The literary legacy of Jorge Luis Borges has been abandoned.
After exercising strict custody over the rights and manuscripts of the author of “El Aleph” for more than three years, Kodama created the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation two years later to disseminate and preserve the writer’s work.
His lawyer Fernando Soto confirmed the day before that Kodama “did not leave a will.”
“Your trusted notary does not have a will. No one from a close circle among whom we consulted knows the will, ”she said at a press conference.
The lawyer explained that Kodama, as Borges’s universal heir, was the owner of the copyright of all his literary work, owner of decorations and distinctions, original manuscripts, drawings and copies of the personal library of the also poet and essayist.
After the legal presentation of Kodama’s five nephews, Soto said this Tuesday that “it makes me very happy and relieves my spirit… A new stage in the protection of the Work of Borges opens.”
Justice will decide whether Kodama’s five nephews are his only heirs. In decades, his widow and executor María Kodama died on March 26 and left no will.
This Tuesday, Kodama’s five nephews appeared before the civil courts as their only heirs and could receive their aunt’s assets, including Borges’ work.
The children of Jorge Kodama – who died in 2017 – requested before the civil court that handles the succession of the widow of Borges to carry out an inventory of the real estate, literary works, prizes, decorations and manuscripts, among others, before the issuance of the Declaration of heirs, according to the court document.
Deserving of multiple awards, such as the Cervantes Prize -the highest distinction for Spanish-speaking letters-, Borges died in 1986 at the age of 86. He left Kodama, a writer and translator whom he had married that same year, as his only heir. They had no children.
