Skarmeta, Antonio

▪ 1999

      In 1998 the award-winning Chilean novelist Antonio Skármeta was chosen to write the screenplay for the movie adaptation of Isabel Allende's novel Eva Luna. The choice of Skármeta was not really surprising. The author of Ardiente paciencia (1985; Burning Patience, 1987)—the source novel of the 1995 Academy Award-nominated Italian motion picture Il postino (The Postman)—was himself an accomplished screenwriter and the director of several films, including a 1983 award-winning version of Ardiente paciencia.

      Skármeta was born on Nov. 7, 1940, in Antofagasta, Chile, the grandson of Yugoslav immigrants. While attending the University of Santiago, from which he graduated in 1963, he produced plays by Edward Albee, William Saroyan, and Eugène Ionesco with the university drama group. He published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled El entusiasmo (1967), the year after he graduated with a master's degree from Columbia University. It was followed by Desnudo en el tejado (1969), which won the Casa de las Américas de la Habana Prize and was the first of his works to be widely translated, and El ciclista del San Cristóbal (1973). He finished another collection, Tiro libre (1973), and the novel Soñé que la nieve ardía (1975; I Dreamt the Snow Was Burning, 1985) while living in Argentina in exile from Chile's military regime. In 1975 he moved to Berlin, where he lived until 1988, when he returned to Santiago. During this period he wrote Ardiente paciencia, as well as Novios y solitarios (1975), No pasó nada (1980), and La insurrección (1980; The Insurrection, 1983).

      Ardiente paciencia, Skármeta's best-known work, is the story of an extraordinary friendship that develops between the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, living in exile, and his postman; it has been translated into 20 languages. The book's title was inspired by a quote from the French poet Arthur Rimbaud—"A l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides villes." ("At dawn, armed with burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.") Skármeta wrote that he wanted "to say to all men of good faith, to the workers, and to the poets, that the entire future was expressed by Rimbaud in that one sentence: only with burning patience shall we conquer the splendid city that will give light, justice, and dignity to all men. Thus poetry will not have sung in vain." Skármeta's other books included Match Ball (1989) and Watch Where the Wolf Is Going (1991), an anthology of his short stories in English translation. He also wrote several film scripts, hosted a successful television program on books, and translated a number of English-language works into Spanish.

KATHLEEN KUIPER

* * *