Respected Colombian author, Alvaro Mutis, was buried Monday in Mexico City after an intimate wake attended by many notable Latin American literary and cultural figures.
The late poet had suffered for many years against Parkinson’s and other cardiovascular diseases. On Sunday, Mutis, 90, passed away in a Mexican hospital after suffering acute cardio respiratory complications.
MORE: Colombian poet Alvaro Mutis dies in Mexico City at 90
The son of a Colombian diplomat, Mutis was born in Colombia but spent most of his life abroad. Although he passed his childhood in Brussels, Belgium, Mutis’s impressions during his summer vacations spent in Colombia would be enormously influential throughout his writing career. He took up poetry in the 1940’s while in the Colombian capital Bogota and moved to Mexico permanently in 1956.
Mutis’s work was characterized by a ferocious and sensual nature particular to his Latin American influences and worldview.
Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez counted the late poet as a very good friend and said he helped tremendously, by encouraging him to expound ideas, during the writing of Garcia’s seminal 100 Years of Solitude.
Mexican writer Juan Villoro, who attended Mutis’s funeral, said of the author, “His poetry is epic. A deep reflection on love, egotism, the earth, the landscapes… of philosophy and metaphysics.”
Sources
- Álvaro Mutis fue despedido en un velorio íntimo por figuras de la cultura y la literatura (Caracol Radio)
- Mi amigo Mutis: por Gabriel García Márquez (El Espectador)
- Fallece en el México quinceañera afectada por deslizamiento en La Carpio (La Nacion)