for Bocaccio Literature 1996 by Nothing happened..
• Llibreter Award for the illustrated edition of his story The composition.
• Altazor 2000 Award The poet's wedding.
• 2001 Foreign Medicine Award The poet's wedding.
• Medalla Goethe 2002 (Germany).
• Premio Grinzane Cavour 2001 for the best novel of the year in Italy.
• José María Arguedas 2003 Narrativa Award
• 2003 Unesco Award for Child and Youth Literature for Tolerance The wording.
• Planet 2003 Award The Victory Dance.
• Municipal Literature Award for Santiago de Chile 2004 The Victory Dance.
• Premio Internazionale Ennio Flaiano 2006 por "el valor cultural y artistic de su obra" y, en particular, por The Victory Dance.
• Artistic and Cultural Merit Pablo Neruda 2010 (Chile)
• Planeta-Casa de América 2011 Award for The days of the rainbow.
• Premio al Mérito Literario Internacional Andrés Sabella 2011 (Feria Internacional del Libro Zicosur Antofagasta).
• Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (France).
• Comendador de las Artes y las Letras (Italy).
• Order Marko Marulic (Croatia).
• 2014 National Literature Award (Chile).