María Kodama, widow of Jorge Luis Borges, has died this Sunday at the age of 86.
The news of his death has been confirmed by his lawyer, Fernando Soto, on Twitter: “Now you will enter the 'great sea' with your beloved Borges.
May you rest in peace, Maria."
A translator and professor of Literature, Kodama suffered from breast cancer and lived on the outskirts of Buenos Aires
.
She had married the fundamental writer of Argentine literature in April 1986, two months before her death, and since then she was in charge of his work and legacy, which she jealously protected.
The daughter of a Japanese chemist and an Argentine, María Kodama was born on March 10, 1937. She met Borges as a Literature student in the sixties.
He was 38 years older.
They signed two books together:
Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology,
a compilation of one of their great joint passions, English literature;
and
Atlas,
a book of his travels published in 1984 with the impressions of the writer, fiercely attacked by the blindness that accompanied him for decades, and the notes and photographs of his companion.
In 1988, Kodama created the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation, which she chaired until her death.
As guardian of Borges's work, Kodama sued another writer for experimenting with
El Aleph
,
his most famous story, and even fought with the current president, Alberto Fernández.
In 2019, the president tried to create a museum for the writer with the personal file of a collector, and Kodama disapproved: he then denounced that many of the 30,000 objects that the businessman Alejandro Roemmers was going to donate to the State were stolen.
[News in development]
