Alfonso Reyes's Dazzling Clarity in the Shadow of Death
Alfonso Reyes, literary titan, met his end pen in hand. His final pages, penned under death's gaze, shimmered with clarity. Poet, humanist, “Homer of Cuernavaca,” he left 150+ works, from essays to epic translations.
Just a few hours before the premonitory sign, Alfonso Reyes had written a few pages that pulsed with a strange clarity. The world, under the shadow of mortality, had stripped itself bare, revealing “firm outlines and a dazzling clarity.” Reyes, it seemed, was peering into the abyss, and his words shimmered with an otherworldly light.
Then, on December 27, 1959, the abyss blinked, and Reyes was gone. A myocardial infarction, the fifth in a series, snuffed out the life of this “splendidly gifted viewer of all universalist currents.” Mexico's literary circles reeled, the public mourned, and newspapers across Latin America trumpeted the news.
