Edwards, Jorge

▪ 2001

      On April 24, 2000, King Juan Carlos of Spain presented the Cervantes Prize, the highest honour in Spanish-language literature, to Chilean writer Jorge Edwards. In his acceptance speech Edwards, the first Chilean to win the prize, remarked, “I never calculated the consequences of this calling in the beginning. It was an accidental path.”

      Edwards was born July 29, 1931, in Santiago, Chile. He studied law and philosophy at the University of Chile and earned a law degree in 1958. During his student years he published a collection of short stories, El patio (1952). In its portrayal of the alienation of a young man of the middle class, it was a noteworthy break from the prevailing national literary tradition, which emphasized the rural aspects of Chilean life.

      After graduation Edwards entered Chile's diplomatic corps and began a dual career as a government official and a writer. In 1959 his government sent him to the U.S. to study political science at Princeton University. While there, he wrote Gente de la ciudad (1961), a view of the dehumanizing effects of oppressive bureaucracy. He then went to Paris, where he served until 1967 as secretary of the Chilean embassy and representative for European affairs. During those years he wrote his first novel, El peso de la noche (1965), in which he described Chilean society as authoritarian with rigid social norms. Also in Paris he wrote Las máscaras (1967), a collection of short stories in which he broke away from social realism and raised the question of the limits between reality and fantasy, and Temas y variaciones (1969), short stories dealing with such subjects as self-destruction, isolation, anguish, and the desire for utopia.

      Returning to Chile in 1967, Edwards served as the nation's chairman of the Department of Eastern Affairs, often negotiating relations with socialist countries. He worked briefly in the Chilean embassy in Peru and in 1970 was sent to Cuba by Chile's first socialist president, Salvador Allende, with the mission of reinstating relations between the two countries. Edwards recounted his experiences there in Persona non grata (1973), which became his best-known book. In it he sharply criticized the regime of Cuban Pres. Fidel Castro, describing in detail the harassment of writers and the imprisonment of intellectuals and claiming that the only efficient aspect of Cuban society was the government secret police. Because of these views, Edwards was asked to leave Cuba in 1971. He served as assistant to the Chilean ambassador to France, but in 1973 he was expelled from the diplomatic corps by Chile's right-wing dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, who had overthrown Allende in a military coup. Edwards then lived in Spain and Chile, where he continued to write. Among his works during that time were El museo de cera (1981), a novel that revealed his feelings about the conditions in Chile during the Pinochet regime, and Adios, poeta— (1990), a study of Cuban poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda.

David R. Calhoun

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▪ Chilean writer, critic, and diplomat

born July 29, 1931, Santiago, Chile

      Chilean writer, literary critic, and diplomat who gained notoriety with the publication of Persona non grata (1973; Eng. trans. Persona non grata), a memoir of his experiences as the Chilean ambassador to Cuba in the early 1970s. Critical of the revolutionary socialist regime of Cuba's Fidel Castro (Castro, Fidel), the book created controversy among Latin American writers. In 1999 Edwards was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Hispanic world.

      After receiving a law degree at the University of Chile in 1958, Edwards began his career as a diplomat, and in 1959 the Chilean government sent him to Princeton University to study political science. His next major assignment took him to Paris, as secretary of the Chilean embassy. His collections of short fiction, which include El patio (1952; “The Backyard”), Gente de la ciudad (1961; “City People”), Las máscaras (1967; “The Masks”), and Temas y variaciones (1969; “Themes and Variations”), departed from prevailing Chilean literature in that the stories deal not with rural life but with middle-class bureaucrats.

      Edwards's novels about Chile include El peso de la noche (1965; “Night's Burden”), about the decay of the middle-class family; Los convidados de piedra (1978; “The Stone Guests”), a story set during the 1973 military coup; El museo de cera (1981; “Wax Museum”), a political allegory; La mujer imaginaria (1985; “The Imaginary Woman”), about the liberation of an upper-class, middle-aged female artist; El anfitrión (1987; “The Host”), a modern retelling of the Faust story; El origen del mundo (1996; “The Origins of the World”), which centres on leftist Chilean expatriates in Paris; El inútil de la familia (2004; “The Worthless One in the Family”), a fictionalized account of the life history of Edwards's uncle; and La casa de Dostoievsky (2008; “Dostoievsky's House”), about an unnamed avant-garde poet who travels to 1960s Cuba. Edwards's nonfiction works include Adiós, poeta (1990; “Good-bye, Poet”), a study of Pablo Neruda (Neruda, Pablo), El whisky de los poetas (1994; “The Whiskey of the Poets”), and Diálogos en un tejado (2003; “Dialogues on a Rooftop”).

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