Great writers create great characters. Imaginary figures in literature allow us to marvel at humanity. They are the reason why many of us pick up a book in the first place. Fictional characters capture our imaginations, make us feel extremely strong emotions, influence how we behave. We fall in love with characters and often want to embody the words and descriptions on the page. They are the voices inside our heads and represent our own unrealised possibilities. We befriend, follow and converse with them.

Argentine literature is full of interesting characters: attempting to focus on merely five characters from the entire canon of Argentine fiction is a hard task. With this in mind we have tried to pick famous, emblematic creations, all of whom have a profound impact on the reader. Lovers of Manuel Puig, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Cesar Aire, to name but a few, will be disappointed, but please leave your own views below. The fact the list of characters is made up of solely males, is not a reflection of my own sexism, but rather of the male-centric literature that has tended to prevail in this region of the world throughout history.

Martín Fierro

If you ask an Argentine about important characters in literature, one name tends to spring to mind before any other; Martín Fierro. Argentina’s equivalent to Don Quixote, Fierro is the most famous and iconic fictional figure in the South American country’s canon. The protagonist in the eponymous epic poem written by José Hernández in 1872, Fierro’s character has come to represent the essence of Argentina itself. The 19th Century poem was modestly characterised by the great Jorge Luis Borges as the one truly great work of Argentine literature. Borges’ considers the epic poem as being a versed novel in which Fierro’s character is emblematic of Argentine identity. So successful was the initial work, that Hernández wrote a sequel. The two parts are called the ‘Ida’ and the ‘Vuelta’.

Gaucho leading horses in the Pampa. (by Eduardo Amorim, on Flickr)

The poems are narrated by Fierro, a poor, pampas-dweller who is illegally drafted to serve in the Conquest of the Desert, a military campaign to exterminate the native Indians. He eventually deserts and becomes a gaucho matrero, the Argentine equivalent of a bandit in the Wild West. He sings payadas, exalting the beauty of the countryside and calling for freedom from injustice. The ‘Ida’ is a tragic lament for the passing of the gaucho life, while the ‘Vuelta’ emphasises the need to include the gaucho in Argentina’s road to modernity.

Hernández’s work addresses the nation-building project in Argentina, highlighting the urban versus rural battle to be prioritised, and Fierro’s character talks us through this process. He sheds light on the gaucho consciousness, an element integral to the national psyche. He is a projection of national and cultural identity, and with his overwhelming sense of destituteness, the immigrant community found him easily identifiable.

Given Fierro’s status as an emblem of Argentine bravery, rebellion, independence and integrity, he is unquestionably the pinnacle character in Argentine literature. Fierro’s is a character who to this day continues to capture people’s imagination: he manages to delight and inspire whilst also provoke sympathy in readers for the plight of the gaucho.

Horacio Oliviera

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

Written in 1966, ‘Rayuela’ (Hopscotch) by Julio Cortázar is a remarkable novel in terms of its format, but also linguistically and conceptually. Often described as an anti-novel, the work can be read either from front to back as normal, or one can follow the author’s suggested chapter order which jumps around, hence the book’s title.

Set in Buenos Aires and Paris, the book reflects a bohemian Argentina of the 1960s. Horacio Oliviera is the protagonist and primary narrator; a bohemian intellectual and self-professed writer living as an expatriate in the French capital in the mid-20th Century.

Oliveira is a very human character with weaknesses and flaws, but his language and wordplay make him fascinating and very amusing. He and his friends, the other members of “the club”, engage in endless discussion about art, literature, and music, amidst debauched partying. The book reflects the attitudes held by left wing intellectuals forced into exile during this period (Cortázar himself moved to Paris), simultaneously critical of – yet longing for – their motherland.

The story traces Oliveira’s romance with his exotic young lover “La Maga”. Whimsical in nature, La Maga refuses to plan their encounters in advance, preferring instead to run into Horacio by chance by the river or in bookshops. Upon finding each other, they celebrate the random circumstances that brought them together. Eventually, La Maga disappears, and Horacio returns to Argentina. There we are privy to enchanting descriptions of Buenos Aires’ locals as chain-smoking, jazz-listening, passionate conversers.

The novel is deeply moving and Cortázar writes with poetic rhythm, in a variety of languages. The great poet Pablo Neruda famously claimed that “people who do not read Cortázar are doomed” and that “not to read him is a serious invisible disease”. Wise words from a wise man. It is only surprising that Cortázar’s unique work is not more appreciated outside of the Spanish-speaking world.

Pierre Menard

Jorge Luis Borges’s Pierre Menard is a character who has sent more than one head spinning since his creation. His is a story that encapsulates the intricate and complex genius that weaves its way through Borges’s work and it is for this reason that Menard is included in this list.

Don Quixote (by Beatrice Murch, on Flickr)

‘Pierre Menard, Autor del Quijote’ is a short story which forms part of Borges’s collection ‘Ficciones’, published in 1944. The voice in the book is that of an unnamed narrator who sets out to review the work of his recently deceased friend, a fictional French author named Pierre Menard. The narrator begins by listing Menard’s works, before asserting that his best work was, in fact, the unfinished and unpublished word-for-word recreation of sections of Cervantes’ ‘Don Quijote’.

What ensues is a fascinating explanation of why the narrator believes Menard’s work to be richer than that of Cervantes’ original, asserting that the Frenchman is a genius not a plagiarist. In so doing, Borges brilliantly poses all sorts of questions connected with the problem of how we link a text to its source and the nature of authorship.

Menard initially attempts to become Cervantes and essentially take himself back in time to re-enact the writing of the book. But he soon discards this method as both very difficult and devoid of meaning, instead deciding to write the book as himself, and in so doing arrive at the same end but via a completely different set of circumstances.

As Howard Giskin writes, “Through Menard‟s recreation of Quijote in a different time and place from Cervantes’ original, Borges implies the simple yet disturbing supposition that the meaning of literary works is entirely dependent on the varying historical and social contexts in which they are read.”

I imagine that were we to meet for a drink, Menard would probably sit in the glass drinking a bar whilst making conservatories. An intricately conceived and highly disorientating character, Menard is a fascinating figure who invites endless analysis.

Juan Pablo Castel

“It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed Maria Iribarne.” This is the shocking confession in the famous opening line of Ernesto Sabato’s novel ‘El Tunel’ (‘The Tunnel’) and immediately sets the tone as to how his protagonist is to be characterised throughout.

Light at the end of the tunnel. (Photo: mellyjean, on Flickr)

Juan Pablo Castel, so named as a reference to his being a Hispanicised version of Jean-Paul Satre, is an unhinged painter from Buenos Aires, placed in prison for the murder mentioned in the opening sentence of the novel. With disconcerting attention to detail, Castel describes to the reader, from his cell, the series of events that led to his arrest.

Castel first sets eyes on Maria at one of his exhibitions, where he becomes convinced that she is the only person who can truly understand his work. He is obsessive and neurotic, and although the reader is aware of the ultimate outcome throughout, Castel’s downward spiral to delusion is nonetheless a harrowing read, as his logic becomes ever more cruel and angry. The protagonist is prone to bouts of depression; he struggles to understand the point of his existence and sometimes verges on schizophrenia. “How many times had that damned split in my consciousness been responsible for the most abominable acts?” But the true genius of Castel’s character lies in the disarming accessibility of his emotional disintergration, due to the simple, conversational tone of his narrative voice.

Renowned for its existential themes, the book famously received emphatic praise from Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene following its publication in 1948. Sabato provides a dark and at times uncomfortable, psychological portrait of a man who felt both physically and mentally isolated from society. Castel’s haunting, psychotic voice is one that does not leave your head for quite some time.

Remo Erdosain

Tangos & Tragedias (by Cartas do Trópico de Capricórnio™, on Flickr)

Roberto Arlt wrote during the 1920s and 30s, and although his work was unheralded during his lifetime, it is now recognised as key to the formation of Argentine modernism. Remo Erdosain is the protagonist brought to life by Arlt’s hurried and frantic prose in his novel ‘Los Siete Locos’ (The Seven Madmen).

Erdosain is an inventor who is best at failure. A hopeless dreamer, the poor protagonist loses both his wife and also his job at a sugar company whom he owes money. What ensues is a story that blurs fantasy and reality, as Erdosain frantically careers from one grim absurdity to the next, on a revenge-seeking mission with the help of his sinister friend ‘The Astrologer’. The story is humorous at times, but above all, has a melancholic poignancy to it. Arlt gives us an insight into the dark and treacherous underworld of Buenos Aires in the 20s and 30s, with crime and whores galore. And even the whores find Erdosain to be a peculiar character.

Arlt once described himself as “a writer that writes with his guts, cranking out books that are like a punch to your jaw,” and the chaotic character of Remo Erdosain certainly appears to support that claim. Through his anguished and desperate protagonist’s failures, Arlt captures the essence of urban Argentina at a time when it was grasping to find its identity. Although Remo is not necessarily likeable, he is unquestionably fascinating.

Rebellion and experimentalism – the signature of the vanguard – are the historical and cultural legacy bequeathed by Argentina’s literary reviews. The country’s small magazines assumed their present shape in the twenties, that auspicious decade of economic and social optimism. As cultural manifestos were vigorously being penned across the globe, Buenos Aires adopted its own reputation as the intellectual hub of South America – the so-called ‘Paris of the South’, a coinage that still lingers today.

But beneath the surface of bohemian glamour lurked glaring social contradictions that informed much of the groups’ cultural and political struggles. Portals of poetic, philosophical and artistic trends, the reviews fostered a strong artistic community, lending writers a sense of collective purpose.

This week’s Top 5 lists some of the literary journals that have acquired a mythical status in the cultural imagination. Many of the polarised views and vitriolic debates of the 1920s were stirred by two competing literary factions: the Florida group – dubbed the Martinfierristas – and their counterpart, the Boedo group, contributors to Claridad. Cosmopolitan, urban and elitist on the one hand and international and socialist on the other, they constantly pushed artistic and political boundaries. Of a much less militant strand, the long-running magazines Sur and Contorno were instrumental in providing a forum for the writers of Argentina’s literary golden age.

Victoria Ocampo with her review 'Sur' (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)

Sur

Founded in 1931 and published regularly until 1970, Sur was the most vocal literary and cultural outlet in Argentine letters in the twentieth century. Sponsoring a cross-fertilisation of the arts – poetry, philosophy, history and the visual arts – it secured its iconic status for a generation of writers for whom the small magazine was a natural counterpart of the literary salon.

Its longevity was due, in large part, to the sound financial footing of its founder and lifelong editor, Victoria Ocampo, as well as the intimate friendship she cultivated with one of the country’s most famous writers Jorge Luis Borges. Sur provided the occasion for a number of literary encounters, including the introduction of Adolfo Bioy Casares and Ocampo’s younger sister, Silvina Ocampo.

Despite its name, Sur’s contributors ranged far beyond the local scene, including Virginia Woolf, Jean Paul Sartre and William Faulkner, to name just a few. Cultivating ties with foreign luminaries did lead to its derogative branding as extranjerizante - a term that indicated its allegiance to cosmopolitan, elitist, European models.

Whilst never brandishing a manifesto, and in spite of its apolitical ‘art for art’s sake’ agenda, the magazine articulated its own brand of liberalism – a resistance to mass culture and nationalist populism. Many cultural positions adopted throughout the twentieth century were often positioned by their adherence to, or distance from, Sur’s creative manual to the arts scene.

Claridad cover (courtesy of Claridad)

Claridad

A screaming face bursts out of montaged buildings; a man brandishes a florescent torch; a Grecian goddess dances precariously on a sphere, beneath which reads ‘the pedestal of social peace’. Founded by Antonio Zamora, Claridad hit the press in 1926 with the stated mission to mediate the cultural debate, until that time monopolised by another review named Martín Fierro. Inspired by the French magazine Clarté, it gave voice to a militant group of intellectuals who advocated social integration fostered through the arts.

Claridad’s editions serve as documents tracing the developments of leftist thought in the first half of the twentieth century. Its ideals addressed both the influx of immigrant workers and the internationalism of the left. The first editions provided a platform for Russian literature, French social realism, and the dissemination of new national voices – especially those affiliated with the Boedo group, as well as the work of Argentine artists Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti.

Designs by the so-called ‘People’s Arists’ served as a vehicle for the dissemination of social protest and the struggle of neglected sectors of society. Its provocative, ideologically-freighted covers owe much to the futurist and constructivist aesthetic taking off across Europe.While reviews of films by directors Léon Klimovsky and Alfonso Longuet introduced readers to the experimental gaze of Soviet and German expressionist cinema, the Boedo group believed that aesthetic development was inseparable from political consciousness.

Martín Fierro from 1924

Martín Fierro

Founded by Evar Méndez in 1924, the innovative literary magazine acquired a mythic status in its mere three years of publication. A product of the wave of the avant-garde literary reviews that sprang up in vanguard circles throughout the 1920s, Martín Fierro set out to disperse the new ideas that were taking Europe by storm, and assimilate them into the national agenda. Recalling the eponymous epic poem by José Hernández, the Martínfierristas sought to explore the ‘topography’ of criollismo – collapsing distinctions between national tradition and a modern, democratic aesthetic. The gaucho was subsequently recast as a cosmopolitan, flaneur figure, and a frequenter of the shabbier districts of the city.

Martín Fierro’s signature is a wry, sardonic humour, notable in its pseudo-obituaries. Apollinaire, Picasso, Corbusier, and Stravinsky were just some of the eminent international figures that found their way on to Martín Fierro’s pages – as well as Argentine writers including Leopoldo Marechal and Raúl González Tuñón.

The provocative ‘Manifesto of Martín Fierro’, penned by the avant-garde poet Oliverio Girondo, clearly owes much to the Futurists’ vitriolic agenda, debunking moribund traditions and catapulting Argentina into the twentieth century. Méndez discontinued the publication in 1927, unhappy that a faction of the group were using its pages to garner support for the presidential campaign of populist leader, Hipolito Yrigoyen.

Contorno cover from 1953

Contorno

Hailed as a landmark publication upon its inception in the mid-1950s, the contornistas occupied a niche ground in political and cultural journalism. Founded by brothers David and Isamael Viñas, it produced only ten editions over the space of six years but, in that period, successfully formulated a new critical idiom. In keeping with a core group of  Argentine intellectuals, one of Contorno’s most salient features was its militant anti-Peronism – viewing the 1955 overthrow as a moment of liberation. Their provocative manifesto, ‘Terrorism and complicity’ set out to dismantle the pillars of an antiquated arts tradition and bourgeois complacency. Contorno’s revisionary approach did, however, come under severe criticism from those who believed the magazine served merely as a vehicle to dismantle the cornerstones of Argentine tradition.

Despite its eschewal of the past, Contorno sought to advance a cultural agenda that would account for the stark realities of Argentine life, reproblematising relations between literature and society. The periodical published the work of an important coterie of writers, including influential contributors such as Juan José Sebreli, Oscar Masotta and Alejandro Rozitchner.

Highlight entries include Roberto Arlt and the Argentine novel and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and the essay. Acutely aware of its place in the avant-garde tradition, it contextualised its own project with an essay, ‘Martinfierristas: their time and ours’.

Proa reviews

Proa

Proa, the oldest Latin American publication still in print, was founded by Argentine writers Borges, Macedonio Fernández and Eduardo González Lanuza in 1922. Coeval with Martín Fierro, it shared many of its vanguard populist principles – including free circulation in libraries, bookstores and amongst friends.

Originally emulating the triptych design of the Spanish magazine ULTRA, it provided a platform for eminent European and Latin American writers of the era. Two years later, Proa was relaunched from Borges’ Recoleta abode with $50 capital, donated by Georges Braque, Alfredo Brandan Caraffa and Pablo Rojas Paz. The new version, with illustrations from Borges’ sister Norah, as well as Pedro Figari and Adolfo Gramojo, showcased the works of Pablo Neruda, Raúl González Tuñón, Roberto Arlt and Eduardo Mallea. But, constantly stymied by a lack of capital, Proa stopped publishing again the following year.

Silvina Ocampo and Bioy Casares relaunched the magazine in 1988 – a project that Borges ad unsuccessfully attempted since 1982. Proa’s content includes short stories, poetry, essays, literary, film and visual arts criticism. The magazine was again forced out of print following the 2001 economic downturn but was subsequently taken on until 2003 by Chilean publishers. In its third phase, Proa still has a circulation of over 17,000 with a wide distribution throughout Latin America.

Diego Maradona in the last World Cup (photo: Globovision)

Argentines are no strangers to furry faces. Long, wide, dark, light, thin, curly, straight and twisted beards crowd the streets as well as the history books.

We at the Argentina Independent decided to take a deeper look, bringing you a round-up of the country’s greatest whiskers.

To compile this list, each beard was analysed with three elements in mind.

First, we judged the look. Size, shape, colour and originality all played a role in who made the cut.

Secondly, we took into account the position the men held while they had their beards. It can be difficult for anyone to be taken seriously with a furry beast growing out of his face, far less a president.

Lastly, the notoriety of the beard itself was important. Although football legend Diego Maradona grew a beautiful salt-and-pepper beard, few people associate him with it.

With these guidelines in mind, it is our pleasure to introduce the Top 5 Beards of Argentina.

Eduardo Rinesi

Tiempo Argentino has referred to him as “the political expert with the long beard.”

Eduardo Rinesi takes the top spot (Photo: Victor Santa Maria)

A quick internet search finds adult bloggers lamenting, “when I grow up (?) I want to have Rinesi’s beard, but what trouble it must be to maintain it.”

With thick, dark bristles that rival those of Socrates, the political scientist Eduardo Rinesi takes our top spot.

Rinesi has managed to garner great success despite (or because of) his grand beard. He is the rector of the National University of General Sarmiento, and has penned quite a long list of books.

Born in Rosario, Santa Fe in 1964, Rinesi has had lots of time to groom his luxurious facial hair. According to Tiempo Argentino, he hasn’t shaved since he finished his “colimba”, the year-long military service that was obligatory until 1995.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Che Guevara and Castro and a bushy beard (Photo: Wikicommons)

Che’s organic scruff is by far the skimpiest beard on our list, but it is also the most well-known.

“Guerrillero Heroico” – that oh-so-famous photo of Che – was named a symbol of the 20th century and the world’s most famous photo by the Maryland Institute College of Art. The Victoria and Albert Museum says the picture has been reproduced more than any other image in photography.

How popular would that image be if the Argentine revolutionary had been clean-shaven?

Not only is the image printed on T-shirts, but the beard has been copied around the world. Guevara’s life became a symbol – and a part of that symbol was the beard.

What university would be complete without its crew of wannabe revolutionaries, all sporting red-star hats and their own versions of Che’s face fuzz? El Comandante may have been killed in Bolivia 45 years ago, but his beard will live for years to come on the faces of rebellious youth.

Julio Argentino Roca

Julio A. Roca, former argentinean president (Photo: Wikicommons)

According to a Latin saying, “Barba non facit philosophum”. The beard does not make the philosopher.

But could a beard make a villain? Perhaps.

Take former president Julio Argentino Roca, for example. Sure, as president he started a civil registry, made primary education free, and oversaw a state-controlled economy that boomed. But while sporting his Van Dyke of Evil – which you can see on the $100 bill – Roca terrorised the Argentine countryside as part of the Conquest of the Desert. His policies led to the killing and displacement of thousands of indigenous people in the 1870s.

During his second run as president the Residency Law was passed, allowing trade union leaders to be expelled from the country. Remember that obligatory military service our top beard Rinesi served? That was Roca’s doing. That puffy white chin was top dog when the conscription law was enacted in 1901.

Martín Fierro 

If a beard didn’t exist, can it make the Top 5 list?

Sure.

While it never really had a place in time nor space, Martín Fierro’s beard lives in the minds of millions who have read José Hernández’s poems El Gaucho Martín Fierro and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro.

The gaucho Fierro was forced to leave his impoverished-but-romanticised lifestyle when he was drafted to serve at the border. He deserted and tried to return home. Difficulties ensue.

Fierro was an immediate success when El Gaucho came out in 1872, and the two poems together have been called Argentina’s equivalent to Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

But where would he be without his beard? In the Pampas with a cold face.

Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem elected president in 1989 (Photo: Wikicommons)

You could argue that Carlos Menem’s sideburns were not an official beard, but the presidential chops measure up in terms of size, quality and recognisability. There was more hair in his skunk-coloured cheek decorations than some men find on their heads, putting these puppies on our Top 5 list.

First elected as governor in 1983, Menem’s sideburns were the most visible part of his flamboyant style. Elected as president in 1989 and serving in office until 1999, “las patillas” slowly shrunk into a muted state – but his attitude did not.

At the turn of the millennium, the former president started to scoot around in a red Ferrari, married a Miss Universe model, and fathered a child in 2003 at the ripe old age of 73. Corruption charges have littered his résumé over the last decade, along with a recent obstruction of justice charge related to the 1994 Jewish community centre bombing in Buenos Aires.

These days, Menem’s jowls are bare – but pictures will always stand as proof of the former president’s fancy facial hair.

Leopoldo Marechal is a second-time-around success story; an author acknowledged only retrospectively as one of the most significant names in Argentine writing.

Following on from Jorge Luis Borges, Oliverio Girondo, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, the Beyond Borges series looks at the prolific poet, occasional playwright, essayist and novelist whose unpopular political stance resulted in his most accomplished writing being deliberately overlooked for decades.

Rediscovered by later generations, his full-length novel ‘Adán Buenosayres’ was one of the first Spanish language texts to have be deeply indebted to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, and is today considered one of the pioneering, must-read works in Argentine literature.

Leopoldo Marechal in Buenos Aires

Life and Early Work

Marechal was born in Buenos Aires in 1900; the eldest son in a family of French-Uruguayan and Basque-Argentine descent. He received a modest upbringing in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires and, from the age of ten, spent regular holidays with his uncle in Maipu. These early experiences provided an exposure to rural environments that would influence and specifically feature in much of his writing.

Having already begun the “dangerous habit” of counting syllables with his fingers, he wrote his first poems aged only 12. At 18, and only shortly after the death of his uncle, he suffered the loss of his father – an event that pushed him into a teaching career he would maintain for much of his life.

During the 1920s Marechal became actively involved in the avant-garde journals ‘Proa’ and ‘Martin Fierro’, along with the likes of Macedonio Fernández, Girondo and Borges. Amidst this climate of literary fervour he published his first collection of poetry in 1922.

‘Los aguiluchos’ bore echoes of earlier modernist influences while a second collection, ‘Días como flechas’, was published only four years later but adhered more closely to the avant-garde trends of the time. Though both titles revealed the same influence of nature and expression of passion, the latter demonstrated more of the finely tuned elements that framed it well within the reformist movements of the period.

In 1926 Marechal travelled to Europe where he wrote for several Spanish journals and surrounded himself with the artists and sculptors of the ‘Paris group’. He returned briefly to Argentina but, in 1929, returned to Paris where he completed his third book, ‘Odas para el hombre y la muter’. Marking something of a return to classical forms, the book received recognition in Argentina in the form of the prestigious Premio Municipal de Poesia.

An article by Marechal in the magazine Martin Fierro

As the 30s came around, the writers of the influential Florida group began moving away from the avant-garde, signifying an era of aesthetic conversion that witnessed many about-turns and relinquished ideals.

Marechal went on to publish several further books of poetry and won the Premio Municipal de Poesia a second time in 1940 for his book ‘Sonetos a Sophia’. By the end of the decade he seemed well on track to become one of Argentina’s most accomplished poets, had his political opinions not impinged so badly on his future literary success.

Adán Buenosayres

Despite being the author of three novels, almost 50 years of poetry and several plays and essays, ‘Adán Buenosayres’ is the single novel for which Marechal is now most known. Far longer than many of the celebrated Argentine novels before it, the 1948 edition covered 741 pages and was divided into seven books.

Purposefully named after Adam in a biblical sense, the Adam of Marechal’s novel also happens to be Argentine, and porteño, Parts one to five take place over three days and narrate the adventures of the principal character, while the sixth and seventh books make use of a more intimate first person; the sixth serving as Adán’s autobiography, and the seventh describing his symbolic descent into hell. Since the novel’s prologue informs us of his fate, Adán’s status as a mythical character is almost immediately secured from the offset.

As much poetry as it is prose, and as autobiographical as it is fictional, the mood of Marechal’s classic is one of its most noteworthy aspects. Its sarcastic and mocking spirit goes some way in tempering the melancholy sentiment of the story itself, and a linguistic richness accompanies its enormous flow of images and symbolism. Often compared to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ the novel aspired to do for Buenos Aires, and for the variations of the Spanish language, what Joyce’s novel had done for Dublin.

Marechal's urban novel aspired to do for Buenos Aires what Joyce's 'Ulysses' had done for Dublin (Photo: Kate Bowen)

Rejection and Rediscovery

Had Marechal published his novel ‘Adán Buenosayres’ shortly after he’d begun writing it in Paris in 1930, its success story might have looked different. As it was, by the time the novel was published in 1948, its reception was marred by a general reluctance to detach the work from the political position of its writer.

A century earlier, the controversial ideologies of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento had likely succeeded in garnering more public attention for his historical essay ‘Facundo’, but Marechal’s masterpiece paid dearly for its author’s political allegiances.

Having initially aligned himself with a generally accepted trend of catholic nationalism, the author later declared his allegiances to the government of Juan Domingo Perón – a move that resulted in his work being shunned by his contemporaries for almost two decades.

Although his writing was not directly political, from 1945 there was no going back. Marechal would become known as the Peronist of his generation and, as such, his work would be purposefully overlooked until new political winds took flight.

Besides the favourable opinion of a select few writers and the ardent admiration of  Julio Cortázar, the first publication of Adán Buenosayres slipped into oblivion. Its reissue, almost 20 years later, caught the attention of a younger generation whose historical interest in Argentine literature led to the novel’s resurgence and its current recognition as a pioneering work in Argentine writing.

The novel has since been translated to French in 1995, Italian in 2010 and is currently being translated into English for publication this year.

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