Fernando Alegria.

• Author: Donahue, Moraima
• Position: Chilean academic

Fernando Alegria, scholar, humanist, critic, poet, novelist, essayist, a professor of Spanish American literature and a Chilean to his marrow, whose commitment to Chile, the land and the myth, emerges constantly in his writings, was born in Santiago on September 26, 1918.

As a youth, he was strongly drawn to letters. He was about thirteen when his first writings were published in La Nacion, Santiago's daily newspaper. Later, at age sixteen, he wrote an essay, "El Paisaje y sus Problemas," which was published in the journal Atenea of Concepcion University. Two years later he wrote, and published, the historical novel Recabarren, named for a prominent Chilean labor leader. This early work was the genesis of what became one of his favorite literary subjects--the hero in his different forms: the forgotten or discredited hero, the unknown hero, and the antihero. In those years he also wrote comedy in the form of brief theatrical pieces for university presentations.

In 1940 he decided to come to the United States to study psychology. It was with that intention that he enrolled in Bowling Green University, in Ohio. But he soon changed direction and discipline, and enrolled in the English department, receiving his bachelor's degree in July 1941. His great interest in Spanish American literature took him to the University of California at Berkeley which had professors of high prestige on its faculty, including Arturo Torres Rioseco and the great cervantean scholar Rudolph Schevill.

That was also the year the United States entered World War II. Alegria, who had been thinking of traveling to Europe and then returning to Chile, decided to stay in the United States. While at Berkeley he met Carmen Letona Melendez, a highly intelligent and charming Salvadoran medical student whom he married in 1943. The couple then spent some time in Central America and in Washington, D.C. When Alegria decided to continue his doctoral studies, they returned to Berkeley. He received his doctoral degree in 1947 and that same year he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a book about the American poet Walt Whitman. Fellowship in hand, he went to Chile, where he stayed for a year and completed the project; the book was published in Mexico in 1954 under the title Walt Whitman en Hispanoamerica.

The University of Berkeley then offered him a post as an instructor of Spanish American literature. He accepted the post and returned to the United States, where he has lived...