Ernesto Sábato: From science to literature

Abstract

This essay offers a reflection of both the intellectual and vital turn carried out by Sábato when he went from being a physicist with a promising future to a fiction writer in the making. This change, was not exempt from dangers and was the result of a deep professional, existential and intellectual questioning which focal point was the tension in the relationship between knowledge and abstraction, but also between science and literature. Addressing this double tension will allow us to show that for Sábato knowledge is not reduced to scientific knowledge and that, on the contrary, knowledge only acquires meaning in the space of human life for which literature is better prepared.