Mauricio Rosencof Uruguay

© Carlos Contrera

Rosencof was born in Uruguay in 1933, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. Initially Rosencof worked as a journalist, writer and literary and artistic director. He became politically active, finally joining the National Liberation Movement Tupamaros. He was arrested in 1972 and sentenced to a 13 years’ solitary confinement in a 2-square-metre cell, a “hostage” of the military regime.

Since Rosencof was freed in 1985 during a general amnesty he has been invited to numerous conferences and congresses at the most important universities in Europe and America. His dramatic works have been performed internationally. His prose texts El Bataraz and Las cartas que no llegaron (“The Letters which never arrived”) are yet to be discovered.

In Las cartas que no llegaron young Moishe talks about his oppressive childhood and youth, which were marked by war, loss, flight and indomitable courage. As an adult Moishe will report again later from La Paz. His letters are evidence of deep humanity that has survived death, letters full of music, macabre humour and sadness which never arrived. And those in El Bataraz were never written, for the first-person narrator had neither paper nor pen at his disposal to satisfy his urgent need to communicate during his years of solitary confinement. He does so with a cock, the bataraz. With fascination the reader enters into the narrator’s physical and mental world and asks himself, whether the bataraz actually existed: having shared the narrator’s fate of imprisonment and torture and having assumed the role of conversation partner, in the end, this cell companion mutates into his betrayer and executor.

Las cartas que no llegaron: Every formulation is pointed and apt, its unpretentious style polished and exact, without a single superfluous word.

Eva Massingue, LITERATURNACHRICHTEN

In his novel El enviado del fuego (“The Envoy of Fire”), Rosencof passes the word on to the inhabitants of a mental home in a long monologue, which argues for unconditional love, tenderness, human dignity and humour being the only weapons against discontentment in every day life.

The sonnets entitled La Margarita, which were written in prison and smuggled out in the seams of clothes, tell in simple words the story of a first love, of an imaginary Margarita, a girl from the neighbourhood. In 1994 the popular Uruguayan rock musician Jaime Roos put 15 of the 25 sonnets to music. The poems and CD have now been reissued in an attractive new edition, together with interviews with those involved.

Like the sonnets, Rosencof’s work Una góndola ancló en la esquina (“A Gondola Dropped Anchor on the Corner”) evokes the atmosphere of the southern quarter of Montevideo at the beginning of the 1960s. The wonderfully woven story tells of a confetti salesman who, on his search for love, makes a pact with the devil, and henceforth meanders through the area on a gondola until he finally finds happiness. The events – which include other small romantic dramas – are observed and commented on by four card players in the local café. It may not appear so at first, but they take on the very essentials of life.

In Medio Mundo ("Half World") the author reflects on humanity and on the urgent need for man to take control of his destiny, a destiny that only depends on his strength and conviction, because God, this apparently omnipotent and eternal figure, created man as an intelligent and free being, even though the reality, both actual and historic, reveals that he left a lot of unfinished business, with many unpleasant events to follow.

In this novel the omnipotent God figure has lost his strength and in a last attempt to exercise his absolute control he cannot think of anything else to do but call a meeting, 2,000 years later, in a very non biblical setting, a suburb of Montevideo, with the protagonists of that biblical story: Jesus of Nazareth, Mary, Judas, Mary Magdalene and the fishermen. All these characters are called together for this particular meeting without knowing why or who it is that has brought them together. Only at the end, at the last supper, which on this occasion is a more human affair, with exquisite delicacies, do they realise that the God who called them together has no more cards to play. This punishing God who tried to correct a civilisation by drowning it in a flood and who refrained from acting during Hiroshima and Auschwitz, has nothing left to offer. Now everything is in our hands alone.

In this latest novel, Rosencof calls on the strength of humanity, on the strength of everything and every one of us to build a better future, one that is freer and less dark. In the rewriting of certain Biblical passages, man is given that unique opportunity, beyond Biblical maxims: to love each other.

Original editions and rights sold:

Novels:

Las cartas que no llegaron, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2000, 174 p.

Brazil: Record ● France: Les Folies d’ Encre 2009 ● Germany: Residenz (extracts only) 1997, Edition Köln 2004 ● Italy: Le Lettere 2008 ● US: University of New Mexico Press 2004

El Bataraz, Montevideo: Alfaguara 1999, 190 p.

France: Les Folies d’ Encre 2011 ● Germany: Libertäre Assoziation 1995 ● Spain: Alcalá

El enviado del fuego, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2004, 177 p.

Germany: Edition Köln 2007

El barrio era una fiesta, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2005, 174 p.

Italy: Noripios ● Spain: Alcalá 2011

Una góndola ancló en la esquina, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2007, 200 p.

Medio mundo, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2009, 162 p.

Sala 8, Montevideo: Alfaguara digital 2012, 142 p.

Italy: Nova Delphi

Other texts:

Conversaciones con la Alpargata, Montevideo: Arca 1989, 153 p.;

Banda Oriental 2004, 94 p., with a foreword by Mario Benedetti.

France: Le rayon littéraire ● US: The Kenyion Review, vol. 13, 3, 1991

Als der Kerker zur Theaterwerkstatt wurde (speeches and interviews)

Germany: Büro für Kultur- und Medienprojekte 1995

Hundeleben

(poetry, speeches and interviews)

Germany: Libertäre Assoziation 1990 ● Turkey: Belge 1992

Memorias del calabozo, Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 3 vols.

Germany: Libertäre Assoziation 1990 ● Greece: Koukkida ● Italy: Iacobelli 2009 ● Netherlands: Ravijn 1993 ● Turkey: 1992

Participation in anthologies:

Abécédaire incomplet de l'humour juif, France: Folies d’Encre 2011

For children:

Leyendas del abuelo de la tarde, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2004, 62 p.

Italy: Nuova Delphi ● Spain: Alcalá

Lo grande que es ser chiquito, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2008, 30 p.

Spain: Alcalá

Poetry:

La Margarita, new edition by Alfaguara 2006, 66 p. (book + CD)