Buenos Aires, (EFE)
As shared by his lawyer, Fernando Soto, on his Twitter account: “Your friend and your lawyer fire you. Now you will enter the ‘great sea’ with your dear Borges. May you rest in peace, Maria.”
In addition, consulted by EFE, Fernando Flores Maio, vice president of the Borges Foundation and friend of Kodama, confirmed that “there will be no public farewell, at her wish.”
The local press reported that the president of the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation suffered from breast cancer, which would have caused her death, although some close sources asked by EFE were unaware of the disease.
A life with Borges
Kodama was born in Buenos Aires in 1937 and was the daughter of the Japanese Yosaburo Kodama and the Argentinean María Antonia Schweizer, of Swiss-German, English and Spanish descent. She graduated with a degree in Literature from the University of Buenos Aires and specialized in Saxon literature and Icelandic, of which he made translations into Spanish.
She met Borges (1899-1986) when she was 16 years old and he was 54, when she bumped into him on the street, at the exit of a bookstore. She told him that she was going to study Literature and he invited her to study ancient English together, from which time they were never separated again.
Despite the fact that in 1967 Borges married another woman, Elsa Astete, Kodama continued to see the Argentine writer and they finally got married in 1986, months before the writer’s death from liver cancer in Geneva.
Two years after the death of the creator of “El Aleph”, in 1988, Kodama created the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation in Buenos Aires, whose headquarters houses personal belongings, his library, the first editions of his books and some manuscripts, in addition to awards, decorations and diplomas received.
From there, he dedicated himself to disseminate and contribute to the maximum, through courses and conferences throughout the world, to the knowledge of the work of the most universal of Argentine writers.