María Kodama, widow of Jorge Luis Borges, died this Sunday at the age of 86. The news of his death was confirmed by his lawyer Fernando Soto on Twitter: “Now you will enter the ‘great sea’ with your beloved Borges. May you rest in peace Maria.” Kodama, a translator and literature professor who suffered from breast cancer and lived on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, had married the seminal writer of Argentine literature in April 1986, two months before his death, and has been dedicated to his work ever since and heir in charge, which he jealously guarded.
María Kodama was born on March 10, 1937 to a Japanese chemist and an Argentine mother and studied literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He specialized in Anglo-Saxon literature, which he translated into Spanish. Kodama met the writer as a student in the 1960s. He was 38 years older. They signed two books together: Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology, a compilation of one of their great shared passions, English literature; and Atlas, a 1984 travelogue containing the impressions of the writer battered by the blindness that accompanied him for decades, and the notes and photographs of his companion. Borges and Kodama traveled the world from 1975, when they made their first trip to the United States, until late 1985, when the writer was diagnosed with liver cancer and moved to Geneva. There they married and Borges declared her his heiress.
María Kodama and Jorge Luis Borges strolling in Paris in 1977. Laurent MAOUS (Gamma-Rapho / Getty Images)
In 1988, Kodama founded the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation, which he chaired until his death. As custodian of Borges’ work, Kodama sued another writer for experimenting with El Aleph, his most famous story, and even fell out with current President Alberto Fernández. In 2019, the president attempted to use a collector’s personal file to create a museum for the writer, which Kodama disapproved of, denouncing that many of the 30,000 objects businessman Alejandro Roemmers wanted to give to the state were stolen.
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