AGOSTO DE 2017
PERSONAJES
Sábato and
the drowned
“Dark night, with a strong south wind. It has just struck
eleven, but the streets of Bocas del Toro are already
deserted. A group of stray dogs hisses hysterically their
fear of the dark sky. “
T
his is how Guillermo Sánchez-Borbón’s (1924), better known in the world
of significant words like Tristan Solarte, dramatic novel The Drowned be-
gins:
At the end of the Peace Congress in Vienna (1952) I went through several
countries of “popular democracy”, a poetic name with which they were bapti-
zed by order of dear comrade Stalin, a man addicted to euphemisms.
I immediately realized that communism had failed. Back in Panama all
doors were closed to me because of that trip. I went to Bocas del Toro and there
it gave me an atrocious depression.
Partly to scare away the dark clouds that haunted me, I decided to write to
distract me - or perhaps as therapy - a crime novel. But the poet proposes and
the muses dispose. Instead of the crime novel, The drowned came out. I wrote
it feverishly, in 15 days, straight. I do not wish to go through another similar
process.
Everything was born like this: I was sitting on a park bench with a char-
ming friend (Benjamin Fitzgerald, already deceased). He was a painter and
self-taught musician. In addition, he played all known musical instruments.
Everyone loved him in Bocas. Then I wondered, what would happen if this
young man, who does not have a single enemy, appears one day murdered?
I started out from an idea of a crime novel and on the way I got derailed and
came out all the obsessions that had accumulated in my head.
Since then I did not type, the novel was typed clean by my friend Mérido
Cotez.
When I finished, I became seriously ill, but the novel freed me from all my
obsessions. Especially the suffocating Tulivieja.
After writing The Drowned, I spent seven years working on the estate, until
1960. That year I was invited to participate in the Encounter of Writers of
America, held in Concepción, Chile. There I became close friends with the
great Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato (1911-2011).
Francisco Chiari Remón won the presidential elections and, like José Ma-
ría (1918-1973), Guillermo’s older brother, a storyteller, had supported him,
obtained the appointment as cultural attaché of the Panama embassy in Bue-
nos Aires.
Guillermo continues in his minimemories edited by Alberto Gualde:
I lived three years in Buenos Aires. They sent me ... the ambassador told me
to stay home, writing.
I became close friends with Sábato.... I often saw Sábato. He had just deli-
vered “On Heroes and Tombs” to his editor and insisted that he also edit The
Drowned.
Unfortunately, the publishing house Fabril closed soon after and that was
very bad for me. Publishers of other languages were interested in translating
and publishing it. It was translated into French only (Le Noyé, translated by
Maurice Serrat) because, due to the chaos that reigned in Fabril, they did not
even reply to the correspondence.
“It seems unfair to me that this novel remains hidden in a corner of Pa-
nama. I am happy about its publication especially for the readers, “said that
universal Argentinean.
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