When Ernesto Sabato passed away on April 30th at the age of 99, he repeated to himself the words of Maria Zambrano: " To die, this elusive act which is accomplished through obedience, takes place beyond reality, in another realm ." In his home in Santos Lugarès ("Holy Places" near Buenos Aires), Ernesto Sabato obeyed this final injunction. He had prepared himself for it for a long time. In Resistance , his moving literary testament published in 2002, he wrote: " I have forgotten large parts of my life, but, on the other hand, certain encounters, moments of danger, and the names of those who pulled me out of depression and bitterness still throb in my hands. And yours too, you who believe in me, who have read my books, and who will help me die."
Darkness shrouded the abyss . Ernesto Sabato was situated there. Between darkness and abyss. In a kind of tunnel. In a perpetual genesis. All his novels attest to this. Few writers knew human nature as well as he did. Few writers have so thoroughly penetrated the mystery of the human condition. How did Ernesto Sabato know human nature so well? Where did he get this keen understanding of the labyrinth in which humankind spends most of its existence struggling?
Ernesto Sabato's work represents an understanding of humanity through the lens of evil. This is how darkness pervades his entire oeuvre. Not for aesthetic reasons, not by choice, not through Manichaeism. Ernesto Sabato's characters seek the light, strive to fill their voids, yearn to breathe the heights. Unfortunately, they are powerless on their own, and darkness envelops them for this very reason: because they search alone, because they are mere atoms, because they have often lost their personhood, their sense of wonder. But wonder cannot be learned. And once lost, it can never be recovered. Ernesto Sabato had given up on educating his time, but not on scrutinizing it. In 1985, he began a project on the disappeared in Argentina during the dictatorship. He collected testimonies, thousands of testimonies, thousands of cries and tears, spending weeks and months listening to the tortured before his very eyes. Who, apart from Sabato, could have borne the Evil recounted in such detail, dissected and analyzed, obliterating all knowledge and all civilization, Evil inscribed in the very skin of one of the most civilized countries, the glory of South America, Argentina? No one but Sabato. Not that he took it well, not that all those testimonies of rape, murder, torture, crimes, and obscenities didn't haunt him until the end of his days. Ernesto Sabato was not a superman. He was even convinced that the superman was not a human being. He didn't find it any easier to bear good and evil than you or I. It's just that Ernesto Sabato knew that human nature was contained within it. Of course, you and I are aware of it too. We know the situation. But for Ernesto Sabato, it was different. He didn't just wander among the corpses. He lived there. He became one with this dark side of life, and his heroes with him.
Evil, but also Grace. Ernesto Sabato lived in Evil. He reigned in Evil. He had overcome his fear. He made use of his fear. In this, Sabato agrees with Bernanos. He is not afraid of fear. Well, yes, he is afraid of fear, but he also draws his strength from it. In a sense, you see, Fear is still the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday night. She is not a pretty sight—no!—sometimes mocked, sometimes cursed, rejected by all. And yet, make no mistake: she is at the bedside of every dying person, she intercedes for humankind ( in Dialogue of the Carmelites). These words of Bernanos could be Sabato's. It is also this quality that gives Sabato's characters and writings their humanity. It is impossible to read this Argentinian author without being captivated by the humanity embodied by all his characters, good or bad, without exception. After all the horrors Sabato chronicled, he could have thrown away the book of humanity. He could have judged, labeled, diminished, having no further hope for humanity. But no. It was precisely the opposite. He embraced humanity and sought to understand it, again and again.
So, of course, if we're talking about human nature, it's not very scientific. Which is just as well, because Ernesto Sabato almost never talked about it. If you're wondering what took precedence in his life: science or metaphysics, you won't find an answer. In the first part of his life, he was a scientist who asked metaphysical questions. The rest of his life, he metaphysically questioned science. Ernesto Sabato didn't separate the fear of nothingness from the symptoms that this fear produced. He looked both in the eye. Man is an animal endowed not only with a soul, but with a spirit. The first animal to modify its natural environment through culture. As such, he finds himself in a state of equilibrium—an unstable one—between his own body and his physical and cultural environment . This equilibrium is what's troubling us. Our era rests entirely on technology and claims to be sovereign. Technology supposedly makes us strong. Our era refuses to acknowledge any kind of fragility. Now, if there is one thing that alienates us from human nature—and Ernesto Sabato, like Bernanos and Jünger, noted this—it is technology. Technology alienates us from humanity. More precisely, technology alienates humanity from itself. Technology is not evil, but evil uses technology to alienate humanity from itself. The alienation of humanity is one of Ernesto Sabato's major themes. I believe that freedom was given to us so that we might fulfill a mission, and without freedom, nothing is worth living for. Moreover, I believe that the freedom within our reach is greater than the freedom we dare to live. One only needs to read History, that great teacher, to see how many paths humanity has forged through sheer willpower, how much humanity has altered the course of events, with hardship, love, and even fanaticism . This is Ernesto Sabato's testament. This is human nature. Sabato's teaching is that there is wonder everywhere, but we are blind to it. This is why we see old people who hardly speak and spend their days gazing into the distance, when in fact their gaze is turned inward, into the deepest recesses of their memory . Wherever there is life, there is wonder. And even in the deepest recesses of evil, wonder still resides. As long as life is there, wonder can emerge. Images of men and women struggling against adversity come back to me, like that little pregnant Indigenous girl, almost a child, whom I met in the province of Chaco and who moved me to tears because she blessed the life she carried within her despite the misery and deprivation . Human nature, they say. And forgetting human nature is forgetting wonder. Man is not a titan, and yet modern man continues to live as if he were. And since it must be emphasized: One need only reread Homer, or recall the pre-Columbian myths. Humans believed themselves to be the children of God, and he who feels he belongs to such a lineage may well be a serf, a slave, but he will never be a mere cog in the machine. Whatever his living conditions, no one can deprive him of his sense of belonging to a sacred history; his life will always be under the gaze of the gods.
Ernesto Sabato is finally in the light. But we will miss his earthly wisdom. And a part of our human nature died with him. He had this watchful function of reminding us of ourselves. From the perspective of modern man, people in the past were less free and their choices were limited. But their sense of responsibility was much greater. It never even occurred to them that they could neglect their duties, that they could be unfaithful to the piece of land that life seemed to have granted them . The question that arises from this is a harsh one. Haven't we reduced everything to nothing? Aren't we replaying the scene of Original Sin? What has man put in place of God? He has freed himself neither from cults nor from altars. The altar remains, no longer a place of sacrifice and self-denial, but of comfort, self-adulation, and the veneration of the great gods of the screen . Are Adam and Eve my ancestors or my future? Ernesto Sabato had only one fear: that humanity would confuse the promise "You will be like gods" with the assertion "We are gods!"
Modern times have been marked by their disregard for the essential attributes and values of the unconscious. Enlightenment philosophers kicked the unconscious out the door, only for it to return through the window. Yet, since the time of the Greeks, if not earlier, we have known that we must not despise the goddesses of the night, much less banish them, because they react by taking revenge in the most merciless way.
Human beings oscillate between holiness and sin, flesh and spirit, good and evil. And the most serious, the most foolish thing anyone has done since Socrates is to try to suppress their dark side. These forces are invincible. When attempts were made to destroy them, they lurked in the shadows and ultimately rebelled with increased violence and perversity.
We must acknowledge these evils and at the same time tirelessly strive for good. The great religions do not merely advocate good; they command us to do it, which proves the constant presence of evil. Life is a terrifying balance between angel and beast. We cannot speak of man as if he were an angel, and we must not. But neither must we speak of him as if he were a beast, because man is capable of committing the worst atrocities, but also the highest and purest acts of heroism.
I bow respectfully before those who allowed themselves to be killed without seeking revenge. I wanted to show this supreme goodness of humankind in simple characters like Hortenzia Paz or Sergeant Soa. As I have stated, human beings cannot survive without heroes, without saints, and without martyrs, because love, like every true act of creation, is always a victory over evil.
* The quotes from Ernesto Sabato used in this article are all taken from the book Resistance.
Ernesto Sabato's works are widely read, The Tunnel , his Buenos Aires trilogy, Heroes and Tombs , and The Angel of Darkness .
All of his works were published by Editions du Seuil.
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