Jorge Luis Borges
'Argentine literature' is among the most important in
Spanish language, with world-famous writers such as
José Hernández,
Jorge Luis Borges,
Julio Cortázar,
Manuel Puig,
Joaquin Gomez Bas and
Ernesto Sábato. Like other aspects of the
Argentine culture, literature in
Argentina has always been subject to heavy
European influence, especially from
Spain and
France.
History
Origins
Argentine literature began around the year
1550, with Matías Rojas de Oquendo and Pedro González de Prado (from
Santiago del Estero, the first important urban settlement in Argentina), who wrote both
prose and
poetry. They were partly inspired, undoubtedly, in the unwritten aboriginal poetry, according to Carlos Abregú Vyrreira by the ''lules'', ''juríes'', ''
diaguitas'' and ''tonocotés''. A symbiosis emerged slowly between the aboriginal and
Spanish traditions, creating a distinct literature, which was geographically limited (well into the
18th century) to the Argentine north and the central region, with the province of
Córdoba as its center. Two names stand out from this period: Gaspar Juárez Baviano and Antonia de la Paz y Figueroa, also known as "Beata Antula". Within poetry, Luis de Tejeda, disciple of
Góngora and
Saint John of the Cross, is considered to be the first Argentine poet.
Gradually, with the economic prosperity of the port, the cultural axis moved eastward. The letters of the colonial age (Viceroyalty-
neoclassicism,
baroque and
epic) grew under the protection of the
independentist fervor:
Vicente López y Planes, Pantaleón Rivarola and
Esteban de Luca.
Cultural independence from Spain
The rupture with Spanish tradition, in favor of the
French romanticism that postulated the return to popular sources and to the
medieval past, allowed Esteban Echeverría to be the creator of the first local and realistic story, ''El Matadero'' ("The slaughterhouse"), and of the poem ''La Cautiva'' ("The Captive"), with the
Pampas as its stage.
In the middle of the
19th century José Mármol published the first Argentine novel, ''Amalia''. Meanwhile poetry decreased its combative spirit and turned towards the anecdotal and sentimental: Carlos Guido y Spano and Ricardo Gutiérrez, the chronicle writers of folk literature;
Vicente Fidel López, Lucio V. Mansilla and
Juana Manuela Gorriti; and the historical ones:
Bartolomé Mitre and
Domingo F. Sarmiento.
Generation of 1880
The generation of 1880 emphasized the
European color and the cultural supremacy of
Buenos Aires. The
migratory current of mixed ethnicity accentuated the change of the ''big village'' for the ''cosmopolitan metropolis''. The poetry of this period is lyric: Leopoldo Díaz y Almafuerte.
Essay is a recent genre: José Manuel Estrada, Pedro Goyena and Joaquín V. González. The narrative works oscillated between social issues and folk literature: Miguel Cané, Eugenio Cambaceres, Julián Martel y Carlos María Ocantos.
===''
Literatura Gauchesca''===
While European-oriented, indeed Eurocentric, themes and styles were and would remain the norm in Argentine letters, especially from Buenos Aires, a picturesque, imitation-
gaucho literature, purporting to use the language of the gauchos and reflect their mentality, arose in the 1880s as a part of that Generation's understanding of national identity. The three great figures in this trend,
José Hernández,
Estanislao del Campo and
Hilario Ascasubi immediately became, and have remained, among the most popular figures of a whole unique genre in Argentine and Uruguayan literature, the '''gauchesco''' or "gauchoesque" style. (Cf:
Borges: ''Aspectos de la poesía gauchesca'', 1950).
Modern
Towards the end of the
Nineteenth Century, led by the
Nicaraguan
Rubén Darío,
modernism appears. Preciosity of manner and the influence of
Symbolism sum up the new esthetic, which inspires the clearest voice in poetry,
Leopoldo Lugones, author among many other things, of the first Argentine
science fiction story.
The first truly modern generation in Argentine literature is that of the
Martinfierristas (c.
1922). The movement contributes an intellectual doctrine in which current representative paths come together: that of
Florida group, adscript to
ultraísmo, with Oliverio Girondo,
Jorge Luis Borges,
Leopoldo Marechal and Macedonio Fernández; and that of Boedo, impressed by
Russian
realism, with Raúl González Tuñón, César Tiempo y Elías Catelnuovo. Of all of them,
Ricardo Güiraldes remains classic in style, giving a whole new freshness to ''gauchesca'' poetry and writing perhaps the great Argentine novel, ''
Don Segundo Sombra''.
Benito Lynch (1885-1951), a wonderfully excentric short-story writer who, like Güiraldes, does not easily fit into any tiresome "generation", proposed his marvelously quirky tales in an enchanted new-''gauchoesque'' manner about this time.
Between the end of this decade and the beginning of the following one emerged the ''Novísimos'' ("Newest"), a generation of poets (Arturo Cambours Ocampo, Carlos Carlino and José Portogalo), as well as narrators (Arturo Cerretani,
Roberto Arlt, Luis Maria Albamonte and Luis Horacio Velázquez) and playwrights (Roberto Valenti, Juan Oscar Ponferrada and Javier Villafañe). This group postulates philosophical reflection and a new essence for ''Argentinidad''.
Generation of '37
The ''Generation of
1937'' centres perhaps on poetry, where it develops the descriptive, the nostalgic and the meditative with
Ricardo E. Molinari, Vicente Barbieri, Olga Orozco, León Benarós and Alfonso Sola Gonzáles. Narrators line up after idealism and
magic realism, (María Granata,
Adolfo Bioy Casares,
Julio Cortázar) or a subtler form of realism
Manuel Mujica Laínez, Ernesto L. Castro,
Ernesto Sábato and Abelardo Arias), with some urban touches as well as folk literature (Joaquín Gómez Bas and Roger Plá).
Essayists do not abound: Antonio Pagés Larraya, Emilio Carilla, Luis Soler Cañas; but, of course, the greatest Argentine essayist after Sarmiento,
Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, belongs to the Generation of '37.
Neohumanism, Existentialism and other influences
About 1950 another milestone arises: the
New Humanism, a response to
World War II and its aftermath. On one level are
avant-gardists like Raúl Gustavo Aguirre, Edgar Bayley and Julio Llinás; on another,
existentialists: José Isaacson, Julio Arístides and Miguel Ángel Viola. Further away, those who reconcile both tendencies with a regionalist basis: Alfredo Veiravé, Jaime Dávalos and Alejandro Nicotra. Among narrators we find charged testimonies of the times:
Beatriz Guido, David Viñas and
Marco Denevi. In a majority of these writers, a strong influence of
Anglo-Saxon and
Italian poetry can be perceived.
A new trend starts in
1960, going till about to 1990 . Influences are heterogeneous:
Sartre,
Camus, Eluard; some Spanish writers, like Camilo José Cela; and Argentines like Borges, Arlt, Cortázar and Maréchal. Two tendencies can be seen: the tracing of
metaphysical time and
historicity (Horacio Salas,
Alejandra Pizarnik, Ramón Plaza) and urban and social disarray: (
Abelardo Castillo, Marta Lynch,
Manuel Puig, Alicia Steinberg).
From the provinces important poets and storytellers appear: Luis Franco, Juan L. Ortiz and Jorge Wáshington Ábalos.
Dark military days
The
1970s are dark for the intellectual creation. The sign of the epoch is
exile (
Juan Gelman,
Antonio Di Benedetto) or death (
Roberto Santoro,
Haroldo Conti,
Rodolfo Walsh). Remaining literary journalists like
Liliana Heker veiled their opinions in their work. Some journalists (
Rodolfo Walsh), poets (
Agustín Tavitián, Antonio Aliberti), narrators (
Osvaldo Soriano, Fernando Sorrentino), and essayists (Ricardo Herrera, María Rosa Lojo) stand out between the vicissitudes and renew the field of the ethical and aesthetic ideas. Again the referents are Eluard, Eliot, Montale and
Neruda.
Current
The
1990s are marked by the reunion of the survivors of different generations, in an intellectual coalition for the review of values and texts facing the end of the
century.
Miscellanea
Ernesto
Che Guevara was an Argentine, born in
Rosario. Besides his armed fight and his political involvement with
Fidel Castro's government in
Cuba, he wrote ''
The Motorcycle Diaries'', about his travels around Argentina and South America, which was turned recently into a movie.
See also
★
Latin American Boom
★
Latin American literature
★
Latin American poetry
★
Cultural movement
External links
★
Historia de la Literatura Argentina (Spanish)
★
Literatura Argentina (Spanish)
★
Generaciön del 37 (Spanish)
★
Biblioteca básica de literatura argentina
★
Scanner cultural
★
La inmigración en la Literatura Argentina (Spanish)
★
Orígenes de la Literatura Argentina (Spanish)
★
Dossier Juan L. Ortiz
★
Irreferencias: an argentine poet
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