Unpublished Sager Text on Arroyo's Struggles Released

Éditions Ides et calendes has published a monograph in a small collection featuring an unpublished text by Michel Sager on his friend Eduardo Arroyo. Sager, known for translations of Buzzati and Henry James, wrote the piece in the mid-1960s after meeting Arroyo in Italy. The text offers a blunt account of the drama of being from 'Spanish obscurantism and bourgeois bad faith,' compounded by the disillusionments of the late 1960s. Fabienne di Rocco's postface notes Arroyo was 'inhabited by this feeling of defeat.' Sager's writing mirrors Arroyo's harsh painting, emphasizing struggles over successes. He writes, 'If he had difficulty painting his own image without detours, it's because for him, painting was killing.' Sager's aphorisms include 'one is not born a painter, one becomes one' and 'he hates what he is… he is what he hates.' The text contrasts painting with intellectual speculation, stating painting 'needs to be nourished day by day by confronting reality.' Catherine Millet reviewed the book.