By: Sandra Beatriz Ludena
María Kodama was the widow of Borgian literature, until now that she has died in Buenos Aires, at the age of 86. I affirm this since, since her husband, the famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, died in 1986, she without possible reluctance carried his widowhood with no more or less dignity than an executor, and I would also say that she did it as one who carries a hole in the rib, in the sternum or in the heart, as if something of hers was missing, something lost that led her to be the most jealous guardian of what was written by the master Borges.
Kodama, as passionate about literature, was a translator and taught the most wonderful science in the world, the one that deals with feeling and its signs, Literature, but, more important was her last position, that of having become a the eyes of her husband, whom she accompanied in this world even after his death.
Kodama was fond of writing and that is why she met the great Jorge Luis Borges with whom they began a friendship, in the sixties. She was the student in front of the great teacher and then their relationship matured and she became sentimental. That was how she became the wife of the genius of letters, despite the large difference in age, which was no less than thirty-eight years apart between generations, thus forging an inevitable destiny of widowhood.
Borges’ wife was a fundamental woman in his history. She gave him her eyes so that he could continue to see the world; and, he took his wisdom from him, the pleasure of accompanying someone so exceptional brought them together, they shared deep tastes such as Literature in English, for this, together they produced the book: “Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology”. It seems to me that they shared work in the work: “Atlas” (1984), the one that deals with Borges’ travels around the world, —an itinerary that Kodama joined in 1975 when they traveled to the United States—, thus the work contains texts by Borges, photographs and notes by Kodama.
Borges’s widow was criticized and accused of having manipulated the great writer, so that two months before his death, he would travel to Geneva and marry her, naming her his universal heir. Although the writer of works such as “Relatos” and “Homage to Borges”, widow of Borges literature, denied and demonstrated with acts that her love of literature united her with the great writer, well, two years after her husband’s departure, he created the Jorge Luis Borges Foundation, which he took care of until the day he died.
She promoted the literary work of Jorge Luis Borges around the world, was his faithful representative and the widow of Borges’ literature. Her lawyer Fernando Soto, close to her widow, has broken the news on Twitter saying: Now you will enter the “great sea” with your beloved Borges.