Buenos Aires in Literature

CRESPO, NATALIA

World Literature in Spanish: An Encyclopedia

ABC-Clio

Lugar: California; Año: 2011; p. 232 - 237

Buenos Aires in Literature. Natalia Crespo En World Literature in Spanish: An Encyclopedia. Eds. Maureen Ihrie y Salvador A. Oropesa. ABC-Clio: California, 2011. Founded in 1580 by Juan de Garay, the city that in 1880 became the capital of Argentina has been depicted as a remote, beautiful, hybrid, and mutating place. Its demographic and architectural growths have never been gradual, and its many vertiginous changes produced an array of expectations, fears and reactions that can be traced in its literature. During its colonial period, the city at the shores of the River Plate estuary appeared in Viaje al Río de la Plata  [Travel to River Plate] by Ulrico Schmidel, Romance Elegíaco [Elegiac Romance] by Luis de Miranda, Argentina by Ruy Díaz de Guzmán, and The Argentine by Martín de Barco de Centenera as a place characterized by its emptiness and remoteness. The idea of Buenos Aires as an empty land in need of European civilization –and under risk of native barbarism– is an important theme in Nineteenth-Century texts. Esteban Echeverría’s El matadero (1839) [The Slaughter House], Domingo Sarmiento’s Facundo (1845), and José Mármol’s Amalia (1851) represented Buenos Aires both as the ideal scenario for a new civilization and as a chaotic, barbaric place. After 1880, due to the arrival of millions of immigrants mainly from Europe, Buenos Aires became for its intellectuals an unpredictable, hybrid, and dangerous city. Eugenio Cambaceres’s Sin rumbo (1885) [Without Direction], Lucio López’s La gran aldea (1882) [The Grand Village], Antonio Argerich’s ¿Inocentes o culpables? (1884) [Innocent or guilty?], Miguel Cané’s Juvenilia (1884), Lucio Mansilla’s Mis memorias (1907) [My memories] left us a literary testimony of the conservative concerns, nostalgia, and fears expressed by the elites after this abrupt demographic growth.  During the first decades of the 20th Century, Buenos Aires appeared in literature as the condensation of all desired modernity, but also as the center of unexpected conflicts derived from such modernity. Leopoldo Lugones’s Odas seculares (1910) [Secular Odes] celebrated its beauty and grandeur; Baldomero Fernández Moreno’s Ciudad (1917), [City] and Evaristo Carriego’s Canción del barrio (1912) [Song of the Neighborhood] exalted the simplicity of the outskirts; Manuel Gálvez’s Nacha Regules (1919) depicted Buenos Aires with a realistic prose; Roberto Arlt created through literary journalism an alienating city (Aguafuertes porteñas, 1930) [Etchings from the Port]; the renown Jorge Luis Borges wrote his first poetry book, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1925) [Fervor of Buenos Aires]. The presence of Buenos Aires delineates many of Borges’ literary pieces. From his early avant-garde poems and essays --Cuaderno San Martín, 1929 [San Martín Notebook]; Inquisiciones, 1925 [Inquisitions]; El tamaño de mi esperanza, 1926 [The Size of My Hope]-- to his mature books --Ficciones, 1944 [Fictions, 1962]; El Aleph, 1949 [The Aleph, 1970]; El otro, el mismo, 1964 [The Other, the same]; Elogio de la sombra, 1969 [In praise of the Shadow]-- Borges has expressed his love for his natal city. In his literature, Buenos Aires is portrayed as a labyrinth, a cosmopolitan space, a place where the writer would re-encounter his inner soul. From the 1930’s on, many novels and essays portrayed Buenos Aires as a mutating place. Leopoldo Marechal’s Adán Buenos Aires (1948) offered a satirical depiction, while Manuel Mujica Láinez (Canto a Buenos Aires, 1943 [Song to Buenos Aires] and Misteriosa Buenos Aires, 1950 [Mysterious Buenos Aires]), Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (La cabeza de Goliat, 1946) [Goliath’s Head], Eduardo Mallea (La bahía del silencio, 1950) [Silence Bay], Adolfo Bioy Casares (El sueño de los heroes, 1954) [The Heroes’ Dream] inquired into hidden secrets of the polis.  In the last decades of the Twentieth Century danger and anonymity became central themes in the literature about Buenos Aires. In Rayuela (1963) [Hopscotch, 1966], 62 Modelo para armar (1968) [62: A Model Kit, 1972], as well as in many of his short-stories, Julio Cortázar described Buenos Aires as an unpredictable, oneiric space. César Fernández Moreno’s Buenos Aires me vas a matar, (1977) [Buenos Aires you are going to kill me], David Viñas’ Cuerpo a cuerpo (1979) [Melee] and Ernesto Sábato’s Sobre heroes y tumbas (1961) [On Heroes and Tombs, 1981] captured the sense of threat, anonymity, and violence of the megalopolis.             During and after the last military period (1976-1983), literature about Buenos Aires described the city as the backdrop of dictatorship and its multiple sufferings. This is the case in Cortázar’s Deshoras (1982) [Unreasonable Hours, 1984], La ciudad ausente (1992) [The Absent City, 2000] by Ricardo Piglia, Abril en Buenos Aires (1983) [April in Buenos Aires, 1983] by Luisa Valenzuela, Buenos Aires (1984) by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, Rosalba Campra’s Ciudades para errantes (2007) [Cities for Wandering People], among others. Natalia Crespo Michigan Technological University Works about: Abós, Alvaro. Al pie de la letra: guía literaria de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Mondadori, 2000. Bernardson, Wayne. Buenos Aires. London: Lonely Planet, 1996. Graña, María Cecilia. La selva en el damero: Espacio literario y espacio urbano en América      Latina. Ed. Rosalba Campra. Pisa: Giardini, 1989. Lehan, Richard. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley, U of      California Press, 1998. Wilson, Jason. Buenos Aires: A Cultural and Literary Companion. Oxford: Signal Books, 1999.