Is Olive Oil A Vegestable Shortening

David Viñas and Ernesto Sabato , divers truths

by Omi Fernandez

By honoring Maria Elena Walsh from this column, we did not imagine they would suffer the loss of two talented and popular writers in the same year. Two different personalities together, but who joined the same commitment to the letters.

DAVID VINES died on March 10, 2011, at age 83, all who passed by the café La Paz, we saw it with your cup of coffee and cigarette, affable to those who approach him. Claw was a writer, his writings are born of a beloved fury, built in the pain of losing two children during the military dictatorship, and also the violence that generated the social lies and hypocrisy.

Long before personal tragedy, was president of the FUBA, first steps of a militant of the left, which was maintained throughout his life. Created, with his brother Ismael, the magazine CONTOUR, a merger between his political activism and his love of letters, which helped Juan Jose Sebreli and Noah Jitric, among others.

At age 30, published An Everyday God , a novella about the conflict of a priest, a great religious book written by an agnostic. followed The men of the earth, Dar face, In the tragic week, horsemen , and many more. In all his political commitment is present, their fight visceral contra la injusticia, el abuso de las clases gobernantes, la oligarquía abulonada al sillón del poder.

Como ensayista analizó y desmenuzó la literatura argentina desde Sarmiento a Cortázar, considerando la relación literatura y sociedad.

Escribió ensayos sobre los indios, los montoneros, los anarquistas, todos ellos producto de un estudio serio sobre el tema y con su particularísima visión de la realidad. Pero, es a mi entender su obra ficcional la que lo trasciende, la que lo coloca en uno de los sitiales más altos de la literatura argentina. Recibió dos veces el Premio Nacional de Literatura, y en 1991 rejected the $ 25,000 Guggenheim Fellowship, in his words "as a tribute to their daughters." Writers of his generation as Haroldo Conti and Rodolfo Walsh are among the missing from the military dictatorship. He was a survivor, was forced into exile and return, took the chair of literature at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the UBA, which kept his unbridled passion and attitude to learn.

Unlike Viñas, who maintained throughout his political life together with his literary activity, Ernesto Sabato, in his youth a member of the Communist Party but soon becomes disillusioned, especially the policy of Stalin. Besides, he was dedicated to science, received a doctorate in physics and achieved a scholarship to do research on atomic radiation in the Curie Laboratory in Paris. The grant is obtained through the intermediary of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Dr. Bernardo Houssey, who had high expectations for their students, therefore, to learn that in France Sabato following a vocational crisis decides to leave the science to devote himself to literature, takes the salute.

In his autobiographical "Before the end" Sabato tells us how he felt at that stage: "The Curie Laboratory, one of the highest goals we could expect a physicist, I found it meaningless. Beaten by disbelief, followed by a strong forward momentum that rejected my soul."

back to Argentina in 1940 and is a professor at the University of La Plata and start writing articles, some of which are published in the Journal South directed by Victoria Ocampo

His first book is One and the Universe, a set of texts poetic reflection on which criticizes the dehumanization of science and technologies.

Unlike Viñas was a prolific writer, Sabato wrote three works of fiction: THE Tunnel, On Heroes and Tombs and Abaddon the destroyer. The tunnel is made into a film, like "Report on blind" part of On Heroes and Tombs. The rest of his published work consists of essays, reflections and philosophical texts.

In 1983 he was summoned by President Raul Alfonsin to preside over the CONADEP (National Commission on Disappeared People), the synthesis of this work was published under the title "Never Again" and led to the trials of military juntas dictatorship.

Sabato was an introvert, struggling with his ghosts and demons, pessimistic in his later years, almost apocalyptic. He married in 1936 Matilda Kusminsky Richter, who had two children. She was his companion and friend for 62 years, was his spine and fire who saved much of the work we know.

In recent years, vision problems prevented him from reading and writing so he turned to painting, making several exhibitions. In March there 100 years old, but failed, the tribute they had prepared for him at the Feria del Libro de Buenos Aires 2011, was made without him and with the assistance of his son Mario (director).

Vineyards and Sabato, two different writers in their literary style, in their ideology, their way of coping with life but with a common denominator: they both traveled through the years the road to find their truths intellectual honesty.

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