This article is published in number 16 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until April 20, 2021
April 16 is a year since the death of Luis Sepúlveda, one who in his life was a guerrilla, a political prisoner, a journalist attentive to the causes of the weakest, an activist and an ecologist, as well as a writer. And also one of the first “famous deaths” of Covid, a year ago. Yet, even though he died tragically and prematurely, Sepúlveda is one of those people who, behind them, because of the passion and generosity with which they have lived, leave only light, not melancholy.
And his biography published by his historical translator, Ilide Carmignani, Italian voice also of Bolaño, Borges, Márquez, Javier Marías, Cortázar, is luminous, because Story of Luis Sepúlveda and his cat Zorba (Salani Editore) is a different biography from the usual ones, in which the narrator – who throughout the text dialogues with Sepúlveda – is the cat Diderot, precisely that of Gabbianella, the intellectual cat who owns and consults an encyclopedia. There are many anecdotes in this conversation with Diderot. Among the funniest and most tender there is the memory of when Luis as a boy invented a radio program called The cinema in your home, in which on Sunday evening, from ten to midnight, he told the first run films to listeners who could not see them because they lived in too isolated places. Of course there is also a passion for politics; Sepúlveda was very close to Allende, he joined the Socialist Party and the personal guard of the Chilean president. In the book he says to the cat Diderot: “I accompanied my companion president in the thousand most beautiful and intense days of my life.” These are stories that Ilide Carmignani has heard from Sepúlveda, a lifelong friend, or from his wife, the poet Carmen Yáñez whom Lucho married, divorced from, whom he married again. Despite, or because of, his tiring and very adventurous, dangerous and passionate life, the figure of Luis Sepúlveda is one of those who leave a happy imprint, beautiful to remember.
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