sobre espólio literário e as guerras financeiras

The papers of Portuguese author José Saramago have found a permanent home in Lisbon without the sort of purchasing battle that might accompany the acquisition of the papers of a similarly accomplished writer working in English, French or Spanish.  Examples like this one suggest that there is a correlation between the financial value of literary archives, and by extension their final resting place, and the language in which they are written.  In this light, the article considers the likely destinies of the papers of authors including Doris Lessing, Naguib Mahfouz, Gabriel García Márquez  and Orhan Pamuk.

interessantíssimo artigo, aqui.


"The purchase by Princeton University of the Carlos Fuentes Archive provoked front-page outrage in Mexico. Similarly the proposed Sotheby’s sale of Naguib Mahfouz’s papers in December 2011 caused controversy in Egypt, and the sale was abandoned. It seems that at least some of the family now want these papers to go to the American University in Cairo, or to another Cairo library. Meanwhile the archive of Margaret Atwood is arriving in regular instalments at the University of Toronto, and Elfriede Jelinek seems to have the same sort of arrangement with the University of Vienna. Samuel Beckett’s papers present a classic example of a “split collection” – being divided between the Universities of Reading and Texas and Trinity College Dublin. Similarly, although some Doris Lessing papers have recently gone to the University of East Anglia, the bulk are divided between the Universities of Texas and Tulsa.

 Given that there is almost no interest in Turkish language and literature in the four big purchasing countries, there is every chance that the Orhan Pamuk Archive will stay in Istanbul, where it so obviously belongs. It could be said that Pamuk is to Istanbul what Saramago is to Lisbon and Mahfouz to Cairo. In 2012 Pamuk established a museum in Istanbul displaying his own novel ‘The Museum of Innocence’. You can read the amazing story at http://yazkam.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/review-istanbuls-museum-of-innocence."

comecei Pamuk com o racismo literário que lhe dedicam os críticos anglófilos, posso bem continuar: "given that there is no interest in Turkish language and literature"... é preciso dizer mais alguma coisa?

aliás, dizer que Marquez é um "highly marketable author-commodity" diz quase tudo sobre a sociedade contemporânea de língua inglesa.

enfim, um artigo interessante a acrescentar uma perspectiva aos nossos clichés romantizados sobre a importância da língua.

(a propósito, a lusofonia de Alexandre Pomar)