Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan essayist, was talking with Juan Gelman, the Argentine poet, about contemporaries. The poet asked, “Who are my contemporaries?”
Gelman became a citizen of Mexico after the collapse of democracy in Argentina in the 1970s. The autocratic government — as the thugs were called — murdered Gelman’s son and daughter-in-law.
Gelman said wherever he went in the world — Buenos Aires, Paris, wherever — he ran into people who smelled of fear. They didn’t seem like contemporaries. Perhaps the word suggests some kind of camaraderie that just wasn’t there for Gelman.
However, Gelman did not feel that he was alone. Galeano’s account:
But there is a Chinese, who, thousands of years ago, wrote a poem about a goatherd who is far from his beloved, and yet can hear in the middle of the night, in the middle of the snow, the sound of her comb running through her hair. And reading this distant poem, Juan finds that yes, these people — the poet, the goatherd and the woman — are truly his contemporaries.
I would love to better understand how we connect with art and artists — and with their fictional characters.
If I were to list my comrades — the people I feel closest too — I’d include people I never met and characters who existed only in stories.
I can imagine a biography that includes a list of characters from fiction who were beloved by the subject of the biography. I’m sure this person’s choice of contemporaries would be telling.
• Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces, translated by Cedric Belfrage; New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 244.
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