Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta dies at 83

A leading figure in Latin American literature, Chilean writer, scriptwriter and director Antonio Skarmeta has died in Santiago at the age of 83, from cancer.

His most famous novel, "Ardiente paciencia" ("Burning Patience") from 1985, was adapted into the 1994 movie "Il Postino: The Postman," which earned numerous accolades, including several Oscar nominations and the Academy Award for best original dramatic score. 

He also served as the Chilean ambassador in Germany from 2000 to 2003, having established a new home in the country after fleeing the Pinochet regime.

School of democracy

Antonio Skarmeta was born in Antofagasta, a city in the subtropical northern part of Chile, on November 7, 1940.

Shortly before the begin of the First World War, his grandparents emigrated from Croatia to Chile. Skarmeta's 1999 novel, "La Boda del Poeta" (The Poet's Wedding), tells the story of their life.

Many of his works contain autobiographical features. And many of them focus on flight and exile, which was one of his most important themes.

Skarmeta went to school at the Instituto Nacional de Chile, the country's most renowned boys' school. The school shaped him for life: "It taught me democracy. It was attended by students from all walks of life, the poor, the middle class and the rich. That explains my positions in literature and politics," he told DW in 2017, as part of a long interview conducted in Chile for the multimedia project "Artists After the Escape."

After finishing high school, Antonio Skarmeta studied philosophy in Chile and spent some time in the US.

In the 1970s, he supported the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet in 1973. On the day of the coup, on September 11, 1973, Allende committed suicide in the presidential palace.

In the following months and years, numerous artists, intellectuals and Pinochet opponents were tortured or assassinated by the military dictatorship.

Song writer Victor Jara was shot dead in a sports stadium. Skarmeta's friend, Chilean national poet Pablo Neruda, died shortly afterwards in a hospital. His family had always claimed that he had been poisoned; later inquiries determined that he did not die of cancer as authorities claimed.

Numerous intellectuals left the country, among them writer Isabel Allende. Antonio Skarmeta also decided to leave Chile in 1973, while it was still possible.

He came to West Berlin in 1974 with the help of a grant of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). His first wife and his two young sons joined him shortly afterwards.

In Berlin, he worked on turning his latest experiences into literary works. In "No pasó nada" (Nothing happened), he depicted a young man's perspective on the complicated relations between his old and his new home. It told the story of a family torn apart by exile. It was his story.

Skarmeta, Neruda and Chile's beloved poets

It is also in Berlin that he wrote the novel that gained him international fame. "Ardiente Paciencia" (Burning Patience), published in 1985, was adapted into the film "The Postman" (1994), starring French actor Philippe Noiret.

Through the story of a postman who conquered his love interest with the help of romantic verses, the novel is as a literary tribute to Pablo Neruda. "'Ardiente Paciencia' is also the story of a poet who loves his people, and of a people that loves its poets," said Skarmeta.

"Pablo Neruda had a special relationship to people. I often witnessed that," added Skarmeta, recalling how people in a tiny village once asked Neruda to cite poems that these peasants and craftsmen knew and loved.  

After the Pinochet regime came to an end in 1989, Antonio Skarmeta returned to Chile, after 16 years in exile in Berlin. He was accompanied by his second wife, a German, and their two sons. His two elder sons from his first wife were adults by then and remained in Berlin. Exile also meant that Skarmeta's family lives on two continents.

Return to a divided country

The years of dictatorship had destroyed the country that the poet once loved so much.

Formerly exiled Chileans wanted to help reconstruct democracy, as "in the first years during the 1990s, it was still very unstable," recalled Skarmeta. "There was a democratically elected president, but Pinochet remained in his post as military commander for some time" — until 1998. Pinochet died in 2006, without ever having been made responsible for the crimes committed during his dictatorship.

Along with his work as a writer, Antonio Skarmeta also hosted a literature program on Chilean television during the 1990s. From 2000 to 2003, he returned to Germany as the ambassador of his home country in Berlin. In 2014, he was honored with Chile's most significant literary award, the Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile.

This article was originally written in German.