Drawing: PORTRAIT OF THE POET
by artist Juan Carlos Benítez
Betina Edelberg was born in Buenos Aires, the year that J L Borges returned from Majorca after a long sejourn in Europe.
Her passion for reading and classical literature (Greek and Latin) led her to devote her life to literary activity. For her works, Betina Edelberg has been recognized as one of the finest poets and Argentine writers.
Her verses reveal the quest for the universal through everyday life. That may be the key to her work ...... [+]
The poet Betina Edelberg and the author of 'The Sect of the Phoenix' maintained a long friendship, crowned with a book written in collaboration: an essay on Leopoldo Lugones.
She also wrote with Jorge Luis Borges, as an argument for a spoken ballet, a parody on dictatorships which apparently also alluded to Peronism that, unsurprinsinly for Argentina, remains unpublished. Its titled, perhaps prophetically, 'The Lost Image'.
On Wednesday, at the headquarters of the Argentinean Society of Writers (SADE), Uruguay 1371, a tribute shall be pay to Edelberg. This event will take place at 7pm and the speakers will be: Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, Antonio Requeni and Gerardo Lehmann, her husband, the lifelong partner of Betina. Lehmann is French, an engineer by profession, but also author of tales and short stories.
Betina Edelberg defined herself, not long ago, thus: "I love and write. My life is secret, passionate and above all, free. I accept the man who accepts me as I am. I belong to the XXI century. I do not grow my nostalgia nor my weaknesses, and I bore at drama. In mechanics, I am a fanatic of direct injection. I have sworn to be forever young. Other details do not matter."
Published in La Nación (Saturday the 25th Septiembre 2010)... [+]
Betina Edelberg chaired the Friends of Jorge Luis Borges worldwide Society in Argentine.