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.

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.