BIOGRAPHY OF MARIO

BENEDETTI.
 ABOUT HIS LIFE…

• (Paso de los Toros, 1920 - Montevideo, 2009)

Uruguayan writer. Mario Benedetti was an
outstanding poet, novelist, playwright,
storyteller and critic, and, along with Juan
Carlos Onetti, he was the most relevant
figure in Uruguayan literature of the second
half of the twentieth century and one of
the great names of the Boom of Spanish
American literature . Cultivator of all genres,
his work is as prolific as popular; novels such
as La truce (1960) or Thanks for the Fire
(1965) were adapted for the big screen,
and various singers contributed to spread
their poetry by playing their verses.
• Mario Benedetti worked in many trades
before 1945, when he began his activity as
a journalist in La Mañana, El Diario, Tribuna
Popular and the weekly Marcha, among
others. In the work of Mario Benedetti can
be differentiated at least two periods
marked by their vital circumstances, as well
as by the social and political changes of
Uruguay and the rest of Latin America. In
the first, Benedetti developed a realistic
literature of little formal experimentation, on
the subject of the public bureaucracy to
which he himself belonged, and the petty-
bourgeois spirit that animates it.
 ABOUT ITS RECOGNITION…
• The great success of his poetic and narrative books,
from the verses of Poems of the Office (1956) to the
stories about the official life of Montevideanos
(1959), was due to the recognition of the readers in
the social portrait and in the critic, largely of an
ethical nature, that the writer formulated. This
attitude resulted in an acid and controversial essay:
The Straw-Tail Country (1960), and its literary
consolidation in two important novels: The Truce
(1960), a love story of a tragic end between two
clerks, and Thanks for the fire (1965), which
constitutes a broader critique of national society,
with the denunciation of the corruption of
journalism as an apparatus of power.
TACTICS AND
STRATEGY
My tactic is
look at you
learn how you are
love you as you are

my tactic is
to talk to you
and listening to you
build with words
an indestructible bridge

my tactic is
stay in your memory
I do not know how I do not know
under what pretext
but stay in you
 my tactic is
be frank
and know that you are frank
and let's not be sold
simulacra
so that between the two
no curtain
no chasms

my strategy is
instead
deeper and more
simple

my strategy is
that any day
I do not know how I do not know
under what pretext
at last you need me.
 VICE VERSA
I'm afraid to see you good luck hear you
need to see you and fears of hearing
hope to see you
deserted to see you that is
summarizing
I want to find you I'm screwed up
concern to find you and radiant
certainty of finding you maybe more first
poor doubts of finding you that the second
and also
I urgently need to hear from you vice versa.
joy to hear you