SALVADOR ELIZONDO: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

Salvador Elizondo Alcalde (1932-2006) was a Mexican writer, literary critic, and translator. His work on letters has been recognized as one of the most important and innovative in the last decades of the 20th century. In addition to his recognized passage through literature, he excelled in film and painting.

Elizondo's literary work encompassed various genres, including novels, essays, theater, and short stories, among others. He was characterized by being different from the authors of his time, always looking for originality and creativity. As a writer, he was influenced by the literature of the Irishman James Joyce.

Salvador Elizondo. Source: sinaloaarchivohistorico, via Wikimedia Commons

Some of the literary titles of the Mexican writer were Farabeuf, El graphographer, Poetic Museum, Precocious Autobiography, and Past Past. Elizondo's performance in the world of letters earned him several awards and critical acclaim.

Biography

Birth and family

Salvador was born on December 19, 1932 in Mexico City. The writer came from a cultured family, linked to cinema and politics. It is known that his father was Salvador Elizondo Pani. He lived part of his childhood in Germany, and since childhood he was immersed in the world of letters and literature.

Elizondo Education

Elizondo's early years of education took place both in Germany and in his native Mexico. Then, for a period of three years, he studied in the United States, specifically in California, in a military institution. Later he moved to his country to study higher education.

At the university level, the writer was trained in prestigious universities in the world. In Mexico he studied plastic arts and literature at the National Autonomous University. He continued his preparation in letters in different prestigious institutions, such as the Sorbonne, Cambridge, Ottawa and Peruggia.

First publications

Salvador Elizondo began to fertilize the literary field from a young age, collaborating in various print media. He worked in magazines such as Vuelta, by the writer Octavio Paz; Always, founded by José Pagés Llergo; and Plural, among others.

The author was also motivated to create his own publications. This is how Nuevo Cine and SNOB were born. As for his books, in 1960, when he was twenty-eight years old, Poemas came out. Three years later Luchino Visconti published the criticism, and in 1965, his famous novel Farabeuf appeared.

Elizondo, between scholarships and an award

Salvador Elizondo was a writer in constant learning. That led him to be part, in 1963, of the Mexican Center for Writers. Then, in 1964, he received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for his work Farabeuf. He also studied Chinese at the Colegio de México, thanks to a scholarship. He served as a professor at UNAM.

Coat of arms of the UNAM, where Elizondo was a professor. Source: Both, the shield and the motto, José Vasconcelos Calderón, via Wikimedia Commons

For a time the author went to live in the United States to continue his training. He was awarded a scholarship by the Ford Foundation to study in San Francisco (California) and New York. Then, in 1968, it was sponsored for a year by the Guggenheim organization.

Marriages of Salvador Elizondo

Although the data on Elizondo's personal and married life are not extensive, it is known that he was married twice. She contracted first nuptials with Michell Alban, with whom she had two daughters: Mariana and Pía. Later he married Paulina Lavista, and they had a son named Pablo.

Recognized by the Academy of the Language

Salvador's literary performance allowed him to be recognized by the Mexican Academy of the Language. He was appointed a member in 1976, and on October 23, 1980, he held the XXI chair. The following year he began to be part of El Colegio Nacional, entered with his acclaimed “Joyce and Conrad” speech. His three-act comedy Miscast dates from that year.

National College of Mexico, to which Elizondo belonged. Source: Thelmadatter, via Wikimedia Commons

Last years and death

Elizondo was dedicated to writing throughout his life. Among his last works were The Light that Returns, Estanquillo, Theory of Hell and Precocious Autobiography. Unfortunately, his life came to an end due to cancer, on March 29, 2006, in Mexico City.

Style

Salvador Elizondo's literary style was characterized by being avant-garde, full of creativity and particularity. His literature was universal due to the cultural baggage he possessed. This allowed him to differentiate himself from the movements that predominated in his time.

The Mexican writer developed his work away from objectivity. Reality was important to him, but from a subjective point of view. Reflection was also part of his texts. The language he used was well crafted and careful, precise and clear.

Plays

Salvador Elizondo was a writer who set the standard inside and outside of Mexican literature, both for his way of writing and for the content. Perhaps his works were for select readers, because in his stories there were worlds within other worlds. That made him different, and gave him a space in history.

- Poems (1960).

- Luchino Visconti (1963). Review.

- Farabeuf or The Chronicle of an Instant (1965). Novel.

- Narda or The summer (1966). Stories.

- Autobiography (1966).

- The secret hypogeum (1968). Novel.

- Writing notebook (1969). Review.

- The portrait of Zoe (1969). Stories

- The graphographer (1972). Stories and texts.

- Contexts (1973). Review.

- Poetic Museum (1974). Anthology of Mexican poetry.

- Personal Anthology (1974).

- Miscast (1981). Comedy in three acts.

- Camera lucida (1983).

- The returning light (1984).

- Elsinore, a notebook (1988). Story.

- Estanquillo (1992).

- Theory of hell (1993).

- Early autobiography (2000).

- Past past (2007).

- Sea of ​​iguanas (2010).

- The story according to Pao Cheng (2013).

Brief description and fragments of some of his works

Farabeuf or The chronicle of an instant

It was one of the most renowned works of Salvador Elizondo. According to annotations by the author himself, it began to be conceived from the 1950s. With this title he won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the same year of its publication; in addition, it was translated into several languages.

Although the work bears the name of the doctor Louis Farabeuf, taken from a text on surgeries, the content is different. It dealt with pleasure, Chinese writing, eroticism, divination, and other similar subjects. The plot did not have a common thread, so it was not considered a novel; also, for many, it was difficult to understand because of its structure.

Fragment

"Do you see? That woman can't be entirely wrong. Your concern, teacher, stems from the fact that those men performed an act similar to the ones you perform in the basements of the school when your students have left, and you are left alone with all the corpses of men and women. Only they applied the edge to the meat without method… ”.

The secret hypogeum

It was a novel by the Mexican writer in which creativity and innovation were the main characteristics. It was about the love between a couple who, from Elizondo's pen, expressed the subjectivity contained in the mind, inside.

The play was deep and thoughtful. In it the woman played an important role: the author symbolically reflected the need she had to be rescued, saved. At the same time, the different characters made an observation among themselves, and this led them, in some way, to reveal Elizondo's wishes.

Fragment

“Fix me here so that the world has an eternity and not a history. Don't tell me any stories, because stories always have an ending in which the characters dissolve like the body in carrion… necessarily banal, because it is an outcome in which what I had been, simply ceases to be ”.

The graphgrapher

This work by the Mexican writer was a compilation of different stories on various topics. Although the title of the publication was related to one of the stories, whose theme was writing, the text was characterized by being framed in the avant-garde line.

Fragment

"I write. I write that I write. Mentally I see myself writing that I write and I can also see myself seeing that I write. I remember me already writing and so watching me writing. And I see myself remembering that I see myself writing and I remember seeing myself remember that I wrote…

I can also imagine writing that I had already written that I would imagine myself writing that I had written that I imagined writing that I see myself writing that I write ”.

Elsinore

With this work Salvador Elizondo continued to strengthen his capacity for the avant-garde, and reaffirmed his particularity when writing. The text was related to his years of study in California, in the institution of Elsinore. In his story, two companions escaped.

With this story, Elizondo played with time. For him, life was only moments, minutes; it was reduced, it was brief. In such a way that, within his customary subjectivity, his story began with the dream of writing it, to then give the young students a run for it.

Fragment of

“The light contained in Moriarty's chamber was animated by slow transformations; Then came, but in the opposite direction, Calpurnia's dream: how the fragments scattered on the ground come together to form the pinnacle that then rises through the air until it is placed in the highest part of the house and how the tip of the lightning recedes and disappears… ”.

Fragment of

“I don't even know if Zoe was her real name. Some told me that was his name; But why am I going to tell you that I am sure of it if in the end the only thing I learned about her was her absence. I was learning it little by little; throughout the days first…

A slowness that, imperceptibly, began to flow within a dizzying speed of months… ".

References

1. Gutiérrez, C. (2017). Salvador Elizondo. Mexico: Encyclopedia of Literature in Mexico. Recovered from: elem.mx.
2. Gudiña, V. (2015). Salvador Elizondo. (N / a): Poems of the Soul. Recovered from: poemas-del-alma.com.
3. Salvador Elizondo. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: wikipedia.org.
4. Elizondo mayor, Salvador. (2019). (N / a): Writers Org. Recovered from: writers.org.
5. Domínguez, C. (2000). Complete narrative by Salvador Elizondo. Mexico: Free Letters. Recovered from: letraslibres.com.