Enrique Gómez Carrillo arrived from Guatemala at seventeen and never really left again: the city would be his address and his subject at once. A tireless chronicler, he fed the Spanish-language newspapers of both Americas and ran reviews through which a good part of Latin America read the capital. Oscar Wilde was among his friends. His widow would marry Saint-Exupéry.
The story
Born in Guatemala City on 27 February 1873 under the name Enrique Gómez Tible, he arrived in Paris at seventeen and never really left again. The city became his subject as much as his address.
A tireless columnist, he wrote for the Spanish-language press of two continents and edited the reviews Nuevo Mercurio and then Cosmopolis: it was through him that much of Latin America read Paris.
He moved in the literary circles of the Belle Époque and counted Oscar Wilde among his friends — the Irishman lies today in the same Division 89.
In 1926 he married the Salvadorean Consuelo Suncín de Sandoval. The following year he died, at fifty-four: she married Antoine de Saint-Exupéry four years later, and came back to lie here.
He died in Paris on 29 November 1927 and lies in Division 89, avenue Aguado, third row, under a stele bearing a bronze likeness, its epitaph opening: “En éveil parmi tant de choses endormies” — awake among so many sleeping things.
The grave
A stele bearing a bronze bust signed Sansea Brianno, with a bronze crucifixion. The epitaph, in French, opens on a sentence that stands for his whole trade as a chronicler: “Awake among so many sleeping things — Enrique GOMEZ CARILLO, Guatemala 27 February 1873, Paris 29 November 1927.” The surname lost an “r” there. Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry (1907-1979), his widow, rests here: she came back to her first husband.
On site, do not miss
The bronze bust, and the French epitaph that begins “Awake among so many sleeping things”. Read the engraved name: “GOMEZ CARILLO”, with one “r” fewer than it needs.
Visitors' questions
Where is Enrique Gómez Carrillo's grave?
In Division 89, avenue Aguado, third row, beneath a stele topped with a bronze bust. Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, his widow, who went on to marry the author of The Little Prince, rests in the same grave: she came back to her first husband.
Consuelo de Saint-ExupéryDid Gómez Carrillo know Oscar Wilde?
Yes, they were friends in fin-de-siècle Paris. Today the two men rest in the same Division 89 of Père-Lachaise, a few paths apart — one beneath the most visited monument in the sector, the other beneath a modest bust.
Oscar WildeWhat is written on his grave?
“En éveil parmi tant de choses endormies — Enrique GOMEZ CARILLO, Guatemala 27 février 1873, Paris 29 novembre 1927” — awake among so many sleeping things. The epitaph is in French, and the name is carved with a single “r” — one of the cemetery's engraving errors. The bronze bust is signed Sansea Brianno.
Edmond HaraucourtWhy were there so many Latin American writers in Paris?
Because the city was the literary capital of the Spanish-speaking world: it was where you got published, got translated, made your name. Gómez Carrillo lived there for thirty-seven years, the Colombian philologist Rufino José Cuervo for twenty-nine.
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