BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Antonio Porchia was born in the town of Conflenti in the Calabrian region of Italy on November 3, 1885. He spent his childhood and early teenage years in Avellino, although, as Porchia later told it, his family seems to have moved a bit from town to town: Porchia’s father Francisco left the priesthood in order to marry one of his parishioners, Porchia’s mother Rosa Vescio, and the stigma clinging to an apostate priest meant the family were unable to stay settled in one place for long.

Francisco died in or around 1900. A few years later, Rosa decided to emigrate with Porchia and his six siblings to Argentina: they boarded the steamship Bulgaria in Naples, and arrived in Buenos Aires on October 31, 1906.

In order to support his family, Porchia worked for many years as a basket-weaver and clerk at the Buenos Aires port. In 1918, having gathered some savings, the Porchias moved from the neighborhood of Barracas to a bigger house in the neighborhood of San Telmo. At that time Porchia and his brother Nicolás also decided to buy a printing shop on calle Bolívar.

For the next eighteen years Porchia worked at the shop. Once his brothers and sisters had become independent, Porchia quit the press and, in 1936, purchased a house on calle San Isidro, and began his life alone. He got used to visiting the Italian neighborhood of La Boca, where he became acquainted with a group of anarchist sculptors and painters who eventually founded the “Association of Arts and Literature Impulso.” It was they who managed to convince a reluctant Porchia to self-publish, in 1943 and 1948, some of the fragments and sentences he called voices.

The Argentine poet Roberto Juarroz remembers how, “when he received the packages [with his voices] from the printers, Porchia didn’t know where to store them (his house was small and unprotected). He asked the artists at Impulso whether he might be able to leave the books with them. Of course, one, two, three months went by, and the boxes were still piled-up, unopened. At one point the painters began to get annoyed, and told Porchia: ‘When are you going to get this out of here? It’s in the way, we need the space.’ Porchia, who was an amazing being, wondered what he could do with all of these books. Someone told him about a ‘Society for the Protection of Public Libraries,’ which coordinated a series of libraries scattered across the country; Porchia donated all the copies of his voices to this organization.”

José Pugliese, a member of Impulso, describes Porchia as “very shy, very introverted, he always placed himself in the farthest corner of the room, and spoke very little. He didn’t comment on his work. Only reluctantly did he ever accept to read one of his voices in public. [...] Above all, he left neither students nor followers; no one can claim to have received directives from Porchia. [...] The truth is that Porchia’s work is closed, it allows for no heirs.”

A copy of the self-published Voices came into the hands of the French poet and critic Roger Caillois, who was in Argentina working for UNESCO and as an editor at the prestigious magazine Sur. Amazed, Caillois sought out Porchia and told him: “For these lines, I would exchange everything I have written.”

Back in France, Caillois translated the voices into French and had them published in Parisian magazines and in a small booklet (1949). Caillois’s translation led an admiring Henry Miller to include Porchia in the 100 books of Miller’s ideal library, and André Breton to write: “The most supple thought in the Spanish language is, for me, that of the Argentine Antonio Porchia.”

At the beginning of the 1950s, finding himself in financial straits, Porchia sold his house on calle San Isidro and bought a smaller one on calle Malaver, and for a time lived on the difference. The poet Juarroz writes: “I cannot remember another being who was both so humble and neat. He almost never wore a shirt. In summer he wore a pajama jacket and in winter he tucked a scarf underneath a heavier sweater, holding it in place with a hairpin. After we’d been with him for a while, he would set out a bottle of wine and a bit of cheese, salami and bread on his small table. All of this he went to purchase with his tiny bag to the market.”

Another anecdote tells of a time when three burglars broke into Porchia’s house; somewhat frightened, Porchia told them, “Friends, I have no money, but there are books and paintings, take whatever you want and leave, please.” Porchia then began to talk with one of the burglars, while the other two took note of the dedications that were on the paintings hanging on the walls. “To the poet...,” “To the philosopher....” Eventually Porchia asked them all to have some wine, cheese and salami. After two hours, the burglars got up and said: “We can’t rob a philosopher.” Before heading out, one of them asked Porchia: “Do you like figs?” Porchia nodded. A week later there was a knock at the door; Porchia opened up and found the burglar, carrying a plate full of figs covered with green leaves. Even after that incident, Porchia still never locked his front door.

Throughout the 1950s, Porchia’s work continued to resonate in Europe, where more of his voices were translated into French, German and Italian; in South America, revolutionary students spread Porchia’s work in handwritten copies that rapidly attained cult status. In 1956, the famous publishing house Sudamericana approached Porchia and offered to bring out his two self-published books in a new single edition. Porchia proceeded to make a rigorous selection of his old voices (from 957 pieces, he selected only 471) and then added 130 new voices, making the new total 601.

This official edition (marked as such by Porchia’s dedication to Roger Caillois) was regularly re-printed and sold out; it was re-published first by Francisco A. Colombo (1964) and then Hachette (1966). Notwithstanding the relative recognition, Porchia remained a solitary being; he spent his time gardening and keeping his close friends company. Roberto Juarroz writes: “Porchia’s way of listening seemed to create depth in his companions, and when he talked, we had the feeling that he did so ‘from the other side’, which then became infinitely close, much more than this side.”

The sculptor Libero Badii, a close friend of Porchia, remembered: “He always talked of beauty. [...] I never heard a bitter word from him, and yet he’d suffered more than most. But each blow became, after years of meditation, a brief sentence of wisdom. [...] Porchia had peace. He paid for it with his solitude, with his monkish life, such was his fortune. […] It did me good to spend time with him, and listen as he sometimes said an admiring word about creation, about Beauty, about the instant’s perfection. Or simply as he stayed silent, which he often did. You didn’t need to speak. Porchia said that the whole of knowledge is condensed in twenty words, and he was terrified by the mass of books he received every day, sent by friends and strangers. ‘How many words,’ he lamented. He wrote very little, four or five sentences a year. But he worked on each one with a rigor that was not only internal but of a wordsmith. He was obsessed with commas, because a comma was essential to mark the nuances of his thought. I’ve only seen him angry because of that: because of a comma misplaced by the printers.”

In 1967, Porchia fell from a ladder while gardening and suffered a concussion that would lead to complications; after an operation, Porchia convalesced for a time but his health soon deteriorated, and he died on November 9, 1968, four days’ short of his eighty-third birthday.

Gonzalo Melchor