If you were to write an ABC of Argentine literature, you’d expect to find three of the hardest-hitting household names. The Indy continues the Beyond Borges series with the author whose name would surely be the first on most people’s lips.

Nowadays best-known for his novels ‘El juguete rabioso’, ‘Los siete locos’ and ‘Los Lanzallamas’, Roberto Arlt was a novelist, short story author, journalist and playwright who, despite entering literature as something of an underdog, emerged as the first ‘modern’ novelist in Argentina and a source of inspiration to a generation of writers that followed.

An artists impression of Roberto Arlt (Courtesy of the artist Ricardo Ajler)

A Treasured Columnist

The son of immigrant parents, Arlt was born in Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century and raised in the Buenos Aires’ neighbourhood of Flores. He spoke openly about the difficulties of his upbringing and of the abusive and tyrannical nature of his father, a Prussian glassblower and postcard artist.

Having been expelled from school between the ages of eight and ten, he received minimal formal education from then on, choosing instead to spend his time on the streets of the city that inspired him, or reading the work of the Russian greats Gorky, Dolstoy and Dostoevsky.

His first short story, ‘Jehovah’, was reportedly published before he left home in 1916, but before pursuing writing as his profession. Arlt attended the a naval school of mechanics, and also served in the armed forces, undertaking various forms of employment as a mechanic, a painter, a dockworker, an apprentice to a tinsmith and a brick factory manager, before entering journalism.

Like many Argentine authors before him, he viewed journalism as a means of financially supporting his creative writing, but also as a step up to the arena he wished to enter.

Many years later, he published a column entitled ‘Yo no tengo la culpa’, whereby he spoke of the difficulties he encountered breaking into the country’s literary circles as an immigrant with an expressionless family name of no social standing.

But writing as a columnist proved to be an important aspect of Arlt’s career and an important form of expression for Arlt, who originally wrote part of his first novel, ‘El juguete rabioso’, as a column.

Published in a variety of newspapers including Critica, Don Goyo, and much later in El Mundo, Arlt’s columns, known as ‘Aguafuertes’, were the most popular of his literary offerings during his lifetime and brought him nation-wide recognition as a writer.

The ‘Aguafuertes’ written between 1928 and 1935 for the newspaper El Mundo, are favourably remembered for commenting on the peculiarities and the hypocrisy of life in Buenos Aires at the time. Retrospectively compiled and republished in a book that itself became a classic, they are often reprinted and remain treasured works of national literature.

Writing From Buenos Aires’ Underbelly

In the same year that his friend and contemporary Ricardo Güiraldes published his nostalgic novel ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, Arlt published his first novel ‘El juguete rabioso’ in 1926.

The novel, which narrates the adventures of a character called Silvio in his efforts to become someone, was originally drafted as ‘La vida puerca’ until Güiraldes prompted a rethink by suggesting that Argentine readers were perhaps not yet ready for such a crude title.

Roberto Arlt (Photo: Veronique Pestoni)

Featuring unlikely characters alienated by environments found to be rife with inequality and oppression, his fiction presented a so far unexplored perspective and found a huge audience among the youth.

Reflecting the hardships, as well as the energy and chaos of the time, the novel adopted a darkness of style that hadn’t been seen before, and expressed anguish and scenes of violence in a language that was described as at once “rough” yet the “most alive”.

His 1929 novel, ‘Los siete locos’, and its sequel ‘Los lanzallamas’, which followed in 1931, are collectively considered his masterpiece. Together with ‘El juguete rabioso’ they are occasionally considered a trilogy and whilst it’s true that they each played a part in revealing Buenos Aires’ hidden underbelly, it was ‘Los siete locos’ that earned Arlt the nickname ‘The Porteño Dostoyevsky’, after the Russian existentialist author.

The innovation of Arlt’s work lay not only in his style, but also in his decision to feature the poor, the criminal and the mad as his protagonists – predating the likes of William Burroughs and Irvine Welsh, who have since created equally shocking literature by adopting similar subjects.

Intended to be experimental and impressionistic, his novels introduced a fragmented and confused chronology, adding to the warped atmosphere and sense of chaos present in the storylines.

At once a heady mix of lower and middle-class Spanish, scientific vocabulary, vulgarities and foreign words blended with the dialects of porteños and thieves, Arlt was condemned by some for poor grammar and bad craftsmanship. At the same time, his coarse yet imaginative use of language was commended by others.

In saturating his work with a language that was as grossly urban as his themes, Arlt wrote with deliberate disregard for the rules knowingly observed by other authors. But whilst his unpolished colloquial writing came under fire from some, it was undoubtedly a refreshing move away from the middle-class literature exemplified by the Argentine writers of the same time.

Citing the changing of ideas as a reason to reject literary tradition, he made little effort to ‘linger over embroidery’, presenting a case for language being something that is constantly evolving, as though it were living.

It was this attitude that gained him the respect of a new generation of writers, who saw him as a proponent of anti-establishment anti-literary writing.

Julio Cortázar, author of the Argentine ‘anti-novel’ and the big name to have emerged from the Latin American literature boom of the 1960s regarded Arlt as a master, whilst award-winning writer Ricardo Piglia and ‘mass novelist’ César Aira have also cited him as particularly influential.

A recent stage production of Trescientos Millones (Photo: Estefanía Zinboer)

A Theatrical Legacy

With the exception of a fourth novel, ‘El amor brujo’, and two short story collections, Arlt moved his writing almost exclusively into a new medium from 1930 onwards.

Of his ten plays, only  ‘El fabricante de fantasias’ was released in a commercial theatre, with the remaining nine premiering at independent venues such as Teatro del Pueblo.

‘Trescientos millones’ in 1932, ‘Saverio el cruel’ in 1936 and ‘La isla desierta’ in 1937, make up a trio of plays generally considered the most representative of his theatrical writing.

Commended for the construction of dreamlike sequences and the imagination of nightmarish characters in plays that were fuelled by a social conscience, Arlt is considered a forerunner to the trend of social theatre and the currents of absurdism and existentialism that followed.

We continue The Indy’s Beyond Borges series with Ricardo Güiraldes, author of one of the two most important regional novels to have emerged from Latin America during the 20th century.

In his epic ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, Güiraldes transformed the cultural heritage of the Argentine gaucho into an enduring national myth, resulting in the celebration of his novel as an instant classic and the elegy of a bygone era.

Ricardo Güiraldes (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Early life

Himself resembling an escaped character from a fin de siècle novel, Güiraldes led a lifestyle that was simultaneously decadent and bohemian.

The son of a wealthy member of the Argentine oligarchy, he was born in the rural town of San Antonio de Areco in 1886. His family moved to Paris when he was only one year old, and settled in an upscale neighbourhood near the Rue Saint-Claude.

With French and German as his first and second languages, and Castellano as his third, the family returned to Argentina in 1890 where he began his education.

In Argentina, his time was divided between Buenos Aires and his father’s estancia, La Porteña, in San Antonio de Areco. It was there that he came across the men who would lend free rein to his writing. His father’s employee, Segundo Ramírez, was to be Güiraldes’ teacher in the practical matters of rural life but also provided the inspiration for at least one of his short stories, as well as the basis for the eponymous character in the novel that would establish his fame.

Having studied architecture before switching to law in 1905, Güiraldes completed neither and instead sailed for France, where in the company of artists, musicians and writers, he developed an interest in ethics and metaphysics that would lead his writing beyond traditional themes to more universal ideas of religion and philosophy.

Spiritually restless, but satiated by recent overseas travel in Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Egypt, Russia, Japan, and Germany, it was in Paris, in the workshop of Argentine sculptor Alberto Lagos, that Güiraldes decided to dedicate himself to writing.

As at home in the salons of Paris as on the estancias of San Antonio de Areco, Güiraldes would return to again and again to the French capital, eventually dying there in 1927.

Early Writing

Following his return to Buenos Aires and his marriage to porteña Adelina del Carril in 1913, Güiraldes published his first book of short stories and a book of poetry together in 1915.

‘Cuentos de muerte y de sangre’ and ‘El cencerro de cristal’ were both overlooked by critics, but ‘Raucho’, written and published two years later, was more a sketch of what would follow in ‘Don Segundo Sombra’.

Güiraldes' novel served as an elegy of a bygone era (Photo: Eduardo Amorim)

Its protagonist, a man who leaves the Argentine countryside for Paris but returns an educated and cultured individual, drew a likeness with Güiraldes himself, and later reappeared in the closing chapters of ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ as the well-travelled teacher and companion of the book’s narrator.

A second novel, originally published in a literary review as ‘Un idilio de estación’ in 1818, was later republished in book form. Dedicated to one of his sisters, ‘Rosaura’ told the story of a blossoming romance between a woman of society and a well-travelled, handsome stranger passing through Lobos train station, who promises to open her eyes to a world beyond the limited scope of rural Argentina.

Indeed, almost all of Güiraldes’ literature concerns itself with the difficulty of settling upon a national identity that could blend the traditions of the past with the ideals for the future.

Conveying the collective concerns of many Argentines at the turn of the 20th century, his writing sought to recover the lost identities of his readers, and ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ in particular, met the demand for a rose tinted perspective on a past that many Argentines did not know but were eager to accept.

The Creation of an Instant Classic

Güiraldes’ ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ is a classic coming of age tale that follows an inexperienced and orphaned young gaucho as he becomes a man under the care of an older and accomplished mentor, Don Segundo.

The first ten chapters had been written in Paris as early as 1920, but it was not completed until 1926 when a wave of Argentine immigration had led to a resurgence of interest in the gaucho. Unlike the social and political interest that had accompanied the genre the first time around, the renewed interest stemmed more from nostalgia and a need for understanding.

Written when gaucho culture had already perished, the novel was less a reflection of national spirit – as gauchesque literature had typically been – and more a lament for something lost.

'Don Segundo Sombra' cemented the stereotype of the Argentine gaucho (Photo: Eduardo Amorim)

Güiraldes’ gaucho entered literature already an emblem of the past, and is often held up as the image of a true gaucho.

Having journeyed in Argentine writing from the uncivilised barbarian put forward by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, through Bartolomé Hidalgo’s courageous and patriotic war hero, Estanislao del Campo’s backward and uncultured laughing stock and José Hernández’s persecuted citizen-turned-criminal; Güiraldes’ stylised portrayal helped cement a positive and prevailing image of the Argentine gaucho.

But whilst the novel marked a return to the themes of the gauchesque and was in keeping with the genre in that it assumed the voice of a gaucho narrator, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ made little attempt to imitate the same local vocabulary or dialect found in earlier examples of gaucho literature.

In employing the polished techniques of European writers in a work that was at once European in flair and Argentine in nature, Güiraldes essentially refined the Latin American novel.

Reaching a new generation and a new audience, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ was heralded an instant classic.

As the first novel to receive such immediate acclaim and the last important writing to emerge on the gaucho theme, it gained more critical attention during the 20th century than perhaps any other work of Argentine writing.

Retaining its relevance and its following several generations on, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ remains one of the most-treasured texts in Argentine writing, and is still considered the masterpiece of all literature pertaining to the Argentine gaucho.

Rarely left out of anthologies of Argentine writing or directories of modern female poets of South America, the next author in our Beyond Borges series is a writer who also finds herself among the stranger-sounding titles ‘Argentine people of Swiss descent’ and ‘Suicides of Argentina’.

A widely-known poet, lesser-known playwrite and unfaltering feminist, Alfonsina Storni was one of few women to move in the male dominated arenas of literature and theatre, and as such, developed a unique and valuable voice that holds particular relevance in Latin American women’s poetry.

Talk to me about Alfonsina Storni

Perhaps better known among the current generation for the way she chose to end her life than for her literature; her supposedly serene suicide, by walking out to sea at Mar del Plata, has rendered her an almost mythical figure.

The author of poetry that is at once painful, disturbing, and rewarding, her razor-sharp writing has been described as “poetry of fatal beauty that leads to an unavoidable death”. But to appreciate the significance of her work, she must be looked at in the context of early 20th century Argentina.

Portrat of Alfosina Storni. (courtesy of Wikipedia)

The daughter of an amateur actress and a beer industrialist, she was born in Sala Capriasca, Switzerland, in 1892, and moved to Argentina when she was only four years old. After living for some time in San Juan, her family settled in Santa Fe, where her life unravelled a course of constant obstacles that would inevitably become themes in her literature.

Having toured for little under a year with an amateur dramatics company, she returned to Rosario to graduate as a teacher in 1910. Sustaining herself with teaching and newspaper journalism, she moved to Buenos Aires in 1913 where the social and economical difficulties faced by Argentina’s growing middle classes were inspiring an emerging body of women’s rights activists.

Herself an unmarried mother, Storni turned to poetry to boldly confront the repression and denial she recognised, employing paradoxical verse that was rich in eroticism and passion while harbouring strongly feminist notes.

A Voice of Modern Feminism

Winner of the first Municipal Poetry Prize and the second National Literature Prize for her book ‘Languidez’, Storni wrote in several phases: the first from 1916-1920, a second from 1925-1926 and a third from 1934 until her death in 1938.

Belonging neither to modernism or the avant-garde, her writing did not align itself with either movement until they’d each begun to fade. Criticised for not slotting in to a style typical of the time, she comes bundled under the ill-defined label of postmodernism, whereas in truth she simply stood alone.

Writing on humanist thoughts and her responses to nature, as well as on the alienation of urban life and the pervasive presence of death, her poems return again and again to themes of family, sorrow and women’s issues, occasionally overshadowed by the spectre of violence.

Her first book of poetry, ‘La inquietud del rosal’, was published three years after her move to Buenos Aires and introduced the themes of love and feminism that although in their infancy, would come to dominate much of her work.

Developed along openly erotic lines, two further books were each divided in to two parts. At first amorous and passionate, then bitter and tempestuous, they showcased well Storni’s increasing preoccupation with the collective concerns of women. One of her most talked about poems, ‘Tú me quieres blanca’, famously denounced double standards and served as a literary indictment against male macho character.

By 1919 she seemed an unstoppable voice – authoring six short stories, two short novels, and a series of essays in a year of remarkable productivity. But with the publication of ‘Languidez’ the following year, she effectively closed the door on one creative period and opened a new one.

The arrival of ‘Ocre’, five years later, essentially heralded in a new phase without making much of a departure from the form and content of her earlier work. Described as a transitional text, it shifted in tone and ushered in the irony that would characterise her work from then on.

Whilst her early poetry might have been the most striking, it was marred with immaturity and the signs of a beginner. The ardent feminism and eroticism of her work at one time opened her up to accusations of publically ‘undressing’ herself, but as time passed she learned to temper her voice, which for critics, meant her writing matured.

After a book of love poems that slipped away unspoken of, and an almost eight-year absence from poetry, Storni returned with two books that together mark the height of her poetic maturity.

‘Mundo de siete pozos’, written in 1934 at a time when cancer had taken hold of her, and ‘Mascarill y trebol’, written in the year of her suicide, represented the most definite diversion from where she’d begun. In 52 unrhymed and sometimes obscure sonnets, Storni finally proved herself a ‘poetess’ as good as any poet of her time.

A Lone Woman in Theatre

Far from stepping down; during her apparent eight-year absence, Storni actually stepped up to the literary stage.

More human and restless in her writing than her contemporaries, what distinguished her from other female and even feminist authors in Chile and Uruguay was her foray in to theatre.

In four plays for adults and several more for children, her writing demonstrated the obvious yearning she felt for an alternative outlet of expression, and verged on dramatic poetry in terms of intensity and rhythm.

The Cervantes Theatre, where 'El amo del mundo' opened briefly in 1927 (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Following much the same path as her poetry, her plays progressed from the confessional autobiographical to the more experimental, but despite combining political clarity with social subtlety, most never saw a stage.

Inspired by her encounters with Spain’s post-war artistic movements, ‘Dos farsas pirotécnicas’, brought together the genres of tragedy and farce in two plays that were especially acute in revealing the conflict between women’s public and private lives. Focusing squarely on the same themes of class and gender tensions as modern drama elsewhere, they contrasted sharply with the traditional repertoire of Argentine theatre at that time.

Straddling the breakthrough aesthetics of the avant-garde and the early activism for women’s rights, Storni stood as one of the most radical playwrights of the period, and had the absence of women playwrites and an unfavourable climate not sided against her, she would surely have developed in to one of the most important.

Honoured during her lifetime as Argentina’s foremost female poet and one of the three most prominent in South America, she is credited with authoring work that was not only of great value and originality, but which established the foundations of feminist discourse in Latin American literature.

Leopoldo Lugones (courtesy Wikipedia)

Carrying The Indy’s Beyond Borges series in to the 20th century is an author who held a supreme sway over Argentine letters during his lifetime.

Often named as one in a trio of innovators to have influenced Latin American literature; journalist, essayist, and poet Leopoldo Lugones was a principle figure in Argentine modernism.

Most known for his collections of short stories, his work is considered foundational in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and he is considered a forerunner to the 20th century Argentine masters of the form.

Early Life and Work

Lugones was born in Villa de María del Río Seco, in the Argentine province of Córdoba in 1874. He began writing by contributing to local newspapers, and in his early twenties cofounded a socialist periodical called ‘El pensamiento libre’.

His literary career unfolded rapidly upon moving to Buenos Aires, where he was welcomed into a circle of the city’s influential socialist writers. He wrote for several provocative and revolutionary socialist journals whilst also writing poetry, initially under the pseudonym of ‘Gil Paz’.

At the time, the movements of modernism and realism were developing simultaneously, and the remnants of romanticism still remained in the work of Argentine poets such as Rafael Obligado and Almafuerte.

Lugones’ earliest poetry collections, ‘Las montañas de oro’ and ‘Los crepúsculos del jardín’, published in 1897 and 1905, immediately secured him a place among the modernistas.

As Argentina’s foremost exponent of one movement, he is also credited with being a precursor of another. ‘Lunario sentimental’, published in 1909, transformed the structure and tone of Spanish language poetry to pave the way for the avant-garde.

His two most praised short story collections succeeded on very different levels. ‘La guerra gaucha’, published in 1905, continued the legacy of gauchesque poetry by romanticising the gaucho in a collection of tales of anonymous heroes from independence war times. ‘Las fuerzas extrañas’, published only one year later, embarked on something very different.

Forward Thinking Science Fiction

With its themes in modern day science rather than historical politics, ‘Las fuerzas extrañas’ is a collection of 12 short stories revolving around paranormal experiences and phenomena.

A pair of wild monkeys (Photo: Michael McDonough)

Included are an apocalyptic vision of the earth before the great flood, the tale of a gardener who tries to invoke the capacity for killing in flowers, the story of a man who discovers his soul to be twinned with a mere monkey, and another´s efforts to teach a monkey to speak.

Whilst ‘La guerra gaucha’ had been hugely retrospective, focusing on events of one hundred years earlier, ‘Las fuerzas extrañas’ incorporated Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and animal emotion into fantastic fiction that was impressively current.

With nearly all of its protagonists being scientists and practitioners of the occult, the book carries an enduring and ultimately pessimistic message that we will always pay a high price for experimenting beyond the realms of human knowledge.

One discovers the elixir of madness whilst trying to liquefy thought and ends up in a mental institution, another succeeds in channelling the energy of sound but destroys his brain in the process, and a third goes blind on revealing the colours of music.

But what ‘Las fuerzas extrañas’ lacked in sense of humour it made up for in a bizarre kind of accuracy. By the publication of the second edition twenty years later, many of the pseudoscientific explanations Lugones had presented were accepted by scientific communities.

Dividing Opinion in Life and Letters

Initially less well received than ‘La guerra gaucha’, whose rich language and epic nature had made it an immediate success, ‘Las fuerzas extrañas’ was later accepted as a pioneering work in Latin American literature.

Although several Argentine authors, including Lugones’ mentor Eduardo Holmberg, had been writing horror fantasy and science fiction before him, the quality of Lugones’ prose was unmatched in Argentine writing at the time.

With five of the 12 stories falling neatly into the genre, he is recognised as an Argentine author who made a foundational contribution to science fiction in its gaslight era.

Lugones’ strict adherence to literary forms inspired a mixed reaction from emerging literary groups.

Argentine writer and respected critic Jorge Luis Borges, initially rejected the merit of Lugones work, but later described the pages of ‘Las fuerzas extrañas’ as among the most accomplished in Hispanic literature, adding “writing well, is for many, writing as Lugones”.

Translated in to English as ‘Strange forces: The fantastic tales of Leopoldo Lugones’, its distinctly florid style earned its author a reputation as a master of the macabre.

Quiroga, Lugones and other contemporary writers

As the highest profile author in Argentina, Lugones divided public opinion as much in life as in letters. Described as doctrinaire and precocious among other things, his personality was commonly caricatured in periodicals of the time.

His suicide by whisky and cyanide in 1938, emphasised the excessive nature of his personality, and left him in danger of being talked about as much for his drastically changed ideologies as for his writing.

The author that had begun an anarchist and a zealous socialist ended his days an ardent nationalist and a prominent right wing poet.

But whilst he’d almost certainly sought a political stage, the spheres of literature and politics had been gradually moving apart so that an audience in one no longer guaranteed credibility in the other. Despite maligning his public persona with several controversial speeches, his literary legacy remains unclouded.

Honoured retrospectively by Borges as the greatest of all Argentina’s writers, Lugones is celebrated as an inspirational author of fantastic fiction, and the face of Argentine modernism.

The Indy’s ‘Beyond Borges’ series has so far introduced five of Argentina’s influential authors. Among them, romantic prose writers Esteban Echeverría and José Mármol, controversial essayist Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and two significant poets of the gauchesque genre, Bartolomé Hidalgo and Estanislao del Campo.

José Hernández

The sixth in the series brings us to the most celebrated poet in the gauchesque canon, and the best-known name in 19th century Argentine writing. José Hernández, the author behind Argentina’s national poem ‘Martin Fierro’, is credited with the immaculate consolidation of the gauchesque genre in a single, yet hugely impacting work.

‘Martin Fierro’

One of few gauchesque poets to have lived for any time as a gaucho, Hernández was born in 1834 and raised on a farm in the Buenos Aires province. He lived a large portion of his life in rural Argentina and fought on the federal side of several civil conflicts and border wars.

His epic poem ‘Martin Fierro’ assumes the voice of an Argentine gaucho conscripted to serve at a border fort in defense of the national frontier.

Originally written in two parts, ‘El gaucho Martin Fierro’ in 1872 and ‘La vuelta de Martin Fierro’ in 1879, the poem follows Fierro as he deserts military service and returns home to find his farm abandoned and his family gone. Together the two parts chart the downfall of an individual who grows rebellious against the laws that have not served to protect him, and descends into a life of crime and immorality.

‘Martin Fierro’ as a Product of its Time

Hernández’s poem is celebrated for having its feet firmly in social conflicts. Twenty years earlier, the Argentine provinces had joined in a confederation that Buenos Aires was not to join until 1862. The four years of provincial revolt that followed were some of Argentina’s most conflictive, and a crucial period in both the process of state formation and the destruction of the gaucho way of life.

New laws of vagrancy and conscription saw Argentina fall under a dual justice system that differentiated between urban and rural, and prioritised one above the other. The passing of a ‘Rural Code’ in 1865 further discriminated against the gaucho by imposing stringent regulations on rural life and labour.

In ‘Martin Fierro’ Hernández returned to the pro-gaucho sentiment and themes of conflict that had traditionally provided the content for populist gauchesque poetry. The poem serves as both a lament for the loss of a romanticised lifestyle, and a protest against the persecution of the gaucho at the hands of a centralised government. In this respect, Hernández revived the element of protest that had faded from gauchesque poetry soon after Bartolomé Hidalgo had given birth to it.

The appearance of ‘El gaucho Martin Fierro’ in 1872 turned the tables on then president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. In his political essay ‘Facundo’, Sarmiento had presented the gaucho as an enemy of civilisation and his barbarism as a product of his rural existence. In ‘Martin Fierro’, Hernández presents Fierro’s behaviour as responsive to the actions of a government that sought to destroy him.

Running of the horses (Photo: Felicitas Molina)

The Success and Legacy of ‘Martin Fierro’

Hernandez’s ‘Martin Fierro’ was an unprecedented and immediate success. ‘El gaucho de Martin Fierro’ had 48,000 copies in circulation throughout Argentina and Uruguay by the time that ‘La vuelta de Martin Fierro’ was published seven years later.

The poem met with similarly positive reactions from critics, who admired the work for its aesthetic merit rather than its protagonist. So convincing was Fierro’s character that many believed him to be a real person, who in spite of his immoral actions, was taken in to the hearts of the Argentine gauchos as someone who fairly depicted their circumstances and their plight.

The success of ‘Martin Fierro’ might be attributed to the fact that it appeared to many to be an example of genuine gaucho literature. Whilst critics take care to differentiate between the poetry of the gaucho and the poetry of the gauchesque, some position Hernández’s poem at the confluence of these two important literary traditions.

By brightening the eight-syllable lines of rural ballads with language, imagery and a local colour that wouldn’t normally have been found in solemn payadas, the gauchesque cultivated a popular style. But in an attempt to imitate a vocabulary and a way of speaking, it had succeeded in creating something forced and false.

Although many poets before him had made use of this same eight-syllable line, none had done so with the same level of authenticity. In the scenes of the poem where payadas are sung, Hernández writes unfalteringly within the discipline of the form. When writing about abstract themes, his language bears the closest resemblance of all the gauchesque poets to the language of a payador singer.

Some interpretations have incurred the wrath of the poem’s supporters by contesting the Argentine nature of the work – annexing it to Spanish literature, or even European. Regardless, the poem is one of few works to have shaped the course of Argentine literature so significantly, drawing inescapable comparisons with the importance of Cervante’s ‘Don Quixote’ in Spanish literature.

Its infamous protagonist has since lent his name to more plazas, avenues, pizza restaurants, literary reviews, films and television awards than the author himself.

Often imitated but never matched, Hernández is credited with the neat consolidation of Argentina’s most important literary genre in a perfect example of gauchesque writing. Whilst Argentine authors continued to experiment with gauchesque writing, some argue that the 1810-1821 wars of independence and the 1880 constitution of the Argentine state marked the opening and closure of the genre – making Hernández not only the greatest writer of the genre but also one of the last.

English language translations of ‘Martin Fierro The Gaucho’ and ‘The return of Martin Fierro’ are available for download at sparrowthorn.com

When Bartolomé Hidalgo assumed the voice of the gaucho in early 19th century writing, he planted a seed that would later mature and thrive. Carried forward by poets such as Hilario Ascasubi, the gauchesque genre came in to its own in the second half of the century.

The latest instalment in our Beyond Borges series introduces the Argentine poet Estanislao del Campo. Born in Buenos Aires in 1834, Del Campo was a well-known literary figure and remains one of the more prominent names of the gauchesque period. His playful twist on the genre pushed the gaucho protagonist to the forefront of Argentine writing.

The Branches of the Gauchesque

'Fausto' pushed the gaucho protagonist to the fore (Photo: Sam Verhaert)

Since Hidalgo, gauchesque poetry had continued, although not necessarily in the same vein. Rather the genre branched off in two directions in accordance with the different understandings of national and cultural identity. The first took its cue from Hidalgo and followed populist advocacy for the excluded lower classes, while the second took its language and form from his writing, but either skewed or avoided its politics.

The branching out of the genre ensured that the gauchesque was a usable outlet whatever the political orientation of the author or the audience. Argentine poet Hilario Ascasubi for example, utilised the voice of the gaucho in anti-federalist literature until the 1850s, presenting him as a backward individual and a mouthpiece of Juan Manuel de Rosas’ federalist regime.

As urban intellectuals began making use of the genre in a new way, the Argentine gaucho found his body used by the army, and his voice used by literate culture. Whilst the gauchesque appealed to the lower classes on one hand, the development of a new type of gauchesque presented the gaucho as source of entertainment, and extended its attraction to upper classes on the other.

The appearance of Del Campo’s humorous and light-hearted poem ‘Fausto’, in 1866, was a welcome source of relief in a genre that had, until then, been taking itself very seriously.

Interpretations of ‘Fausto’

A firm favourite with Argentines, ‘Fausto’ stands out as one of the most universally popular texts in the entire portfolio of gauchesque literature. Taking its name from Charles Gounod’s world-famous opera, and originally subtitled ‘Impressions of the gaucho Anastasio el Pollo on the presentation of this opera’, the poem joins gaucho figures El Pollo and Don Laguna in the Argentine pampas, where El Pollo is convincingly recounting the tale of his encounter with the devil.

Del Campo shifted the subject of the gauchesque from conflict to high culture (Photo: Francisco Aragão)

The story he offers is not in fact real life, but the plot of the opera he had seen performed at the Teatro Colón when he visited Buenos Aires. What is open to interpretation however, is whether El Pollo had genuinely mistaken the opera for real life, or whether he was merely leading Don Laguna to believe so.

Borrowing the eight-syllable lines of the rural ballads and the vocabulary of the gaucho, Del Campo created a satirical version of ‘Faust’—an Italian opera based on a French play, based loosely in turn on a German one.

Any moral tale that had been present in ‘Faust’ was deliberately lost in translation, and some say that, in this sense, Del Campo came closest to representing the diction of the gaucho but furthest from understanding his mindset.

Del Campo’s playfulness comes in when we consider which group ‘Fausto’ is really mocking. Whilst it appears that the gaucho who was brave and heroic in Hidalgo’s hands has become idiotic and laughable in Del Campo’s, the poem has also been read as an intelligent joke towards the urban elite.

A favourite among Argentines: Estanislao del Campo

The similarity between the writer’s own name, Estanislao Del Campo, and that of his protagonist, Anastasio el Pollo, also inspires some speculation as to who El Pollo was really meant to represent. Was the naivety and cultural innocence that endeared Del Campo’s gaucho to so many intended to represent only the gaucho, or a more common Argentine mentality?

The poem sat comfortably with upper classes because it seemed to assert a popular belief that the cultures of the rural populations were simplistic and easily understood, whereas high culture could only be understood by the urban elite. The idea that they might have been missing the joke placed them in the same basket as El Pollo when it came to understanding sophisticated culture.

‘Fausto’ as a Text Apart

Having attended the opening of the first Teatro Colón in 1857, Del Campo had entertained the idea of uniting a gaucho character with the theme of an opera for some time.

He first introduced his protagonist, Anastasio el Pollo, in a poem ‘Carta de Anastasio el Pollo sobre el beneficio de la señora La Grua’, but didn’t return to his idea until the announcement that ‘Faust’ would be performed at the Teatro Colón in August 1866.

El Pollo’s reappearance in ‘Fausto’ one month later coincided perfectly with the enthusiasm of the Argentine elite to embrace opera as a sign of their identification with European culture—resulting in the adoption of Del Campo’s poem as a celebration of a key cultural event.

Where the subject of gauchesque literature had traditionally been the narration and celebration of political events, Del Campo’s poem shifted the content of the gauchesque from conflict to high culture. In ‘Fausto’ we arrive to a refreshingly creative text, which at face value is purely cultural and whose protagonist is fictional. Del Campo’s poem remains humorous and avoids maliciousness because his gaucho can be observed as a character and an individual, rather than representative of a whole group.

Del Campo’s willingness to have fun within the genre not only broadened the appeal of the gauchesque, but also changed its content and its style – propelling the genre to new levels of popularity.

One of the most important developments in Latin American literature during the 19th century was the emergence of gauchesque poetry – poetry written, not written by gauchos as the name suggests, but usually by urban authors who assumed their voice.

Bartolomé Hidalgo (Photo by: El Bibliomata)

Although gauchesque writing was at its height of popularity during the mid to late 19th century, the seed of this home grown genre was planted many years earlier. Continuing The Indy’s Beyond Borges series is Bartolomé Hidalgo – the poet otherwise known as the ‘Father of the gauchesque’.

Life and early writing

Most known for his cielitos and patriotic dialogues, Hidalgo was born in Montevideo in 1788 to Argentine parents. He lived most of his life in Uruguay but died in Argentina, leaving both nations a claim to the creator of a genre whose popularity would eventually straddle Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil.

With a lifestyle far removed from that of the river plate gaucho, he was raised in a modest urban home and suffered the loss of his father at a young age. He grew to be highly patriotic, and learned the hardships of poverty and battle through participation in several military actions that fought for the liberation and independence of Uruguay and Argentina.

His patriotism translated into his writing, with the appearance of his first composition, ‘Himno oriental’, coinciding with the 1811 battle where Uruguay’s José Gervasio Artigas began the siege that would eventually liberate Montevideo from the control of Buenos Aires.

Under Artigas, Hidalgo presented several one-man plays including ‘Sentimiento de un patriota’ and ‘Idomeneo’ in 1816, but this period of political stability was short lived. The Luso-Brazilian invasion of Montevideo provided further material for Hidalgo’s extremely patriotic literature, provoking two further works, ‘Marcha nacional’ and ‘Cielito oriental’, which were both written in direct response to these political triggers.

With Carlos Frederico Lecor ruling the region, Hidalgo found himself censored from the theatre where he had previously been appointed director, and left for Buenos Aires.

His writing therefore, can be considered in two distinct periods – the first from 1811 to 1816 in Uruguay, and a second beginning 1818 and continuing until his death in 1822 in Argentina. Critic Eleuterio Tiscornia draws a clear chronological divide through his body of work, labeling the writing from the first period as militant poetry, and the cielitos and patriotic dialogues from the second as ‘poesia expectante’.

It was not until this second period that Hidalgo made the transition from using his own voice to using the voice of his peers, or the gaucho – qualifying the cielitos and patriotic dialogues written near the end of his life as the earliest form of gauchesque writing.

His most celebrated compositions such as ‘Cielito patriotico’ and dialogues such as ‘Nuevo dialogo patriotico’ and ‘Dialogo patriotico interesante’ emerged from this period. His writing remained aggressively patriotic and in one cielito, ‘Un gaucho de la guardia del Monte’, he offers up one gaucho’s bold response to the manifesto of Ferdinand VII, the King of Spain.

The Birth of a Genre

There are two schools of thought surrounding the origins of the gauchesque genre – one that gauchesque literature stemmed naturally from the rural song and popular poetry of the gaucho, and the second stating that it was a form of populist poetry created artificially by generally educated writers. The idea that Hidalgo’s cielitos and patriotic dialogues marked the beginning of the genre positions the truth somewhere in the middle.

Gaucho mural. (Photo by: Beatrice Murch)

The originality of Hidalgo’s writing lay in taking something already existing and transforming it into something new. His cielitos were an adaptation of the ballad like payadas sung spontaneously by gaucho payadors, and his patriotic dialogues borrowed and transformed the theatrical form of the sainete – placing literature at the service of specific political instruction.

Whilst he might not have created the cielito, and his use of language may have borrowed heavily from a dialect that was not his own, Hidalgo is recognised now, not so much for what he wrote, but for what he started.

In this respect, his contribution to Latin American literature has been described as both modest and revolutionary. Modest because it took the popular speech and satirical elements already existing in the cielitos of the River Plate region, and revolutionary because in doing so, he produced something never seen before in literature.

In adopting the familiar form of song and the common language used by the gaucho, he created a literature that could be understood and embraced by the lower classes. The marriage between the techniques of modern journalism and those of age-old storytelling allowed his literature to spread through the spoken word as well as in print. Rather than a literature aimed at intellectuals and elitists, here was the creation of an accessible literature – one which directly addressed the gaucho whilst simultaneously granting him a voice.

The adolescent irreverence and simplicity of Hidalgo’s writing held an undeniable charm. His series of patriotic dialogues mimicked conversation between two gaucho figures where one, usually more educated than the other, passed on his version of recent political events. In tune with popular feeling, these dialogues reflected the gaucho’s aspirations and sense of disillusionment that the independence he had fought for was not benefitting him as he imagined. The appearance of Hidalgo’s writing satisfied a certain demand, since it marked the first instance of a writer addressing the idea of awarding the Argentine gaucho a place in an emerging nation.

Some say that this need for a voice stemmed from the physical relocation of the gaucho from the rural pampas to the forefront of the nations armies, arguing that conflict not only provided the content for early gauchesque literature, but also the necessary foundation for its success as a genre.

Indeed, the gauchos approved of the flattering portrayal as brave and courageous men, and welcomed Hidalgo’s affirmation of them as authentic Argentines who embodied a national spirit.

However you might explain the success of the gauchesque genre its popularity is undeniable, and Hidalgo’s influence on the development of literature throughout the Southern cone was enormous. The seed he planted at the beginning of the 19th century would continue to mature and thrive throughout shifting social circumstances and gave birth to a truly South American genre.

Lead image by: Eduardo Amorim

The third in our ‘Beyond Borges‘ series, the poet, playwright and novelist José Mármol follows hot on the heels of August’s Esteban Echeverría and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, completing a trio of prominent mid-19th century romantics.

Jose Mármol

Mármol is most known for his semi-autobiographical fiction ‘Amalia’ which, when it was published in its entirety in 1854, constituted the first full-length Argentine novel.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1818, he’d grown up to be a vehement opposer of ruling federalist politician Juan Manuel de Rosas and had abandoned his university studies amidst the flurry of a growing opposition movement.

Mármol fled Argentina in 1840 at the height of Rosas’ regime. He lived in exile in Montevideo alongside several other Argentine authors, including fellow romantic writer Echeverría. Having been arrested a year before for distributing anti-Rosas literature, he claims he wrote his first poetry against the dictator from his prison cell.

Like his contemporaries, Mármol had similar ideas of what could be expressed through literature, and took advantage of the freer climate which existed in Uruguay to write from exile. There he founded several journals – among them ‘La Semana’ – through which he launched scathing attacks on Rosas and earned himself the nickname “the poetic hangman”.

His journalism and poetry took a no-holds-barred approach, as demonstrated in his poem ‘A Rosas, el 25 de Mayo de 1843′, which directly and strongly denounced the Argentine ruler. The poem is noted for its 14 syllable alexandrine lines, a structure which was at that time more commonly associated with the 12 syllable equivalent of the French and English poets.

Although chronologically Echeverría was the forerunner to romanticism in Argentina, the influence of the European romantics was evident not only in Mármol’s poetry but also in his plays ‘El poeta’ and ‘El cruzado’. His celebrated autobiographical poem ‘El peregrino’ for example, spans 12 cantos and draws comparisons with the narrative poetry of leading English romantic Lord Byron, as well as the poetry of some Argentine contemporaries.

Mármol took Echeverría’s same sordid vision of Argentina under Rosas, and expanded and deepened it in the realistic fiction ‘Amalia’ – a tragic tale of two young lovers caught up in the anti-Rosas movement.

The heroine of the story is an indigenous woman living in Buenos Aires, whose life transpires between the polarisation of barbarism and civilisation. She falls for Eduardo while she and her cousin Daniel are sheltering him from military persecution, but before the trio can make their escape, Rosas’ federalist henchmen arrive.

The combined use of costumbrismo alongside romanticism paints a detailed picture of life under a violent dictatorship, resulting in ‘Amalia’ being held up as an early example of social romanticism. Because the novel mixes fictional characters with several living figures, it can also be labelled a historical novel, and along with Sarmiento’s ‘Facundo’ it is considered a precursor to the important genre of ‘dictator novel’ which would later appear in Latin American literature.

Juan Manuel de Rosas

Mármol started writing ‘Amalia’ in Uruguay in 1844 and, as Sarmiento had done with ‘Facundo’, began publishing it as a feuilleton inside ‘La semana’ review in 1851. The serials were discontinued following the fall of Rosas in 1852, when Mármol returned to live in Argentina after a period of more than 12 years in exile.

The first edition of ‘Amalia’ as a complete novel appeared in Argentina in 1854 and was immediately adopted as Argentina’s national novel. Although the love story which ran through it accounted for a large portion of its appeal, the book respected certain traits of the serial format and didn’t come together especially well as a single novel.

Mármol’s literary style has since come under fire for borrowing too much from European writers of the time, and for lacking the quality of Sarmiento’s ‘Facundo’ and the authenticity of Echeverría’s ‘El matadero’. Renowned Argentine critic David Viñas observed that his greatest aesthetic achievements came when he wrote about barbarism in crude realistic terms, and when writing about his protagonist Amalia, his writing became too ornamental and rhetorical.

Contemporary reviews occasionally draw comparison with Scottish romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott, and whilst nowadays the novel finds its reader base mostly among students of romantic or 19th-century literature, it enjoyed enormous popularity for over a century in Argentina.

In 1914 the book was adapted for silent film – making ‘Amalia’ not only Argentina’s first full-length novel, but also the first feature-length Argentine film production.

Mármol’s career as an author ended with ‘Amalia’, as though his inspiration to write left along with Rosas, and while a succession of anti-Rosas novels followed in its footsteps, none were as well received as this landmark first novel. Shortly thereafter, he assumed the position of director of Argentina’s National Library, joining the likes of Marcos Sastre, whose bookstore provided the setting of the Generation of 37′s literary salon 20 years earlier, in an impressive line-up of directors considered crucial in the makeup of Argentina’s intellectual and historical fabric.

Continuing our ‘Beyond Borges’ series is an author who if you don’t know for his contribution to Argentine literature, you may well know for being Argentina’s seventh president, the subject of one of Rodin’s final sculptures, or the face of the fifty pesos note.

Sarmiento's writing on the fifty peso note (Photo: Julián Rodriguez Urihuela)

Aside from his achievements in areas of education and modernisation, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was also an intellectual, an activist, and a prolific writer whose historical essay ‘Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie’ has been elevated to classical status among works of Latin American literature.

Life and Early Exiles

Born in the landlocked Argentine province of San Juan in 1811, Sarmiento grew to be an unlikely intellectual. By 15 years of age he had already identified himself as a supporter of the Rivadavia government that was dividing unitarian and federalist ideologies.

Prevented from attending school in Buenos Aires by the outbreak of a civil war in the province, he joined the unitarian army to fight against the invasion of Juan ‘Facundo’ Quiroga – the gaucho who would become his obsession and subject.

With Argentina under the rule of federalist dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, Sarmiento fled to Chile in 1831 where he lived the first of three periods of exile, and began exploring an environment of free expression by writing political commentaries.

In an effort to recreate this same environment inside Argentina, he directed his energies into the foundation of an anti-federalist review, ‘El zonda’, but was forced into exile a second time in 1840. It was during this passage to Chile that he wrote out the misquoted French “On ne tue point les idées” – an incident that would become the preface to ‘Facundo’, his most famous work.

The phrase “ideas cannot be killed” translated as a warning to Rosas, but also served to further emphasise the difference Sarmiento perceived between the civilised intellectual who understood French and the uneducated barbarian who could not.

Back in Chile, and bearing a larger than life chip on his shoulder, Sarmiento resumed an extremely active literary career. Through regular contributions to ‘El mercurio’ and articles in his own newspaper ‘El progreso’, he strove to defeat the political ideologies of Rosas from across the Andes.

Facundo

‘Facundo’ itself was written during this second period of exile, and first appeared in serial form inside ‘El progreso’ in May 1845. Through the impassioned study of real-life figure Juan ‘Facundo’ Quiroga, it launched a strong protest against the federalist dictatorship, painting Facundo’s barbarism as a product of his environment and of the Rosas regime.

Presenting an Argentine national character torn between the dichotomy of civilisation and barbarism, it can be seen as both a critique and a symptom of Argentina’s internal cultural conflicts at the time. In it Sarmiento delivers a written prescription for the modernisation of Latin America, in accordance with his own vision for Argentina’s future under a democratic unitarian government.

The interior of Sarmiento's home (Photo: Axel Rosito)

Often cited an exemplary precursor to the genre of the Latin American dictator novel, ‘Facundo’ set the bar high. Many consider it crucial reading in understanding not only Argentine history but also Latin American history in general.

What began as a biogaphy of the barbaric gaucho nicknamed “the tiger of the plains”, ended as a combination of biography, autobiography, creative non-fiction, essay and political diatribe which fuelled by Sarmiento’s own fascination with his subject, read as easily as fiction.

Political Writing

As an author Sarmiento wrote diversely and extensively, publishing several autobiographical works including ‘Recuerdos de Provinca’ and ‘Campaña del ejército grande’ – describing his own part in the tri-nation army which finally defeated Rosas in the 1852 ‘Battle of Caseros’.

With Rosas in exile and a programme of national organisation underway, Sarmiento remained in Argentina where he forged a promising political career alongside an ongoing literary one.

Although the majority Latin American literature from the time can be earmarked political in some respect, politics ran as a common thread through almost all of Sarmiento’s work. The appearance of a new edition of ‘Facundo’ at the end of his presidency was considered by some to be a form of political gesturing. The 1874 edition spanned 15 chapters broadly divided in to three sections: the history and geography of Argentina, the barbaric life of the gaucho Juan ‘Facundo’ Quiroga, and several chapters originally left out of the 1845 edition in which Sarmiento outlined his own political visions.

In addition, the much talked about ‘Conflictos y armonias de las razas en América’ is an example of post-presidency writing in which Sarmiento put forward controversial ideas about the effects of racial mixing in Latin America, while continuing to offer the existence of the rural pampas as a reason why Argentina had failed to achieve civilisation.

Ironically, whilst denouncing the barbarism of the Argentine gaucho, Sarmiento simultaneously romanticised him, transforming him into a symbol of national mythology that would soon be at the head Argentine literature. Despite his sometimes controversial opinions, his bold ambition and his renowned egotism, Sarmiento is nowadays reflected upon favourably as a public figure and heralded as the best Argentine writer of the 19th century.

Kick-starting The Argentina Independent’s ‘Beyond Borges’ series is an author generally accepted as marking the beginning of Argentine literature, and arguably the first writer to play a significant role in its development.

Esteban Echeverría (courtesy of Wikipedia)

As one of the earliest romantic writers in Latin America, founder and figurehead of the first circle of young Argentine intellectuals, and the author behind the country’s first work of literary prose, poet Esteban Echeverría is a man credited with many literary titles.

His graphic and bloody vignette, ‘El matadero’, is commonly considered a cornerstone of national literature and remains one of the most studied texts in Argentina.

For this reason, his poetry and prose can be seen as marking the beginning of a new style of writing – one which signified Argentina’s literary break from the Spanish and a move away from the artistic currents that had previously flowed from Madrid. Until then, Argentine writers had grown up under independence fervour, but remained limited by a paradoxical Spanish influence that prevented them from developing their own distinct style.

Quoting French poet Victor Hugo by describing romanticism as “liberalism in literature”, Echeverría became one of the first Latin American writers to employ literature as a vehicle for communicating strong political and social opinion.

Romantic Writing

Although he authored several works, Echeverría’s reputation as a writer rests most securely on ‘El matadero’ and on his long narrative poem ‘La cautiva’, published as the 2,100-line centrepiece of ‘Rimas’ in 1837.

‘El matadero’ was written in the late 1830s but not published until 1871. It came politically-charged and packed a powerful punch against the federalist dictatorship that existed in Argentina at the time. Set inside a Buenos Aires slaughteryard, this short story describes the capture and torture of a passing unitarian by the Mazorca – brutal enforcers of Juan Manuel de Rosas’ federalist regime.

Inside 'El matadero' slaughteryard (Photo: Sam Verhaert)

Written as a political allegory, the Mazorca can be seen to represent barbarism and the young protagonist to represent civilisation. Or in a different light, the federalists are presented as butchers and the unitarians as animals.

First published inside the ‘Revista del Río de la Plata’ twenty years after Echeverría’s death and more than thirty years after it was written, the text is widely acclaimed for its realistic presentation of a gruesome period in Argentina’s history.

The poem ‘La cautiva’, translated into English as ‘The captive woman’, marks the first instance of rural Latin America serving as poetic backdrop, and is also listed among the best known romantic works of 19th century Latin American literature.

Featuring the indigenous people of the time as its subjects, the poem was commended for bursting the illusion of harmonious racial relations. Whereas captivity tales had traditionally been told in the first person by the survivor, ‘La cautiva’ uses the third person to narrate the fate of a couple captured by indians at the frontier.

Like ‘El matadero’, the poem is noted for its incorporation of local dialects and regionalisms without the use of italics or quotation marks. It also explores the struggle to position a national identity somewhere between Europe and America – an issue which journalist, essayist, and author Domingo Faustino Sarmiento would later place at the heart of Latin American culture.

The Generation of 1837

Along with many intellectuals of the period, Echeverría sought shelter from the Rosas dictatorship in neighbouring Uruguay, where he lived until his death in 1851. What forced him into exile, however, was not the unpublished manuscript of ‘El matadero’, but his association with the group of Argentine writers and intellectuals known collectively as the ‘Generation of 1837’.

The Generation of '37 created a literary salon in the backroom of Marcos Sastre's bookstore (Photo: Sam Verhaert)

Brought together by a shared passion for aesthetics and freedom, they gathered in the backroom of Marcos Sastre’s bookstore to give readings and engage in intellectual debate.

Within six months, the movement Echeverría had been so fundamental in starting was taken underground. Renamed the ‘Assosciation of May’ and holding onto the spirit of the 1810 revolution, they became Rosas’ most determined opposition with the slogan: “May, Progress, Democracy”.

When his signature on an anti-Rosas petition eventually brought about his exile in 1840, Echeverría moved to Montevideo where he made up part of a far-reaching network of exiled intellectuals in Uruguay, Chile and France. The movement continued to actively oppose the Argentine government whilst simultaneously campaigning for the creation of a national literature that was representative and responsive to social climates.

Echeverría’s popularity among his peers was such that one present day scholar has described him as “a Beatle”, with others suggesting that his esteem exceeded the literary merit of the majority of his work, taking care to make an exception of his brief but impacting novel ‘El matadero’.

As undoubtedly the most popular Argentine intellectual of the first half of the 19th century, Echeverría became a leader of many and an attraction for the rest- paving the way for a change of direction in Argentine literature.