Reconstructing Benedetti's Mind Through His Thoughts, a Challenge for CeMaB

What was going through Benedetti's mind? This is the question faced by the Ibero-American Literary Studies Center of the UA. The cataloging of the press clippings that the Uruguayan collected on topics that he found "especially interesting" has led CeMaB to "reconstruct" the author's thoughts on three of his "admired" contemporaries, who were "always objects of his attention".

The director of CeMaB, Beatriz Aracil, explains to TodoAlicante that the proposal to carry out a research proposal around this question is on the table for the second semester of this academic year. It is an "interesting" suggestion that could be launched as a thesis by the UA and this center.

For now, the cataloging of Mario Benedetti's press clippings around Carlos Fuentes, Vargas Llosa, and García Márquez is already operational and archived at CeMaB. "Anyone can consult the bank and, if interested, we send a digitized image," details Aracil.

The digital archives show the "intensity" with which Benedetti collected information about the authors, symbolizing the "admiration" that the Peruvian felt towards them, which "persisted over time" despite ideological differences. It is, in Aracil's words, the ability that Fuentes, Vargas Llosa, and García Márquez had to create "a total novel closely linked to Latin American reality" that triggered his fascination.

Thanks to these clippings, CeMaB has found that despite distancing himself "personally," Benedetti remained interested in these three authors, an "interesting observation" captured in their database -under the section title 'Press Reader'- accessible to any researcher interested in delving into the Uruguayan's more personal side.

These files also include Benedetti's handwritten poems, whose digitization process took nearly ten months and highlights a "lost material" that complements -and also becomes part of- the essays published by the author.

They also show that Benedetti "worked like a craftsman," with notes taken on small notebook sheets. This discovery also allows us to know and discuss "how poets read each other."