Cervantes Prize: Cecilia Roth thanked on behalf Cristina Peri Rossi with a strongly feminist and anti-war speech

The kings of Spain presented this Friday at noon (Madrid time) the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious of spanish lyrics, to Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi, who was unable to attend personally due to health problems and was represented by Argentinian actress Cecilia Roth. A bronchospasm prevented the 80-year-old novelist and poet from traveling from Barcelona, where she has lived for decades, to Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of the author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, where a solemn ceremony takes place every year to commemorate the day of the death of Miguel Cervantes, on 23 April. This year, the ceremony was brought forward one day.

Roth, with the proven acting quality of an actress, read with emphasis the words written by Peri Rossi. It was a decidedly feminist speech. “It was clear to me that in a patriarchal society being a woman and independent was rare and suspicious,” Roth said on behalf of Peri Rossi to recall a relative's comment: women shouldn't write because if they did, they ended up in suicide (like Sappho of Lesvos, Virginia Woolf or Alfonsina Storni). That's why he talked about “commitment.” “Compromise is everything from an article against Putin or a tribute to women raped in Ciudad Juarez to Cortázar's stories. As much commitment as writing a lyrical poem that exalts the desire between two women or between a man and a woman.”

Peri Rossi was referring to her uncle who, although “fiercely misogynistic”, owned a huge library with which she began to read and love books. He highlighted three: The diary of Anne Frank; The mother, by Maximo Gorki and precisely Don Quixote de la Mancha. The latter was difficult for him to read, but at the same time “I was excited that his purpose was to break wrongs and establish justice”. There he remembered the battered women who lived in his neighborhood. “How did I wish Don Quixote would appear then, with his skinny Rocinante to save them from beatings and mistreatment”.

He also spoke of his exile from Uruguay in the 70s, and his arrival in a Spain that also lived under a repressive regime. “I turned resistance into literature (...) and instead of renouncing society (...) from my books, since my life, I have tried as 'Doña Quixota', to 'break' wrongs and fight for freedom and justice,” Peri Rossi said in the text read by Roth.

“Her writing in the various genres that she has cultivated involves irony and lucidity, humor and tenderness,” highlighted King Felipe VI, who thanked the author “to have proved rebellious, submissive and transgressive”.

The winner of Cervantes, considered the Nobel Prize for Letters in the Spanish language, was announced last November, when the jury stressed that Peri Rossi's work, “bridge between Ibero-America and Spain, must remain as a perpetual reminder of the exile and political tragedies of the twentieth century”.

The jury chaired by José Manuel Sánchez Ron, appointed by the Royal Spanish Academy, awarded this prize to the Uruguayan poet for “recognizing in her the career of one of the great literary vocations of our time and the size of a writer capable of translating her talent into a plurality of genres. Cristina Peri Rossi's literature is a constant exercise of exploration and criticism, without shying away from the value of the word as an expression of a commitment to key issues of contemporary conversation such as the condition of women and sexuality. Likewise, his work, a bridge between Ibero-America and Spain, must remain as a perpetual reminder of the exile and political tragedies of the twentieth century”.

Peri Rossi, the sixth woman to win the Cervantes, has written almost twenty books of poetry, fifteen stories and several novels, which have earned her numerous awards. He cultivated various genres such as the novel, with works such as La nave de los locos' (1984), Love is a hard drug (1999), Everything I couldn't tell you (2017) or the autobiographical novel La unmissa (2020); the story, with books such as Private Rooms (2012) or Los amores wrong (2015); the essay with titles such as About Writing (1991) or When Smoking Was a Pleasure (2003); as well as poetry, with titles such as Description of a Shipwreck (1975), Babel Bárbara (1992), Playstation (2009) or The Replicants (2016).

Born in Montevideo in 1941, Peri Rossi had to leave her country in 1972 for political reasons and moved to Barcelona, from where she had to flee again, in this case to Paris, for a couple of years, persecuted by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975). He recalled that in Uruguay “as punishment my books and even the mention of my name were banned. I miraculously saved my life.”

In addition to being a writer, Peri Rossi has been a professor of literature, translator and journalist.

Before Peri Rossi, the last winners of Cervantes were Spaniards Francisco Brines (2020) and Joan Margarit (2019), both deceased in 2021, Uruguayan Ida Vitale (2018) and Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez (2017). Since it began to be awarded in 1976, the award has gone to authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Camilo José Cela, Álvaro Mutis and Eduardo Mendoza. The Cervantes Prize is endowed with 125 thousand euros (about 144.00 dollars).

Source: AP

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