‘The life given us by nature is short, but the memory of a life well spent is eternal.’
Cicero
Isaías Lerner was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1932. He studied in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires, where he graduated with a degree in literature in 1959. At the University of Buenos Aires, he worked with disciples of Amado Alonso, including Ana María Barrenechea and Marcos Morínigo, who introduced him to the study of Cervantes and Latin American epic poetry. With Morínigo, he published an annotated edition of Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana. María Rosa Lida de Malkiel would work with Lerner on studies of the picaresque novel. Visiting professors included such renowned philologists as Angel Rosenblat and Rafael Lapesa, whose seminar on textual analysis would decide Lerner's orientation toward lexicons and historical linguistics. His interest in lexicography and dialectology led him to collaborate with the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Buenos Aires, directed by Salvador Bucca, and to be part of the team led by Clemente Hernando Balmori, then at the University of La Plata, that conducted fieldwork on the indigenous languages of the Chaco province and northeastern Argentina, including the Toba language.
During those years at the university, Lerner was building a profile marked by an affirmation of the intellectual and academic enrichment offered by the Humanities, with multiple interests of a linguistic and historical orientation that sought the confluence of Peninsular and Latin American studies. This led him to enhance his humanistic studies with a dedication to an additional area, classical philology.
In Buenos Aires, Lerner began doing research and teaching Latin and history of the language courses in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires. He also lectured on historical grammar, Latin, and Spanish literature at the National College of Buenos Aires, the country's most prestigious public high school.
After the military coup of 1967, he lost his job at the National College of Buenos Aires, and moved to the United States to continue his studies at the University of Illinois, where he received his doctorate in 1969 under the direction of Marcos Morínigo. By then, his edition of Don Quixote, done in collaboration with Celina Sabor de Cortázar, appeared in Buenos Aires, with some calling this edition ‘La Americana.’ In 1974 he published in Spain his study entitled Arcaísmos léxicos del español de América. This work won him a special award, the Augusto Malaret Prize of the Royal Spanish Academy, in 1973.
In the United States, Lerner worked as a professor at various universities: Northern Illinois University, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Lehman College of the City University of New York, and the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Between 1985 and 1993 he served as Executive Officer at CUNY. During his years as professor at the Graduate School and University Center, Lerner had the opportunity to form a group of disciples devoted to studies in Golden Age and Latin American literature, in an effort to bring together the two sides of the Atlantic.
In 1999, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York named him ‘Distinguished Professor’ in recognition of his outstanding teaching and research career. He lectured at universities in the United States, France, England, Italy, Spain, Israel, Mexico, Uruguay, and Argentina. He was a member of the editorial board of the journals Philology, Lexis, Colonial Latin American Review, and Moenia, and honorary board member of the Institute of American History in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of La Pampa. Lerner was also a member of the Board of the Cervantes Institute of New York and of the Advisory Committee of the Spanish Cultural Institute in New York, and he served on the Advisory Board of Anales Cervantinos and the Honor Committee of Hesperia. From 1993 to 1996 he served as president of the International Golden Age Association, and from 1996 on he was its honorary president.
Lerner received a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He researched, published, and taught on topics in history of the Spanish language, Spanish literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and colonial Latin American literature. He authored fifteen books and editions and more than one hundred articles and reviews.
As José del Valle has noted, ‘Isaías’ shadow is long and wide, and his intellectual legacy is not only in the libraries of the world but in the critical spirit of wisdom and countless alumni and partners on whom he left the marks of his intelligence and affection.’
I had the great privilege of his friendship for over twenty-five years; not only was he my dissertation director, he was also a close friend. I always went to him whenever I wanted to share professional or personal news.
For many years, every Friday afternoon we always met at the same place, 14th Street and 5th Avenue, to begin a walk through different neighborhoods of this unique city that is New York. While our conversations began with matters related to our research and professional issues, we would always turn to our beloved country, Argentina, which united us in identity and a sense of belonging, something that was not available to us here in this city that had adopted us.
Isaías was so cosmopolitan that he could be a citizen of Buenos Aires, Madrid, Paris, or New York. He was a man of extraordinary wisdom and universal culture. He loved opera, classical music, film, architecture, and any theme that emerged in our conversations—indeed, the topics were endless and diverse. He was the opposite of anything arrogant. He happily and easily shared his knowledge with those around him.
In early 2000, when I came to The City College and was elected chair of the Foreign Languages department, Isaías told me that he would like to teach a class to our graduate students; I was thrilled at the thought. On Monday afternoons, when he taught his class, he used to come to my office and we held brief conversations, not taking too long since he arrived with just enough time to prepare his class. He deeply respected his students and prepared for each class meeting with care. One day, during one of those visits, he expressed his desire to create a scholarship in his parents’ name—so we did, and to this day dozens of students have benefited from the Emilia & Simon Lerner Memorial Tuition Award. He loved coming to the ceremony for our students, and to personally deliver the award.
Years later, on one of his visits to my office, he told me that the walk uphill to campus was getting more difficult, and that he had decided to stop teaching at the College. However, his connection to The City College continued via his colleagues and students.
It was during these years that I mentioned to him my discovery of a text by Juan María Gutiérrez on colonial writers, in the Library of Harvard, published in 1865. He immediately became interested, and the idea of recovering the text and making an annotated edition was born.
Among the figures of the first magnitude belonging to the generation that Ricardo Rojas dubbed the ‘outlaws’ is undoubtedly that of Juan María Gutiérrez, lesser known and less studied. His published works are rare and mostly unobtainable today, with studies devoted to him almost nonexistent. He was a historian, anthologist, biographer, literary critic, journalist, translator, poet, editor, and book author.
Gutiérrez was an erudite scholar, as was Isaías. Their connection was immediate. On one of my trips to Argentina, I mentioned this project to a friend who served as Secretary of Education. He was very interested in the idea, and encouraged me to publish this edition in Argentina so that it could be presented in April at the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires. We worked around the clock, but it was impossible. The edition was finished during the summer.
But for me, the long conversations that we had about Gutiérrez and why to make note of certain words were so rewarding. During those times, Isaías was quite happy with the project. Just as were finishing up and the book was published, the unpleasant news of his illness arrived. I assumed that since he was such a fighter he would recover, as he had in the past.
During the holidays this year, I was out of town when several copies of the book finally came into my possession, and I had two sent over to him immediately. We didn't talk, but he sent me an email a few days later saying that he loved the book. I think he had found peace with himself, because he told me that having attained the age of 81 with the array of friends that he had, he thought he had little left to accomplish in life. Obviously, I did not see it like that.
I believe this book was important to him because it allowed him to close his brilliant career with an edition of an Argentine author.
We will miss him—we already do. His work and teaching will be in our hearts. And of course, all of our thoughts go to Lía and Bettina.
Juan Carlos Mercado
City College/City University of New York