With more than twenty years of teaching at the Institute of Poetics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) for over twenty years, Fabio Morabito knows very well that speaking more than one language and translating it every day is a treasure, as he recognizes the emotional and psychological value that this implies.
For this teacher, poet and writer, the use of two languages is a practice that, contrary to popular belief, constantly enriches both languages, an act that, in his words, must be defended.
In the corridors of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), people spoke of him with a mixture of respect and a bit of fear. After choosing his subject, half blindly and out of curiosity, I heard a rumor: “He is very strict,” said someone who had already taken one of his classes.
I decided to ignore those words and headed towards the Poetics Department. A place that, to get to, you have to take the “Puma Bus,” travel outside of Ciudad Universitaria and arrive almost at the outskirts of UNAM.
There was Fabio, starting the class to which I arrived a few minutes late.
The discomfort of silence made me say, without anyone asking me, a greeting followed by my name: "Hello, I'm Frida" and, in addition, add an obvious: "I arrived late" followed by silence.
Who knows what Fabio must have thought, since until then I had only known him through a vague nickname given by his unknown companion: "Fabio...strict," he doesn't seem that strict, I thought.
By then Fabio Morabito, an Italian born in Alexandria who has been writing in Spanish in Mexico since his adolescence, already had a prolific career as a poet and writer under his belt.
In 1985 he won the Carlos Pellicer Ibero-American Fine Arts Poetry Award for Published Work for his collection of poems "Lotes baldíos", a work that brings together two of his most significant poems "Cuarteto de Pompeya" and "La ola que volví".
The imagined story of the last moments of two bodies embracing and petrified during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD – one of the greatest natural disasters of the last two thousand years – discovered by the Italian archaeologist Vittorio Spinazzolla in 1922 and which he named "The Lovers of Pompeii", and of which Fabio recreated a last night full of passion.
While «The wave that returns», the title of the volume of poetry and short stories about everyday life that brings together three of his books «Lotes baldíos» (1985); «De lunes todo el año» (1992), winner of the Bellas Artes Poetry Prize in Aguascalientes; and «Alguien de lava» (2002), a poem that speaks of the strength of the sea and nature.
In 1997, with "When Panthers Were Not Black," which tells the story of a young feline's journey in search of her identity, guided by a group of her peers "who leave no trace," he was awarded the International White Raven Prize by the Jüngenbibliotheke in Munich.
In 2006, “Grieta de fatiga” (Griet of Fatigue), fifteen short stories about the beauty and curiosity of everyday life – a favorite and recurring theme in Fabio’s narrative and poetry – won the Antonin Artaud Narrative Prize.
Of all this, the only thing we knew was that the teacher was perhaps "strict."
Whoever said that ignorance is bliss was not wrong. Because this ignorance created a kind of bond between the professor and his shy students in the Translation I and II classes. Thus creating a recurring familiarity on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the faculty room of the Poetics department, so far from the hustle and bustle of the Faculty corridors.
Over time we got to know each other. The translation “teacher” gradually acquired an air of respect that was diluted by the great sense of humor with which he praised each word we experimented with. “What does the paragraph say?” “What other word can you think of?” “That sounds good.” “No, that doesn’t convince.”
Years and interviews later, Península 360 Press, from its segment “Portraits of the Bay Area,” returns to the same Poetics classroom at the UNAM Institute of Philology to meet up with that professor again and listen to his experiences from his role as a teacher of the subject of Translation of Modern Italian Letters at UNAM, which he has taught for more than ten years.
A class that he says is “more like a translation workshop.” Fabio also reflects on the constant work that is done when coming into contact with another language that is not “one’s own.”
Years after those revealing classes, his students met and warmly congratulated their translation “teacher” because, in 2015, Fabio was again awarded the White Raven International Prize granted by the Jüngenbibliotheke in Munich for “Cuentos populares mexicanos.”
Later, in 2017, he was awarded the Fine Arts Award Narrative Colima for Published Work for “Mothers and Dogs”, while in 2018 he won one of the highest awards in Mexican literature, which is given each year to the best published book: the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize from Writers for Writers for his work “The Reader at Home”.
This prize has been awarded in the past to writers such as Juan Rulfo for "Pedro Páramo" in 1955, to Octavio Paz for "The Bow and the Lyre" in 1956, to Josefina Vicens for "The Empty Book" in 1958, to Elena Garro in 1963 for "Memories of the Future" and in 2021 to Cristina Rivera Garza for "The Invincible Summer of Liliana", among many others.
In addition, in 2019 Morabito wins the Roger Caillois Award awarded by the French PEN Club, An award given each year to an author of Latin America and another to an author of French language.
Among the Latin Americans who have been awarded in the past are Chilean José Donoso in 1991; Colombian José Donoso in 1993; Alvaro Mutisin 1995, the Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casaresin 2003, the Mexican Carlos Fuentes; and in 2006, the Mexican Carlos Fuentes Sergio Pitol, to name just a few.
For more details about Fabio Morabito and his role as a teacher and translator, visit the interview on the Instagram account of @peninsula360press.
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