Santiago Kovadloff: "If the ideal of the republic falls, the ideal of politics disappears."
Daylight begins to fade and flows into the living room of Santiago Kovadloff 's (1942) apartment, a cozy space filled with objects, books, and works of art collected over a lifetime. The building, a century-old structure located on Riobamba Street, still retains its old charm.
He moved here more than forty years ago. He spent half his life here and wrote a robust body of work that includes essays, poetry, and translations. It was also here that he welcomed his youngest daughter, Julia. “When I arrived here, I was still immortal. But today I know this is the place where I will live until the end of my life. Riobamba also means my last place,” Kovadloff says in an intimate conversation with La Nacion.
He has just published The Sum of the Days: Fragments of a Life (Emecé), a diary written between 1985 and 2023. This text, which was not originally intended for publication, is more than a literary autobiography. It is, in a sense, the portrait of a life. And in those forty years, marked by the joy of writing, glimmers of farewells to parents and grandparents, family life and children, her brother Hugo, her passion for music, and her beloved Fernando Pessoa.
In this living room, which exudes pure warmth, there will be a moment to discuss this tense political present, marked by a "sewer language" that persists in underestimating dialogue. "It actually enhanced the prominence of the monologue," Kovadloff notes, explaining why.
Cristina Kirchner had political enemies, but the current president went further. “Milei considers anyone who isn't on her side to be absolutely irrelevant, but existentially irrelevant, not just politically. It's as if there's been an ontological increase, on Milei's part, regarding the devaluation of the other,” describes Kovadloff, vice president of the Argentine Academy of Letters and member of the Argentine Academy of Political and Moral Sciences.
The conversation, which weaves together past and present, will not avoid questions about the future, the final season, the final farewell. “It's goodbye, yes, this is the season of goodbye. Without melancholy. I feel fulfilled. I'd like to leave with a smile,” says the writer.
– You could say that this apartment, your home for 42 years, is also a witness and protagonist of this book. You mention your move to Riobamba and that initial feeling of strangeness, but almost everything ended up happening here.
–You touch on a point that surprises me because it's true, without me having thought about it. We came to live here because we were looking for a place for Julia, who didn't have any space at all in the house where we lived before. But it's true that in the last 42, 43 years, everything has happened to me here, even aging. Even! When I arrived here, I was still immortal. I had the feeling I'd reached a place where our life gained more power with that third daughter. But today I know this is the place where I'm going to live until the end of my life. And here we touch on a central point. Many things are uncertain regarding the outcome of one's own life, but I know it will be in this place. Riobamba also means my last place. And I say this without melancholy, more like someone discovering something within the imponderable that is every end.
– Your diary begins in 1984. Although there is no political context, it seems to be the journey of a personal and literary life that intertwines with the democratic life of Argentina .
–Yes, in fact, Julia's birth came after many years, during the years of the military dictatorship, when that daughter didn't arrive. She was born in 1985. So Julia arrived with democracy as well.
– In your entry of June 14, 1986, you wrote, “Jorge Luis Borges, that immensity, died today. I wouldn't say he was the best. I would say he was unique like no other.” And you recall that Borges had said to Alfonsín: “Mr. President, you have restored to us the duty of hope.” In your case, does hope remain? Or does the duty of hope remain?
–The duty of hope remains. Not hope, but the duty of hope. Because it seems to me that an inseparable feature of civic sensitivity is the need for politics. Politics, democratically understood, is necessary. And I believe that, if the ideal of the republic falls, in some way the ideal of politics disappears, because politics without a republic leads to the most primitive form of social organization: authoritarianism, anarchy. And I continue to believe that hope is imposed as a task, the sensitivity that civic citizenship has. I am not a politician, but I am a citizen. And as such, I have a stake. And I did. In any case, I continue to believe that we are in the hands of something quite similar to what we wanted to leave behind.
I really like working, bullfighting with the draft, stirring the raw material and finding what is significant.
– In what sense?
–In terms of what consideration of the other means, I don't see any major changes. The transition from Kirchnerism to Mileiism didn't leave behind the underestimation of dialogue. On the contrary, it strengthened the prominence of the monologue. It strengthened it, gave it even more power, because Cristina Kirchner had political enemies, and Milei considers anyone who isn't on her side absolutely irrelevant—but existentially irrelevant, not just politically. It's as if there's been an ontological increase, on Milei's part, regarding the devaluation of the other. We've gone from "you're not with me because you don't think like me," to "you don't think or mean anything, and you're part not only of a political caste, but of a social standing that allows me to equate you with animality." There's a shift from the human order to the zoological order. It seems to me that this aggravated the irrelevance of the other and subsumed the meaning of the word "adversary" even more deeply into insignificance.
The problem with this government is that it managed to gain relative unanimity through its political management and began to generate discontent due to the unilateral nature of its language.
– You have referred to the “sewer language” that governs us.
–Yes. I'm talking about a language that has a sinister history in the history of Western culture. The first to notice it was Kafka. He noticed it in his time as something circulating in the streets, and it seems to me that it can be the preamble to all forms of violence that are justified because one is not attacking a fellow human being, a human being. When verbal violence takes over the characterization of the adversary, it can end up rendering their existence irrelevant.
– There are those who believe that these “sewer” words and insults “tell things as they are” and have the value of being “authentic.”
–There's something very interesting: the plausibility of his discourse was proven by his electoral victory. In other words, his electoral victory proves the representativeness of that discourse. Now, what may be representative at one point can lose overall representation over the course of a political administration. I believe the problem this government has is that it managed to gain relative unanimity through its political administration and began to generate discontent due to the one-sidedness of its language, which was no longer representative of a general social demand, even though Milei still holds a majority. But if we analyze the majority he has, it's a decreasing majority, a decreasing majority. There's something in the demand of the non-Milei sectors that supported him out of fear or whatever, who are now asking for a much greater openness to coexistence in language. It would be extraordinary if the President could gain ground in terms of a more suitable vocabulary for coexistence, but I see that as quite difficult.
Milei has generated a real trauma in political society, because a trauma is a phenomenon that consists of being paralyzed by an event
– While on one side words are used like missiles, in the heterogeneous opposition camp there is, generally speaking, silence, impotence, resignation, and disorientation. There are no words because there are no ideas or answers.
–I completely agree. I think Milei's prominence doesn't stem from the fact that he can persuade those who don't think like him, but from the fact that what's happening on the other side is a complete silence and bewilderment. No one knows what to do about him. All the forces that once had political significance have lost their prominence, but today they don't. Today they are individuals striving to represent something more than doctrinally significant forces, but they are individualisms without power, without ideas, without power to attract the electorate. It seems to me that Milei has generated a true trauma in political society, because a trauma is a phenomenon that consists of being paralyzed by an event. And I think he has generated paralysis, that is, a political inability to react. There is no reaction to his discourse. Many people can demonstrate against him, Peronism, for example, but they do so in the name of social ideals that are representative of a past that I don't think will return, and not of a project for the future. And when you see the discourse of those in Pro, of Karina Milei's current allies, it has the meekness of resignation. It's a kind of discourse that justifies a lack of ideas.
– To create this book, you undertook a process of selecting and editing the material that ultimately survived. Is it possible to speak of a balance or reckoning? How would you describe that process?
–First and foremost, this is my first book that wasn't born out of the intention of making a book. I set out to write a diary and finish it, not leave it posthumously. I didn't want it to outlive me, at least not in the form of an unpublished original. So I began to read it, but with the intention of seeing what I could do if I published it. And I discovered it was the diary of a writer, and not necessarily the diary of a husband, the diary of a father, the diary of a son. Although we're all there. Me as a young man approaching old age, and as an older man looking back. I realized I had expressive literary material there and that it was justifiable for me to select short texts that, in their apparent discontinuity across all those profiles, nevertheless gave a portrait of a life in all those aspects. But I especially wanted to capture the twists and turns of writing my books: the hope or joy of being able to get a good page and suddenly discovering the next day that it wasn't any good. It was really interesting for me to read that process because it taught me about the ability to wait. Knowing how to wait allows the right word to come and rescue you from the conviction that you're sterile and can't generate anything more. And there's also the joy of work, because for me, writing is a great joy. I don't write tormented. When I write, I feel like I've defeated the torment. I really enjoy working, wrestling with the draft, sorting through all that raw material there, and from so many emotions, finding what might be meaningful to me.
– On May 22, 1997, you wrote that you were working with Graciela Fernández Meijide on a book about the story of her son Pablo, who disappeared in 1977 at the age of 17.
–Yes, I met Graciela at the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, which Enrique Vázquez, the journalist from Humor magazine, had taken me to. I met Graciela and her husband, and we became very close friends. She's Julia's godmother. It was a fascinating job because she brought me the originals, and we discussed them. Especially from an expressive point of view: her battle to put the unspeakable into language. For me, it was a privilege to be able to accompany her in that endeavor. As Graciela says, she was able to write when she overcame hatred.
– Let's go back to the beginning of the conversation, where we talked about endings, the final season, and finitude. Do you think about that moment? Do you think about how you would like it to be?
–I think about it a lot. I'm 82 years old and healthy, but I don't kid myself. This has to end. I don't know how it's going to end. I once wrote: "I'd like her to find me at my desk working like Merleau-Ponty, on the table" (laughs). My penultimate book of poems is called The Last Skies . And it's a long goodbye. And I believe that yes, that death lives on in my loving feeling of each day that passes. In that passing of the day and in that coming of the day lies the farewell. Because of the way I live the arrival and the departure. I feel it. I don't feel it violently, I feel it sweetly. I'm living the stage of a long farewell, and I live it with inner peace. I did what I wanted, I knew love, I knew fatherhood, the beauty of having children, the joy and pain of watching them grow and leave. I've lost my parents now; I have a brother, the only one I have, but I have him. We are both witnesses. But it's goodbye, yes, this is the season for goodbye. Without melancholy. I feel fulfilled. I'd like to leave with a smile.
–...
–My wife and Patricia talk a lot about the death of one of us, about who will go first, before the other. I joke about it and tell her, “Look, I think I've been a gentleman all my life, but for the first time, you're going to let me go first.”
INSPIRED ESSAYIST, POET AND TRANSLATOR
PROFILE: Santiago Kovadloff
Santiago Kovadloff was born in Buenos Aires in 1942. A graduate in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires, he is an essayist, poet, and translator of Portuguese-language literature.
She has published four books of children's stories, thirteen books of poetry, and twelve books of essays. She has translated, among others, Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet.
He is vice president of the Argentine Academy of Letters and a member of the Argentine Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
Among other awards, he received the Pedro Henríquez Ureña International Essay Prize, awarded by the Mexican Academy of Language.
She has just published The Sum of the Days. Fragments of a Life (Emecé), with entries from a diary she kept between 1985 and 2023.
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