Mary Kodama

María Kodama (Buenos Aires, March 10, 1937) is an Argentine writer, translator and professor of literature, known for her relationship with the writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Biography

Maria Kodama in 2010.

She was born in Buenos Aires, the daughter of María Antonia Schweizer, of Swiss-German, English and Spanish descent, and the Japanese chemist Yosaburo Kodama. Her marriage certificate states that she was born in 1941. However, according to her birth certificate, she was born on March 10, 1937.

She met the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in literary study sessions thanks to her degree in Literature and their shared interest in Anglo-Saxon languages. Later they began studying Icelandic, a language in which Borges was interested, considering it a mother tongue.

After being a fellow student (in numerous interviews she flatly denied having been his personal secretary) in 1975 they traveled together to the United States. He collaborates with him on the books Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology (1978) and Atlas (1984), testimony of trips that both made together around the world, and on the translation of the Gylfaginning, first book of Snorri Sturluson's Lesser Edda, published under the title Gylfi's Hallucination. In 1978 a film directed by Ricardo Wullicher called Borges for Millions was released, in which Kodama appeared.

On April 26, 1986, she married the writer, a few months before his death. The wedding was carried out by proxy in Asunción, Paraguay.She presided over the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation, based in Buenos Aires.

On December 4, 2019, he was the protagonist of a controversy with the then president-elect of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, when he rejected the initiative to create a "Borges Museum" with manuscripts donated by the businessman Alejandro Roemmers. In exclusive statements to the Noticias Argentinas agency, Kodama stated that the books that the businessman intended to provide had been "stolen"; to Borges by a domestic employee After the accusation, Alejandro Roemmers claimed that he had "supporting documentation"; to verify that Borges's papers were legitimately acquired.

Work

• Tribute to Borges, Lumen (2016)
• Reports, South American (2018)