Daniel Divinsky dies, the historic Argentine editor of ‘Mafalda’

“Edit is an absolutely incurable disease,” said Daniel Divinsky. “The edition,” he said also, “it is an addiction and there I will continue until my death.” That day came this Friday, when the Argentine editor had already reached 83 years and had left a deep mark on the cultural history of the country, an imprint developed for almost six decades to work force and talent, reader and commercial, especially from editions of Flor, the independent company where it launched into the world Mafaldathe creation of Quino, and where he also published many other authors such as Rodolfo Walsh or Roberto Fontanarrosa.

Divinsky was born in 1942 in Buenos Aires, where death found him, a victim of a kidney disease that dragged from his childhood. Convalescent, he was an early student at age 15, he entered the university, to study, by family mandate, right. The law exercised her while given, at the same time, her first steps towards her editorial vocation. In 1966 he rehearsed his first great experience in that field, which would end up marking all his career: with another key editor for the Argentine culture, Jorge Álvarez, and the lawyer Oscar Finkelberg, who died just a week ago, wanted to open a bookstore but, as they could not, they decided on an editorial.

“Editorial flower want to do!” Susana writer told them Piri Lugones The granddaughter of the poet Leopoldo Lugones, disappeared during the last dictatorship, was the involuntary mentor of a name that would become emblem of the Argentine editorial industry, an avant -garde expression channel for literature that were still considered marginal. Thus was born editions of the flower.

The first publication of the seal, the following year, was Buenos Aires, from the anguish Foundationan anthology of stories signed by Leopoldo Marechal, Enrique Wernicke, Bernardo Verbitsky, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Rodolfo Walsh, Julio Cortázar and David Viñas, among others. The jump of the publisher would occur in 1970, when Ana Maria had already joined the address Kuki Miller, Divinsky’s partner until entering this century, with the publication of the comic book format Mafalda.

“It changed life to the publisher,” Divinsky told this newspaper, in an interview published ten years ago. “It allowed me to leave law, which exercised in disgust: I did not satisfy that profession of ready and rich fools.” The tender and rebellious girl who imagined Joaquín Washing, Quino, the staunch enemy of the soup that always seems to speak from the present, was for 55 years the great success of Ediciones de la Flor, with rolls that came to have, at their best, 200,000 copies.

During the military dictatorship (1976-1983), Divinsky and Miller were arrested for four months and, after being released, they were exiled in Venezuela, where they lived six years. The alleged crime attributed by state terrorism was to have published a children’s book, Five fingersthat in its lid showed a fist high: for the censors of the regime, an unequivocal called to subversion.

They would return to the country after the recovery of democracy. Since 1983, the publisher relaunched and built a diverse catalog of more than 600 titles. They had already been doing it from the beginning of the publisher. In the same year they had launched their first edition of Mafaldain 1970, they had also published Massacre operationby Rodolfo Walsh. With the passage of time, they sent many of the most outstanding graphic humorists in the country, from Fontanarrosa and Caloi to Liniers, Maitena, Sendra, Rep and many others. They also housed fundamental titles for the renewal of Argentine literature, such as The pichiciegosfrom Fogwill, or, some time later, The translatorby Salvador Benesdra.

Divinsky walked away in 2015 from Ediciones de la Flor, since then by Kuki Miller. The editor’s death occurs just weeks after the end of a 55 -year link between the company and Mafaldawhich will now be published under another seal. Divinsky, who also exercised journalism and other activities, was not just editions of the flower and the publisher was never only Mafalda. But his destinations seemed to be embedded in an endearing intimacy.