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{{short description|Mexican writer and editor}}
{{Wikify|date=December 2008}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2014}}
'''Alberto Ruy Sánchez Lacy''' is a [[Mexican people|Mexican]] writer and editor born in Mexico City on 7 December 1951. He is the author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Since 1988 he has been the chief editor and founding publisher of Latin America’s leading arts magazine: ''Artes de Mexico.'' He has been Visiting Professor at several universities, including Stanford, Middlebury and La Sorbonne, and is invited to give lectures in Europe, Africa, Asia and all the American Continent. His work has been praised by [[Octavio Paz]], [[Juan Rulfo]], [[Severo Sarduy]], [[Alberto Manguel]], Claude Michel Cluny and recieved awards from several international institutions.


{{BLP sources|date=March 2011}}
== Biographical lines ==
[[File:Alberto Ruy Sánchez Lacy.jpg|thumb|Alberto Ruy Sanchez Lacy (left) receiving Arts and Literature National Prize 2017.]]
Joaquín Ruy Sánchez, his father, was born in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, as well as his mother, María Antonieta Lacy. Alberto Ruy Sánchez was the first of five children. Following the hazardous working engagements of his father, the family used to live almost half of the year in Mexico City and the other half in the North of the country. Including longer residence periods in [[Ciudad Obregón, Sonora]], and [[Villa Constitución]], in the sonoran desert of Baja California, where he lived when he was between three and five years old. That gave him a unique and early experience of the desert.
'''Alberto Ruy-Sánchez Lacy''' is a [[Mexicans|Mexican]] writer and editor born in [[Mexico City]] on 7 December 1951. He is an author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Since 1988 he has been the chief editor and founding publisher of Latin America's leading arts magazine, ''Artes de Mexico''. He has been a [[Visiting scholar|visiting professor]] at several universities including [[Stanford]], [[Middlebury College|Middlebury]] and [[La Sorbonne]], and has been invited to give lectures in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and South America. His work has been praised by [[Octavio Paz]], [[Juan Rulfo]], [[Severo Sarduy]], [[Alberto Manguel]] and Claude Michel Cluny and has received awards from several international institutions.


== Early life ==
===Involuntary Memory and 'finding another Mexico'===
Ruy-Sánchez's parents, Joaquín Ruy-Sánchez and María Antonieta Lacy, were both born in the northern Mexican state of [[Sonora]]. Alberto was the first of five children. For a few years, the family spent almost half the year in Mexico City and the other half in northern Mexico. These relocations included long residence periods in [[Ciudad Obregón, Sonora]] and [[Villa Constitución]] in the Sonoran desert of [[Baja California]], where Ruy-Sánchez lived from ages three to five. This experience gave him a unique early experience of the desert.<ref>Delay, Bruno. [https://www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros/Semblanza.html ''Semblanza de Alberto Ruy-Sánchez'' ] Decoration Speech. Mexico city, 15 February 2000.</ref>
Experience that he forgot and suddenly recovered many years later, in 1975, when he visited the Sahara for the first time. From that involuntary act of memory he built a special creative relationship to the Moroccan desert, and mainly to the walled city of Essaouira, the ancient Mogador, as main scenario for most of his novels. As he explains in his essay, "The nine gifts that Morocco gave me" :<ref>In ArabAmericas, Literary entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World, edited by Ottmar Ette. Bibliotheca IberoAmericana, 110, Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, pages 261-275</ref> "My first trip to [[Mogador]] became a much longer and deeper journey. First came the shock of discovering a place that on spite of being so distant from Mexico provoked a strong impression of recognition, much greater than the one a Mexican receives upon arriving to Spain. A combination of body language, place and objects made me feel that I had ventured into another Mexico.(...) Our legacy derives from five centuries of mixing Indian and Spanish blood, but we must not overlook the Arabic heritage running through our veins, introduced by Spanirds bodies. We must not forget that for eight centuries two thirds of what is now Spain and Portugal was Arabic: the Andalusí civilization."


===A Baroque Value of the Senses===
=== Journey to Morocco===
Ruy-Sánchez had forgotten his early childhood experiences until he suddenly recalled them in 1975, visiting the [[Sahara]] for the first time. From that involuntary sudden recollection he developed a special creative relationship with the Moroccan desert, especially the walled city of [[Essaouira]] (the ancient Mogador), which became a principal setting for most of his novels. As he explains in his essay, "The nine gifts that Morocco gave me":
Before travelling to Morocco for the first time, as a teenager and later as college student, he received a severe humanistic education from Jesuit schools in Mexico. From which he kept "a Baroque, counterreformist idea of the world as a complex reality that can only be fully understood and enjoyed with all the senses." So, in his poetic and narrative writing there is always the baroque aim of "listening with the eyes, looking with the fingers and the ears, tasting with the smell, etc, as an artistic principle." <ref> Artes de México, nums 70 and 76, 2004 and 2005, Mexico.</ref>
===The pleasure of hearing and telling stories===
The enlarged sonoran family that finally fully emigrated to Mexico City, kept weekly meetings where he learned "the big pleasure of hearing and telling stories, and it was there that I felt growing inside me the desire of being a writer." .<ref> "Indicios de autorretrato" in his Antología, inside his site, www.albertoruysanchez.com</ref> A desire confirmed when he visited in 1975 and 1976 the [[Djemaa el Fna]] square in Marrakech, where the Traditional Story Tellers made this place deserve to be declared Oral Human Heritage Site by Unesco in June 1997. <ref> [[Juan Goytisolo]], Xemaá-El Fná, Patrimonio Oral de la Humanidad, Galaxia Gutemberg, Barcelona, 1997.</ref>


{{quote|My first trip to [[Mogador]] became a much longer and deeper journey. First came the shock of discovering a place that on spite of being so distant from Mexico provoked a strong impression of recognition, much greater than the one a Mexican receives upon arriving to Spain. A combination of body language, place and objects made me feel that I had ventured into another Mexico.(...) Our legacy derives from five centuries of mixing Indian and Spanish blood, but we must not overlook the Arabic heritage running through our veins, introduced by Spaniards' bodies. We must not forget that for eight centuries two-thirds of what is now Spain and Portugal was Arabic: the Andalusí civilization.|Alberto Ruy-Sánchez|<ref>In ArabAmericas, Literary entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World, edited by [[Ottmar Ette]]. Bibliotheca IberoAmericana, 110, Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, pages 261–275</ref>}}
===A double search===
A fourth biographical threat present in his work is the fact that he considers his novels as a search. A search of knowledge in both senses of: A. Investigating the mysteries of life; and B. Looking to go beyond our given material reality. His search has a name: Desire. He began writing as an effort to understand women's desire, through stories women told him and he witnessed. And that produced the novel ''Mogador, the names of the air.'' It opened a cycle including later ''En los labios del agua; Los Jardines secretos de Mogador; Nueve veces el asombro'' and a few other "mogadorian" titles, all of them written through almost twenty years. As each published book produced a massive reaction of mail by people telling their stories of desire, mainly by women, the author always considered them, heavily transformed, to nourish the stories deployed in the next book of the series. There could be an explanation for all this dimension of his 'work as a search' if we{{Who|date=January 2010}} consider that, between the jobs he had while he was living in Paris, he was first a Tantra student and then a Tantra instructor. For a short time he was even working for a sexual therapist. The other sense of the term search in his books, the more spiritual or religious one, could also be linked to this Tantric period of his life. And it is evident when he declares his books as "material objects, geometrical compositions, that could help people think, feel, understand and improve their lives".{{Attribution needed|date=January 2010}}


===Initiation===
=== Inspirations ===
Before travelling to Morocco for the first time as a teenager, and later returning as a college student, Ruy-Sánchez received a severe humanistic education from [[Jesuit]] schools in Mexico. From these experiences he gained "a Baroque idea of the world as a complex reality that can only be fully understood and enjoyed with all the senses." The baroque aim of "listening with the eyes, looking with the fingers and the ears, tasting with the smell, etc, as an artistic principle" is a common theme in his poetry and prose.<ref>Artes de México, nums 70 and 76, 2004 and 2005, Mexico.</ref>
In 1975 he went to Paris, where he lived until 1983. There he followed the seminars of [[Roland Barthes]], his thesis director, of [[Michel Foucault]], [[Jacques Rancière]], [[André Chastel]] and some others. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Paris, became an editor and a writer. Between 1984 and 1987, already in Mexico, he was managing editor of the magazine, ''[[Vuelta (magazine)|Vuelta]],'' edited by [[Octavio Paz]]. Who considered him "The strangest of Mexican writers, a true cosmopolite poet telling stories from a territory wider than just a country because he is the poet from the Skin. That is why his language is the Touch, the sense that implies all the others." The Cuban writer [[Severo Sarduy]] wrote that he "invented not only novels but a new way of reading, the way of poetic lightning stroke." <ref>[http://www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros/Critica1.html This and other comments in]</ref>


Ruy-Sánchez's large Sonoran family finally fully emigrated to Mexico City and held weekly meetings where Ruy-Sánchez learned "the big pleasure of hearing and telling stories, and it was there that I felt growing inside me the desire of being a writer."<ref>https://www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros/Aut.html "Indicios de autorretrato"</ref> This desire was confirmed when he visited the [[Djemaa el Fna]] square in Marrakech in 1975 and 1976, where traditional storytellers are responsible for the square's designation as an UNESCO Oral Human Heritage Site in June 1997.<ref>[[Juan Goytisolo]], Xemaá-El Fná, Patrimonio Oral de la Humanidad, Galaxia Gutemberg, Barcelona, 1997.</ref>
===Moving Recognitions===
Some of his books have been translated to several languages, French mainly, Portuguese, Italian, German, Arabic, Servian, Turkish, etc. They are kept in print in Spanish as they became cult objects: strange poetic long sellers since his first publication in 1987, when he was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the most prestigious literary recognition in Mexico. But only one has been published in English. The University of New Mexico awarded him as Literary essayist in 1991 and he was also a Fellow of the [[John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation]]. In February 2000 he was decorated by the French Government as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The Governor of Kentucky awarded him as "Kentucky Colonel", the highest distinction given in that State, where he also is Honnorary Citizen of Louisville. Between 1999 and 2003 he was appointed as Chairman of the Creative Non-Fiction Summer Program in the Banff Centre for the Arts, in Canada. In November 2006, The Editor's Guild of Mexico awarded him with the Premio Juan Pablos al Mérito Editorial, a life achievement recognition for 26&nbsp;years of working as an editor and mainly for his work making of the publishing house, ''[[Artes de México]],'' a leading cultural project in the Americas. He currently lives mainly in Mexico City, with his wife the historian Margarita De Orellana, coeditor of ''Artes de México'', a daughter, Andrea, born in 1984, and a son, Santiago, born in 1987. His work as international lecturer keeps him traveling abroad, no more than his work as a researcher on rural Mexican cultures keeps him traveling inside Mexico.


===The theme of search in life and writing===
== Basic bibliography ==
The theme of the search in Ruy-Sánchez's novels also has its roots in his own life. Specifically, he uses his novels as a means to search for knowledge in the senses of investigating life's mysteries and going beyond observed material reality. Ruy-Sánchez began writing seeking to understand women's desire, through the stories women told him those he witnessed. This first search led to the novel ''Mogador, the names of the air.'' This became a series that included ''En los labios del agua'', ''Los Jardines secretos de Mogador'', and ''Nueve veces el asombro''. The full series took almost twenty years to write, as each published novel generated many letters in response, mostly from women telling their own stories of desire. Sánchez would consider those stories, alter them, and create another book, following this ongoing theme of search.

Ruy-Sánchez had a number of jobs while living in Paris, but in between he became a tantra student, a tantra instructor, and worked for a sexual therapist. This exploration of tantra contributed to the search through writing both in the sense of literally searching for women's desire and in a more spiritual or religious sense of seeking transcendent experiences. Ruy-Sánchez describes in a statement essay [http://www.albertoruysanchez.net/disc.htm] his books as "material objects, geometrical compositions, that could help people think, feel, understand and improve their lives".

===Education and reception===
Ruy-Sánchez lived in Paris from 1975 to 1983. He took writing seminars from his thesis director [[Roland Barthes]], [[Michel Foucault]], [[Jacques Rancière]] and [[André Chastel]] and received a PhD from the University of Paris. He worked as both an editor and a writer, building on his experiences as managing editor of the Mexican magazine ''[[Vuelta (magazine)|Vuelta]],'' edited by [[Octavio Paz]], from 1984 to 1987. Paz called Ruy-Sánchez, "the strangest of Mexican writers, a true cosmopolitan poet telling stories from a territory wider than just a country because he is the poet from the Skin. That is why his language is the Touch, the sense that implies all the others." The Cuban writer [[Severo Sarduy]] wrote that Ruy-Sánchez, "invented not only novels but a new way of reading, the way of poetic lightning stroke."<ref>[https://www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros/Critica1.html This and other comments in]</ref> The historian and essayist Alberto Manguel wrote about his novel Los sueños de la serpiente: "based on my experience I can say that this is a masterpiece. One of the most important books written in Spanish in recent years."<ref>Alberto Manguel: "Un laberinto en el que el lector se encuentra." EL Cultural, suplemento de la Razón. Número 209. Julio 19 2019. Páginas 6-8.[https://issuu.com/razon.com.mx/docs/ec_209_vobo4]</ref>

===Awards and current life===
Ruy-Sánchez's books have been translated into several languages – mainly French, but also Portuguese, Italian, German, Arabic, Serbian and Turkish. Only one of his books has been published in English, however. They remain in print in Spanish as cult favorites, unusual for poetry. His first work came out in 1987, when he was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the most prestigious literary recognition in Mexico.

The University of New Mexico awarded him as Literary Essayist in 1991 and he was also a Fellow of the [[John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation]]. In February 2000 he was decorated by the French Government as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The Governor of Kentucky awarded him as "Kentucky Colonel", the highest distinction given in that state, where he also is Honnorary Citizen of Louisville. Between 1999 and 2003 he was appointed Chairman of the Creative Non-Fiction Summer Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. In November 2006 The Editor's Guild of Mexico awarded him with the Premio Juan Pablos al Mérito Editorial, a lifetime achievement recognition for 26 years of working as an editor and mainly for his work in creating the publishing house ''[[Artes de México]],'' a leading cultural project in the Americas.

Ruy-Sánchez currently lives in Mexico City with his wife, historian Margarita De Orellana, coeditor of ''Artes de México'', and their children Andrea (born 1984) and Santiago (born 1987). He continues to speak internationally and travel within Mexico as a researcher of diverse Mexican cultures.

== Bibliography ==
'''Novels'''
'''Novels'''
* 1987. ''Los nombres del aire.'' English translation as ''Mogador'',by Mark Schafer, San Francisco, City Lights, 1993.
* 1987. ''Los nombres del aire.'' English translation as ''Mogador'', by Mark Schafer, San Francisco, City Lights, 1993.
* 1996. ''En los labios del agua''
* 1996. ''En los labios del agua''
* 1998. ''De agua y Aire. Disco.''
* 1998. ''De agua y Aire. Disco.''
Line 30: Line 42:
* 2005. ''Nueve veces el asombro.''
* 2005. ''Nueve veces el asombro.''
* 2007. ''La mano del fuego.''
* 2007. ''La mano del fuego.''
* 2014. ''Quinteto de Mogador.''

* 2018. ''Los sueños de la serpiente.''
* 2021. ''El expediente Anna Ajmátova.''
'''Short Stories'''
'''Short Stories'''
* 1987. ''Los demonios de la lengua.''
* 1987. ''Los demonios de la lengua.''
* 1994. ''Cuentos de Mogador.''
* 1994. ''Cuentos de Mogador.''
* 1999. ''De cómo llegó a Mogador la melancolía.''
* 1999. ''De cómo llegó a Mogador la melancolía.''
* 2001.'' La huella del grito.''
* 2001. ''La huella del grito.''
'''Essays'''
'''Essays'''
* 1981. ''Mitología de un cine en crisis.''
* 1981. ''Mitología de un cine en crisis.''
Line 46: Line 60:
* 1999. ''Aventuras de la mirada.''
* 1999. ''Aventuras de la mirada.''
* 2000. ''Cuatro escritores rituales.''
* 2000. ''Cuatro escritores rituales.''
* 2011. ''La página posible.''
* 2011. ''Elogio del insomnio.''
* 2014. ''Octavio Paz: cuenta y canta la higuera.''
'''Poetry'''
'''Poetry'''
* 1990. ''La inaccessible.''
* 1990. ''La inaccessible.''
* 2006. ''Lugares prometidos.''
* 2006. ''El bosque erotizado.''
* 2011. ''Decir es desear.''
* 2016. ''Luz del colibrí.''
* 2017. ''Escrito con agua. Poemas de horizontes lejanos.''
* 2018. ''Soy el camino que tomo. Poemas marginales 1970-2018.''
* 2019. ''Dicen las jacarandas.''


==Awards==
==Awards==
Line 53: Line 77:
*1987, '''Premio Xavier Villaurrutia''' for his novel ''Los nombres del aire.''
*1987, '''Premio Xavier Villaurrutia''' for his novel ''Los nombres del aire.''
*1988, '''Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation''', Nueva York.
*1988, '''Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation''', Nueva York.
*1991, '''Premio de Literatura José Fuentes Mares''', for his book ''Una introducción a [[Octavio Paz]]''. New Mexico State University and Universidad de Ciudad Juarez.
*1991, '''[[José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature]]''', for his book ''Una introducción a [[Octavio Paz]]''. New Mexico State University and Universidad de Ciudad Juarez.
*1993, '''Honorary Member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores,''' México.
*1993, '''Honorary Member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores,''' México.
*1998, '''Honorary Citizen of Louisville''', Kentucky.
*1998, '''Honorary Citizen of Louisville''', Kentucky.
*1999, '''Honorary Member of the chapter Mu Epsilon''' of the National Hispanic Society Sigma, Delta, Pi, in the USA.
*1999, '''Honorary Member of the chapter Mu Epsilon''' of the National Hispanic Society [[Sigma Delta Pi]], in the USA.
*1999. '''Kentucky Colonel,''' by the Governor of Kentucky.
*1999. '''Kentucky Colonel,''' by the Governor of Kentucky.
*2000. '''Prix des Trois Continents,''' for the French edition of his novel ''En los labios del agua.''
*2000. '''Prix des Trois Continents,''' for the French edition of his novel ''En los labios del agua.''
*2001. '''Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,''' by the French Government.
*2001. '''Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,''' by the French Government.
*2002. '''Honorary Captain''' of the historical Steam Boat ''La belle de Louisville".
*2002. '''Honorary Captain''' of the historical Steam Boat ''La belle de Louisville".
*2003. '''Premio Cálamo''', by Librería Cálamo and the Universidad de Zaragoza for ''Los Jardines Secretos de Mogador'', Spain.
*2003. '''Premio Cálamo''', by Librería Cálamo and the Universidad de Zaragoza for ''Los Jardines Secretos de Mogador'', Spain.
Line 65: Line 89:
*2006. '''Premio a la Excelencia de lo Nuestro.''' By the Fundación México Unido. México.
*2006. '''Premio a la Excelencia de lo Nuestro.''' By the Fundación México Unido. México.
*2006. '''Premio Juan Pablos al Mérito Editorial.''' By the Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana (CANAIEM). Mexico.
*2006. '''Premio Juan Pablos al Mérito Editorial.''' By the Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana (CANAIEM). Mexico.
*2011. '''Premio San Petersburgo Lee''', votación de lectores de la ciudad de San Petersburgo, Rusia.

*2014. '''Premio Las Pérgolas.''' Otorgado por la Asociación Mexicana de Libreros.Entregado durante la FIL Guadalajara. Por su "contribución notable a las letras hispánicas".
==Books on Alberto Ruy Sánchez==
*2015. '''Premio ELENA PONIATOWSKA,''' Chicago. Otorgado por el NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEXICAN ARTS, en Chicago. 22 de mayo. Premio compartido con Margarita De Orellana.
* Padilla, Ignacio. ''Claves para La Crítica en Primera persona propuesta por Alberto Ruy Sánchez'', Universidad Iberoamericana, México, 1993.
*2015. '''Premio POESTATE 2015.''' Otorgado por el Festival de Poesía de la ciudad de Lugano, Suiza: POESTATE. 6 de junio. Compartido con Elsa Cross.
* Monges Nicolau, Graciela. ''Hacia una Hermenéutica del deseo. Lectura de tres novelas de Alberto Ruy Sánchez.'' Universidad Iberoamericana. Colección Alter Texto. México, 2004.
*2017. '''Premio Homenaje al Bibliófilo 2017.''' Otorgando por la FIL: Feria Internacional del libro de Guadalajara
* Buyssens, Emmanuelle. ''Ecritures Saturnales. Le défi poétique de Alberto Ruy Sánchez.'' Pris au mot, Paris et Quebec, 2002.
*2017. '''Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes 2017.''' Campo de Lingüística y Literatura. Máxima distinción que otorga el estado mexicano desde 1945.
*Ortiz Domínguez, Efrén et Al. ''Alberto Ruy Sánchez: oasis en la narrativa mexicana.'' Texto Crítico 13. Universidad Veracruzana, Jalapa, 2003.
*2018. '''Premio Mazatlán de Literatura.''' Por la novela Los sueños de la serpiente.
*2018. '''Doctorado Honoris Causa.''' Otorgado por el Centro Universitario de Integración Humanística, CIUH, Estado de México.
*2019. '''Premio Caracol de Plata.''' Otorgado por el Festival de Poesía Letras en la Mar. Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.


==Footnotes==
==Footnotes==
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}
1. In ''ArabAmericas, Literary entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World'', edited by Ottmar Ette. Bibliotheca IberoAmericana, 110, Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, pages 261-275.
2. ''Artes de México,'' nums 70 and 76, 2004 and 2005, Mexico.
3. ''Indicios de Autorretrato'', in ANTOLOGÍA. http://www.albertoruysanchez.com
4. [[Juan Goytisolo]], ''Xemaá-El Fná, Patrimonio oral de la Humanidad,'' Galaxia Gutemberg, Barcelona, 1997.
6. This and other critical comments on his work, in http://www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros/Critica1.html


==External links==
==External links==
*His Blog:CUADERNO ABIERTO,<ref>http://albertoruysanchez.blogspot.com</ref>
*[http://albertoruysanchez.blogspot.com Official blog]
*[http://www.albertoruysanchez.com Alberto Ruy-Sanchez: Mexican Author: Ecrivain mexicain] His main Site (in Spanish) with photos and more than a hundred texts, 30 on the author and 80 by him.
*[http://www.literalmagazine.com/es/archive-L14.php Places of Longing Ruy Sánchez on Gabriel Figueroa Flores]
*His main Site in Spanish<ref>[http://www.albertoruysanchez.com Alberto Ruy-Sanchez: Mexican Author: Ecrivain mexicain<!-- bot-generated title -->] at www.albertoruysanchez.com</ref> with photos and more than a hundred texts, 30 on the author and 80 by him.
*A site in English at the Authors Guild:<ref>http://www.albertoruysanchez.net</ref> with his statement on the gifts that Morocco gave him.
*A<ref>http://www.literaturainba.com/escritores/ruy_sanchez.htm</ref> short Bio [/A] in Spanish, by Elda García.
*An interview in Spanish for ''El Universal''. By Sandra Licona.<ref>[http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/49230.html Hay patologías que ayudan a vivir: Alberto Ruy Sánchez - El Universal - Cultura<!-- bot-generated title -->] at www.eluniversal.com.mx</ref> Are you a literary pop star?
* In Words Without Borders, a fragment of<ref>[http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-garden-of-voices/ Words Without Borders<!-- bot-generated title -->] at www.wordswithoutborders.org</ref> The secret Gardens of Mogador: The Garden of Voices. Translated by Rhonda Dhal Buchanan.
* Also in Words Without Borders,<ref>[http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/from-the-secret-gardens-of-mogador-voices-of-the-earth/ Words Without Borders<!-- bot-generated title -->] at www.wordswithoutborders.org</ref> The Voices of the Earth. Translated by Rhonda Dhal Buchanan.


{{Authority control}}
==References==
<references/>


{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
| NAME = Ruy-Sanchez, Alberto
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION =
| DATE OF BIRTH = 1951
| PLACE OF BIRTH =
| DATE OF DEATH =
| PLACE OF DEATH =
}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruy-Sanchez, Alberto}}
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[[Category:University of Paris alumni]]
[[Category:University of Paris alumni]]
[[Category:Mexican novelists]]
[[Category:Mexican novelists]]
[[Category:Mexican male novelists]]
[[Category:Mexican essayists]]
[[Category:Mexican essayists]]
[[Category:Guggenheim Fellows]]
[[Category:Mexican male writers]]
[[Category:University of Paris faculty]]
[[Category:Mexican male essayists]]
[[Category:Academic staff of the University of Paris]]
[[Category:Stanford University faculty]]
[[Category:Stanford University faculty]]
[[Category:Writers from Mexico City]]

[[de:Alberto Ruy-Sánchez]]
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Latest revision as of 02:04, 15 June 2024

Alberto Ruy Sanchez Lacy (left) receiving Arts and Literature National Prize 2017.

Alberto Ruy-Sánchez Lacy is a Mexican writer and editor born in Mexico City on 7 December 1951. He is an author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Since 1988 he has been the chief editor and founding publisher of Latin America's leading arts magazine, Artes de Mexico. He has been a visiting professor at several universities including Stanford, Middlebury and La Sorbonne, and has been invited to give lectures in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and South America. His work has been praised by Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Severo Sarduy, Alberto Manguel and Claude Michel Cluny and has received awards from several international institutions.

Early life

[edit]

Ruy-Sánchez's parents, Joaquín Ruy-Sánchez and María Antonieta Lacy, were both born in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Alberto was the first of five children. For a few years, the family spent almost half the year in Mexico City and the other half in northern Mexico. These relocations included long residence periods in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora and Villa Constitución in the Sonoran desert of Baja California, where Ruy-Sánchez lived from ages three to five. This experience gave him a unique early experience of the desert.[1]

Journey to Morocco

[edit]

Ruy-Sánchez had forgotten his early childhood experiences until he suddenly recalled them in 1975, visiting the Sahara for the first time. From that involuntary sudden recollection he developed a special creative relationship with the Moroccan desert, especially the walled city of Essaouira (the ancient Mogador), which became a principal setting for most of his novels. As he explains in his essay, "The nine gifts that Morocco gave me":

My first trip to Mogador became a much longer and deeper journey. First came the shock of discovering a place that on spite of being so distant from Mexico provoked a strong impression of recognition, much greater than the one a Mexican receives upon arriving to Spain. A combination of body language, place and objects made me feel that I had ventured into another Mexico.(...) Our legacy derives from five centuries of mixing Indian and Spanish blood, but we must not overlook the Arabic heritage running through our veins, introduced by Spaniards' bodies. We must not forget that for eight centuries two-thirds of what is now Spain and Portugal was Arabic: the Andalusí civilization.

— Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, [2]

Inspirations

[edit]

Before travelling to Morocco for the first time as a teenager, and later returning as a college student, Ruy-Sánchez received a severe humanistic education from Jesuit schools in Mexico. From these experiences he gained "a Baroque idea of the world as a complex reality that can only be fully understood and enjoyed with all the senses." The baroque aim of "listening with the eyes, looking with the fingers and the ears, tasting with the smell, etc, as an artistic principle" is a common theme in his poetry and prose.[3]

Ruy-Sánchez's large Sonoran family finally fully emigrated to Mexico City and held weekly meetings where Ruy-Sánchez learned "the big pleasure of hearing and telling stories, and it was there that I felt growing inside me the desire of being a writer."[4] This desire was confirmed when he visited the Djemaa el Fna square in Marrakech in 1975 and 1976, where traditional storytellers are responsible for the square's designation as an UNESCO Oral Human Heritage Site in June 1997.[5]

The theme of search in life and writing

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The theme of the search in Ruy-Sánchez's novels also has its roots in his own life. Specifically, he uses his novels as a means to search for knowledge in the senses of investigating life's mysteries and going beyond observed material reality. Ruy-Sánchez began writing seeking to understand women's desire, through the stories women told him those he witnessed. This first search led to the novel Mogador, the names of the air. This became a series that included En los labios del agua, Los Jardines secretos de Mogador, and Nueve veces el asombro. The full series took almost twenty years to write, as each published novel generated many letters in response, mostly from women telling their own stories of desire. Sánchez would consider those stories, alter them, and create another book, following this ongoing theme of search.

Ruy-Sánchez had a number of jobs while living in Paris, but in between he became a tantra student, a tantra instructor, and worked for a sexual therapist. This exploration of tantra contributed to the search through writing both in the sense of literally searching for women's desire and in a more spiritual or religious sense of seeking transcendent experiences. Ruy-Sánchez describes in a statement essay [2] his books as "material objects, geometrical compositions, that could help people think, feel, understand and improve their lives".

Education and reception

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Ruy-Sánchez lived in Paris from 1975 to 1983. He took writing seminars from his thesis director Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière and André Chastel and received a PhD from the University of Paris. He worked as both an editor and a writer, building on his experiences as managing editor of the Mexican magazine Vuelta, edited by Octavio Paz, from 1984 to 1987. Paz called Ruy-Sánchez, "the strangest of Mexican writers, a true cosmopolitan poet telling stories from a territory wider than just a country because he is the poet from the Skin. That is why his language is the Touch, the sense that implies all the others." The Cuban writer Severo Sarduy wrote that Ruy-Sánchez, "invented not only novels but a new way of reading, the way of poetic lightning stroke."[6] The historian and essayist Alberto Manguel wrote about his novel Los sueños de la serpiente: "based on my experience I can say that this is a masterpiece. One of the most important books written in Spanish in recent years."[7]

Awards and current life

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Ruy-Sánchez's books have been translated into several languages – mainly French, but also Portuguese, Italian, German, Arabic, Serbian and Turkish. Only one of his books has been published in English, however. They remain in print in Spanish as cult favorites, unusual for poetry. His first work came out in 1987, when he was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the most prestigious literary recognition in Mexico.

The University of New Mexico awarded him as Literary Essayist in 1991 and he was also a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In February 2000 he was decorated by the French Government as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The Governor of Kentucky awarded him as "Kentucky Colonel", the highest distinction given in that state, where he also is Honnorary Citizen of Louisville. Between 1999 and 2003 he was appointed Chairman of the Creative Non-Fiction Summer Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. In November 2006 The Editor's Guild of Mexico awarded him with the Premio Juan Pablos al Mérito Editorial, a lifetime achievement recognition for 26 years of working as an editor and mainly for his work in creating the publishing house Artes de México, a leading cultural project in the Americas.

Ruy-Sánchez currently lives in Mexico City with his wife, historian Margarita De Orellana, coeditor of Artes de México, and their children Andrea (born 1984) and Santiago (born 1987). He continues to speak internationally and travel within Mexico as a researcher of diverse Mexican cultures.

Bibliography

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Novels

  • 1987. Los nombres del aire. English translation as Mogador, by Mark Schafer, San Francisco, City Lights, 1993.
  • 1996. En los labios del agua
  • 1998. De agua y Aire. Disco.
  • 2001. Los jardines secretos de Mogador.English translation as The Secret Gardens of Mogador, by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, Buffalo, New York, White Pine Press, 2008.
  • 2005. Nueve veces el asombro.
  • 2007. La mano del fuego.
  • 2014. Quinteto de Mogador.
  • 2018. Los sueños de la serpiente.
  • 2021. El expediente Anna Ajmátova.

Short Stories

  • 1987. Los demonios de la lengua.
  • 1994. Cuentos de Mogador.
  • 1999. De cómo llegó a Mogador la melancolía.
  • 2001. La huella del grito.

Essays

  • 1981. Mitología de un cine en crisis.
  • 1988. Al filo de las hojas.
  • 1990. Una introducción a Octavio Paz.
  • 1991. Tristeza de la verdad: André Gide regresa de Rusia.
  • 1992. Ars de cuerpo entero.
  • 1995. Con la Literatura en el cuerpo.
  • 1997. Diálogos con mis fantasmas.
  • 1999. Aventuras de la mirada.
  • 2000. Cuatro escritores rituales.
  • 2011. La página posible.
  • 2011. Elogio del insomnio.
  • 2014. Octavio Paz: cuenta y canta la higuera.

Poetry

  • 1990. La inaccessible.
  • 2006. Lugares prometidos.
  • 2006. El bosque erotizado.
  • 2011. Decir es desear.
  • 2016. Luz del colibrí.
  • 2017. Escrito con agua. Poemas de horizontes lejanos.
  • 2018. Soy el camino que tomo. Poemas marginales 1970-2018.
  • 2019. Dicen las jacarandas.

Awards

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  • 1987, Premio Xavier Villaurrutia for his novel Los nombres del aire.
  • 1988, Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Nueva York.
  • 1991, José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature, for his book Una introducción a Octavio Paz. New Mexico State University and Universidad de Ciudad Juarez.
  • 1993, Honorary Member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores, México.
  • 1998, Honorary Citizen of Louisville, Kentucky.
  • 1999, Honorary Member of the chapter Mu Epsilon of the National Hispanic Society Sigma Delta Pi, in the USA.
  • 1999. Kentucky Colonel, by the Governor of Kentucky.
  • 2000. Prix des Trois Continents, for the French edition of his novel En los labios del agua.
  • 2001. Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, by the French Government.
  • 2002. Honorary Captain of the historical Steam Boat La belle de Louisville".
  • 2003. Premio Cálamo, by Librería Cálamo and the Universidad de Zaragoza for Los Jardines Secretos de Mogador, Spain.
  • 2005. Gran Orden de Honor Nacional al Mérito Autoral. By the Instituto Nacional del Derecho de Autor. Mexico.
  • 2006. Premio a la Excelencia de lo Nuestro. By the Fundación México Unido. México.
  • 2006. Premio Juan Pablos al Mérito Editorial. By the Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana (CANAIEM). Mexico.
  • 2011. Premio San Petersburgo Lee, votación de lectores de la ciudad de San Petersburgo, Rusia.
  • 2014. Premio Las Pérgolas. Otorgado por la Asociación Mexicana de Libreros.Entregado durante la FIL Guadalajara. Por su "contribución notable a las letras hispánicas".
  • 2015. Premio ELENA PONIATOWSKA, Chicago. Otorgado por el NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEXICAN ARTS, en Chicago. 22 de mayo. Premio compartido con Margarita De Orellana.
  • 2015. Premio POESTATE 2015. Otorgado por el Festival de Poesía de la ciudad de Lugano, Suiza: POESTATE. 6 de junio. Compartido con Elsa Cross.
  • 2017. Premio Homenaje al Bibliófilo 2017. Otorgando por la FIL: Feria Internacional del libro de Guadalajara
  • 2017. Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes 2017. Campo de Lingüística y Literatura. Máxima distinción que otorga el estado mexicano desde 1945.
  • 2018. Premio Mazatlán de Literatura. Por la novela Los sueños de la serpiente.
  • 2018. Doctorado Honoris Causa. Otorgado por el Centro Universitario de Integración Humanística, CIUH, Estado de México.
  • 2019. Premio Caracol de Plata. Otorgado por el Festival de Poesía Letras en la Mar. Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.

Footnotes

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  1. ^ Delay, Bruno. Semblanza de Alberto Ruy-Sánchez Decoration Speech. Mexico city, 15 February 2000.
  2. ^ In ArabAmericas, Literary entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World, edited by Ottmar Ette. Bibliotheca IberoAmericana, 110, Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, pages 261–275
  3. ^ Artes de México, nums 70 and 76, 2004 and 2005, Mexico.
  4. ^ https://www.angelfire.com/ar2/libros/Aut.html "Indicios de autorretrato"
  5. ^ Juan Goytisolo, Xemaá-El Fná, Patrimonio Oral de la Humanidad, Galaxia Gutemberg, Barcelona, 1997.
  6. ^ This and other comments in
  7. ^ Alberto Manguel: "Un laberinto en el que el lector se encuentra." EL Cultural, suplemento de la Razón. Número 209. Julio 19 2019. Páginas 6-8.[1]
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