How to say goodbye to someone that will never leave. I’m not thinking about the common place and also true that we tend to repeat: when writers die, we are left with his books. Yes, we agree, we’ll see you there. Every time we get to his writings, we meet John Berger in some way. But the truth is that sometimes one feels that the writers are not already there, that is to say, that already were in the books that they wrote, that often happens. you If so, then dear John Berger, if you were of each one of the books that we now you leave forever, then, where will you be from today? St. Augustine left us said that the dead are not beings absent, but invisible. If you do not already you’ll be in the garden of your house peeling onions and arranging your fabrics on the table as if you were painting a picture in the open air, where find you then from today? Where to find you, dear writer, now that you will no longer be in the door of your house to embrace us when you arrive, give us your joy, prepare coffee, talk without trouble of the trees, the poetry, the work of a peasant, the pure love for the simplest things of this world?
John Berger died yesterday and was born in London in 1926. He was a painter, writer, and art critic. He wrote novels, plays, essays, movies. He was 50 years old when he went to live in France, in a mountain village of the Haute-Savoie. I used to say that his formal education had ended at the age of 16 but there, among the farmers of Quincy, in the mountains, I had learned as much as in a university. For many readers, Berger is a writer for a depth exceptional. Their essays reflect on the art in a different way and engage with the political issues. He was engaged for fifteen years to write the trilogy with his efforts, composed by three novels exceptional, Sow earth, once in Europe and Lilac and Flag, which chronicles the life of the peasants and their struggles to survive in a world increasingly hostile to them. He is the author of G, for which he won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1972. There was a critique o f european society in the years preceding the First World War. Also noteworthy is his essay of introduction to the critique of art, Ways of seeing, considered to be a text basic reference for the history of art.
Andra so easy to talk with you, a teacher, and was also comfortable to sit in the silences between one topic and another. Even if you don’t liked so much to answer interviews, not because you were not open, what ages and so much so that one had the impression that at that time the world was reduced to those emotions that came with the dialogues and family stories that we had. But you were a peasant and you sorprendías of people show interested in you, a man who worked the land, was pending in the growth of the plants and wrote. What you wanted was to listen to the other. Know your history, your life, and only interrumpías for something important. Find a loaf to cut some bread pieces and share them on the table, make coffee, bring a mug of warm milk.
The first time I went to his house, he proposed a toast before saying goodbye. Paulina Third party, the photographer mexican that lives many years ago in Geneva, was with me. I took the bottle of Italian wine that he had brought for him and in that moment I gave it. He took her in his arms, he read the label and smiled. But he immediately made a gesture of doubt, said that he wanted to save this wine only to last longer and it was up to the furniture of your kitchen field. I remember the care with which he embraced the modest gift, the way, as acariciándola, in which you saved the bottle. In that same piece of furniture sought out another, and while we were preparing the cups on the table I thought that maybe this wine was also a gift from another friend and that was a good way to build the life, by an invisible chain but strong affections and gifts between the links that pass through our lives.
A cold night in late July of 2013 I received in Buenos Aires an email from you that in the matter said BEVERLY. We had been at home with my daughter the previous year and both he and his wife were strong, healthy and loving as always. I didn’t know that she was sick. The mail Berger said: Beverley has left us on the morning of this day, July 30, 2013. to That your peace be a comfort to all. Two years later, appeared Rondo, the wonder that he and his son wrote in memory of that woman adorable. "You were four weeks ago. Last night came back for the first time. Or, to put it another way, your presence replaced your absence. I was listening to a recording of Rondo no. 2 for piano (op.51) of Beethoven. For nearly nine minutes, at least, was that rondo, or rondo became you. Contained your levity, your persistence, your eyebrows arched, your tenderness." the Thank you, dear John Berger, for finding so many times the beauty in life, sometimes, the sad beauty of life, and make it circular by the words up to us. I’m going to look everywhere starting today. Sure I’ll wait in the hands of workers, of peasants, in the ways of viewing a photograph, in the silences of autumn under the trees, in fabrics of the onion, in the Apennines of Emilia Romagna. Thank you, master, you left me so many good places to be able to find you, I’ll be there.
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