C A M B R I DG E I B E R I AN A N D

LAT I N A M E R I C AN STUD I E S

GENERAL EDITOR

P. E. RUS SELL F.B.A.

Emeritus Professor of Spanish Studies

University of Oxford

A S SOCIATE EDITORS

E. PUPO-WALKER

Director, Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies

Vanderbilt University
A. R. D. PAGDEN

Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge

Sur

This book tells the story of Sur, Argentine's foremost literary and cultural journal
of the twentieth century. Victoria Ocampo (its founder and lifelong editor) and
Jorge Luis Borges (a regular and influential contributor) feature prominently in
the story, while the contributions of other major writers (including Eduardo
Mallea, William Faulkner, Andre Breton, Virginia Woolf, Alfonso Reyes,
Octavio Paz, Waldo Frank, Aldous Huxley, and Graham Greene) are discussed.
Politically speaking, Sur represented a certain brand of liberalism, a resistance to
populism and mass culture, and an attachment to elitist values which offended
against the more dominant phases of Argentine thought, from Peronism to the
varied forms of nationalism, socialism and Marxism. Dr King examines the
journal's roots, its development, and its demise, relating it to other journals
circulating at the time, and highlighting vital issues debated in its pages.
 CAMBRIDGE IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

LITERATURE AND LITERARY THEORY

STEVEN BOLDY: Tiu Novels of Julio Cortlkar

ANTHoNY c As c ARD1: Tiu Limits of Illusion: a critical study of Callkr6n
MAURICE HEMINGWAY: Emilia Pardo Ba<.tfn: the making of a novelist
B. w. IFE: Reading and Fiction in Goldm-Age Spain: a Platonist critique and some picaresque replies
JOHN KING: Sur: A study of tire Argentine literary journal and its role in tire thvelopment of a culture,
1931-1970
JOHN LYON:
Tiu Tluatre of Valle-Inclan
JULIAN OLIVARES: Tiu Love Poetry of Francisco de Qpevedo: an aesthetic and existential stut(y
FRANCISCO RICO: Tiu Spanish Picaresque Novel and tire Point of View
HENRY w. SULLIVAN: Callkrdn in tire German Lands and the low Countries: his reception andi'!fluence,
165,,.-1g8o
DIANE F. UREY: Galdds and tire Irony of Language
HISTORY AND SOCIAL THEORY

ROBERT 1. BURNS: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in tire Crusader Kingdom of Valencia
M1c HAEL P cos TELoE: Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and tire Spanish American revolutions,
•

1810--1840
HEATH DILLARD: Daughters of tire Reconquest: Women in Castilian town socieljl, 1100--ljOO
JOHN EDWARDS: Christian C6rdoba: the ciljl and its region in tire late Middle Ages
JUAN L6PEZ-MORILLAS: Tiu Kraasist Movement and Ideological Change in Spain, 185,,.-1874
LINDA MARTZ: Poverljl and Welfare in Habsburg Spain: the example of Toledo
ANTHONY PAGDEN: Tiu Fall of Natural Man: tire American Indian and tire origins of comparative
ethnology
EVELYN s. PROCTER: Curia and Cortes in Ledn and Castile, 107:r1295
A. c. DE c. M. SAUNDERS: A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal,
1441-1555
DAVID E. VASSBERG: Land and Socieljl in Golden-Age Castile
 Sur
A study of the Argentine
literary journal and its role in the
development of a culture, 1931-1970

JOHN KING
Lecturer in Cultural History, University of Warwick

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 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1986

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permission of CambridgeUniversity Press.

First published 1986

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

King, John, 1950-
Sur: a study of the Argentine literary journal and
its role in the development of a culture, 1931-1970.
(Cambridge Iberian and Latin American studies)
Bibliography.
I. Argentina-Intellectual life. 2. Sur (Buenos Aires,
Argentina) I. Title. II. Series.
F2810.K55 1986 982'.12 86-9625

ISBN 978-0-521-26849-3 Hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-12121-7 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy ofURLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

Acknowledgements page vii

Introduction

The cultural context

Argentine letters in the nineteenth century:
'gentleman' and 'professional' writers 7
Magazines in the cultural life of Buenos Aires: I 900- 30 I3

2 Sur: the early years

Victoria Ocampo 3I
Literary travellers in Argentina 35
Sur: the first issues 43

3 The years of consolidation, I 935-40

Introduction 58
The intellectual and social context of the I 930S 60
The literary context 77

4 The war years

Sur and the war: an overview 95
Foreign contributors IOI
Latin American contributors I 07
Argentine writers I IO
Sur and little magazines, I 940-5 I 26

5 Sur in the years of Peronism, I 946-55

An overview
The opening to Europe
Latin American writers
Argentine writers
v
Vl C ONTENTS

6 Sur, 1 956-70: the failure of reconstruction

Argentine cultural development, 1 956-70
Foreign contributors to the magazine
Latin American contributors
Argentine contributors

Conclusion 1 98
Notes 203
Select bibliography 225
Index 229
 Acknowledgements

My greatest thanks go to Gerald Martin who acted as my supervisor

when an earlier version ofthis work was presented as a thesis at Oxford
University. Gordon Brotherston, John Rutherford and Peter Russell
also read the text and made many valuable observations. John
Wainwright of the Taylorian Institute in Oxford gave me a great deal
of bibliographical guidance. Cristina Weller commented on the text
and typed up several versions with great skill and accuracy. Janet
Greenberg in Berkeley was also generous with her observations and
shared her research material on Victoria Ocampo with me.
In Argentina I was helped by a number ofpeople. The writers and
critics associated with Sur discussed their ideas with me, in particular
the late Victoria Ocampo and the late Maria Rosa Oliver,Jorge Luis
Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jose Bianco, Silvina Ocampo, Enrique
Pezzoni and Teddy Paz. Carlos Lohle and Marcela Sola assisted me in
many different ways and I was greatly encouraged by their enthusi­
asm and friendship. The editorial committee of the magazine Punto de
Vista gave me a number of valuable insights, in particular Beatriz
Sarlo and Maria Teresa Gramuglio. The staff of the Sur offices and in
the various libraries of Buenos Aires were always cooperative.
Finally my research trips to Buenos Aires were financed by the
SSRC, the DES, the Ford Foundation, the Di Tella Foundation and
the University of Warwick.

JOHN KI NG
Warwick, June 1g85

vu
 For my mother
and in memory of
my father

Vlll
 Introduction
Tout cela d'un gout exquis, evidemment. 1

This book is concerned with the problem of reading and interpreting

the Argentine literary magazine Sur, which was published regularly
between 1 93 1 and 1 970, and irregularly thereafter, as an elegant
fusion of fiction, poetry, philosophy, plastic arts, history and social
commentary. That a magazine should be chosen as a research topic
reflects the reality of Argentine literary life in the twentieth century.
Such publications offered many writers their main opportunity to put
forward ideas in the form of works ofliterature and critical or general
essays. Most magazines only lasted for a few years or, in some cases, a
few issues, but Sur, thanks to the quality of its contributors and the
sound financial base of its founder, Victoria Ocampo, was to have an
important influence on several generations.2
There have been no substantial accounts written of literary
magazines in Latin America, and few studies exist of their European
and North American counterparts.3 There are signs that more
attention is being focused on this area, but the research for this study,
and in particular the methodological and theoretical issues that it
raises, have evolved, to a large extent, in a critical vacuum. The lack of
a coherent body of criticism imposes certain necessary limitations on
the work. Francis Mulhern has argued in his recent study of the
English critical magazine Scrutiny:
It will doubtless be noticed that the book lacks a systematic theoretical and
methodological preamble . . . This is largely a matter of necessity. Few
precedents exist for the study of a journal as such; it would evidently have
been inadequate to construct a schema, by derivation and specification from
the existing conceptual resources .. . and it would just as evidently have been
illegitimate to elicit one by induction from the investigation ofa single case.4
What his work has demonstrated and what this book sets out to
achieve is a detailed case study which pays attention to the magazine
as history and as text. It will be argued that Sur should not just be
2 INTRODUCTION

treated as an anthology that came out every month or two, but rather
as a process - with its own internal history and conflicts - which
developed in a certain political and cultural setting. Its discourse
remained remarkably coherent throughout the period of its publica­
tion and can therefore, if my methodology is successful, be reliably
charted through the changing conditions of Argentina in the mid
twentieth century.
The main focus will therefore be literary history. It will locate the
journal within the very specific development of Argentine letters in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then seek to explain
how it elaborated and altered these tendencies throughout the forty
years of its regular publication. Sur's view on literature and life
became the most powerful force within Argentine letters during this
period and all other forms of cultural expression can be defined by
their adherence to, or disagreement with, its central premises. The
literary world cannot be divorced from the wider historical context
and particular attention will be paid to developments within
Argentine and world history to which the magazine was forced to
respond and which shaped its course, in particular the growth of
fascism and communism, the Second World War and the rise and fall
of Juan Domingo Peron.
Complex problems arise when dealing with a composite text, for
it is necessary to identify links between a number of diverse texts
without reducing a complex enterprise to a crude general classifica­
tion of content. Raymond Williams has argued in an influential essay
on the 'Bloomsbury fraction' that the critic of a literary magazine or a
cultural group must establish two factors: the internal organisation of
a particular group and its proposed and actual relations to other
groups in the same area of enquiry and to the wider society.5 Certain
magazines declare their intentions and thus offer guidelines for
subsequent analysis. Other magazines, in the apparent heterogeneity
of their material, present more complex problems. Historians ofideas
have pointed out that there is a very substantial difference between the
great reviews of the nineteenth century that attempted to speak for a
wide cross-section of educated opinion and the little magazines of the
later period that sponsored the new, 'in the vanguard of the war
against established literary, artistic or political properties'.6 In most
cases, the little magazines set out a manifesto or a programme which
determines their selection, proclaiming the foundation of new
movements and developing their doctrines explicitly and polemical­
ly.7 Poggioli makes the distinction:
 INTRODUCTION 3
The romantic, nineteenth century periodical . . . [is] . . . essentially an organ
of opinion, exercising an avant-garde function only insofar as it leads and
precedes a vast corps ofreaders in the labyrinth of ideas and issues: but the
avant-garde periodical functions as an independent and isolated military
unit, completely and sharply detached from the public, quick to act, not only
to explore but also to battle, conquer and adventure on its own.8
Every magazine maps out a space for itself in the intellectual field,9
establishing the boundaries between its own work and other tenden­
cies: in the case of little magazines, the boundaries are very clear.
With magazines such as Sur, which never declared its principles in
an opening manifesto and which lasted many years longer than the
briefand scintillating life-span ofa little magazine, the search for unity
is more complex and must be sought in a body ofpractice or a general
ethos rather than in any declared statement of principles.10 It can be
argued that to impose an order on such established, long-running
magazines as the .Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise, the Revista de Occidente or Sur
is to simplify and distort. How can such diverse, seemingly eclectic
material be seen as part of a coherent project? Jorge Luis Borges, the
main writer in Sur, whose literary development will provide a major
focus for the text, has tended to see the magazine as eclectic rather
than dynamic:
Et puis, Victoria [Ocampo) avait une conception assez curieuse de la revue
litteraire et ne voulait publier que des textes des collaborateurs illustres et ne
voulait pas des notes, sur le theatre, les films, les concerts, les livres . . . et tout
cela est la vie d'une revue, non? C'est a dire, c'est ce que veut trouver le
lecteur; tandis que s'il trouve un article dequarante pages signe Homere et un
autre de cinquante signe Victor Hugo, �a le fatigue.11
Whilst there is much truth in what Borges says, there was more to Sur
than a random anthology offoreign luminaries. Not even the bulkiest
review can be boundlessly eclectic, and as soon as the element ofchoice
is introduced, the question of a principle or a programme, however
implicit, becomes inescapable. As has been said, Sur, in fact, offered a
surprisingly coherent discourse: a small group of writers, with a
particular attitude to Argentina and universal letters, remained
together for several decades engaged in a collective enterprise.
The analysis of this group and its literary production moves the
present study into an area in which traditional disciplines are
sometimes uneasy. Literary studies, in particular, have tended to be
predominantly interested in the 'text-in-itself', relegating questions of
literary production to the background. As it happens, this is especially
the case with critics of Borges, who take their cue from that writer's
own aesthetics and mock the social text. John Sturrock, a recent
4 INTRODUCTION

English critic of Borges, has remarked that there is nothing in the

stories of Borges for those whose tastes are moralistic or sociological;
everything in them for those whose tastes are literary .12 A study ofSur,
it will be argued, can add to this rather one-dimensional view, by
locating writers in their social and ideological context, as well as in the
more abstract world ofliterature. Most literary critics now accept the
fact that texts exist in an intertextual world, that conventions,
precursors and styles restrict the notion of individual production.
Rather fewer of them consider, especially in the case of a writer like
Borges, that institutional and ideological determinants might act in a
similar way.13
History and sociology are also uneasy with cultural groups for, as
Raymond Williams has pointed out, 'the group, the movement, the
circle, the tendency seems too marginal or too ephemeral to require
historical and social analysis. '14 Yet it is possible to examine what these
groups have accomplished and their relationship to the society in
which they live. The Sur group had specific ideas as to their own
identity and function, which can be observed in the magazine, in
memoirs and through a series of extensive interviews with the main
protagonists. It will be necessary to emphasise at certain points the
personal relationship of family and friendship, for inclusion and
exclusion from the group often depended on these very personal
factors. A close-knit group managed to achieve the status ofa cultural
institution, 'naturalising' in this way their often very idiosyncratic
views.
As such, they caused a fierce literary polemic over many years and it
will be an aim of this study to offer meta-commentary on the
development of Argentine literary criticism with respect to the
magazine. Most criticism has tended to be Manichean and it is an
important task both in considering Sur and for the development of the
discipline in general, to understand how and why such a polarised
position has occurred. The debate has focused around two poles which
can broadly be defined as liberal/populist or universalist/nationalist.
Sur articulated a liberal, universalist stance and it was natural for
opponents to define themselves in opposite terms. The debate has
become so polarised that the real significance of the magazine is often
lost. In this world of simple dualities, Sur has been condemned as
extranjeri;:;ante (a dismissive term, referring to those intellectuals whose
ideas and attitudes are formed by foreign, in particular European,
models), cosmopolitan and elitist in contrast to an 'ideal' Argentine
 INTRODUCTION 5
culture which should be popular and nationalist. No real attempt has
been made to examine the validity of these labels. This study will
attempt to locate Sur's 'cosmopolitanism' within a very specific
Argentine tradition and will examine critically the concept of elite
culture which seems to presuppose some homogeneous stable entity,
with its own monolithic world-view.15 It will hope to offer a balanced
view of the development and limitations of a particular elite group
and in this way refocus attention on important concerns that become
confused when critics line up in opposing camps, and as David Vinas
has said, make an act offaith: 'En los dos andariveles no se critica. Ni se
piensa, claro esta. Se reza o se cocina.'16 In this way the study seeks to
draw the attention ofliterary critics and cultural historians to a crucial
area ofcultural analysis which has generated a good deal ofheated but
often facile debate at a narrowly political level, but has been largely
neglected by serious studies of literature.
Four further points should be made concerning methodology. The
study draws on an exhaustive statistical analysis made by the
magazine itself on two occasions: in 1 950, after twenty years of
publication; and in 1 967, towards the end of the period of its regular
publication.17 These works list the numbers of contributors, the
subject matter oftheir articles and the date ofpublication. They are, of
course, necessarily limited insofar as they do not attempt to interpret
and make sense of this raw material. This study will not therefore
dwell on detailed statistical analysis at any given period, but will
attempt to illustrate and analyse the most important tendencies. It is
not enough to say that the magazine published a specific number of
Argentine or European writers. This bald statement immediately
raises the more complex questions: Why then? Why there? Why thus?18
Secondly, the chapter divisions correspond in the main to historical
trends within the period. This is the most logical procedure, since the
content of the magazine was very much determined by four major
historical periods: the ideological divisions of the 193os, the war years
( 1 940-5), the first Peronist .regimes ( 1 946-55) and the attempt to
'modernise' Argentine society between 1 956 and 1 970. Internal shifts
within the magazine are also registered, but these are not sufficient to
give shape to the magazine's history. Events in the wider society
ultimately determine the development and eventual demise of Sur.
To map the development ofa magazine within its historical context
is to write, in microcosm, a history of twentieth-century Argentine
literature. This is a complex task, especially since there is a lack of
6 INTRODUCTION

supporting monographs. General histories ofliterature vary in quality

and studies of specific periods or groups are only just beginning to
appear. The work draws on interesting analyses of the 1 920s and the
1 960s. Peronism, however, still remains largely unexplored in the
cultural field and the 1 93os and early 1 94os tend to be totally ignored
by critics as the wilderness period between the avant-garde of the
1 920s and the 'boom' of the late 1 950s and 1 96os.19 This study offers a
reading of the whole period but is aware that many more studies of
Argentine cultural history are necessary before the successes and
limitations of the Sur project can finally be appreciated.
Thirdly, it will be seen that most attention will be given to the
magazine's publication ofensayos and cuentos . It also published poetry,
as all literary magazines do, but this was never a major concern of a
coherent group within the magazine. My treatment of poetry reflects
its effective weight in the magazine's affairs. Equally, Sur often
published short notes on art exhibitions by eminent critics such as
Julio Payr6 and Damian Bayon, and on concerts, by composers and
music critics like Alberto Ginastera and Juan Carlos Paz. These were
not, however, substantive essays on aesthetics, but rather contem­
porary comments on cultural life in Argentina.20 It is in the essays on
contemporary events or universal culture and in the short stories that
the complexity of Sur's enterprise can be most successfully analysed.
Finally, in order to give the reader an idea ofthe debates within and
surrounding the magazine, extensive use is made ofquotations. These
quotations are important since they help to define the 'tone' of the
magazine and they also provide valuable additions to the existing
bibliography on particular writers. A writer such as Borges is very
selective in ordering his 'complete works' and an analysis of the
journals to which he contributed throughout his life reveals a number
ofinteresting observations on Argentine history and society, as well as
on national and universal literature. Since they are intended as source
or archival material, the quotations are given in Spanish in the text,
but a non Spanish reader will be able to follow the main arguments in
the book without any difficulty.
 I

The cultural context

La Historia Argentina, que era la de nuestras familias, justo es
recordarlo . . .1

Argentine letters in the nineteenth century: 'gentleman'

and 'professional' writers
In artistic matters, absolute beginnings are extremely rare: we find
instead continuities and breaks with the past. Sur was always very
conscious ofhistorical precedent and saw its own development as part
of the Great Tradition of Argentine liberalism, which had been
expressed, in its purest form, by the 'generations' of 1 837 and 1 880.
Even though, as will be argued below, the magazine arose out of the
specific cultural and social conditions of the early 1 930s, its signifi­
cance cannot be understood without reference to the formative years
ofArgentine history. For Victoria Ocampo, there was only one history
in Argentina, that which had been forged by her family and friends,
and which had to be defended against the mass movements offascism
and communism spawned by the late 1 920s and early 1 930s.
The most significant historical reference point for the magazine was
the life and work of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. In an issue devoted
to Sarmiento in 1 938, Ocampo included a photograph of that great
liberal patriarch which had been dedicated to one of her ancestors,
also called Victoria Ocampo.2 Sarmiento was one of the family, and
his classic statement on the need for Argentine development, Facundo:
civilizaciony barbarie ( 1 845), was a model for Sur's later enterprise. Like
Sur, Facundo was written at a time ofcultural crisis, when the Federalist
dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas was attempting to organise the
country under his exclusive rule and shut it offfrom outside influences.
Sarmiento and his contemporaries Esteban Echeverria (El matadero,
1 838) and Jose Marmol (Amalia, 1 85 1 ) wrote against Rosas from exile
and developed a coherent political programme which would be
expressed within a Manichean conceptual framework.
In broad terms, the Unitarian group sought to develop the
7
8 SUR

potential riches of the littoral provinces, at the expense of the

backward interior with its basic cottage industries, and promote a
dynamic export economy linked to the expanding British Empire.
The traffic would pass through the city of Buenos Aires and yield a
high revenue which would benefit the whole country. The central city
of Buenos Aires would control a process which would encourage
foreign investment, technology and immigration.3 Refracted through
the Romantic prose of Sarmiento, this struggle between liberalism
and autarky became a battle between civilisation and barbarism, and
engendered a series of opposites, in which the first term was always
positive: Europe/America; liberalism/autarky; Buenos Aires/ Cor­
doba; water, the sea/pampa; liberal elite/gaucho; social order/
excessive individualism; mind/matter; Paz, Sarmiento/Facundo,
Rosas.
In Sarmiento's analysis, therefore, his own liberalism had four
characteristics. Firstly, it was anti-democratic: the masses, despite
Sarmiento's literary, Romantic admiration of gaucho skills, were a
threat; brute forces that could be manipulated by a dictator.
Liberalism was equated with economic development and material
progress, as the boom years of the l88os witnessed. Progress was also
equated with European models, which represented civilisation, and
national or popular symbols were perceived as backward and
threatening. Finally, liberalism was anti-personalist: it mistrusted
local caudillos, be they Rosas or his twentieth-century incarnation
Peron.4 In this tradition, Sur articulated an elite, modernising,
European cultural practice, which mistrusted mass civilisation and
had to fight against personalist leaders.
The next important cultural moment for Sur was the development
that took place under the 'generation of l880'. After a long and bloody
battle, the nation-state was consolidated according to Sarmiento's
dream: the great landowners of the littoral provinces, working
through the city of Buenos Aires, controlled the growth of the export
economy, which became enormously profitable when allied with
British capital and technology. With Europe a ready market for
Argentine foodstuffs, it was inevitable that Argentina should become
part of the international trading system. Enormous wealth was
generated by the eager acceptance ofthe world division oflabour, and
was to cause profound transformations in Argentine society. David
Rock provides some telling figures. 'Between l 880 and l9 lo the value
of its [Argentina's] exports had increased sixfold. After 1 860 total
 THE CULTURAL CONTEXT 9
production had grown at an annual average of 5 % per year,
population by 3-4%, the crop area by 8.3% and the 'railway system by
1 5.4%-'5 Yet this wealth caused the development of a very distinct
political and social system.
In the main, a small group of traditional Creole families took
advantage of these favourable external conditions to collaborate with
the expanding British Empire. It has been estimated that less than
2,000 families owned a land area equivalent to Italy, Holland,
Belgium and Denmark added together.6 The wealth of this class was
enormous: they often lived in Buenos Aires, or in Paris, as rentiers (the
Ocampo family is a good example of this tendency) , and controlled
commerce and politics as an oligarchy. Yet this simple system was
broken up, to a certain extent, by the high rate of urban development
in the late nineteenth century, which created a more complex social
structure of working-class and middle-class sectors. The middle-class
groups were in the main white-collar workers, professional men and
bureaucrats: the export economy did not create a strong, indigenous
industrial sector. The working class was largely made up of immi­
grants, for immigration had increased enormously. Immigration was
concentrated in Buenos Aires and other littoral urban centres, where
there were more opportunities for social mobility than in the rural
areas.7 This concentration created problems for the elite, who tried to
exclude immigrants from the political system. Yet as politicisation of
the urban middle and working classes increased, a more flexible model
had to be adopted, partially to assimilate middle-class groups. This
was largely effected by the Saenz Pena law oflimited suffrage ( 1 g 1 2) ,
and the growth of the Radical Party, which acted as a broker between
the oligarchy and middle-class groups dependent on State patronage.
A more democratic pluralist society therefore emerged, but one that
was still controlled in the last instance by the elite. The dependent
middle-class groups were included in the system, but the working
classes, first- and second-generation immigrants, were still perceived
as a threat.8
These tensions were reflected in the cultural sphere in a process that
David Vinas has called the development from the 'gentleman' to the
'professional' writer.9 Victoria Ocampo, born in 1 890, grew up in the
society of the 'gentleman' writer and her subsequent narrative style
bears a strong resemblance to that of Miguel Cane and Eduardo
Wilde in its decorous, yet colloquial tone, its sense of a private
conversation among equals, and the vivid descriptions of European
IO SUR

cultural centres. These men of the 1 88os cultivated a genre of travel

literature in their dispatches from various diplomatic centres. They
created the impression of a class sure of its position at home and
confident of its reception abroad. Their observations on politics and
social developments are often less important than their ability to tell an
anecdote or record a scene. The generation of 1 880 was a gentleman's
club - its redoubt the Jockey Club - and its writers described the
intimacy of the group, an intimacy that Ocampo sought to maintain
in the very different conditions of the 1 93os. Her actions would always
be greeted suspiciously, however, for she was a woman in a man's
world.
The writer-politician or the gentleman-diplomat gave way, in part,
to the professional writer. The term professional does not refer to the
ways in which writers earned their living, for the market was still
restricted and the reading public small. It was impossible to live from
the proceeds of writing, except as a journalist. Roberto Giusti, one of
the most important critics of the early twentieth century, remarked
that at the turn of the century, 'Una persona de recursos medianos
podia adquirir, si lo deseaba, todos los libros impresos en el dia.
Editores propiamente no los habia. El autor se pagaba la edicion.'1 0
The concept of professionalisation referred instead to the writer's
perception of himself as a writer. The key movement in this respect
was modernismo and its main advocate and practitioner Ruben Dario.
The modernistas advocated the separateness of poetry from its social
context and the need to extend and perfect the craft ofliterature.1 1 It
was, ofcourse, a revolt within a system: for all its rejection ofbourgeois
positivist values, it relied on the patronage of the oligarchy, especially
that of the great newspapers such as La Nacion, in which the writers
work"ed as journalists. La Nacion , as David Vinas has pointed out, was
one of the most important cultural institutions in Buenos Aires. It
published poetry, literary essays and cronicas, short essays evoking
people and places. 'Llegar a escribir en La Nacion , convertirse en "un
hombre de La Nacion " era el ideal de vida que empezaba a fijarse y una
categoria de validaci6n social de los intelectuales.'12 The modernistas
were adept essayists, and some of the techniques ofjournalism - an
agility of style, an emphasis on freshness and newness - could also be
seen in their verse. Despite these conditions, Dario longed to escape
from journalism into the purer world ofpoetry and it was his assertion
of the separate space of literature that helped to define it as an
independent career. The Romantic theme of a public unable to
 THE C U LTURAL CONTEXT II

understand the world of the artist was intensified at a time when a

community of writers began to appear, which met in the pages of La
Nacion , the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras or in certain cafes.
Literary production was no longer confined to a small group of
friends from established aristocratic families. Just as the classic liberal
model of 1 880 adjusted subtly over the years to assimilate rural
landowners and new middle-class groups, becoming increasingly
more democratic, the intellectual groups also became more diffuse.
The Facultad de Filosofia y Letras at the University of Buenos Aires
was important in this respect, offering access to libraries, which had
earlier been the exclusive prerogative of the rich, and to well-known
intellectual figures, who had become teachers. Roberto Giusti and
Alfredo Bianchi, both sons ofimmigrants, met in the Faculty and their
friendship would later blossom into one of the most successful literary
enterprises ofthe twentieth century in Argentina, as they coedited the
literary magazine Nosotros . Yet family relations still played an
important part. Manuel Galvez has written that as a young, unknown
writer, he delivered a bad article to La Nacion . To the surprise of no
one, since he came from a well-established family, the article was
printed the next day.13 In the last instance, the oligarchy defined the
boundaries within which culture could develop.
Liberalism became more democratic and its adherence to Euro­
pean models became more complex and contradictory. Sarmiento
had decried the indigenous population and had hoped that it would
gradually be replaced by European immigration, yet by the late
nineteenth century the effects of immigration were not viewed as
wholly positive. As an abstraction, the idea of mass immigration was
attractive: in reality, however, it seemed to fill the country with
morally and socially inferior beings from southern Europe, who
brought with them dangerously egalitarian or anarchist ideas. A
number of novels, lnocentes o culpables ( 1 884) by Antonio Argerich, En
la sangre ( 1 887) by Eugenio Cambaceres and La Bolsa ( 1 89 1 ) byJulian
Martel, all viewed the immigrant as a threatening invader.14 Even in
later, seemingly more liberal texts (the novels written by Francisco
Sicardi in the 1 890s) , the immigrant was never seen as a complex
character, but rather as a man who, through honest industry, would
adapt to the dominant social values in Argentina.
These novelists could shape the destiny of the immigrants in the
pages of fiction, but it was less easy to modify the text of history.
Substantial working-class and lower middle-class sectors emerged,
12 SUR

which provided a new market for more popular forms of cultural

expression: the theatre, the music-hall, the serialised novel, the
political newsletter. These people would always be considered beyond
the boundaries of civilisation, until certain literary movements in the
1 92os focused on their problems and aspirations. The little magazine
Mart(n Fierro , as will be discussed below, mounted a direct attack in
the 1 92os on immigrants and those writers who sought to express their
culture: 'Sabemos, si, de la existencia de una subliteratura, que
alimenta la voracidad inescrupulosa de empresas comerciales,
creadas con el objeto de satisfacer los bajos gustos de un publico
semianalfabeto . . . Nos hemos encontrado con la consabida anecdota
de conventillo, ya clasica, relatada en una jerga abominablemente
ramplona, plagada de italianismos.' The article ends with a reference
to a popular edition of the poetry of Ruben Dario, edited by a left­
wing publisher. How can the masses understand Dario?: 'No hay que
echar margaritas a puercos. '15 The difference between civilisation and
mass culture was accentuated in these years, and would become one of
the major concerns of Sur.
In the face ofimmigration, old criollo values began to be reasserted
in a positive sense. The symbols and myths used to define the new
Argentine nation could not logically be borrowed from European
models. In a cultural climate in which Unamuno and Ganivet began
exploring the national soul and the infra-history of Spain and Rod6
articulated the spiritualist 'Arielist' nature of Latin America, Argen­
tine writers began to look for the founding myths of the Argentine
nation and appropriated Jose Hernandez's narrative poem Mart(n
Fierro ( 1 876) . Mart(n Fierro could be seen as the soul of the Argentine
nation in an almost metaphysical sense: the elements of social protest
and social injustice were neatly elided from the text in the cultural
revisionism of Leopoldo Lugones' El payador ( 1 9 1 6) and of Ricardo
Rojas, who had been appointed professor of Argentine literature at
the University of Buenos Aires.16 This cultural movement, as
Altamirano and Sarlo point out, was fundamentally defensive, for it
reasserted the right of an elite of criollos viejos to continue in power.17
The most successful fusion of these two seemingly contradictory
impulses, European culture and Argentine nationalism, was effected
by Ricardo Giiiraldes in Don Segundo Sombra ( 1 926) , in his acculturat­
ed gaucho character Fabio. Giiiraldes was a good friend of Victoria
Ocampo and his spirit and example (he died, a relatively young man,
in 1 92 7) would be important to the conception ofSur. The question of
 THE CULTURAL CONTEXT

nationalism in literature would become one of the major concerns of

Argentine cultural history and Sur would be a fundamental part ofthis
acerbic debate.
These brief remarks bring the account up to the second decade of
the twentieth century. It is at this point that the examination of the
literary groups in the country must become more detailed, for Sur was
to emerge from the conflicting debates of the 1 920s. Its links with the
nineteenth century were, however, clear: Sarmiento and the genera­
tion of the 1 880s were Ocampo's immediate precursors, and she
continued a tradition of oligarchic support and control of cultural
practices. Liberalism was the model, but it was a set ofideas that had
become increasingly problematical with immigration and the birth of
cultural nationalism. The professional writer and the professional
academic had emerged to occupy some of the ground that had
previously been the exclusive prerogative ofthe oligarchy. In the same
way Sur would blend writers from old families, professionals and
academics. The foundations were being laid which would make
Buenos Aires, together with Sao Paulo, the most important intellec­
tual and cultural centre in Latin America.18 It was on this firm basis
that the most solid and provocative intellectual journal of the
continent could be founded.

Magazines in the cultural life of Buenos Aires: 1 900-30

Nosotros
In Argentina and in particular in Buenos Aires (the adjective
'Argentine' is often too ample a term to describe the achievements of
the major city) , literary reviews were the dominant form of artistic
production and distribution. Sur was not the only major literary
magazine to appear in Buenos Aires in the twentieth century. An
earlier review, Nosotros, was founded in 1 907 by two young writers,
Alfredo Bianchi and Roberto Giusti, and was to continue, with a break
in the 1 930s, until 1 943. Its most influential period can be seen as the
first twenty years of its publication, when it combined all the literary
tendencies of the period, the 'gentleman' writers, the modernistas,
academics and the younger avant-garde: 'En Nosotros escribian lo
mismo los hombres de la generacion de Dario, tales como Leopoldo
Diaz y Roberto Payr6, y escribian los jovenes. Todo joven que traia
versos decorosos, se lo publicabamos.'19 There had been earlier
 SUR

successful cultural magazines. Paul Groussac, the director of the

Biblioteca Nacional, edited La Biblioteca between 1 896 and 1 897,
including the official representatives ofelite culture, Mitre, Cane and
Obligado, with the new writers Lugones and Larreta. Eugenio Diaz
Romero had produced the best magazine ofmodernismo, El Mercurio de
America , between 1 898 and 1 900, but like Groussac's publication, it
was short lived. Another important journal, Ideas ( 1 903-5), was
founded by Manuel Galvez and Ricardo Olivera. It sought to reassess
the work of the generation of 1 880, admiring its many achievements,
but pointing out that such achievements were now often perverted by
materialism and a lack of ideals and had been distorted by a
cosmopolitan outlook which ignored the question ofnational identity.
Many of the contributors were drawn from the provincial aristocracy
and were anxious to reassert traditional, national values. This group,
which has been called the first nationalist group in Argentina, was
assimilated into Nosotros .20 Nosotros became a cultural institution in
Buenos Aires, and established a tradition ofletters that the vanguard
movements of the 1 920s would react against. Nosotros allowed
different tendencies to coexist in its pages as it attempted to represent
the whole community ofwriters: its very title suggests this orientation.
The cultured minority was of course relatively small: Nosotros printed
no more than a thousand copies.21
The writers continued to meet in the offices of La Nacion or in the
famous 'literary' cafes, the Brasilefla and Los /nmortales .22 Nosotros
included a number of very different writers: two young second­
generation immigrants, Giusti and Bianchi, who were socialist
sympathisers; the legendary Emilio Becher, the aesthete of the group
who provoked the reverential admiration of his friends ('Tan limpia
era su prosa como su perfil aristocratico, de rasgos purisimos') ;23 the
aristocratic nationalist, Gerchunoff; and the oldest member of the
group, the essayist and novelist Roberto Payr6. All would meet in the
cafes, and be grouped in the pages of Nosotros. In the sociology of
artistic groups, the salon-care and the regular dining groups play an
important role in the maintenance and development of cultural
contacts.24 Sur would later show a similar concern to provide
hospitality for intellectuals in the house and publishing house of
Victoria Ocampo. However, Villa Ocampo and Sur were to become
more of a salon-chapel than a salon-cafe:25 whereas Nosotros was open
to all, Sur was to restrict its dialogue. 'Nosotros estaba abierta a todos los
escritores argentinos; asi tuvieran 60 como 25 aiios. Sur en cambio
 THE CULTURAL CONTEXT

estaba limitada a un pequeiio grupo y a ciertos escritores

extranjeros.'26
Nosotros grew in stature, publishing the limpid poems of Enrique
Banchs and Arturo Capdevila, the popular verse ofEvaristo Carriego
and Florencio Sanchez, the novelist Manuel Galvez and the essayist
Ricardo Rojas. In later years, when young writers began to
experiment with many aspects of the avant-garde, the values of
Nosotros came under attack. From the 1 920s, a number of writers
began to question this careful, eclectic, traditional approach to
Argentine letters and sought to break away from that magazine. Of
course, the consolidation and prestige of a cultural tradition must
create, paradoxically, a dynamic avant-garde movement which
rejects tradition and the market-place yet is secretly fascinated by the
rewards and recognition that the cultural 'establishment' can
bestow.27
Nosotros, as part of its project, attempted to absorb these tensions
within its text, maintaining an open dialogue with young writers. It
was at least partially successful, publishing an extensive survey of the
opinions of young writers in 1 923, and inviting these writers to
contribute to the magazine. When Borges published his first book of
poems, Fervor de Buenos Aires ( 1 923) , he thought ofthe Nosotros offices as
a convenient post-box, a place where he could contact the writers and
intellectuals of the day:
Having noticed that many people who went to the offices ofNosotros . . . left
their overcoats hanging in the cloak-room, I brought fifty or a hundred
copies to Alfredo Bianchi, one of the editors. Bianchi stared at me in
amazement and said: 'Do you expect me to sell those books for you?' 'No' I
answered. 'Although I've written them, I'm not altogether a lunatic. I
thought I might ask you to slip some of these books into the pockets of those
coats hanging out there.' He generously did so.28

Alfredo Bianchi had earlier included an ultraist anthology in

Nosotros and had asked Borges to contribute an article explaining
ultraism, which was published in December 1 92 1 . Borges would
occasionally write for Nosotros, but he and most young writers
preferred to found their own magazines which on occasion attacked
the stolid older journal.29 Most were fairly light-hearted satires,
although a more serious critique ofNosotros was launched by the little
magazine Iniciales in 1 923.
The purpose of these attacks was to assert that the work of young
writers was as valid as the 'consecrated' texts by Galvez or Rojas. The
 SUR

avant-garde, as will be seen below, never rejected the literary system

of the day: it was anxious, rather, to undermine traditional values and
thus have its own work appreciated and rewarded. Bianchi and Giusti
attempted to defuse the antagonism, pointing out the limitations of
youthful, overzealous commitment either to the avant-garde or to the
socialist revolution. Bianchi contributed to the 2ooth edition of the
left-wing literary journal Claridad ( 1 930) and reviewed the work of
that magazine. Once again, he pleaded for moderation: 'Creo que
debieran evitar dos cosas: primero, la critica de camarilla, en la que se
exalta solamente a las del grupo, y segundo, los excesos de lenguaje
. . . Ya es muy vieja la exacta frase de que "lo cortes no quita lo
valiente".'30 He went on to condemn excessive sectarianism which
aped naturalistic or Russian social-realist texts. Such a tone defined
Nosotros: traditional, but concerned; conservative, but anxious to
coexist with the young. Nothing would be further from Sur's position:
it is impossible to envisage Victoria Ocampo writing for Claridad.
To risk generalisation with limited data (the r.euvre of Nosotros is too
vast to assess in detail in this text) , the magazine was open to many
different Argentine writers and it considered Argentine problems. It
also examined social and cultural developments in Latin America. It
was threatened with closure after publishing a comment on the
massacre of workers in the semana tragica of 1 9 1 9, and in 1 920 Giusti
abandoned the review for several years, since he felt that it could not
pay specific attention to important political issues. Both the editors
were close to the middle-class, intellectual Argentine Socialist Party,
which did not seriously challenge the hegemony of the liberal State,
and the magazine pleaded for social justice within a framework of
consensus. Such peaceful coexistence was possible up until 1 930, for
the rate ofeconomic growth in Argentina assured the maintenance of
a relatively organic community.
The magazine published the community of national writers, and
organised encuestas and special editions to celebrate specific Argentine
writers such as Lugones. In this way, it was more open than Sur would
ever be, as well as more eclectic.Jose Bianco, who was later to become
thejefe de redaccion in Sur, has stated that he published his most juvenile
work in Nosotros , whilst Maria Luisa Bastos, the Argentine literary
critic, has made the important point that the magazine had no specific
aesthetic criteria: sometimes Borges is praised, at other times pilloried
in a completely arbitrary manner.31 A policy of being open to every
tendency might have won a lot of friends, but it did not offer a sound
basis for measured criticism.
 THE CULTURAL CONTEXT

Whatever its flaws, Nosotros received a good press from its

contemporaries. Claridad wrote in theJune/July issue of 1 938: 'Nosotros
sigue siendo, y lo sera por muchos afios a{m, bajo la supervision de sus
directores, el espejo de nuestro laboratorio artistico y literario para
toda America, que puede encontrar en sus paginas todos los signos de
nuestra inquietud intelectual y de nuestro proceso evolutivo cul­
tural. '32 This can be compared with its description of Victoria
Ocampo in an 'Encuesta sobre el teatro' published in February 1 927:
'La senora Ocampo escribi6 una pieza que se titula La Laguna de los
nenufares. jCoqueta! jRemonona! ( Estas son las novedades que los
intelectuales piensan traer al teatro nacional?'33 It was, however, to be
Victoria Ocampo's magazine that was to set the standard for the
thirties, for Nosotros entered the new decade in decline, beset with
financial difficulties, its 'moment' at an end. It finally closed with the
death of Bianchi in the early forties.

The little magazines

Little magazines and the avant-garde in Latin America in the

1920s
Before considering in detail the vanguard cultural magazines in
Argentina, it is necessary to see their work within the wider context of
Latin America, as part ofa general movement for cultural innovation.
Critics have argued convincingly that although such movements were
self-consciously cosmopolitan and internationalist, they were not
merely copies of European models.34 The conditions that fostered the
modernist movements in the late 1 9 1 0s and 1 920s in Europe were also
present in Latin America. Perry Anderson, the British critic, sees
modernism in art and literature as occurring at a very specific socio­
political conjuncture: 'European modernism in the first years of this
century thus flowered in the space between a still usable classical past,
a still indeterminate technical present and a still unpredictable
political future. Or, put another way, it arose at the intersection
between a semi-aristocratic ruling order, a semi-industrialised cap­
italist economy and a semi-emergent, or semi-insurgent, labour
movement.'35 Certainly in Latin America - as we have seen in
Argentina - there was a cultural academy, operating within an
aristocratic State, against which the vanguard could react. There
were also the beginnings of industrialisation and consumerism (the
mirage of the American way of life and the new technologies of the
18 SUR

second industrial revolution that so obsessed the modernists) ,

although it would take until the 1 96os for the market-place to develop
fully. Finally there was the imaginative proximity ofsocial revolution,
as the events in Mexico or the student reforms in Cordoba in 1 9 1 8
revealed. Anderson's analysis of the ambiguous and open perspective
of modernism has relevance to Latin America, though it must be
argued that the main flowering ofmodernism - especially in the novel
- was to occur in Latin America in the 1 96os.36 However, in poetry
and plastic arts, many innovative movements saw the brief light of
day.
The vanguard movements flourished in the major cities in Latin
America: Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and, to a lesser extent,
Lima and Havana.37 Mexico City, in the aftermath ofrevolution, was
an innovative and exhilarating centre, whose atmosphere was both
modern and indigenous. The intellectual's task - following the lead of
Vasconcelos - was to proclaim the new nation ofMexico, to assert the
spirit of revolution in, say, the bold brush-strokes of the muralists.
Interestingly, the most sophisticated of the little magazines to appear
in the confusion and excitement of these years, Contempordneos
( 1 928-3 1 ) , founded by Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, sought to
blend the latest trends in European and North American culture with
contemporary Mexican writing. It proclaimed internationalism,
rather than narrowly extolling the virtues ofthe revolution. The name
of another magazine of the time, Ulises, also points to this attempt to
translate and assimilate modernist trends.
In Peru, the magazine Col6nida ( 1 9 16), founded by the Decadent
Abraham Valdemar, acted as a bridge between the modernistas and the
avant-garde, earning the enthusiastic support of writers such as
Vallejo and Mariategui. Mariategui's magazine Amauta ( 1 926-30),
thanks mainly to the dynamism ofits founder, was perhaps the most
interesting attempt in Latin America to fuse a radical line in politics
with the cause of modernism in art. In Cuba, the Revista de Avance
( 1 927-30), through its main editors,Jorge Mafiach,Juan Marinello,
Felix Lizaso and Alejo Carpentier, published new Cuban writing, but
was also conscious of developments in North and Latin America. It
was in Sao Paulo, however, that perhaps the most lively debates took
place, in little magazines such as Klaxon, Terra Roxa and Verde and in
manifestos and exhibitions, such as the now legendary Week of
Modern Art in February 1 922. The work of two writers, Mario de
Andrade ( 1 893-1 945) and Oswald de Andrade ( 1 890-1 954), illus-
 THE CULTURAL CONTEXT 19
trates these tendencies. Mario's supreme work Macuna(ma ( 1 928)
blended European modernism with a deep awareness of Brazilian
music, popular culture and ethnicity. Oswald preferred the more
direct medium of the manifesto, from the 'Pau Brasil' declaration of
1 924, which argued that Brazil had exported materials such as brazil­
wood to Europe since the sixteenth century and that it was now time to
export culture, to the 'Anthropophagous' statement of 1 928, which
argued through the question 'Tupi or not Tupi?' that Brazilians
should not slavishly copy European culture, but rather digest it and
use it for their own purposes, following the example of the Tupi
Indians, who ate their European captives in order to ingest their
power.
These briefremarks point to a widespread vanguard movement in
the 1 920s, in which Argentina played an active, if somewhat
conservative, part. The period saw the beginnings of a Latin
American community ofwriters, mainly among those writers who met
in the 'City of Light', Paris. It is within their country of origin,
however, that the main impact ofcultural groups and little magazines
must be analysed.38

The little magazines in Argentina

One of the stylistic features ofJorge Luis Borges' writing that is often
commented upon is his use of subversive disparate enumerations.
Enumerations are usually assumed to be logical classifications, but
with Borges the logic is broken down mercilessly and ridiculed. One
very early example of this technique, written many years before the
story ofthe Chinese encyclopedia which prompted Michel Foucault to
reassess the 'order of things' in Western civilisation,39 can be found in
the 1 92 7 twentieth anniversary issue ofNosotros. This issue is an indis­
pensable review of the past and current literary preoccupations and
Borges-contributed a short article entitled 'Pagina sobre la lirica de
hoy', adding in a postscript - another recurring technique - the
following observation, which is worth transcribing in full:
Postdata : Demasiado se convers6 de Boedo y Florida, escuelas inexistentes.
Creo, sin embargo, en la correlaci6n de la parroquia, de la secci6n electoral,
del barrio, con la literatura. Aiiado sin ningun etcetera de confianza, el
siguiente borrador de clasificaci6n:
(a) Escuela de la indefinida apetencia o de los antiguos barrios del Sur:
Maria Alicia Dominguez, Susana Calandrelli, Gonzalez Carbalho.
20 SUR

(b) Escuela del malhumor y del bellaquear o de los barrios nuevos del
Sur: Alvaro Yunque, Arist6bulo Achegaray, Juan Guijarro.
(c) Escuela de la fina cursileria, o de Flores: Atilio Garcia y Mellid,
Bartolome Galindez.
(d) Escuela de la rima a mas no poder o de las tertulias del Centro: Luis
Cane, Conrado Nale Roxlo, Ernesto Palacio.
( e) Escuela de las palabras abstractas y definitivas o de Belgrano: Carlos
Mastronardi, Ulises Petit de Murat, Pondal Rios.
(f) Escuela de lo aventurero, del agua, o del Paseo de Julio y la Boca:
Raul Gonzalez Tuii6n, Hector Pedro Blomberg, Pedro Herreros.
(g) Escuela de las bien practicadas puestas de sol o de las caminatas por el
Noroeste: Norah Lange, Ricardo E. Molinari, Paco Luis Bernardez, J.L.B.
Esta localizaci6n, como se ve, no conduce a nada.40
Here the classifications are seen to be conventional, destroying any
attachment to a known place or area. Poetry is not about geography
or history, but about language. The physical surrounding or banlieue of
Buenos Aires become transformed into what Foucault has called the
'non-lieu' of language. For Borges, any ideological explanation of
literary groups in the 1 92os is by definition - his definition -
misplaced.
The history books and memoirs group the little magazines of the
period around the geographical and ideological poles of Florida and
Boedo. The Florida group - named after the fashionable main street of
Buenos Aires - experimented with the many and varied avant-garde
movements of the day.41 The publications ofBoedo - a working-class
district - attempted to define a new 'realist' socialist consciousness.
There has been much debate as to the differences between these two
groups of young writers: Borges has dismissed the whole experience as
a 'sham literary feud, cooked up in Buenos Aires' .42 Maria Rosa
Oliver, a friend of Victoria Ocampo and one of the founders of Sur,
saw the division as a squabble between two essentially very similar
groups:
Los mismos escritorcs, periodistas, pintores, etc. salian de Amigos dcl Arte
para ir en pandilla a cenar en uno de esos fondines con paredes cubiertas de
botellas y salames y jamones colgando del techo . . . Cuando oi mencionar lo
de los dos grupos, vi en Amigos del Arte el simbolo de Florida y en el de los
fondines con aserrin sobre el piso el de Boedo . . . Como la vida me interesaba
mas que la literatura y el arte, me costaba aceptar que los que se entendian
conmigo sobre 'cosas de la vida' no pudiesen, por ser de la nueva sensibilidad
o de la vieja, entenderse entre ellos.43
Yet it seems clear that there was more to the dispute than this and
other memoirs from the perspective of Sur might suggest.
 THE CULTURAL CONTEXT 21
What then were the differences between the two groups? It has been
pointed out that one aspect of the avant-garde was its rejection of
traditional culture and, by extension, a rejection of the market-place.
The buying public were either the philistine bourgeoisie or the semi­
literate Italian and Spanish working-class immigrants who could not
understand new movements in art. There was, however, a simulta­
neous complicity and contempt in its attitude towards the crowd, as
Walter Benjamin has shown in his masterly analysis of the poetry of
Baudelaire. The poets pretended just to keep a distance, as solitary
flaneurs, but they sought acceptance at the same time.44 They rejected
the market-place, but were also anxious for recognition and remu­
neration - an uneasy contradiction. It did, however, make it easy to
separate themselves from the masses and to scorn any writers who
appeared to pander to popular tastes. The realist texts of Manuel
Galvez were bad enough, but worse still were the naturalist and social­
realist writers who claimed to speak for and about the working man.
The vanguard upheld the purity oflanguage and ofliterature in the
face of an invasion of foreign tongues, the contaminated street
language ofthe new arrivals. Each side claimed to represent authentic
national culture, accusing the other ofcosmopolitanism and attempt­
ing to define a justifiable or illicit use offoreign literature.45 For Boedo,
the extranjerizante texts were those of Supervielle, Apollinaire and
Marinetti; for Florida, the main enemy was Anatole France, Tolstoy
or Zola. Florida was a group of poets, Boedo a group of novelists,
essayists and short story writers: the purity of poetry was opposed to
the social contamination of fiction.
One notable polemic within the pages of the most representative
and irreverent of the Florida magazines, Marttn Fierro, illustrates this
point. Roberto Mariani, one of the most significant short story writers
of the 1 920s, opened his attack on the magazine by disputing its right
to use the symbolic nationalist title Martin Fierro (the first issue of the
magazine had deliberately evoked the poem ofJose Hernandez, with
the significant front-page headline 'La vuelta de Martin Fierro'. ' iPor
que los que hacen Mart{n Fierro - revista literaria - se han puesto bajo
la advocaci6n de tal simbolo, si precisamente tienen todos una cultura
europea, un lenguaje literario complicado y sutil y una elegancia
francesa?'46 True Argentine culture could only be a reflection of the
struggles of the working man. Evar Mendez, the editor of Mart{n
Fierro , poured scorn on this attitude, ridiculing the latest left-wing
magazine Extrema b:,quierda : 'Apareci6 Extrema /zquierda, "jSalutte!"
22 SUR

Muy realista, muy, muy humana. Sohre todo esto - hay en sus paginas
un realismo exuberante, el lexico que zarandean sus redactores es de
un extremado realismo: masturbaci6n, prostituci6n, placas sifiliticas,
piojos, pelandruiias, que le pari6, etc., etc. Muy, muy realista.'47
Although it is incorrect to divide the Buenos Aires cultural groups
into rigidly defined ideological positions, the differences between
them were marked. The solemn, pious young radicals ofBoedo were
faced with problems similar to those ofHenri Barbusse, the founder of
the Clarte movement in France: both tried to disseminate the teachings
ofrationalism and socialism to the masses with little real working-class
support, and in a climate ofincreasing censorship.48 Evar Mendez, on
the other hand, closed Martin Fierro rather than have his magazine
take an overtly political stand. It is interesting in this context that in
1 926 Ricardo Giiiraldes published Don Segundo Sombra and Roberto
Arlt published El juguete rabioso. These two writers, with their
divergent views as to the social function ofliterature, can be taken as
symbols of the split that existed in Argentina even in the 1 920s and
continued after the appearance of Sur in 1 93 1 : whereas Giiiraldes is a
constant memory in Sur - the first edition bears his photograph - Arlt
never would be published in its pages.
A closer look at the representative magazines reveals more clearly
the differences. The Florida group supported magazines such as
Prisma ( 1 92 1-2 ) , the second Proa ( 1 924-26), lnicial ( 1 923-6) and
Mart{n Fierro ( 1 924-7) . The two issues ofPrisma allowed Borges and his
friends to proclaim their ultraist manifesto. The magazine railed
against the psychological novel, lengthy poems, tired symbolism and
established forms of versification, and proposed instead innovative
verse based on the power ofmetaphor, free from superfluous adjectives
and literary ornamentation. Prisma, copying the vogue in Europe, was
produced as large posters, which adorned trees and buildings from
Palermo to the centre of town.49
Mart{n Fierro appeared with a flourish in 1 924 and was to end on a
high note in November 1 927 when the editor Evar Mendez, as
mentioned above, refused to get caught up in the feuding between
Yrigoyen and the anti-personalist faction of Melo and Gallo.
Apoliticism is thus one defining characteristic ofthe enterprise, which
appeared during the afios locos of the Alvear period, that brief moment
of optimism between the two world economic crises of 1 920-2 and
1 929. Optimism caused by economic and political stability coincided
with a reaction to the mad futility of the recent slaughter in Europe. It
 T H E C U LTURAL CONTEXT

is debatable whether Buenos Aires echoed more than just the freedom
and enjoyment of those years. The avant-garde was a very modest,
essentially conservative affair, not only because of the ideological
limitations of its protagonists, but also because of the intellectual
climate of the society. Sexual and moral repression, apoliticism and
the power of the State permitted only a limited revolution within a
tight system. The family, the fatherland, religion and authority were
all taboo subjects, unlike in the truly radical initiatives of Breton and
the surrealists.50 Gomez de la Serna, whose cultural clowning and
linguistic jokery made him the idol of the martinfierristas, was hardly
the stuff of which cultural revolutions are made. Perhaps the most
innovative work was to be found among the artists. Xul Solar, for
example, worked with cubist and surrealist techniques, but cannot be
easily encapsulated within these movements. The work is a blending
of the occult, archetypal symbols, numbers and letters, dislocations, a
play ofpositive and negative aspects. There is no volume as such and
the pictures have a musical rhythm very close to the work of Paul
Klee.51 He and Pettoruti were the arti�ts of the Florida group, and
both men transformed the techniques they had learned in Europe.
The same cannot be said of the poets.
The writers of Martin Fierro delighted instead in novelty, insults,
pastiche and iconoclastic humour which gave the magazine a
popularity hitherto unknown in Argentina: 20,000 copies of issue 1 8
were published. The contributors were generally under twenty-five,
unlike those of Sur, which was a 'mature' magazine from the outset,
and delighted in poking fun at the older generation. Leopoldo
Marechal led the attack on Lugones in a number ofarticles which took
exception to the master's teachings on rhyme and metre: 'La rima y el
metro son recursos barbaros que ya no interesan ni como deporte.'52
Lugones edited the cultural pages of La Nacion for a time, which led
Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza to pronounce the following, rather puerile
epitaph:
En aqueste pante6n
Yace Leopoldo Lugones
Quien, leyendo La Nacion
Muri6 entre las convulsiones
De una auto-intoxicacion.53
In the fourth issue of Martin Fierra the group declared its manifesto
(written by Oliverio Girondo) , highlighting the points made above. It
challenged the 'impermeabilidad hipopotamica del "honorable
24 SUR

publico" ' and proposed instead a new sensibility which was to be

American, yet at the same time open to the positive influences of
Europe. It declared itself to have 'faith in our phonetics', thus
distancing itself from the mass immigrant community.54 It later
published some good poets, in particular the macabre, epigrammatic
Oliverio Girondo and Florencio Sanchez; was open to new move­
ments in music, cinema and in art; focused on the eccentric intellects of
Macedonio Fernandez and Borges;55 polemicised with 'reactionary'
m.ass literature; and made the literary community less solemn. Sur
would recruit contributors from the ranks of Florida, but would
impose on them a new sense of discipline, of literary decorum.
Everyone of the Florida group published in Martin Fierro , but some
also started up little magazines oftheir own. Proa was perhaps the most
solid of these publications and its fifteen issues contain a wealth of
material from the pens ofits editors Ricardo Giiiraldes, Rojas Paz and
Borges. It was a smaller group and more rigorous in its presentation
of material. It combined the writing of Borges and Macedonio
Fernandez, with Giiiraldes' essays in praise of Valery Larbaud and
Leon-Paul Fargue, the poetry ofBrandan Caraffa and contributions
from other young writers like Pablo Rojas Paz and Leopoldo
Marechal. Now, it seems difficult to see how Borges could have been a
joint editor of a magazine with Giiiraldes, since their theories on
regional and national literature seem so different. Yet, although
Borges was later to criticise Giiiraldes' Don Segundo Sombra, it is clear
that at the time both men could combine their talents in an
appreciation of contemporary literature and a reassessment of the
Argentine past. The same dualism or attempted synthesis was present
in Martin Fierro, with the interest in contemporary European letters
(Gomez de la Serna) and popular Argentine poets (Evaristo
Carriego) . The fifteen issues of Proa, therefore, show a clear unity.
A content analysis of one issue - number 6, January 1 92 5 -
illustrates the variety and scope of the publication. It begins with an
essay by Borges on 'El Ulises deJoyce', in which Borges boasts ofbeing
'el primer aventurero hispanico que ha arribado al libro de Joyce'
(p. 3), but confesses that he can only guess at the meaning of the work.
He delights in Joyce's word-play and use of language and translates
the famous last page of the book. A poem by Salvador Reyes and
several short pieces by Evar Mendez, the editor of Mar#n Fierro,
follow. Fernandez offers an appreciation ofEvar Mendez's work, and
also makes a remarkable early claim for Borges, calling him 'el mejor
 THE C U LTURAL CONTEXT

dotado prosista de habla espaiiola hasta hoy a JUlClO de m1

incompetencia' (p. 1 6) .
Leopoldo Marechal - an active member of a group that he was
later, as a Peronist, to flagellate in his acerbic roman-a-clef, Adan
Buenosayres - contributes a poem which shows vestiges of the ultraists'
desire for striking images. Brandan Caraffa and Roberto Godel also
include poems and Borges' father translates a long extract of Rubaiyat
of Omar Khayyam , followed by a note on Omar Khayyam and
Fitzgerald, the English translator of the work, by Borges himself.
Further essays on Argentina and the European avant-garde are
supplied by Ernesto Palacio, Ricardo Giiiraldes and Guillermo de
Torre, the Spanish literary critic, later to become the leading
authority on the avant-garde in the Hispanic world. He was married
to Norah Borges, and Norah herselfincludes a portrait. A final note by
Giiiraldes castigates La Nacion for an arbitrary assessment of young
writers and their publications and reaffirms his faith in little
magazines. It is an extraordinarily rich and well-balanced issue which
appraises new work in Argentina and Europe and reassesses classical
texts. Sur would continue and develop these practices.
The magazines ofthe Boedo group reflected very different concerns.
Emir Rodriguez Monegal describes contributors in conspiratorial
terms as a group of writers more or less connected with the emerging
Argentine Communist Party anxious to gain control ofor destroy the
avant-garde movement.56 Here Rodriguez Monegal falls unwittingly
into the same Manichean polemic, emphasising the dark destructive
forces of the 'Marxisant' group. The main editor of Los Pensadores and
later Claridad was an independent socialist, Antonio Zamora, and his
publications sought to rally socially concerned, if not always socialist,
writers. Claridad owes more than just its name to the Clarti movement
and Henri Barbusse. The initial idea ofClarti was to organise a series of
international organisations which would transcend the rivalries
which had caused the cataclysm in Europe. It was to be a 'living
encyclopedia', a 'large university', both inside France and abroad.57
The magazine, under the guidance of Raymond Lefebvre, reflected
these interests in revolutionary education. In the same spirit, the first
one hundred issues of the Argentine magazine Los Pensadores were
translations ofleft-wing critics and writers. The magazine circulated
at a cheap price (about 20 centavos, the price of a completo coffee and
-

croissants- at the time) , and a publishing house produced inexpensive

editions oftheir own writers such as Roberto Mariani, Alvaro Yunq ue
 SUR

and the main target for the contempt of Florida, Elias Castelnuovo.
Yunque's Versos de la calle sold some 20,000 copies, an enormous print
run in the 1 920s, and the magazine Los Pensadores printed regularly
5,000 copies.
Clartl had a profound impact in Latin America and led to the
formation of the Claridad group in Peru, to which Mariategui
belonged for a time, and the Clarti group in Brazil. The movement
split in France for a number ofreasons. It was unable to attract a mass
audience, outside a reduced, radical middle class, and was also
somewhat unrealistic as to its own possibilities. The revolutionary
optimism of the period up to 1 925 was tempered by the regression of
the following years. The Boedo group worked within the same
restraints: there was little support for left-wing parties and no clear
idea as to what committed or proletarian art implied in practice. The
writers were as conscious of writing for each other as they were of
producing for the working masses. Yet this is not to condemn the effort
out of hand, as most critics have done, either as a misguided
conspiracy or as the achievement ofa group of middle-class intellectu­
als impersonating radicals, but who were really more at home amid
the polished floors of the aristocratic cultural centre Amigos del Arte or
the Cafe Richmond.58 It was a confusing time for these magazines.
Should they support the Third International, support the socialists as
Justo, the socialist leader, wanted or remain independent? Barletta
left the magazine Claridad after a year since he thought the group too
closely identified with the Justo faction.59
The literary direction of the group was also unclear. There was
support for the nineteenth-century realists, and for contemporary
intellectuals such as Rolland and Barbusse. But what ofrevolutionary
art? Trotsky, writing in the 1 920s, argued in articles published in
Clarti ( 1 5 August; 1 November 1 923) that there was no such thing as
an essential proletarian consciousness in a pre-revolutionary society.
Only the Revolution would bring forth revolutionary art, and in the
meantime the category 'proletarian art' was vague and contradictory.
Intellectuals in Argentina debated the same problems, though as
Prieto points out, they had more ofan ingenuous faith in 'essences': 'Es
un mundo inundado de piedad, de compasi6n, de virtudes
evangelicas. Un mundo poblado de ap6stoles y de fariseos, en el que
Cristo redentor se sustituye por la esperanza mesianica en la
Revoluci6n social. '6o
Essays reflected this 'mystic' beliefin the people as the repository of
 T H E C U LTURAL CONTEXT 27
revolutionary values. The dominant mode ofliterature was the short
story or the political essay, working within a realist tradition. They
scorned the avant-garde aspirations of Florida, claiming that:
'Nosotros escribimos mal, tal vez, porque nuestra aspiracion no
consiste en llegar a escribir bien. Somos desaliiiados: lo sabemos.
Sucios. Espontaneos. Pero nos hacemos entender hasta por el vigilante
de la esquina . . . c!Quien entiende lo que dice Mart{n Fierro? Proa. iY
lo que dice Proa? Lo entiende Mart{n Fierro.'61
The dangers ofsuch an approach were obvious. In France the Clarti
movement maintained a dialogue with the surrealists. In Argentina,
only the 'pure' were acceptable. Luis Emilio Soto pointed out the
problems of philistinism in the 2ooth edition ofClaridad: 'Burlotear al
vanguardismo, solo por la etiqueta, equivale a sentar plaza de
preceptor limitado y obtuso. Un obrero saturado de esa monserga y
amante de la pintura, por ejemplo, se quedara perplejo frente a un
Diego Rivera, pintor del pueblo y vanguardistas, [sic] . . . No,
expliquesele antes el concepto de tal, estableciendo cuales son los
innovadores de verdad . . . y cuales los "fumistas". '62 Such a wish
was to be unrealised since literature became less important in
the pages of Claridad. The magazine lacked formal structure. It
published poetry or short stories sporadically and its book review
section was called 'libros buenos y malos libros'. It is difficult to
perceive a sustained critical strategy in the arts, as would be expected
from its subtitle: 'Revista de arte, critica y letras'. The second part of
its title more accurately reflects the interests: it was a 'tribuna de
pensamiento izquierdista'.
The main targets of the magazine were writers such as Galvez,
Giiiraldes and Larreta and the establishment newspaper La Nacion .
Although it condemned adulation of foreign models, the magazine
was interested in visitors from afar, in particular Waldo Frank, the
writer who was to be so important in the founding of Sur. In fact the
cover of issue 1 9 1 (28 September 1 929) was a photograph of Waldo
Frank (by Alfred Stieglitz), which was used again some fifty years
later by Sur to adorn the cover of his memoirs. One important
difference is that whereas Sur was later to print the mystical effusions of
such men with reverence, since they were important guests, Claridad
thought itselfcapable ofcutting through the rhetoric.63 The magazine
criticised Keyserling and Frank as vague and idealist as part of its
constant and increasing preoccupation with the socio-economic
condition of Argentina. In a world dominated successively by the
 SUR

Great Slump, growing nationalism, the rise of Nazism and the

Spanish Civil War, there seemed to these men little time to debate
literature.
We can therefore confirm a clear ideological gap between Florida
and Boedo and point to weaknesses on both sides: the frivolity of
Mart(n Fierro and the confusion ofleft-wing critics. Sur was to recruit its
writers from Florida and was to be criticised by a weak Marxisant
group. The latter did not make a significant literary intervention for
some time, either as writers or as critics: it could condemn, but found it
difficult to produce alternative models. The weakness of the Boedo
position is seen clearly in comparison to the literary review Amauta
edited by Mariategui in Peru. This articulated a coherent political
strategy ofinternationalism with a struggle for socialism within Peru,
but it was also sensitive to the need to fuse art with revolution.
Mariategui was aware of the conservative nature of Marinetti's
futurist ideology, but greeted surrealism enthusiastically, as a way of
breaking with bourgeois naturalism.64 Both Florida and Boedo, on the
other hand, were trapped in a seemingly free and prosperous society,
which nonetheless clearly defined the limits of radicalism. Even
though they spoke out against the system, young writers continued to
depend on the country's social elite for cultural patronage and
material support.
By the late 1 92os, therefore, Buenos Aires had a dynamic, if rather
conservative, cultural life. The main institutions were Nosotros
(though its energies had been dissipated by the end of the decade) and
the literary pages of La Nacion , which published poetry, short stories
and short critical essays. Privately sponsored organisations also
brought together foreign and Argentine intellectuals. Amigos del Arte
developed a tradition of cultural sponsorship of art, music and
literature which had begun with El Ateneo in 1 892, the Conservatorio in
1 893, the Circulo de la Prensa in 1 896. All these bodies were supported
by private funding and sought to develop Argentine culture through
the stimulus of European contacts and visitors. The magazine Proa , in
its first edition, supported the founding of Amigos del Arte in 1 924. It
argued that: 'Cuando las clases dirigentes de un pais buscan la
convivencia con los artistas, ese pais esta llegando a un grado
apreciable de civilizaci6n. '65 The importance of these visitors in the
founding ofSur will be discussed in the following chapter. In this way it
was hoped to develop an international spiritual aristocracy, a
community of like minds.
 T H E C U LTURAL CONTEXT

The spiritual aristocracy - or oligarchy, as its critics would later

argue - was made up of few people, who produced, distributed and
disseminated knowledge. Literary magazines had print runs of, at the
most, one or two thousand, and many authors had to pay for their own
editions to be printed. Buenos Aires was a highly diverse city and there
was another public that read weekly magazines and serialised novels
and went to the music-hall in large numbers. The writers with which
this thesis will be concerned, however, always kept a distance from the
crowd, who were considered outside the boundaries ofcivilisation, as a
comment from Borges reveals:
Yo publique mi primer libro Fervor de Buenos Aires en al aiio 23. La edici6n me
cost6 300 pesos. No se me ocurri6 llevar un solo ejemplar a las librerias, ni
tampoco a los diarios y no se hablaba de exito ni de fracaso. Mi padre era
amigo de Arturo Cancela, que publicaba libros que se vendian muchisimo,
pero el creia que si los otros escritores se enteraban de esto, pensarian que sus
libros estaban escritos para el vulgo y que no tendrian ningun valor. Entonces
deda: 'No, no, la gente exagera, realmente mis libros se venden muy poco.'66
It was argued that Buenos Aires, with such intellectuals, could be
considered an important cultural centre which could take its place
among the leading cities of the world. It could not maintain this
position, however, without European contacts. New ideas could be
translated (part of the aesthetic of Martin Fierro was its promotion of
the ideal of the polyglot) or could arrive in the person of a famous
guest. The dinner to celebrate the arrival ofa visiting intellectual, and
the lecture itself, were an integral part of cultural organisation.
Ramon Gomez de la Serna, a frequent visitor to Buenos Aires in the
1 920s and 1 930s and a resident after 1 936, remarks: 'Sabido es que la
Argentina es la primera consumidora de conferencias del mundo.'67
Such cultural organisation required substantial funding, and while
the State did offer limited support to the arts, the cultural Maecenas
became an important figure. Nosotros, exceptionally, was sustained
through the efforts and fund-raising capacity of its editors Giusti and
Bianchi, but in the main only money from rich traditional families
could sustain long-term cultural ventures. Amigos del Arte received
some government assistance, but was supported by the wealthy Elena
Sansinena de Elizalde, aristocratic friend and rival of Victoria
Ocampo. A venture such as Sur was only made possible through the
wealth of Victoria Ocampo. Generally, little magazines floundered
after two or three years, or even two or three issues, for lack ofsupport.
Finally, Argentina in the l 92os lived through a period ofprosperity,
30 SUR

which tended to reduce ideological antagonism. Society developed

under the sign of liberalism, equated with 'European' values.
Argentina benefited from the world division oflabour and few saw any
reason at this time to question its neo-colonial dependence on Great
Britain. Most discord was contained by an ostensibly benevolent
State, but one which could also act with great severity to crush
dissident movements, as it had in the semana tragica of 1 9 1 9. The 1 92os
did not see revolutionary unrest in Argentina or a flowering of new
ideas. This traditionalism was accentuated when the harmonious
years of the 1 920s gave way to the Great Slump, a military coup and
the so-called decada infame ofthe 1 93os. The magazine Sur was founded
at this moment, and the historical and cultural conjuncture set the
boundaries within which the magazine would develop. It inherited
vexed, unresolved problems in the cultural sphere - the conflict
between populism and modernity, and nationalism and cosmopoli­
tanism - tensions that would become increasingly acute in the
following decades.
 2

Sur: the early years

Desde un rinc6n, el viejo gaucho extatico, en el que Dahlmann vi6 una cifra
del sur (del sur que era suyo), le tir6 una daga desnuda que vino a caer a sus
pies. Era como si el sur hubiera resuelto que Dahlmann aceptara el duelo.1

Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo financed Sur out of her own personal fortune and
supplied its initial contributors from her circle of friends. Cyril
Connolly, the editor of the British cultural magazine Horizon , has
remarked that: 'Magazines require two animators: an editor and a
backer (or angel) . . . The life of a little magazine depends on three
things: the resources of its angel, the talents of its editor and the
relationship between them . . With a good angel and wise editor,
contributions flow in and ultimately the public is formed for them:
they shape the times which they reflect.'2 At first, Ocampo combined
both functions, though since a magazine is a composite literary text,
blending different voices, it soon became much more complex than a
mere reflection of her own very personal literary tastes and social
background. In the beginning however, the magazine cannot be
divorced from Ocampo's personal development. Since Sartre's Search
for a Method, we have learned to see the family organisation as socially
coded or symbolic of the society at large, and Victoria Ocampo and
Sur offer a complex set of references.3
The first chapter located the Ocampo family within a liberal
aristocratic tradition, and for members of this class it appeared that
the history of the Argentine Republic was synonymous with the
development of their own families. Ocampo's autobiographical
account of the latter half of the nineteenth century returns insistently
to family intrigue and to several central houses located in the heart of
town (occupying the few blocks from the Plaza San Martin to the Calle
Viamonte), in which everything, from political agreements to grand
balls, took place: 'La cosa habia ocurrido en casa, o en la casa de al
lado, o en la casa de enfrente: San Martin, Pueyrred6n, Belgrano,
Rosas, Urquiza, Sarmiento, Mitre, Roca, Lopez . . . Todos eran
 SUR

parientes o amigos.'4 For Ocampo, this organic sense of culture

became lost as the city developed and university faculties, office
blocks, ministries and large shops took over the buildings that had
been the town houses ofthe elite. For a time, however, life was tranquil
and settled.
The Ocampo girls - there were six in all - were brought up within
this close-knit community. Their education, which took place at home
and was organised by several governesses, stressed competence in
foreign languages. Argentina could supply the immediate concrete
needs of the group from the extraordinary wealth derived from the
pampa region, but the life of the spirit could only be nurtured by
contact with European, and in particular French, culture. Spanish
was the language of barbarism: the Ocampos were taught French as a
first language and Victoria did not feel confident writing in Spanish
without the help of a translator until the 1 93os, by which time she was
forty years old. Her childhood education imposed a linguistic
schizophrenia: 'El idioma de mi infancia y adolescencia - el frances -
era mi idioma; no podia librarme de el al intentar escribir. El drama
comenzaba ahi. Para publicar algo en mi pais, como me lo proponia,
necesitaba hacerme traducir y las traducciones me chocaban y
disgustaban.'5 Sur would later address itself to the problems and the
advantages of a polyglot education, by making impeccable transla­
tion one of its main aims.
Families such as the Ocampos would often spend several months of
the year in Europe, taking with them not just the entire household, but
cows and chickens to provide food on thejourneys. In Paris they took
over entire hotels, or rented apartments in the most fashionable areas:
Passy, Neuilly and L'Etoile.6 Maria Rosa Oliver's memoirs recall her
family having to change hotels in Paris, since it was so full of
Argentines.' It was there that she first met Victoria Ocampo, even
though they lived just across the road in Buenos Aires, and she became
a lifelong friend and later a regular contributor to Sur.8
These childhood experiences reveal a fascination with Europe
which would be central in forming the conception of Sur. Another
aspect of biography which would become significant is that Victoria
Ocampo was brought up as part of a large family of girls, in a society
and a class which had rigid definitions of a woman's role in the home
and in the family. Her early interest in the theatre was not pursued, for
this was felt to be a profession unworthy of a lady: theatre was
perceived as a popular, lower-class form of entertainment in Buenos
Aires, to which immigrants flocked in large numbers.9 Her education
 THE EARLY YEARS 33
was limited to languages and Argentine history and stressed the
attributes and decorum necessary for a young lady to make a good
wife. She became a prolific reader, but was aware that even this could
only be viewed by her family and acquaintances as a frivolous
pastime. She wrote in her late teens to a close friend, Delfina Bunge,
who would later marry the novelist Manuel Galvez: 'Literato es una
palabra que solo se toma en sentido peyorativo en nuestro medio . . .
Si se trata de una mujer, es indefectiblemente una "bas-bleu", una
"poseuse" . . . En cambio, la palabra estanciero tiene prestigio.
Significa . . . "veau'', "vache'', "cochon'', "couvee" .'10 She began to
perceive how stifling were a number ofthe traditional attitudes of her
class, but was trapped within those confines. Women were excluded
from male institutions, be they political or cultural: the smoking-room
and the club were the spaces in which power resided. She married,
early and disastrously, a young man called James Monaco, in an
attempt to seek freedom from family constraints. The marriage lasted
only a few months, though she lived under its cloud for more than a
decade, forced to hide a long-standing love affair from family and
friends in a society where divorce was forbidden. 11 Her later writing
would concentrate on women's issues and she clearly identified herself
with Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own ( 1 929) . The woman writer
had to find the wealth and independence to create, free from economic
or intellectual subjugation by men. Sur would become her 'room'.
Victoria Ocampo's early literary development was, however,
marked by a series oflove-hate relationships with certain male writers.
In reality she had little to do with the literary effervescence of the
1 920s. She did not travel to Europe from the time of her marriage in
1 9 1 3 until 1 928 and therefore missed a most exciting period which
other literary Maecenas such as Nancy Cunard and Peggy
Guggenheim had lived to the full.12 She had also little to do with
young Argentine writers, except for close friends such as Giiiraldes,
though she is sure to have met them at readings or lectures in Amigos del
Arte. She published her first article in La Nacion in 1 920 ('Babel' on
Dante) and later extended this into a short book De Francesca a Beatrice
( 1 924) , which was published by the Revista de Occidente in Madrid,
having earlier been quietly rejected by Paul Groussac. These tentative
readings, together with a number of recitals in French and several
lectures in Amigos del Arte, were 'au-dessus de la melee' of the avant­
garde in Buenos Aires, very different to the polemical tone and
youthful euphoria of other young writers.
Her first contacts with literary life came not through the turmoil of
34 SUR

little magazines, but through her role as hostess to leading foreign

intellectuals. Sur would later reflect the same interest: the publishing
house would extend hospitality similar to that offered by her houses in
Palermo Chico, San Isidro and Mar del Plata. In 1 924, she invited the
Indian poet and mystic Tagore to stay in San Isidro, near her family
home, when he fell ill during a lecture tour.13 Tagore would be the first
of several lifelong enthusiasms for great men from the Indian sub­
continent, which included Gandhi and Nehru. Her guest list
sometimes confused the truly famous with the charlatan, for she was a
compulsive hero-worshiper, and this compulsiveness could blind her
for a time to the true nature of a writer's intellectual or even physical
inclinations. Such a misunderstanding occurred with Count Keyser­
ling, the founder of the 'School of Wisdom' in Darmstadt, Germany,
whom Ocampo had read in the Revista de Occidente .14 She immediately
invited him to Argentina and corresponded enthusiastically for over a
year, eventually visiting him in Germany. This enthusiasm was
misinterpreted by the Count, who was extremely indignant and upset
when he found himself physically rebuffed. He took this problem to
the celebrated depth psychologist C. G. Jung, who interpreted
Victoria's behaviour as that of an anima figure possessed by earth
demons.15 It is ironical indeed that Victoria Ocampo, that most
cosmopolitan of women, should suffer on several occasions the
indignity of being classified as an 'earth-woman'. Ortega y Gasset,
another important visitor, attempted a somewhat more subtle
description, seeing Ocampo as the fusion of the body ofAmerica and
the spirit of Europe. She became, in his letters; 'La Giaconda de la
Pampa'.16 These and other remarks made the relationship between
Ortega and Ocampo somewhat frosty for the decade of the 1 92os.
While such meetings with Ortega, Keyserling and the Indian poet
Tagore confirmed Victoria Ocampo's belief in the aristocracy of the
spirit, and the necessary superiority of literature and art, they also
made her aware of the advantages and disadvantages of her sex and
marked a further stage in her own, albeit tentative, feminist revolt.
Disadvantages, when used as an icon for 'telluric machismo';
advantages, when as a beautiful rich woman in her later thirties, she
could visit Paris and England in 1 929 and come into contact with the
cream of intellectual life. She became the lover of Pierre Drieu la
Rochelle and through him met Andre Malraux and Aldous Huxley.
She visited Adrienne Monnier in her bookshop in the rue de l'Odeon
which was stocked with the latest trends in European thought. Thus
 T H E EARLY YEARS 35
when she returned from Europe in 1 929 and met the American writer
Waldo Frank in Buenos Aires, she was perhaps 'ridding herselfof the
titans', in Jung's evocative phrase. It was Frank who would persuade
her to launch a literary journal, and the time seemed right. She had
emerged from earlier uncertainties to an awareness that she could
frequent the great names of literature and art, on some basis of
equality. In a literary world of near-starving artists, her wealth cast
her naturally in the role of Maecenas, though she was often dismayed
at the title, as the biographers ofDrieu la Rochelle point out: 'Quand
Victoria Ocampo lira plus tard clans le Journal qu'il la rangeait parmi
ses "mecenes leminins" - "Ensuite ont commence les mecenes
leminins" - elle s'indignera, pleurera. "Comment, ecrira-t-elle a
Grover, peut-il parler de mecene, grand dieu! Le don etait
absolument fraternel . . . " '17 Later, however, in different circum­
stances, she did not hesitate to affirm her financial control of Sur: 'Sur
me ha pertenecido y pertenece materialmente. En lo espiritual, ha
sido compartida por un grupo de escritores.'18 Her formation was in
the language and literature of France but she also had an ambivalent
attitude towards her country of origin. Argentina was the patrimony
of her family and of a few others and she had the right to speak of its
advantages and limitations. She was ready to take up the challenge of
'the South', referred to in the short story by Borges that prefaces this
chapter. In this optimistic frame of mind, she met the latest foreign
traveller to Buenos Aires, the persuasive Waldo Frank.

Literary travellers in Argentina

The travel book, which seems so · 'natural' a kind of text, as Edward
Said has said, is of course never innocent.19 It imposes corrections on
raw reality, classifying it according to the ideas of the observer, hence
Victoria Ocampo as an earth-mother. In a very real sense it creates
that reality which it purports merely to describe. The history of Latin
America has been shaped by the assumptions travellers have made
about an 'other' landscape and people.20 Since the time ofthe Spanish
conquest, when Columbus mistakenly called the inhabitants of the
New World indios, colonisers, explorers and travellers have sought to
impose their own view on the 'empty' continent, writing what had
previously been unwritten.
Todorov gives an interesting account of how knowledge of the
Indians in the New World was linked to power,justifying a century of
36 SUR

genocide and colonisation. The nineteenth-century imperial powers

could also find justification for their acquisitiveness in their mission to
find out and discover hidden areas of the world. Marlowe in Heart of
Darkness is obsessed by maps: 'I would look for hours at South America
or Africa or Australia and lose myself in the glories of exploration. At
that time there were many blank spaces on the earth and when I saw
one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look like
that) I would put my finger on it and say, when I grow up I will go
there.'21 It rarely troubled the Great Powers that these empty spaces
were, in fact, populated by native peoples. The view ofotherness thus
reflected the concerns and interests of the observer, offering black or
white myths which never perceived the other as a person.
After the First World War, the concept 'abroad' was filled with a
new significance. It meant breaking away from the physical but also
the intellectual limitations ofthat period: virtually every British writer
of note spent long periods of time abroad, heading south to the
Mediterranean or, in the case of a daring few, to Africa and South
America. In the post-war years, European intellectuals began to
question whether their own civilisation could again be restored
complacently as a store-house of universal values. In the face of the
brutal carnage and horrors ofwar, it was impossible to maintain that
there was nothing wrong with European civilisation. The philosopher
Oswald Spengler caught the mood of the time, and, in a major work,
The Decline of the West, first published in 1 9 1 8, evolved a theory to
explain the plight ofWestern civilisation. He argued that world history
was made of a series of successive cycles, and that a nation's culture
grew and died like a biological organism. Man's understanding ofhis
relationship with nature and the landscape varied according to the
development of the cycle. Cultured man, at an early stage of
development, lived in harmony with his community and his land­
scape. Civilised man, at a later stage, became self-reflexive and
corrupt.22 Spengler sees the modern world as having reached that
stage of self-reflection which causes entropy and decline. In a cyclical
view of history, the culture of the 'world-city' ceases to flourish
organically: 'It [a culture] blooms on the soil of an exactly definable
landscape, to which plant-like it remains bound. It dies when this soul
has actualised the full sum of its possibilities . . . and reverts to the
proto soul. '23
Living close to the soil, at one with the rhythms and essence of
nature, developing not 'historically', but 'in history': such idealist
 THE EARLY YEARS 37
philosophy had obvious attractions not only for certain jaded Western
intellectuals, but also for Latin American thinkers who saw them­
selves at that earlier, more optimistic, stage of development. Spengler
was translated into Spanish, with the help ofOrtega y Gasset, in 1 923,
and the Revista de Occidente helped to disseminate these views
throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Vasconcelos, the visionary
Mexican educationalist, wrote of the 'raza c6smica' in 1 925 and
writers such as Alejo Carpentier and Nicolas Guillen have talked of
the significance of Spengler's writing in Cuba in the late 1 92os.24
Spengler's argument appeared apposite in a country like Cuba where
the racial mixture and the social structure bore witness to unequal
development: the roots of Afro-Cubanism must be found, at least in
part, in the sense ofoptimism given to Latin American intellectuals by
such a seductive Lebensphilosophie.
In Europe, there were many signs that the Americas could be a
source ofinspiration to a decadent culture. The interest was reflected
in France in the growth of social anthropology and ethnography.
Professor Georges Raynaud was extending the scope of Middle
American studies, translating the texts ofthe Popol Vuh and Ana/es de Los
xahil, which excited the interest of his students including the
Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias and the Mexican Jose Maria
Gonzalez de Mendoza. A discourse thus grew up based on the
dichotomy Old World/New World; decadence/vitality. It was given
scholarly encouragement by ethnographers, but more important was
the space of the imagination that opened up in the minds ofartists and
intellectuals. An interest in black culture, for example, was seen in the
work of Picasso in the 1 920s, in Gide's visit to the Congo and in the
vogue for black American music such as jazz. For some, such interests
were sustained, and the opening to other cultures proved productive.
Later Caribbean novelists, Alejo Carpentier in Los pasos perdidos
( 1 953) and Wilson Harris in The Palace of the Peacock ( 1 969) , wrote
novels in which the journey back to earlier civilisations opened up new
areas ofexperience for the traveller. For many others, however, it was
just an exotic vogue, like the tango which the whole ofParis danced in
an earlier period. Perhaps the most influential Latin American man of
letters in Paris at the time, Alfonso Reyes, was conscious of the
superficiality of much of this interest. He complained of the indignity
ofbeing exhibited as a Latin American diplomat: 'Mitad simio, mitad
loro . . . Se ve que lo usan como miserable ornamento de toda fiesta. Es
espantoso. '25
 SUR

The reactions of the literary travellers, therefore, varied consider­

ably when faced with new lands. The British - Evelyn Waugh or Peter
Fleming - were rarely disturbed or excited, since they judged
everything foreign by severe standards of British decorum. Cyril
Connolly could remark that he was fond of the Portuguese, 'because
they have carried Dagoism to its highest point' .26 Such British
prejudices, though extreme, were often no more than exaggerated
versions of the mental projections of very reputable travellers.
Bernanos would write in Sur in September 1 938 that he had gone to
Paraguay in search of a lost paradise. The Paraguayan novelist
Augusto Roa Bastos was to rebuke him in the pages of the magazine
some thirty years later, pointing out that the reality of Paraguay was
not a Utopian Garden of Eden but rather a place of dictatorship,
poverty and underdevelopment.27 Obviously travellers did not come
to Argentina as historians of underdevelopment: it would be anachro­
nistic to think in this way. Their travel accounts were imaginative
projections, but they were taken extremely seriously in the countries
they visited. Of course, most Argentines had little time for the wilder
excesses of Keyserling's imagination: they did not entirely see
themselves as lizard-men of the third day of creation, although they
were prepared to concede that other Latin Americans might fit that
description. Other accounts, however, were to become extremely
influential.
Two scholar travellers most significant to the conception ofSur were
Jose Ortega y Gasset and Waldo Frank. Ortega's famous formulation,
'Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia', stressed that men should attain their
true identity through the process of recognising their authentic
circumstances and acting upon them. Latin American scholars should
seek their 'raz6n vital' by analysing their own society, rather than
aping foreign models. Ortega offered his own criticism of Argentine
society, despite stating that the country was mainly invisible to him:
'La pampa no puede ser vista sin ser vivida . . . Como yo no lo he
vivido, no puedo decir que lo he visto y lo subsecuente va dicho como a
degas. '28 The emptiness of the landscape, he felt, made the Argentines
afraid of giving themselves physically or intellectually. They were
prey, instead, to an endemic narcissism, an obsession with their
incomplete selves. The importance of this essay, and other lectures
Ortega gave in Argentina in 1 9 1 6 and more particularly in 1 929, lay
not so much in their truth, but in their mode of enquiry. While many
were not unnaturally furious at being criticised by a Spanish
 THE EARLY YEARS 39
intellectual, a number of philosophers and writers adopted Ortega's
neo-Spenglerian perspective and began to define the 'invertebrate'
nature of the Argentine people in a similarly abstract way.29 This
developing tradition, represented by Eduardo Mallea, Ezequiel
Martinez Estrada and Carlos Alberto Erro, would be present in the
early years of Sur as an attempt to define the true nature of the
Argentinian. Ortega thus helped to justify the early nationalist
writings that were listed in the first chapter and promote a new
generation of pensadores.
Ortega was important not merely as a philosopher and a critic, but
as the editor and motor force behind the most important magazine in
the cultural world in the 1 920s, the Revista de Occidente ( 1 923-present) .
The influence of the Revista de Occidente in Spain and Spanish America
cannot be exaggerated. It was interested in all areas of cultural
activity, from literature to the natural and human sciences. It
published a cross-section of important Spanish writers and scholars
and combined their insights with translations of significant European
and American intellectuals. Ortega's promotion of German philo­
sophy is frequently cited as the magazine's major achievement. In
fact, the translation of philosophers such as Max Scheler, Spengler
and Ludwig Klages was only a small part ofits work which embraced
psychology, ancient history, sociology and physics as well as different
aspects of contemporary literature.30 Sur was modelled on this
universalist, multidisciplinary approach, although it would concen­
trate more on traditional cultural pursuits. Issues ofboth the Revista de
Occidente (especially no. 37,June 1 984) and Sur (in particular nos. 352
and 353, January-December 1 983) would document the parallels
between the two magazines.
The Revista was to teach Sur two further lessons. In the first place,
Ortega stressed that the intellectual should remain apolitical, for
politics and politicians could never aspire to understanding anything.
This was a man who had drawn his lessons from personal experience.
He had actively intervened in the political arena in the 1 9 1 os, forming
the Liga de Educacion PoUtica in 1 9 1 3, and the weekly journal Espana in
1 9 1 4 and 1 9 1 5. He founded the newspaper El Sol in 1 9 1 7 and the
publishing house Calpe in 1 9 1 9, but became increasingly disillusioned
with the corruption of politics, which came to a head under the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The intellectual, in these conditions,
should restrict himself to the eternal questions of culture and
knowledge: Sur would make the same analysis a decade later.
 SUR

Secondly, the Revista revived and developed the essay form, which had
begun to die out in newspapers, as the chroniqueurs were replaced by
specific, factual news-reporters. The essay form will be examined in
the next chapter, but it is important to stress the dignity and value
given to the genre by Ortega and his contributors. It allowed an
artisan approach to history and politics to be maintained, at a time
when serious analysis was needed of the Hispanic-speaking world and
'its circumstances'.
Finally, Ortega's love-hate relationship with Victoria Ocampo
helped to determine the direction of the magazine. Although Ortega
was rebuffed physically, he became an important spiritual mentor.
His interests were very different to those of Victoria. She could not
have approved, for instance, of his rather contemptuous approach to
French literature. Yet he was part of the aristocracy of the intellect
and he taught that it was important to forge links with intellectuals
from other countries, for autarky could only spell obscurantism.
The proposal for setting up a literary review, however, came from
another distinguished visitor, the North American philosopher and
writer Waldo Frank. Frank gave a lecture tour throughout Central
and South America in 1 92g-30 and spent several weeks in Buenos
Aires, attracting large crowds to his lectures on inter-American
solidarity. The visit was sponsored by the Argentine publisher Samuel
Glusberg, who managed to raise funds from the University ofBuenos
Aires and the Argentine-North American Institute of Culture, a
private body set up to promote cultural exchanges between Argentina
and the United States, part of a wider North American interest in
Argentina as an export market. Glusberg's Pan-Americanism and
North American export marketing thus combined in Frank's visit. I
should perhaps develop these two seemingly divergent interests. In
the 1 920s, the United States greatly increased its share of the export
trade to Argentina, partially displacing British competitors. How­
ever, in the sphere of high culture, European models continued to
dominate and the United States was to invest a great deal of time and
energy in promoting an American vision, which would help to
encourage Pan-American solidarity. Attention was paid to the press,
the radio, the film industry and in promoting pro-American intellec­
tuals in different Latin American countries, as Hoover's policies
continued into the New Deal under Roosevelt and the cultural as well
as economic possibilities of the dictum 'Give them a share' were
realised.31 A book published immediately after Frank's visit to Latin
 THE EARLY YEARS

America contains an interesting introduction: 'Investments ofAmeri­

can money amounting to a billion dollars already and the commerce
between Hispano-America and the U.S. on the scale of billions do
most effectively help to bring about a non-hostile frame of mind.'32
However: 'There is a small class ofpeople, the intelligentsia, in each of
these Hispano-American countries who do not participate in the
beneficial effects of the new spirit manifested by the people and
government of this country toward their countries.'33 The way to cure
this misconception was to send an intellectual to reason with his
fellows, to correct the assumptions ofRod6 or the growing Argentine
nationalist movement of the late 1 920s. Waldo Frank was obviously
no easy mouthpiece for the American business community: an
original Greenwich Village member, he rejected the increasing
'metallic necessity' of North American culture and aspired to a vague
American ideal which would be, in his terms, an 'integral commu­
nism'. Yet his search for an innocent, autochthonous American
culture was not at all dissimilar to American aims of a Pan-American
union set against the fear of bilateralism as practised by Britain and
Germany. It was Frank's Americanist faith which attracted certain
Latin American intellectuals, in particular Samuel Glusberg in
Argentina and Jose Carlos Mariategui in Peru. Mariategui spoke in
glowing terms of Frank in Siete ensayos de interpretaci6n de la realidad
peruana ( 1 928) , and he published an article by Frank in Amauta in April
1 928. Frank's interest in Hispanic culture had been developed in his
books Our America ( 1 9 1 9) and Virgin Spain ( 1 926) . He came in contact
with Latin American intellectuals in Spain in 1 924, in particular
Alfonso Reyes, to whom he sent an open letter to Latin American
writers asking for closer cooperation between the North and South.
Frank developed a beliefin a mystical, all-embracing American spirit,
which grew out of contact with the land. Although North America
had become a 'machine jungle', it was possible to look south to earlier,
more authentic societies, in which man could become fused into an
ideal whole. Much ofFrank's communism was mystic and idealist, but
he had great personal charm, was a skilled and persuasive lecturer and
wrote with controlled passion and enthusiasm. He was one of few
North Americans to come to terms with Latin American reality and
audiences were very receptive to this man who came to them as a self­
styled prophet ofAmerican union, a union which could be created by
artists and intellectuals.
The orthodox view of the founding of Sur stresses Victoria
 SUR

Ocampo's meeting with Frank and the gradual development of an

idea of a Pan-American review. Such a view elides the role and
intentions of Samuel Glusberg, who had organised Frank's tour.
Glusberg ran a literary newspaper, La Vida Literaria, and a publishing
house, Babel, which included in its lists Horacio Quiroga, Ezequiel
Martinez Estrada and Leopoldo Lugones. He maintained a mild
nationalist position, withdrawing from the Marttn Fierro group and
attacking their literary, Europeanised posturing.34 He was a self-made
man, conscious ofhis modest social origins, and was not at home in the
aristocratic milieu of much of Argentine cultural life. He was not
committed to social change from a radical perspective, unlike
Mariategui, and shared Frank's more idealistic commitment to
union and harmony within the Americas, which could be attained
through the spirit, not through concrete political struggle. When
Frank arrived in September 1 929, they began discussing a magazine
to be called Nuestra America which would have a Pan-American,
continental perspective.
It was at this point that Waldo Frank met Victoria Ocampo, after
he gave a lecture at the Amigos de/ Arte . They became good friends and
Frank discussed the idea of a new magazine which might fuse
Glusberg's Americanist sympathies with the Europeanised, aristo­
cratic cultural perspective offered by Victoria Ocampo. Maria Rosa
Oliver talks ofFrank arguing the case for a new magazine at the house
of Victoria Ocampo: 'Llame . . . para hablarte de la necesidad de
sacar una revista . . No, no solamente de j6venes ni de polemica
literaria. Se trata de algo totalmente distinto, mas continental.
Porque mira: o desentraiiamos la America oculta por mentiras, mitos,
lugares comunes y propagandas chillonas, o las relaciones entre
nosotros se deterioran de mas en mas. '35
Two things became increasingly clear as the discussions continued.
Firstly, Victoria was not at all interested in working with anybody,
especially not Glusberg whom she found ideologically and socially
unacceptable. The idea for a magazine would become her idea and
hers alone. It was she that sailed to New York in early 1 930 to visit
America and continue discussions with Frank. It was her money that
financed the magazine and her tastes that determined its initial
orientation. Glusberg was marginalised and became angry and bitter.
He attempted to embarrass the Sur group politically in the early
thirties and he eventually left Argentina for Chile in 1 935.36
It was also clear that Victoria's personal tastes were somewhat at
 THE EARLY YEARS 43
variance with an Americanist perspective, however much she might
enthuse about the pampa or delight in gospel singing in Harlem.
Sarmiento, so often a useful guide, briefly founded a magazine
called Ambas Americas, although he was interested in imposing a
progressive, bourgeois, city community in Argentina following the
example of Benjamin Franklin. Victoria was never so interested in
advertising American values, in whatever form. Even though the
editorial in the first edition of Sur talked of cultural interchange,
it is clear that eventually the dominant matrix would continue to
be Europe. Frank supported the development of Sur, though he
admitted in his autobiography that the magazine was far from
his original intentions: 'The ideational split of Victoria, Glusberg
and Maria Rosa was a symbol. The "parts" of America were not yet
ready to grow together. '87 Later magazines, as we will see, were to deal
with the problems of Latin American culture, from an Americanist
perspective. Sur would offer a broader focus: the magazine would be
for everyone with an interest in the Americas and would serve as a
bridge between America and Europe. For, as Victoria Ocampo
stated, how could one ignore Europe: 'iVolver la espalda a Europa?
iSiente el ridiculo infinito de esa frase?'38

Sur: the first issues

The magazine which had been discussed for some two years
eventually appeared early in 1 93 1 . The date is important since the
year 1 930 is a watershed between the expansive optimism ofthe 1 92os
and the troubled 1 930s, which would be symbolised by the 'Infamous
Decade' in Argentina and the victories of fascism in Europe. The
slump of 1 929 had revealed that traditional dependence on foreign
sources did not produce the eternal prosperity that the Argentines had
always assumed. Britain moved towards Imperial Preference at the
Ottawa conference and was to bully Argentina into the Roca­
Runciman treaty in 1 932 which gave Britain extremely favourable
trading conditions in return for a guarantee to buy reduced stocks of
Argentine chilled meat.39 In the political sphere, the Radicals were
bankrupt ofideas and support and were replaced by a military regime
under Uriburu and later Justo which guaranteed a period of
conservative rule through the rigging of elections. In general terms,
liberalism was on the defensive in Argentina and elsewhere in the face
of authoritarian, nationalist regimes. The response of Sur, it will be
44 SUR

argued, was to claim to be above or beyond politics and to reconstitute

liberalism in eternal terms and on a purely cultural level: literature
demonstrated the superiority of art over life and set up an alternative
tribunal against which events could be judged. New times called for a
new tone: Sur would always be a mature text, conscious of literary
decorum and the need to establish standards in years of discord.
The money for the enterprise came from Victoria Ocampo and she
was responsible for selecting and putting together the contributions of
the first issues. In time, other writers had more say in the running of
the magazine and the post ofjeje de redaccion became formalised with
the appointment ofJose Bianco in 1 938. From the outset, however, the
text was a blend of different voices: no editor can ensure that a
composite text confirms his own ideas and tastes unless he writes every
article himself. From the beginning, therefore, it is necessary to talk of
a group practice and find a way of discussing this formation which
both acknowledges the terms in which it saw itself, and would wish to
be presented, and at the same time enables us to analyse these terms
and their general social and cultural significance.40 The magazine
that was to start its life in Victoria's family house, and later move to an
Ocampo store-house in Viamonte (its first offices), was to become the
major cultural institution of the period. Much credit, especially in the
early years, must be given to the wealth, dynamism and stubbornness
ofVictoria Ocampo, and her ability to select other contributors. How
can we define the writers that were to be grouped around the
magazine?
From the outset, certain elements define Sur. One that has already
been mentioned is the 'European ideal'. This should be seen in
relation to another fundamental concept: that the writer, whatever
his sympathies, should have no commitment to political activity.
Andre Gide and the Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise offered a literary model,
and thinkers like Julien Benda and Jose Ortega y Gasset systematised
such ideas. Benda's La trahison des clercs ( 1 92 7) theorised the notion ofa
small disinterested clerisy which was committed to the pursuit of
human values and philosophical enquiry, rather than to an involve­
ment in the political and social spheres. Ortega added that the gap
between the elite and the masses was unbridgeable, and that the
intellectual found more in common with elites from other countries
than with the mass of his fellow countrymen. Traditional functions
such as leader, politician and priest were rejected in favour ofa mission
to preserve intelligence and culture. Contact with other intellectuals
could be made through magazines such as the Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise,
 THE EARLY YEARS 45
The Criterion and the Revista de Occidente. The role of the intellectual, in
a world that E. M. Forster gloomily described in the early 1 920s as a
'planetful ofscraps', was to preserve the continuity ofculture and thus
give shape and order to human existence.41
Sur would always see itself as one of the great literary magazines of
the period, the Nouvelle Revue Franfjaise ofLatin America, with an editor
who knew all the Nouvelle Revue Franfjaise contributors personally. Yet
no writer lives in a historical vacuum. Sur was never just a literary
magazine, although perhaps its contributors would argue that it is the
appreciation ofliterature that makes one fit for life. However, once
defined as fit for life, a contributor had a right to make general
statements about contemporary matters: the magazine was always to
have an outlook on politics and history which included certain views
and excluded a number of others. This was not seen as having
anything to do with 'commitment', however.
Another aspect of this project which was raised on occasion, but
never developed, was the need to show Argentina, the south, as a
distinctive region. The magazine should not just bring the riches of
Europe to Latin America, but provide two-way traffic on the bridge
by highlighting the best ofLatin American society. Maria Rosa Oliver
talks of a conversation she and Victoria had with the two most
distinguished Latin American writers resident at the time in Buenos
Aires: Pedro Henriquez Urena and Alfonso Reyes. Both men were
coopted onto the editorial committee ofthe magazine and would write
on occasions for Sur but even from the outset Maria Rosa Oliver
noticed the amused scepticism which greeted her early effusions about
the American continent, which had been formed by a reading of
Hudson and Giiiraldes, rather than by an understanding of the socio­
economic problems of Argentina. In Argentina:
Se habia superado para siempre la inestabilidad politica que en otras
naciones del continente suscitaba continuos cuartelazos; la de que eramos
distintos de los del res to de America . . . que, por lo mismo, nos atribuiamos el
deber de irradiar hacia ella una cultura tan libre de quejas como de
tropicalismo. No se si esas 'puras ilusiones' llegaban a transparentarse en
nuestras conversaciones. Posiblemente si: subitas, fugaces, hermeticas
sonrisas que ponian una chispa de malicia en los ojos de Pedro Henriquez
Urena y Alfonso Reyes no podria atribuirlas a otro motivo.42

Sur would never be greatly interested in the specific problems of the

continent, for the patrimony of the Argentine was, in Borges' later
phrase, that of the universe.
The Argentine writers that formed the initial Sur group were
 SUR

recruited from amongst the friends of Victoria Ocampo: Victoria

herself; her younger sister Silvina, who was later to marry Adolfo Bioy
Casares; Maria Rosa Oliver; Eduardo Bullrich, a cousin of Victoria;
Oliverio Girondo, the link between Giiiraldes and the martin.fierristas;
Eduardo Mallea, a late arrival to the ranks of the martirifierristas, the
young literary editor of La Naci6n and a very close friend of Victoria;
Borges and his sister Norah, who was married to the Spaniard
Guillermo de Torre, a prolific historian of the avant-garde; Eduardo
Gonzalez Lanuza and Leopoldo Marechal, both martin.fierristas; and
the scholar Raimundo Lida, who helped to translate much of
Victoria's work into Spanish. To these would be added the names of
certain academics, the philosopher-historian Bernardo Canal Feijoo
and Carlos Alberto Erro. These writers were united, often by kinship,
and by similar ideas as to the social function of literature, although
there was a distinct hierarchy among them. A writer such as Borges
would always seem somewhat eccentric to the main aims of the
magazine, even though he was published regularly. He deliberately
kept apart from the famous foreign names and provided a contrast to
the long philosophical or moralistic tracts that filled the magazine's
pages. All could agree, however, that the duty of the intellectual was
to the spirit, and ideological differences could be subsumed into a
unity of quality or of tone. Bernard Grasset comments on his
association with the Nouvelle Revue Fra�aise and offers a definition of
that group which could equally well serve for Sur: 'The ranks of the
Nouvelle Revue Fran,aise offered me much more; a welcoming spiritual
family whose aspirations and research were similar to my own and in
which I could settle without losing any ofmy independence ofmind.'43
Within such a formation, the free civilised individual could be secure
in his autonomy, yet safe within the spiritual family of the best minds.
Sur would never be a totally eclectic text, a mere anthology. This study
hopes to show that there was a clear unity despite the divisions among
its writers.
The first issue of Sur contained these conflicting interests within a
beautiful format.44 It was a bold beginning, on a scale which had not
previously been seen in Buenos Aires. One hundred and ninety-nine
pages, major size, special paper printed by Francisco Colombo, clear,
bold print and twenty-four full pages of photographic illustrations,
from the work of Anjart and Picasso, Spilimbergo, Basaldua and
Pettoruti, to photographs of Giiiraldes and of the scenery of Brazil.
The format underlined the scope and also the unclear direction of the
 T H E EARLY YEARS 47
enterprise, even though the logo on the front cover, an arrow, pointed
firmly south. The photographs were to disappear after issue 5, but
were to lead to a bitter exchange between Victoria Ocampo and
Borges in the early 1 96os. Borges made several wry references to the
'travelogue' nature of the illustrations, put in to show the Europeans
the nature ofLatin America.45 Victoria retorted that the pictures were
there to show the Argentines their own country, since they tended to
look to Europe rather than the lguazu Falls.46 The ironies in this
exchange are manifold on both sides of the dispute.
The text itselfillustrated, but did not resolve, the conflict between
Americanist intentions and more European sympathies. It opened,
not with an editorial, a manifesto or a declaration of principles, but
with a letter from Victoria Ocampo to Waldo Frank - the north/south
poles ofattraction - in which she refuses to speak ofa specific audience.
The letter is interesting. It could have been posted, but by publishing
its contents, the magazine allows the reader to share the dialogue
between celebrities, to be one of the chosen, one of the family.
The review was to be for 'los que han venido a America, de los que
piensan en America y de los que son de America. '47 The birth of the
review was seen as a family enterprise where telephones and planes
could conquer distances between Waldo Frank, Ramon Gomez de la
Serna, Drieu la Rochelle and Ortega. It should be remembered that
air travel had indeed begun to break down these distances. These were
the years of the first non-stop flights from Europe to Latin America. A
letter or an article could now arrive in four days. Waldo Frank, for his
part of the exchange, offered an extract on the Brazilian Indians,
which talks in essentialist terms of the 'obscure race' which is the spirit
of Brazil.48 Such tellurian idealism, a strange addition to a Buenos
Aires publication, was highlighted by photographs and a travelogue
account of a journey to Brazil by Jules Supervielle.
Alfonso Reyes' article somewhat redressed this balance by talking
ofsome of the problems that a Latin American writer faces when torn
between the curiosity of Europeans and the universalism of Latin
American literary output.49 His solution was that writers should deal
with regional themes in novels and short stories, citing Don Segundo
Sombra , La voragine and Azuela's Los de abajo .
Despite Reyes' own rather classicist orientation, however, it is
worth noting that even here he was acknowledging the legitimacy and
importance of the dominant literary mode in Latin America at that
time, the regionalist novel, which focused on the inhabitants of the
 SUR

rural interior and their struggle with natural and social forces. As a
Mexican, Reyes was aware of the importance of the Mexican
Revolution in the cultural field: it pointed the way for writers in the
continent in their search for American forms to describe the nature of
their own reality. The novels of the Mexican Revolution were one
such model, and intellectuals were also supported by the country's
official indigenist policies. Sur, except for a few references in these early
issues, completely ignored this aspect of Latin American culture. One
regionalist novelist and short story writer very near to home, Horacio
Quiroga ( 1 878-1 937), was excluded from its pages. As has been seen,
the social novel was treated with great suspicion and contempt, as an
immigrant importation, and the principal manifestations of Argen­
tina were to be found in the aristocratic, Creole, nationalist texts of
Lugones or Giiiraldes. Not only did Sur largely ignore these tenden­
cies: Borges and a group offriends would later, at the end of the 1 930s,
declare war on any form of nationalist or social literature. Certain
writers within Sur would seek to make invisible the continent and the
social problems of Latin America. Other writers constantly analysed
the problem of americanismo with relation to Argentina, in particular
Martinez Estrada, Mallea and later Murena.
In the first issue, however, a letter from Giiiraldes to the French
writer most sympathetic to Latin America in the 1 920s, Valery
Larbaud, evoked a nostalgic view of the pampa. Giiiraldes, who had
died several years previously, was included since he seemed to fuse the
1 920s avant-garde experimentation with aristocratic national myths.
He represented the true Argentine for which Mallea would later
desperately search in the infra-history of Argentina. Borges was the
only Argentine apart from Ocampo and Giiiraldes to appear in the
main section of the magazine. (The text was divided between leading
articles and 'Notes', a format that would remain unchanged through­
out its history.) Like Giiiraldes, he concentrated on Argentine texts,
developing his interest in gauchesque poetry first shown in an essay in
lnquisiciones ( 1 925), by comparing the work of Ascasubi and
Hernandez.50 Borges argued the originality of Ascasubi, defending
him from those critics who had seen his work as a mere precursor of
Hernandez. A clear effort was made to highlight what was specifically
Argentine in these texts, from a writer whose literary output has
subsequently been read as showing the conventional nature of the real
and the futility of literary nationalism. Beatriz Sarlo has analysed
these early texts ofBorges and his peculiarly eccentric nationalism, an
 T H E EARLY YEARS 49
interest that she has termed 'criollismo urbano'. Borges' writing, as
this study hopes to show, bears a complex relationship to his Argentine
precursors, a simultaneous complicity and contempt. At this stage, he
was anxious to reveal his complicity and published later in the issue a
short essay on various epigrams culled from lorries and buses in
Buenos Aires, ironically entitled 'Seneca en las orillas', a 'scrap-book'
practice which would later define Borges' writing: the writer makes his
own order out ofliterary fragments.51 Photographs accompanied this
exercise in whimsy, a fact he forgot to mention to Napoleon Murat
some thirty years later, when he attacked Ocampo over the inclusion
of the Iguazu Falls.
The broader geographical and cultural scope of the magazine was
revealed in an essay by Walter Gropius describing 'total theatre' and
the experiments of the Bauhaus group. Ocampo and Prebisch wrote
on Le Corbusier, whose ideas were put into practice in the house
designed for Victoria Ocampo in the Palermo Chico district ofBuenos
Aires. Le Corbusier had earlier visited Buenos Aires and had lectured
in Amigos del Arte . The first issue also contained extracts on art and
music, following the tradition of the magazine Mart(n Fierro .
Guillermo de Torre discussed modern painting and the Swiss
composer Ernest Ansermet, who had visited Buenos Aires on a
number ofoccasions as a conductor and was a great friend ofOcampo,
wrote an article and was the subject of a further article. Ansermet
talked of autochthonous music and its necessary transformation by
Western composers. It is clear from this brief discussion that the first
issue of the magazine strove to find a self-conscious 'American' voice
and to this extent was not representative of the magazine's later
interests. In the future, foreign contributors would be unlikely to write
articles specifically related to Latin America and many Argentines
themselves would be more interested in developing their work outside
the narrow confines of 'the south'.
Drieu la Rochelle included an article in which he offered perhaps
prophetic advice. A magazine can only have unity over a limited
number ofyears. 'Al cabo de diez afios, romped vuestras maquinas de
escribir, quemad vuestros archivos y cumplid cada uno por vuestro
lado el trabajo comenzado en comun . . .'52 His remarks raise a
number of questions of importance to the historian of the magazine.
Sur silenced its typewriters after forty years, and then only partially:
commemorative editions continue to appear even today. In this
inability to stop, or to start afresh, lie perhaps the seeds of its decline.
50 SUR

Sur thus began as a luxurious quarterly magazine. The first five

issues contained over 1 50 pages, with photographs, but it soon became
clear that it was not financially viable to produce such a lengthy,
lavish edition. Publishing costs were extremely high and circulation
was limited. The photographs disappeared and there were long gaps
between the appearance of issues 7 and 8 (5 months) , 8 and 9 (9
months) and 9 and 10 (one year) . Issue 10 came out as a monthly in
July 1 935 and for almost two decades the magazine would appear on a
regular monthly basis. Its length varied, but averaged between ninety
and one hundred pages and was divided into a section for leading
articles and another for notes, which included main book reviews, but
also criticism of film, art and theatre. An important contributing
factor to the continuing stability of the magazine was the foundation
of the Sur publishing house in September 1 933 following the example
of the Revista de Occidente. The profits ofbook publishing were put into
the magazine and the books themselves were always reviewed in the
'Notes' section.
The early period up to 1 935 revealed a search for form and unity.
Issues 2, 3 and 4 maintained the size and scope of the first issue and
there was clearly an attempt at interrelating or at least juxtaposing
American subjects. Keyserling, in a prelude to his Meditaciones
sudamericanas (reviewed in Sur 8, September 1 933, by Homero
Guglielmini) , offered a reading ofthe South American psyche in terms
of geographical 'telluric' determinism. The Argentines were later
described in his book as 'lizard-men of the third day of creation', as
has been said, but in Sur his observations were slightly more flattering:
' . . . lo que caracteriza a la atm6sfera psiquica de America del Sur es la
sintesis de lo primordial y de lo refinado. '53 This allowed Sur a certain
amount of space, documenting the 'primordial' and exhibiting the
'refined'; as in the subsequent article by Victoria Ocampo, which was
a reply to Ortega y Gasset's epilogue to her book De Francesca a
Beatrice, and revealed primitive ideas on the role of women in the
ultra-refined Spaniard. In this epilogue he had talked of the function
of men as doers (kacer) and women as passive (ser) , the private
inspiration of men's more public duty. Victoria did not attack
Ortega's views directly in Sur: it was probably too early in the
magazine's life to engage in a polemic with one ofits spiritual mentors.
She did, however, insinuate that relationships could be based on
respect and independence: only then would forms of jealousy and
oppression cease.54 Mallea, a close friend and co-founder of the
 THE EARLY YEARS 51
magazine, offered a short story, 'Sumersion', about an angst-ridden
hero, Avesquin, lost in the enormous city of Buenos Aires, unable to
find fulfilment.55 Mallea here reveals his horror of cities, the urban
masses, the immigrants and mass publicity, through the voice of his
narrator who is both a witness and a prophet. This was the first short
story printed in Sur, and this form was to remain a minority interest
until it received support under Jose Bianco's editorship from 1 938,
and the stimulus ofthe group offriends: Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges,
Bianco himself and Silvina Ocampo. In a lighter vein, Borges
mediated between the primordial and refined with his reading of
Martin Fierro , in which he debunked critics for trying to canonise
Martin Fimo as a genuine rustic poem, or as a national epic. Ricardo
Rojas was the greatest sinner in this respect. Borges described his
discussion on the word cantra or contramilla as being: 'Mas adecuada a
la infinita duracion del infierno que al plazo relativamente efimero de
nuestras vidas.'56 According to Borges, Martin Fierro was not an epic
poem, but a novel in verse. He considered the dialect and conversa­
tional style of the poem, revealing an ear sharply attuned to the
nuances oflanguage. He thought highly ofthe work ofHernandez but
was happy to debunk critical myths, unlike Giiiraldes, who in a
subsequent article explained to Valery Larbaud the 'essential' nature
of the gaucho.
Borges was also responsible for splendid translations of several
poems by Langston Hughes, the black North American poet who was
to have such influence on Nicolas Guillen. Borges at this point displays
a surprising number of influences and interests: the gauchesque
tradition, the malevos ofBuenos Aires (discussed in Sur 4, Spring 1 93 1 )
and even the condition ofthe suffering blacks, reflected in the rhythms
of Langston Hughes. Hughes could reach few people in Argentina ­
the black population had largely disappeared by now, having once
formed a high percentage of the inhabitants ofBuenos Aires - but his
poetry is used as an abstract voice of the Americas:
I, too, sing America,

I, too, am America.57
To counterbalance this enthusiasm, Ansermet wrote an article on the
problems ofAmerican composers, in which he attacked Carpentier for
trying to establish the 'essence' ofLatin American music. A composer,
he argues, cannot just deal with nativist themes. Once again in
contrast, however, the Spaniard Ramon Gomez de la Serna produced
 SUR

an elegant, anecdotic introduction to the art ofDiego Rivera, and the

issue also included a poem by the Mexican Jaime Torres Bodet.
In the notes - for the first time in smaller print than the main
articles, a typographical setting that would be constant throughout
the rest of the magazine's publication - Francisco Romero commen­
ted on Ortega's IA rebelion de las masas ( 1 930) .58 This important book,
he argued, stressed the need for a peer group to preserve the continuity
of civilisation in the face of mass culture. Sur would also see this as its
mission, especially when the masses (under Peron) began to get out of
control. Romero, who was to be a regular contributor on philosophy,
enthusiastically praised a brilliant work in a 'young' discipline,
sociology.
The difficulty ofreconciling Americanist and European sympathies
became apparent when the magazine considered two very different
intellectuals, Ramon Gomez de la Serna and Jose Marti. Sur
continued to admire the hero of the martitifierristas; he was a very
acceptable European guest: 'Ramon y Cocteau comen en mi casa.
Hablamos frances. '59 Jose Marti, on the other hand, was given scant
attention. Pedro Henriquez Urena stressed the greatness of Marti's
work and life, painting him as an apostle and symbol of American
harmony. Sur, however, would never develop these insights, and one
of the most important poets, essayists and political figures in Latin
American history was reduced to the status ofa rather vague footnote
in Surs own conception of cultural history. Once again, therefore, an
issue dealt mainly with diffuse American themes, but in a rather
random and eclectic fashion.
It is significant that despite the real effort of the first two issues to
deal with the problems of American culture, Ocampo opened issue 3
with a defence of her French upbringing.60 A writer called Daireaux
had attacked Ocampo for only writing in French and she explained
her predicament: all her nannies were French. Here is an early version
of the attack on Ocampo and her magazine for being extranjeri;:,ante . It
illustrates two continuing trends in the critique of Sur. In the first
place, Sur is most frequently read as a product of the class background
of Victoria, not as a composite text which attempts to reconcile
conflicting, divergent tendencies. Secondly, from the very beginning,
the magazine saw itself as being under siege, in the position of a
beleaguered minority, which had not only to preserve culture, but also
put the record straight. Later anniversary issues would plot the
development of the magazine, defend choices and attack critics.
 THE EARLY YEARS 53

Issues 3 and 4 (Winter and Spring 1 93 1 ) continued to illustrate

Americanist themes. Alfonso Reyes wrote on Latin American intellec­
tuals, and ironised in particular those Mexicans who considered
themselves: 'A pesar nuestro, colonos, mexicanos provisionales,
europeos por impetu y direcci6n hereditaria. ' Mestizaje, for Reyes,
was the original sin of Latin America, something with which
intellectuals had to come to terms.61 Roberto Latcham surveyed
Chilean poetry, highlighting in particular the work of Pablo Neruda,
and the magazine published the poetry of the Chilean Gabriela
Mistral. Juan Marinello wrote on Gabriela Mistral and Marti (a
further interesting inclusion of a well-known left-wing intellectual
who would disappear from the magazine's pages almost immedi­
ately) ; and Borges published his attack on the porteflo in an essay
entitled 'Nuestras imposibilidades'. The portefio, in a characteristic
Borgesian 'chaotic enumeration', was seen as small-minded, ·racist,
macho, obsessed with trickery and sexual conquest.62 It was a scathing
attack, written in a tone of indignation which he would later reserve
for Peron and his followers. In a more scholarly vein, the
ethnographer Alfred Metraux discussed the Chipayas, with a wealth
of photographic illustrations.
Several essays appeared by North American writers. Waldo Frank
discussed the religious differences between the north and south of the
continent. Lewis Mumford examined American art, J.Munson wrote
on the novel in the United States and Borges translated the poems of
Lee Masters. European writers were occasionally represented with
general essays by Victoria's friends Huxley and Malraux (on Lady
Chatterley's Lover) together with a discussion of Eisenstein's Qµe viva
Mexico. Contributions from European writers were to increase when
the magazine found its specific direction. At this point, Frank could
still hope for a discussion of the social problems of the continent: 'La
ineptitud de estos grupos [intellectuals amongst others] se debe desde
luego a que sus ideates no pueden expresarse en una forma social.'63
His Utopian communism could only find, at best, a tenuous hold in
the magazine. After issue 5, interest in North America gradually
dwindled, to the point where it became one culture among many.
Similarly the focus on Latin America began to blur and was gradually
replaced. The early issues were show-piece anthologies, not an
initiative that could be sustained, given the interests of the editor and
her group.
The next five issues, appearing irregularly, showed a lack of
54 SUR

direction and a need for a coherent format. Travellers' tales appeared

to fill the void, and home contributors began to play an increasing
role. Issue 7 (April 1 933) contained several articles on Waldo Frank.
Number 8 (September 1 933) included essays by Keyserling and
Frank and two commentaries on Keyserling, 'La naturaleza telurica'
and 'Una escena' byJose Luis Romero. Issue 9 (July 1 934) contained
a long essay by Frank on the revolutionary potential of the Jews. As
the travellers returned home and their memories faded, and as the
1 930s grew increasingly darker, so the magazine turned increasingly
to general debates within European culture. Few intellectuals were
specifically interested in Latin America, so instead offorcing compari­
sons, the magazine would interest itself in mainstream literary and
philosophical developments. The publication of Heidegger's essay
'lQue es la metafisica?', in issue 5 (Summer 1 932), is a significant
example of this tendency.
Among the Argentine contributors, a split became increasingly
apparent between the interests of Borges and Mallea, who represent
two tendencies within the magazine. In a crucial essay, 'El arte
narrativo y la magia', Borges distinguished between two causal
processes, 'el natural, que es el resultado incesante de incontrolables e
infinitas operaciones; el magico, donde profetizan los pormenores,
lucido y limitado. En la novela, pienso que la unica posible honradez
esta el segundo. Quede el primero para la simulacion psicologica. '64 In
contrasting these two narrative alternatives, the chaotic arbitrariness
ofrealism and the formal perfection of'magic' narrations, he outlined
a theory that would be at the basis ofhis artistic practice in subsequent
years. Such ideas were totally in opposition to the anguished heroes of
Mallea, who commit suicide because they cannot adapt to the
demands of contemporary existence. Jacobo Uber is one such
character: 'Su pensamiento se vi6 acosado por la idea de que la
suprema privacion de su vida consisti6 en no haber sido fecundado
nunca por la realidad. '6s It is important, however, not to
overexaggerate the radical nature of Borges' writing at this juncture.
He is not yet the supreme anti-realist of the late 1 930s. He could
explore the foibles and speech-habits of his fellow citizens in the essay
'Arte de injuriar' (Sur 8), and was aware of pessimistic nationalist
writers such as Scalabrini Ortiz, from whom he borrows the phrase 'el
hombre de Corrientes y Esmeralda'. He was still interested in the
'startling' image, a practice used by Medieval Icelandic bards in the
poetic device known as the kenning.66 With these reservations, a gap
 THE EARLY YEARS 55
would increasingly open between a moralistic, realistic, essayist group
in Sur and the more structured attention to the craft of fiction as best
represented by Borges' mature fictions.
In these early issues, few original works ofliterature were published:
two stories by Mallea; poems by Francisco Luis Bernardez, Leopoldo
Marechal, Vicente Huidobro, Jules Supervielle and Jaime Torres
Bodet; and several translations of North American authors. The
dominant form was that of the essay which dealt with either general
cultural trends or, more specifically, with the relationship of the
intellectual to his society. The essay was seen as an art-form, rather
than a vehicle for literary criticism, although Amado Alonso
published one work on stylistics, 'El problema argentino de la lengua',
in issue 6 (Autumn 1 932). (This serious scholar was, however, often
treated as a pedant, especially by Borges, who considered that any
scientific analysis of literature destroyed its magic.) The magazine
received articles mainly from the group of liberal writers identified
above, though right- and left-wing critics could appear very occasion­
ally if their subject matter was thought suitable. Julio lrazusta, the
right-wing nationalist, was a regular contributor in the early years, as
we will see in the next chapter, and there is one contribution from the
well-known Boedo critic Elias Castelnuovo on Russian writers,
following his journey to Russia.67 His laudatory account was written
at a time when European and Latin American intellectuals were still
praising the experiment of the Russian Revolution - Stalin was as yet
a figure in the shadows - and the notorious declaration on socialist
realism had not yet been made. Even Victoria Ocampo tried to
persuade Eisenstein to make his Latin American film in Argentina,
rather than Mexico, but could not find financial backing for the
enterprise. Only later would Sur publish Gide's Retour de l' URSS, a
book which synthesised liberal disenchantment with the Revolution
and the growth of socialist realism. Even in these early, honeymoon
days, however, such contributions were very irregular, for the
aesthetics of Boedo were rejected utterly.
By issue 1 0, Sur had perceived its mission. It is summed up in an
essay by Leo Ferrero, the Italian writer who was killed in a car crash in
the United States within weeks ofwriting this article. 'Eljuego politico
no tiene nada que ver, en cierto sentido, con la actividad invisible y
Constante de las elites que Se realiza sobre Un plano moral y- dirfa yo -
casi metafisico.'68 The elites would assert their position as arbiters of
taste and commentators on certain aspects ofsociety, while at the same
 SUR

time denying any ideological contamination - an attitude which in

itself defines their ideological enterprise. This sensibility had to be
maintained in a world that was prey to new evils: nationalism,
authoritarianism and communism. The platform on which Victoria
Ocampo was to build her new monthly magazine was defined as
follows: 'Sur se esforzara en revelar valores j6venes, formados en
disciplinas nuevas, autenticamente despiertos ante la miseria actual
del espiritu. '69 Voices in the wilderness, but voices ofintellectuals who
felt that they could order, in coherent form, the problems of
Argentina.
In his visit to Argentina in 1 929, Waldo Frank described the
interior of Victoria Ocampo's house, a description that might be
extended to her publishing house:
In this conglomerate ofborrowed fineries . . . stands a simple house - back to
back with the rhetorical Embassy of Spain . . . The walls of this house are
white lime over brick . . . at the foot ofthe stairs is a cactus in a mirrored box
. . . The owner of this house is a daughter of the conquistadores, named
Victoria Ocampo. 'What did I want to do?' she says, 'I wanted to make the
sky and the trees come into my rooms. They do come in. I wanted space . . .
emptiness . . . walls naked white; a background so neutral and clear that the
colored cover of a book, a yellow hat on a table, a flower in a vase, a spot of
blue sky reflected in the mirror, should be a sudden holiday for the eyes . . . '
One may go deeper. Doiia Victoria has borrowed lavishly from Europe. The
rugs are by a Frenchman and a Spaniard of the day; the tables are English;
the vast globe in the hall is Renaissance; the architectural lines owe much to
schools of Germany and France. But all these details have been transfigured
and composed by an Argentinian - an American will . . . Victoria Ocampo
. . . in her cult oflight, in her work ofstructure within the chaos ofthe pampa
motion, has learned that she must clasp the bitter cactus in her hand, clasp it
against her breast. She has prophesied for her country.70
This long quotation neatly summarises a number of the major
themes that will be dealt with in this history. Sur perceived its role as
that of the civilising minority in the literary and ideological 'chaos of
the pampa'. It would order the literary world after the effervescence
and experimentation of the 1 920s, and attempt to maintain standards
ofliterary decorum throughout 'troubled' periods such as the Second
World War, Peronism and the growth ofalternative cultural activity.
As a reflection of Argentine. culture, ' a cactus in a mirrored box', it
must be seen as fragmented, offering a partial, selective reflection. The
significance of Sur's discourse lies as much in what it does not say as in
what it reveals. Similarly, it must not be seen exclusively as the
refraction of its founder's taste, but as the work of a group.
 THE EARLY YEARS 57
Sur's practice involved an opening to the world, in an attempt to
break away from cultural provincialism ('I wanted space . . . empti­
ness') . This implied bringing many writers from Europe and
arranging them with Argentine contributors in the pages of the
magazine. The arrangement would provoke a bitter controversy.
Critics of Sur have seen its strategy as that ofwhitewashing Argentine
culture so that the objects of value - European - could be shown to
better effect ('walls naked white', a 'neutral background') . For Waldo
Frank and many others, however, the organisation proved harmoni­
ous, not just a copy of foreign styles, but a real process of transform­
ation. All these points will recur insistently in the developing history of
the magazine.
 3
The years of consolidation, 1935-40
Esta revista no tiene color politico . . . Queremos un clero mejor, un clero al
que le interesa mas la cuesti6n eterna de lo espiritual que los manejos
transitorios de la politica.1

Introduction
Sur always faithfully observed its own anniversaries. Jose Bianco has
remarked on Victoria Ocampo's boundless energy; 'Se le ocurrian
constantemente cosas. Organizaba conferencias y debates, celebraba
los diez aii.os de Sur, los quince, los veinte, los treinta, el numero 50, el
75, el 1 00, el 1 50. Yo le deda: "jPero Victoria, mire que a Vd. le
gustan los guarismos!" Ella continuaba imperterrita.'2
This chapter will trace the development of the magazine up to the
first of these anniversaries, issue 75, published in December 1 940. It
marked the end of a decade which began with the world depression
and a military coup in Argentina and ended with the fall of Paris and
the increasing threat oftotalitarianism in Europe and, by extension, in
Argentina. The magazine would frequently declare its lack ofinterest
in politics, yet this did not mean that it did not express a view on
developments external to literature, including current affairs. Litera­
ture was a privileged area ofexperience and civilisation was based on
knowing 'how' to read. However, those competent in reading
literature, it was implicitly argued, were particularly qualified to turn
their attenti(:>n to history or politics and make valid statements about
those subjects if necessary. Certainly during these six years, the
magazine was much more a journal ofideas than a forum for literary
experimentation. The emphasis on imaginative literature came only
at the end of the period, mainly as a result of Borges' development
from poet and prolific essayist into the writer of short stories ('Pierre
Menard, autor del Quijote' was published in Sur 56, May 1 939), and
also as a result ofthe different emphasis that gradually appeared in the
magazine with the arrival ofJose Bianco asjefe de redaccion in August
1 938.
The decision to continue Sur as a monthly magazine came at a
58
 THE YEARS OF CONSO LIDATION, 1 935-40 59
meeting organised by Victoria Ocampo in 1 935, attended by a group
of writers and critics including Mallea, Borges, Jose Bianco, Amado
Alonso and Pedro Henriquez Urena. For the next three years, the
magazine would follow the pattern of printing, in the main, essays on
general cultural or intellectual developments. Very little fiction or
poetry was published. This must partly be explained by the personal
tastes of Victoria Ocampo. Jose Bianco has remarked perceptively
that, 'El pensamiento abstracto le fascinaba. Su sensibilidad recurria
en primer termino a las ideas para ordenar y esclarecer sus emociones.
Muy en segundo termino le interesaba el mito (exceptuando el de los
poetas) .'3 In the same article, he goes on to agree with my remarks on
the dominance of the essay form in the l 93os and on the changes that
he made after 1 938 and concludes: 'En los veintitantos afios que he
trabajado en Sur, no recuerdo que Victoria me haya sugerido un solo
cuento.'4
The essays published by Sur form a coherent view ofliterature and
life when seen within the context of the specific development of the
mid and late l 93os both in Argentina and abroad. The articles
published in an early issue - number l l , August l 935 - can serve as an
introduction to the period, since they reveal the main areas ofinterest
of the magazine.
This issue contains an essay by Aldous Huxley on the responsibility
of intellectuals. Consideration of Huxley will lead to a discussion of
Sur's response to the conflicting ideologies in the wider world. This
essay is followed by the publication of Victoria Ocampo's radio
address 'La mujer y su expresi6n', a specific political intervention,
aimed to stop the passage through Congress in l 935 ofa bill to curtail
married women's rights. This lecture will be used to discuss Sur's
attitude to political events in Argentina, and its defence of a 'third
position'. A short story of Mallea is followed by film notes by Borges,
which points once again to the difference between a realist and self­
consciously literary aesthetic, which will become more pronounced
when Borges, Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo andJose Bianco begin to
experiment with what can loosely be called 'fantastic literature' in the
late l 93os. An essay by Salvador de Madariaga on Alberdi locates Sur
firmly within the nineteenth-century liberal tradition, while essays on
surrealism and films show that its literary preoccupations are within
the twentieth century. Within the advertisements lurks perhaps a joke
concocted by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Borges. An advertisement for
'Cuajada de La Martona' (owned by Bioy's family) states that it is:
60 SUR

'Alimento para intelectuales y sedentarios en general. Combate las

fermentaciones intestinales, los avances del artritismo y mejora las
condiciones de la piel.'5 Humour was, however, to be mainly absent
from the texts of the 1 930s, for some form of serious commitment was
demanded by events abroad and in Argentina.

The intellectual and social context of the 1 93os

The dominant theme of the essays published by Sur in the 1 930s was
the response ofintellectuals to the crises of the period. Aldous Huxley
can serve as a starting point for this discussion. He was one of
Ocampo's close friends and contributed six times to the magazine
before the Second World War. Huxley's friend and biographer,
Sybille Bedford, quotes a number of examples of this friendship.6
Huxley appealed to the magazine in two ways. He was a writer ·of
fashionable and intellectual novels, in particular Point Counter Point
( 1 928) , the roman-a-clef which deals in thinly disguised fictional form
with the lives of the Huxleys, D. H. Lawrence, Middleton Murry and
Nancy Cunard. He described the lives of the spiritual aristocracy in
Europe, with whom the editor of Sur could feel a particular affinity.
This aspect of Sur's work will be considered in the discussion on
Virginia Woolf, below.
Of more particular significance to this section was the fact that
Huxley was an articulate supporter of the peace movement, speaking
on the same platform as the principal organiser in Britain, Dick
Shepherd. Ocampo shared this interest: one of her first articles to be
published in La Naci6n in March 1 924 considered the philosophy of
Gandhi. In his article in issue 1 1 , Huxley discussed the nature and
limitations ofa writer's influence.7 The writer should be committed to
the eternal questions of truth and value, but by his example he might
also influence politicians. The discipline of the writer could also be
reflected in the social sphere. He wrote in a letter to Ocampo: 'The
only hope lies in the pacifists being better disciplined than the
militants.'8
Pacifism was one form of intellectual and, by extension, social
commitment. However anxiously writers tried to maintain the
independence and purity of their position, they were being forced by
the times into facing up to serious questions. Gide commented wryly in
his diary ( 1 9July 1 932) on Paul Nizan's Les chiens de garde: 'Tel qu'il
est, ce livre est un signe des temps. Lejeu n'est plus permis, filt-il celui
 T H E YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40 61
de !'intelligence. '9 In such an intellectual climate, one constant
preoccupation of the magazine was to steer a path between warring
factions. In a world torn between fascism and Marxism, it would
jealously attempt to guard the middle ground. This liberal position
was virtually untenable by 1 935 - liberalism was on the retreat
everywhere in the face of authoritarian, nationalist regimes - but it
could be maintained at the level ofideas. Intellectual support for this
position came from a number ofdifferent sources, the most important
of which was the set of ideas defined as 'personalism', developed by
Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier in the 1 930s, particularly
in the magazine Esprit.

Persona/ism
Personalism is a term which is used to describe the influential current
of Christian and in particular Catholic thought which began in the
1 930s. Even though Ocampo herself had renounced formal religion,
she allowed space in her magazine for a lively debate concerning the
nature of a socially progressive Church. Personalism appealed to Sur
because it rejected the twin poles offascism and Marxism, individual·
ism and collectivism, categories in which the 'person' became lost.
The 'person' is the spiritual dimension of man, which can only be
attained by looking within oneself and then outwards towards others,
forming a community, a bond within persons, rather than a society
which is an agglomeration of individuals.1° Esprit was not just a
magazine; in many places its readers organised discussion groups,
which were intended to be the precursors of the personalist commu·
nity. At the highest level, the 'communaute personnaliste' or 'la
personne des personnes' would form a series of interlocking love
relations which, taken together, presented the same characteristics as
a single person. Such a state could be reached initially through a
vanguard of a small number of active and intelligent people. The
attraction for the Sur group is obvious.
Sur, therefore, published many of the Esprit contributors. There
were, however, great differences between the members of the Esprit
group. Jacques Maritain in particular rejected any attempt at
political involvement: a philosopher could only be a philosopher ifleft
untainted by ideology. He was strongly opposed to the movement 'La
troisieme force', set up as the political wing ofEsprit, and threatened to
resign from the magazine unless Mounier, the editor, disassociated
 SUR

himself from the movement.1 1 Maritain became a good friend of

Victoria Ocampo and spoke at the PEN Club meeting at Buenos Aires
in 1 936, where he explained his 'Carta sobre la independencia', a
passionate defence of non-involvement. Maritain did sign a letter of
protest, organised by Esprit, against the invasion ofEthiopia, but later
tried to withdraw his signature.
Mounier, on the other hand, was younger, more impulsive and
more committed to the real world. The Spanish Civil War and the
Popular Front in France were two major issues that could not be
avoided. His initial manifesto on personalism published in 1 936 was
Utopian. It concentrated on education, stressing that there should be
schools of all creeds; and on private life, attacking bourgeois comfort,
pleading for recognition ofwomen as 'persons' in their own right, and
offering a view of family life as a free community of persons. It is this
part of the manifesto that appealed to Victoria Ocampo and was
published in Sur in June 1 937 (no. 33) under the title 'La vida
privada'. The manifesto also talked of the need to revivify a stagnant
culture and move towards a pluralist economy, but all the arguments
were pitched at a vague level ofgenerality. Personalism was caught in
a contradiction between theory and practice. It had no mass support:
the fascist youth group and the communist cell were rival mystiques,
flawed examples of the personalist community, but they were
successful in the political arena. Reconciliation between theory and
practice was in practical terms impossible, as is shown in Esprit's
rejection and later qualified acceptance of the politics of the Popular
Front. The Spanish Civil War also proved problematical initially.
Esprit 49 ( 1 936) published an article entitled 'Espagne, signe de
contradiction' which was not explicitly opposed to the Catholic
Church in Spain. The excesses of Franco were, however, abhorred
and, after the massacre of Guernica, the problems ofreconciling overt
support of republicanism with its anticlerical pronouncements be­
came lessened since Mounier in particular could shift his argument to
that of morality. In the main, therefore, personalism could interpret
the world but not change it: its 'third position' was caught between
commitment and withdrawal.
Other intellectuals loosely associated with Esprit were also pub­
lished by Sur, albeit selectively. Denis de Rougemont, the Swiss
Protestant critic, and especially Nicolas Berdiaeff appeared several
times in the magazine, although the latter's contribution to personal­
ist thought was largely ignored. In a major article published in the first
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40
issue ofEsprit (October 1 932) Berdiaeff tried to reconcile Christianity
with communism. He argued that communism was a religion which
set out to replace Christianity. It owed its success to the failure of
Christianity, and proposed a messianic appeal to the soul ofthe masses
and an ethic of devotion. Communism contained certain truths,
insofar as it attacked the capitalist system, formal democracy and
nationalism, but its fault lay in its rejection of God. Berdiaefftherefore
argued that one should admit the truths and reject the errors of
communism, rather than reject it out of hand.
Although Sur published a translation of this article in issue 1 3
(October 1 935), in real terms it found the arguments unacceptable.
There was little formal discussion of Marxism or of communist
regimes over these years. Gide was congratulated for perceiving the
real nature of Stalinism. Sur rushed out a translation of Retour de
l'URSS in 1 937 and the reviewer in the magazine, Ernesto Palacio,
wondered with horror tinged with relief: ' . . . como un esteta refinado
como Gide haya caido en una concepcion intelectualment tan grosera
como es la comunista.'12 The level of the debate remained low and
constantly stressed the divorce between art and ideology. In a
commentary on the suicide of the surrealist Rene Crevel in 1 935,
Guillermo de Torre dismissed the political significance ofthe act. He
could not or deliberately did not see that for some surrealism was a
way oflife, and that Crevel's suicide could well have been due to the
despair that he felt in finding that communism, the great hope for
liberation, had become in Russia the oppressive totalitarianism of
Stalin.13 He was more specific in Sur some years later: 'En el fondo,
comunistoides y fascistizantes de toda laya se clan la mano y se
reconocen como hermanos gemelos en el comun proposito de
aniquilar o rebajar la libre expresion literaria y artistica, queriendo
reducirla a mera propaganda.'14Roger Caillois, in exile in Argentina
during the Second World War, continued the attack on Marxist art in
a review ofEisenstein's Alexander Nevsky : 'El arte de propaganda, pues,
alcanza paradojicamente el arte por el arte en su mismo desprecio por
el asunto, en su misma indiferencia por el valor humano del
contenido, en su mismo desden por el antiguo esfuerzo por la
expresion, por el enriquecimiento, por el ahondamiento de los deseos y
sufrimientos del alma. '15 Caillois was in something of a dilemma since
he admired some of Eisenstein's work, but he managed to escape by
separating art from ideology: Eisenstein's technique is masterly and
since he has such technical and visual competence, he will eventually
 SUR

realise that he is a true artist and recognise the error of his committed
ways.16 Sur would always wrest literary competence from the hands of
the committed and place it in a world of abstract, universal values.
Personalism was thus an attractive doctrine for the intellectuals of
Sur for a number ofreasons. It allowed them to 'position' themselves
between conflicting ideologies, stressed the role of the elite in forming
ideas, encouraged a series of eternal humanist values and referred to
the contemplative as well as dynamic part of every man. More
importantly, it was Utopian without appearing to be so, giving
intellectuals a sense of purpose without concretely referring to a need
for direct political intervention. With a clear conscience the intellec­
tual could be, in Foucault's phrase 'just-and-true-to-all', the vigilant
outsider, who could form a spiritual community with other like­
minded 'persons' .1' In almost every issue of Sur in this period, the
intellectual's responsibility would be couched in such terms.

The impact of the Spanish Civil War

It is wrong, however, to see the publication of such ideas as a mere
abstraction. The fact of publishing Maritain or Mounier linked Sur to
a radical Christian tradition, anathema to many members of what in
Argentina at the time was a very traditional, Spanish Catholic
Church.18 A large Eucharistic Congress had taken place in Argentina
in 1 934 and had received wide publicity. The military regime in
Argentina at the time, underJusto, also referred back to the familiar
hierarchies of the army, the State, the family and the Church. Sur was
attacked by the Catholic magazine Criteria for being Marxist and Sur
replied with a statement ofits position in August 1 937, which is quoted
at the beginning of this chapter. The eternal questions of the spirit
were ofgreater interest than the transitory nature ofpolitical intrigue.
However, politics and history could not be avoided and the Spanish
Civil War forced on the magazine a series ofchoices which would help
to clarify its vague 'third position'.
The PEN Club met in Buenos Aires at the beginning ofthe Spanish
Civil War. It revealed a number oftensions in what was anticipated as
an anodyne, universal gathering of intellectuals. The Argentine
delegation was led by Carlos lbarguren with Victoria Ocampo as a
principal delegate, and Sur published an outline of all the writers
assembled, and some of the contributions (Sur 23, August 1 936) .
Carlos lbarguren was an eminent right-wing nationalist historian,
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40
who later became a fascist sympathiser. The American Blue Book on
Nazi infiltration in Argentina published in 1 946 as an attempt to stop
Peron coming to power cites lbarguren as a principal Axis
sympathiser and agent.19 At this time, however, he could still be a
colleague of Victoria despite the implications of his address to the
conference: 'De un lado, el factor del debilitamiento de la inftuencia
europea - este eclipse de una cultura, esa desconfianza que nos inspira,
la inestabilidad de Europa, su porvenir oscuro e incierto; del otro,
nuestro anhelo de una personalidad propia. Aun no hemos
encontrado esa expresi6n propia, pero la buscamos.'20 The honey­
moon between Argentine liberals and nationalists in the pages of Sur
would end in these years, as we shall see below. The PEN Club
meeting was explosive. It contained leading fascists like the former
Futurist Filippo Marinetti and the poet Guiseppe Ungaretti; victims
of German racist policies, like the Austrian Stefan Zweig and the
German Emil Ludwig (who would later be published in Sur) ; and
liberal French writers such as Maritain, Jules Romains and Benjamin
Cremieux, who was of Jewish origin. Marinetti publicly attacked
Ocampo and there were many confused and heated debates.21 The
intellectuals ofSur were faced not with a universal brotherhood oflike­
minded writers, but with the bitter consequences of a world torn and
divided. It would be more careful, in future, as to the political
persuasion of its contributors. The civil war in Spain emphasised this
point.
After an initial confusion, Sur defended the Republican cause
throughout the civil war, and its contributors helped to organise relief
and refuge for Spanish intellectuals. A number of writers came to
Argentina and would appear in Sur, the most influential of whom was
Rafael Alberti.22 The war also dislocated Spanish publishing and
made Argentina the main centre of publishing in the Hispanic world;
an opportunity that perhaps the editorial Sur lost by being unwilling
to expand in the late 1 930s. These points will be examined in greater
detail in Chapter 4.
The initial confusion was caused by Sur publishing] ose Bergamin, a
spokesman of the Republican cause and editor of the magazine Cruzy
Raya , and then several months later acting as host to Dr Gregorio
Marafi6n, a notorious right-wing historian and journalist who had
none the less sought exile in Argentina. Marafi6n published an article
in Sur 3 1 (April 1 937), provoking an impassioned outburst by
Bergamin: 'No se puede, senora, coquetear con la mentira, ni aun por
66 SUR

esnobismo ante la muerte. '23 Spain must fight and there is no place for
traitors or friends of traitors. Victoria's reply shifted the ground to the
concerns ofwomen's rights. She asserted that she opposed slavery and
oppression in all its forms, but that the greatest exploitation was that
practised by men on women. She equated her own personal suffering
as a woman with the sufferings of the Spanish people and stated that
she and the Spaniards were fighting the same battle.24 Bergamin's
reply published in the following issue (Sur 33) , was masterly. He stated
that Ocampo's literary style had clouded her political judgements:
'Demasiado literaria. Como la que la lleva a Vd. a esa desdichada
comparaci6n feminista entre sus delicados sufrimientos de mujer
secreta (sin entre comillas) y los del proletariado trabajador. Que Dios
le perdone, Victoria Ocampo, esa . . . delicada coqueteria.'25
After this initial exchange, the magazine committed no further
ideological blunders with respect to the Spanish Civil War. The death
of Lorca had a profound effect on Argentine writers, for Lorca had
visited Buenos Aires in 1 934 and had become friends with many of
them. The magazine published poems on the death of Lorca by
Conrado Nale Roxlo (no. 25, October 1 936) and Salvador de
Madariaga (no. 43, April 1 938) , poems by the Spanish exiles Pedro
Salinas and Rafael Alberti and essays by Bernanos, Maruja Mallo and
Maria Zambrano on the agony of Spain. Most importantly, a section
called 'Calendario' had appeared at the end of the magazine to
comment on contemporary literature and current affairs. Here,
outside the main body of the text, but within the 'spirit' of the
magazine, a regular commentary supporting the Republican cause
was published. Issue 56 (May 1 939) , for example, advertised a
'Comisi6n argentina de ayuda a los intelectuales' to help those in
Spanish prisoner ofwar camps. Most ofthe contributors to Sur appear
on the list of signatures. Gomez de la Serna and Maria de Maeztu,
writers who had published in Sur in the 1 930s, and the actress
Margarita Xirgu, now came to live in Argentina, as did Ricardo
Baeza, the ex-Spanish Ambassador in Chile.
The work with refugees was unpopular with a government and
Catholic Church which subscribed to a romantic doctrine of
Hispanidad and looked to the triumph of the Church and the sword in
Spain. The main newspapers, La Nacion , La Razon and La Prensa , were
all hostile to the Republic, if not totally committed to the pro­
insurgent forces. Catholic periodicals such as Criterio were in no doubt
as to their pro-Franco sympathies. Leopoldo Lugones, before his
 THE YEARS OF CONSO LIDATION, 1 93 5-40

suicide, became a chief apologist of Hispanidad and his ideas were

supported in some of the more bizarre actions of the leading cleric
Monsignor Franceschi, who took over a large collection of church
plate to help the Franco cause, and flashed a heliograph message to
the 'loyal' defenders of Toledo just before they were killed by the
Republicans. Sur became involved in a bitter dispute with
Franceschi for publishing an article by Maritain, 'Sohre la guerra
santa', in August 1 937. In this, Maritain argued that the civil war
should not be seen as a clerical crusade: the Church had no right to
support either side in a battle for economic and political power.26 The
dispute between Sur and Criterio requires detailed consideration since
it reveals the splits and hostilities in Argentina's intellectual life caused
by the Spanish Civil War. Criteria first attacked Sur in June 1 93 7 for
publishing Maritain's article 'De un nuevo humanismo' since, accord­
ing to Franceschi, it could provide ammunition to enemies of the
Catholic Church, such as Cesar Tiempo, a 'notorious' communist and
Jew. Franceschi's controlled hostility - it was, of course, difficult for
him to dismiss out ofhand the leading Catholic philosopher ofthe time
- was made explicit in an exchange of letters between himself and
Maritain, which Criteria published as 'Posiciones' on 1 2 August 1 937.
Maritain complained that he was being calumnied in Criteria and
Franceschi answered by criticising Maritain's decision to publish
controversial views in such an ideologically volatile community as
Argentina:
Pero Vd. admiti6 que se supiera en Buenos Aires su posici6n y escogi6 para
ello una revista como Sur cuyo valor literario no pongo en duda, pero cuya
orientaci6n es francamente de izquierda. Desde entonces no hay peri6dico
extremista, comenzando por Critica o Sefiales, sin contar los oficialmente
comunistas, no hay hoja de col provinciana de tinte rojizo que no se valga de
la autoridad de Vd. para atacar a los cat6licos que defienden a sus
correligionarios de Espana. (Criterio, 493, p. 350)

This article provoked Sur's defence ofits principles, which in its turn
prompted another article from the indefatigable Franceschi, who
wrote all the major articles and editorials in Criteria at this time. In the
lead article of2 3 September 1 93 7, he offers an interesting view ofSur as
being an a-religious, liberal and therefore 'left-wing' magazine, a view
that would be shared by the conservative, Catholic right.
La orientaci6n general de Sur . . es, si no erramos, hacia un cristianismo sin
.

sobrenaturalismo y sin Iglesia, hacia una moral desvinculada de todo credo

organico, hacia un Estado, no digo que antirreligioso, pero si arreligioso,
68 SUR

hacia formas politico·sociales de un democratismo liberal, intenso vecino del

radical-socialismo frances, hacia conceptos artisticos cuyos autores se
calificarian a si mismos de izquierdistas. ( p. 78)
Later in the article he tries to find grounds for reconciliation in order
to form a common front against the Marxist enemy; but any attempt
to reconcile such divergent views was impossible. In Franceschi's
view, in the view ofthe Catholic hierarchy, Sur's ideas were untenable.
With regard to the Spanish Civil War, Maria Rosa Oliver has argued
that politics were preached from the confessional and that the
Argentine government was obstructive to the Republican cause.27

The growth offascism

Sur seemed also to run counter to official government policy by openly
declaring its support for the Allied cause at the beginning of the
Second World War. Throughout the 1 930s, with the growth of
fascism, Sur pointed out that a doctrine of hate was corrupting a great
people. Borges, for whom Germany and German literature had
always been essential, summed up this feeling in a review of racist
German school-books: 'No se si el mundo puede prescindir de la
civilizacion alemana. Es bochornoso que la esten corrompiendo con
ensenanzas de odio. '28 In place ofwars and hatred Borges proposed on
another occasion the unity ofEurope. Implicitly attacking Huxley, he
stated: 'El mero pacifismo no basta. La guerra es una antigua pasion
que tienta los hombres con encantos asceticos y morales. Para
abolirla, hay que oponerle otra pasion. Acaso la del buen europeo -
Liebniz, Voltaire, Goethe, Arnold, Renan, Shaw, Russell, U namuno,
T. S. Eliot - que se sabe heredero y continuador de todos los paises.
Abundan aciagamente en Europa el nuevo aleman o el nuevo
irlandes; faltan los europeos.'29 It is clear from these remarks that
Borges' attack on nationalism is not just part ofhis rejection ofrealism
as literary mode, but is also linked to his perception of history
throughout this period and later, with the rise of Peron. The
nationalist, autarkic view could only be provincial, limiting and
potentially dangerous, creating monsters such as Hitler or Peron.
With the declaration of war in Europe, Sur brought out a complete
issue (no. 6 1 , October 1 939) dedicated to the support of the Allies.
Borges offers an 'Ensayo de imparcialidad' in which he condemns
Hitler and Nazism.30 Enrique Anderson Imbert, then a young
member ofthe Socialist Party, talks ofHitler ruining the possibilities of
 THE YEARS OF CONSO LIDATION, 1 935-40 69
liberal social reforms in Europe and, by extension, in Argentina.31
Various French writers also give their opinions: Jean Cazaux,
Armand Petitjean and, significantly, Roger Caillois, a young sociolo­
gist who had been invited to Buenos Aires to give a series oflectures,
and was to remain for five years due to the outbreak of war. Caillois
learned Spanish and became an enthusiastic advocate and critic of
Latin American literature.32 He was largely responsible for setting up
the 'La croix du sud' series in Gallimard in 1 952. He was also to run a
French cultural magazine in exile: Lettres Fran,aises, financed by Sur.
As we shall see in the next chapter, Caillois and Borges did not share
the same interests. Even though he was later to state that Caillois had
invented him - indeed the first French translation of his stories, 'La
loteria en Babilonia' and 'La biblioteca de Babel', was published in
the fourteenth issue ofLettres Fran,aises in October 1 944-Borges found
the young man something of a pedant. (Caillois had initially broken
with the surrealists since he wished to investigate the magical
properties of Mexican jumping beans by splitting them open with a
hammer. Such a 'literal' approach to mystery was to find little favour
with Borges.)
The war could be seen not only in political terms, but also as a moral
issue and, ultimately, as a matter of taste. The Germans literally
produced bad art by rejecting their own cultural heritage and sacking
the culture of Europe. To make the point about the continuity of
culture, the magazine published in this war issue Thucydides' account
of Pericles' funeral speech, one of the classic texts of Greek political
oratory. In this, Pericles defends the democratic system, and extols the
virtues and culture ofthe city ofAthens.33 The battle for Paris is linked
to the defence ofAthens and to the defence ofeternal human values.34
Yet, however moral in tone, Sur's open support of the Allied cause
specifically attacked what it saw as the growth of Nazism in
Argentina, supporting by implication the British and American
position, economically as well as culturally. Victoria was one of the
founders in 1 940 ofAccion argentina, an organisation formed to monitor
and combat fascism in Argentina. There were of course fascist
organisations in Argentina, among both the German and Argentine
communities, and fascist publications such as the newspapers El
Pampero and Cabildo . There were also elements in the army which
supported Nazi ideology and looked to found a corporate state in
Argentina. It is, however, a great leap from this to calling the
Argentine government itself fascist. Castillo, the president in 1 940,
70 SUR

was a narrow conservative, who sought to maintain traditional links

with Britain and saw no reason to break Argentine neutrality to fight
in a war in which the country would not be defended. Argentina
became a cause cilebre in the 1 94os as the only Latin American country
not to break with the Axis, in the face of United States pressure for
hemispheric solidarity. It was seen by Secretary of State Cordell Hull
and later by Ambassador Spruille Braden as a hot-bed ofNazism and
the United States did everything in its power to overthrow the
military government, especially after 1 943. What the Argentines (and
indeed the British) saw as pragmatic policy, the United States saw as a
fascist conspiracy. This was the view that Sur was later to adopt. Maria
Rosa Oliver worked for the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs
Office in Washington and Victoria openly supported the American
democratic system in the pages of Sur. Fascism for Sur became rooted
in Argentina in the late 1 930s and was to flower under Peron. In this
way, moral imperatives and political preferences became mixed. Sur's
view on fascism and the war led it inevitably to condemn Peron.

Ideological debates in Argentina

A brief overview of social and cultural developments in Argentina is
necessary in order to focus the debates that took place within and
outside the magazine. We have seen that the harmony ofelite rule by
the 'generation of 1 880' and the experiment with constitutional
democracy under the Saenz Pena Law had been shattered by 1 930.
The military coup of September 1 930 left Argentina with two main
alternatives: to develop a nationalist, corporatist solution to Argenti­
na's problems (favoured by General Uriburu, who had led the coup)
or to return to some form of parliamentary democracy. The
compromise reached can be termed a restricted democracy: a
coalition (Concordancia ) was formed by the Conservative party, a
fraction of the Radical Party and a minory group called the
Independent Socialists, who represented the older order of cereal
exporters, cattlemen and those dependent on foreign capital. The
Radical party was kept out of politics through systematic fraud and
every 'election' in the 1 930s was rigged. Thus, in these years,
Argentine liberalism lost any chance of being equated with
democracy.
Critics of Sur have argued that the magazine in effect supported
restricted democracy and in this respect was the cultural expression of
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40
the infamous decade.35 Such an easy nexus between culture and
politics does not adequately explain a complex issue relying, as it does,
on an appreciation of social classes and groups as monolithic and
unchanging. Any balanced view of Argentine politics in the period
must point to an elite group which was deeply divided between
anachronism and modernity. Should the old British connection be
maintained or should Argentina become more closely allied with the
United States as politicians such as Pinedo and Roca argued in the
late 1 930s? Could the Radical party be reintroduced into politics, as
President Ortiz argued, or should politicians be dispensed with
altogether, as a number of authoritarian army officers suggested in
their military circles?
Similar divisions appeared in Sur. We refer back to issue 1 1 ofSur, to
an article written by Salvador de Madariaga on Sarmiento. Sur
always defined itself in terms of the generation of the 1 88os, in
particular Sarmiento. It preached an elite, liberal code, by which the
country could be governed by a universalising aristocracy. The
difference between the aristocracy of the spirit and a spiritual
oligarchy was always slight, although Sur would always assert that its
practice was open, rather than narrowly restricted. An issue entitled
'Defensa de la inteligencia' published in July 1 938 (no. 47), which
contained a series of essays by liberal intellectuals from all over
Europe, was followed the next month by a special issue on the work
and thought of Sarmiento. Sarmiento signified modernisation within
a liberal tradition, a view upheld by every contributor to the issue
except Bernardo Canal Feij6o, who questioned the value ofthe dualist
model ofcivilisation and barbarism. In the main civilisation was to be
jealously guarded and the forces of barbarism (to be personified by
Peron) were to be held in check.
Yet what consolation could Sarmiento offer in an era which seemed
systematically to deny his ethos, with the spread of authoritarianism
and nationalism? Sur, at least, could follow Sarmiento's lead as a
critical conscience for successive regimes. The magazine could not
approve of the crudeness with which the old order attempted to hold
on to power through fraud and excessive moralism, for this made a
mockery ofpatrician values, yet equally it could not support any mass
form of political participation. It did, however, campaign on specific
issues ofmoral principle, such as the Spanish Civil War or the rights of
women. Victoria Ocampo's article in issue 1 1 , 'La mujer y su
expresi6n', illustrates this point. It was the text of a radio broadcast
72 SUR

which had been made to publicise the work of the Argentine Women's
Union which Ocampo, Maria Rosa Oliver and Susana Larguia had
set up in 1 936 to stop the passage ofa bill through Congress designed to
curtail the rights of married women. The bill, introduced by theJusto
government, sought to classify women as minors, to be disposed of by
the will of the husband. The campaign was successful, the bill was
stopped and Victoria Ocampo later withdrew from the Union since
she felt that it was becoming too political, too dominated by socialist
groups.
Even though her initiative stopped short of a sustained political
initiative, Ocampo's actions could only be seen as subversive by
traditional elements in society. Take, for example, the view ofwomen
outlined by another member of the aristocracy, Tomas Casares,
published in Criteria in 1 928. Votes for women, according to Casares,
would undermine the eternal values of society: 'La reforma
convertira a la depositaria del sentido sobrenatural del respeto y la
obediencia, condici6n indispensable de todo orden verdadero y
esencial, en rival del hombre en la contemporanea carrera hacia el
abismo, que se llama " conquista de las libertades en la igualdad" .' The
only bulwark against the encroachment of 'lay' values was the
Christian home, run by the woman. 'Y si aun puede decirse que no son
pocos los hogares cristianos, es por la influencia de la mujer en ellos,
pero de esas mujeres para las que el hogar es un mundo, porque en el se
forman y se templan las almas de aquellos de cuyo destino debe dar
cuenta a Dios' (Criteria 6 ( 1 928) , p. 1 75). The house and publishing
house ofVictoria Ocampo did not conform to such ideals. Issues such
as women's rights caused no conflict in Sur: the growth of nationalism
in the period was to prove a more vexed and complex question.
The whole intellectual community was marked by the events of the
1 93os and ideological differences could not easily be subsumed within
the aristocracy of the spirit. One important development is the rise of
nationalist thought and the publication of a number of pessimistic
analyses of the nature of Argentina and the Argentine people. These
are the years of Radiograj(a de la pampa ( 1 933) by Ezequiel Martinez
Estrada, El hombre que esta soloy espera ( 1 93 1 ) by Raul Scalabrini Ortiz,
Hombres en soledad ( 1 935) by Manuel Galvez, Historia de una pasion
argentina by Eduardo Mallea and the revisionist histories of the
Irazusta brothers and Carlos lbarguren. Each essay posed the same
problem: what had happened to one of the richest nations in the
world? What had gone wrong? The essays on national identity, as we
 THE YEARS OF CONSO LIDATION, 1 935-40 73
will see, were discussed at length in Sur. Aggressive nationalism was,
however, less acceptable.
Nationalist revisionist historians equated the decline of Argentina
and the development ofliberalism in the nineteenth century, with its
uncritical acceptance of the growth of the export economy in alliance
with British imperialism. The Depression had demonstrated the
weaknesses of liberalism, and historians condemned the British
connection (in such texts as La Argentina y el imperialismo britanico
( 1 934), by the lrazusta brothers) and revived the dictator Juan
Manuel de Rosas as a nationalist symbol. Rosas, it was argued, was a
man of order. He was a xenophobe, 'an enemy of parliaments,
intellectuals, the press, cities, Freemasonry and above all anarchy and
revolutions, a friend ofhierarchy, property and religion' .36 Liberalism
had introduced dangerously egalitarian ideas, and could thus be
blamed for the spread of communism, anarcho-syndicalism and
labour unrest. Falcoff has termed this group of intellectuals, who
dreamed of an Argentina free of immigrants, radicalism and social
unrest, 'aristocratic' nationalists. The term is very broad and covers a
range of tendencies from the republican nationalists of the magazine
Nueva Republica to the traditional Catholics of the Criterio group and to
crypto-fascists, but it offers a useful category for ilnalysis.
Sur initially received a number of contributions from 'aristocratic'
nationalists, in particular fromj ulio lrazusta. Within the ranks of the
Argentine essayists to contribute to the magazine, lrazusta was
initially quite a prominent figure. His aristocratic right-wing nation­
alism became increasingly pronounced after the foundation of the
journal La Nueva Republica in December 1 92 7, in opposition to
Yrigoyen's growing demagoguery.37 The lrazusta brothers, Ernesto
Palacio and Ramon Doll directed an attack on liberalism as a
movement which had allowed traditional, clerical, Hispanic and
colonial values to be eroded. These views were diametrically opposed
to many of Sur's pronouncements in defence of the values of
Sarmiento. Why, then, could such writers be found within the
magazine?
One answer can be found in lrazusta's memoirs. He talks of
meetings with Victoria Ocampo at her home, or at the offices of Sur:
Eduardo Mallea, Pedro Henriquez Urena, Maria de Maetzu, Carmen
Gandara, Carlos Alberto Erro, Faustino Jorge e innumeros otros que no
tengo presentes, alternaban con nosotros en un ambiente de convivencia
civilizada que habra sido, acaso, igualado, pero no superado en otro salon
74 SUR

literario. Si este experimento ces6, fue, en parte debido a la guerra europea

que confundi6 los espiritus y los dividi6 en banderias intemacionales. Pero a
mi ver debi6se tambien a que el nacionalismo degener6 en una intemacional
ideol6gica, y ya enteramente maniobrado por el regimen, colabor6 con los
sucesivos gobiemos y no cuaj6 en la practica.38

For Irazusta, therefore, competing ideas could be discussed among a

civilised minority, at least in the early 1 930s. Ideas were eventually
distorted into ideologies and politics, but for a time the intellectual
could still float freely, relatively detached from power and its
implications. In this way, the great critics of the oligarqu(a vacuna could
spend happy days wandering the Ocampo estates in Mar del Plata,
talking ofVirginia Woolf. It was a time when Victoria Ocampo could
admire the power ofMussolini and support the French writer Drieu la
Rochelle, who was going through an intellectual crisis which
eventually led him to fascism. Mallea's Historia de una pasion argentina
( 1 934) , an analysis of the faults of Argentine society, is also
problematic in this context. Its analysis of Argentine infra-history
which admires a stoic Creole race uncontaminated by immigrants
and foreign ideologies can hardly be seen as a classic statement of
liberalism, but rather a retrograde positivistic version, overlaid with
ideas of social Darwinism. The writers of Sur could take cues from
admired European intellectuals, but often seemed very insecure in
their own analyses.
Ideologies and politics impinged with the growing European crisis
and the Spanish Civil War. lrazusta embraced the ideology of
Hispanidad and ofwriters such as Maeztu, approved of the writings of
Charles Maurras and the activities of Action Fran�aise, and saw their
relevance to contemporary Argentina. Sur could no longer, therefore,
publish his ideas, and aristocratic nationalism itself, as Irazusta
implies, could not maintain its purity in the face of the pragmatic
nationalism of the 'Infamous Decade' and the increasing dema­
goguery of certain elements within nationalism, which would later
become allied to Peronism. lrazusta felt that nationalism had been
perverted by the Concordancia and that the military 'revolution of 1 930'
had been betrayed.
A second reason for the inclusion of lrazusta and Palacio has to do
with their social background and educational interests.Julio Irazusta
was, in his own terms, an 'historiador a la fuerza' (the subtitle of his
memoirs), and had started his career as a literary critic and
philosopher. He had spent a year at Oxford University in 1 924-5 and
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40 75
had met a number of literary figures including - important for
Victoria Ocampo - Virginia Woolf. His training in English made him
a valued translator in the early 1 930s and he translated Huxley's
Eyeless in Gaza for the editorial Sur in 1 937. He was thus a kindred spirit
who shared similar views on literature: 'Solo la critica literaria hecha
por los grandes espiritus es realmente buena.'39 His views are
prefigured in earlier Argentine writers, in particular Manuel Galvez,
whose novels such as El diario de Gabriel Quiroga ( 1 9 1 o) cast xenophobia
and antiliberalism in an aesthetic mould. These views could be
tolerated for a time, especially if the essays these writers published in
Sur were measured and not openly hostile to liberalism. This is largely
true of most nationalist articles that appear in the magazine. Only the
essay by Ramon Doll commenting on lrazusta's Ensayo sobre Rosas can
be seen as a savage critique ofliberalism. This was published in July
1 936 (no. 22), but it is most unlikely that it would have been published
two years later.
The nationalists of course were happy to appear in the magazine,
for it was the most prestigious literary journal of the time. Very few
writers excluded themselves voluntarily from its pages in the early
days: it was the magazine that was to turn its back on certain writers.
Even Pablo Neruda, who was later to become involved in a dispute
with Sur over pirate editions and who wrote in 1 954 a savage attack on
Victoria Ocampo and the review, reacted with ambivalence in the
early period. In one letter to the publisher Hector Eandi, he calls it a
'cosa muy antipatica', but eighteen months later asked Eandi to
promote his poems in the magazine.4° By the late 1 930s, however,
selection was increasingly made on the basis of political criteria: the
'third position' could only be maintained by rejecting fascists and
Marxists alike.
Two further examples illustrate this point. In a recent article on the
magazine, Maria Luisa Bastos acknowledges the important point that
Sur took for granted certain aesthetic criteria that it did not attempt to
justify.41 In issue 29 (January 1 937) the funeral oration by Martinez
Estrada at the tomb of Quiroga was printed in full. Interestingly,
however, this impassioned speech was prefaced with a statement by
Mallea:
Un criterio diferente del arte de escribir y el caracter de las preocupaciones
que creemos imprescindibles para la nutrici6n de ese arte nos separaban del
excelente cuentista que acaba de morir en un hospital de Buenos Aires. Como
testimonio de respeto a su memoria, en un pais donde solo atreverse a tener
 SUR

ideas y osar expresarlas en terminos de belleza implica un heroismo,

transcribimos hoy estas palabras pronunciadas por Ezequiel Martinez
Estrada frente al cuerpo de Horacio Quiroga.42

These words both neutralise the text of Martinez Estrada and act as a
form of self-justification: we cannot agree with the aesthetics of
Quiroga, they are misplaced and therefore we have never published
him. Sur never addressed the question 'Why?', never offered a
satisfactory critique ofQuiroga. I have argued in another context that
Sur defended value but never defined it: standards are 'known', they
are not defined, in fact probably could not be defined. Sur addressed a
group ofideal readers and made a perfectly circular value judgement,
recalling the English critic Leavis' famous remark: 'That is so, isn't it?'
If the readers did not feel or know 'that' already, it could not be
explained to them.43 Taste could only be upheld by a few intellectuals
who preserved a middle ground which was located in the realms of the
spirit, but which was notionally determined, in the last instance, by
history. No justification would be given, for example, for the exclusion
of Lugones or Alfonsina Storni.
Another writer who found himselfexcluded from the pages ofSur as
he moved further to the right was Leopoldo Marechal. Marechal
contributed to the magazine on several occasions in the early days,
supporting Giiiraldes against the attacks of Marxists and sociolo­
gists,44 commenting on the poet Carlos Mastronardi (Sur 50, Novem­
ber 1 938) and lauding Victoria Ocampo's views on women's liberation
(Sur 52, January 1 939) . In the 1 940s, however, he moved towards
traditional Catholicism and Peronism, became distanced from Sur
and wrote a savage indictment of Argentine literary culture in the
1 92os and early 1 93os - the novel Adan Buenosayres ( 1 948) . The
martinfierrista and friend of Victoria Ocampo had turned satirist. In
the novel, he projects himself as a young Catholic artist of
unrecognised genius, surrounded by a group of idiots and poseurs.
Borges is especially vilified in the character Luis Pereda and Victoria
Ocampo is described as 'La Ultra, Titania', a sham feminist
intellectual.
The novel presents in extreme form a critique ofthe literary tastes of
the contributors of Sur, a critique which would become increasingly
powerful after 1 950. Sur would have to defend its judgements and
preferences in a world ever more inimical to its definitions ofdecorum
and taste. In the 1 93os, the challenge from outside could be dealt with:
the right-wing, crypto-fascist groups did not form a strong intellectual
 THE YEARS OF CONSO LIDATION, I 935-40 77
opposition and the left tended to share Sur's views of the Spanish Civil
War and the Second World War. There was a gap, however, in the
magazine's political analysis: it could defend liberal values, but could
not support any concrete political initiatives within Argentina.

The literary context

/i'oreign contributors
Within this general historical and ideological context, Sur printed a
number of texts which it felt to be most representative of contem­
porary literature. Foreign contributors will be discussed first, since
they always occupied pride of place in the magazine. Three foreign
contributors published at this time in Sur were to have a great
influence on the development of Latin American literature: William
Faulkner, Andre Breton and Virginia Woolf. Faulkner is now widely
acknowledged as one of the precursors of the Latin American new
novel. Garcia Marquez has often talked of his debt to Faulkner; and
Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo can be seen as a creative rewriting of
Absalom, Absalom .45 The influence was both stylistic and thematic.
Although Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in 1 950, his work was poorly
received and misunderstood a decade earlier, especially in the United
States. Malcolm Cowley, whose edition The Viking Portable /i'aulkner
did much to revive interest in Faulkner's work in the mid- 1 94os, has
pointed out that before this revival Faulkner's books were out of print
and that his reviewers were in the main facile and contemptuous.46
In these conditions, therefore, it was far-sighted of Sur to publish
Faulkner in August 1 939. The story 'Septiembre ardido' ('Dry
September') was first published in the magazine Scribners in the
United States early in 1 93 1 . It is a violent tale of the lynching of a
Negro, in which the hot, oppressive weather acts as a kind ofsymbolic
reinforcement of the emotional climate which breeds the violent
outburst. It is likely that many Latin American writers and future
writers read Faulkner for the first time in Spanish in Sur, or in the
translation of The Wild Palms published by Sudamericana the
following year. Borges himself translated The Wild Palms (though in
his autobiographical essay, he claims, characteristically, that his
mother did all the work) . Faulkner had been translated by Lino Novas
Calvo into Spanish in 1 934 ('Sanctuary') but the translation was loose
and the edition was difficult to obtain.47 Sur and later Borges did
 SUR

justice to his texts for the first time in the Spanish language.
In their choice, they were probably influenced by the sympathetic
attention that Faulkner had received in France. The Nouvelle Revue
FraTU;aise had published essays on his work (June 1931 in particular)
and Gallihiard had issued several translations of his novels and short
stories, by Maurice Coindreau of Princeton University, who became
Faulkner's official translator in the early thirties. Coindreau was very
important in introducing the younger North American writers to a
French audience and Sur printed two of his essays - a panorama of
young North American writers in March 1 937 (Sur 30) and an
introduction to Steinbeck in March 1 938 (Sur 42) . Maria Rosa Oliver
also took a particular interest in North American fiction and
published an essay to accompany the Faulkner short story in August
1 939. She was later to take up ajob for a time in North America, which
allowed her to develop her contacts and her interests. Waldo Frank
was still important to the magazine, which published an extract of his
novel David Markand (no. 1 2, September 1 935) with favourable
criticism. Frank spoke words of encouragement to the magazine in
issue 1 8 (March 1 936) and again in the anniversary issue 75
(December 1 940) , but his voice was now not the only North American
one to be heard: Faulkner was to speak more deeply to the writers in
Latin America than Frank, for all his messianic intentions.
The April issue of Sur in 1 936 (no. 1 9) was perhaps the most
important collection of French literature to be published in its pages
throughout this period. It began with a translation of Andre Gide's
Persephone, the text of the poem set to music by Igor Stravinsky and
conducted by Stravinsky himself in Buenos Aires in 1 936, where he
stayed as a guest ofVictoria Ocampo. The magazine thus proclaimed
a major artistic event, which its founder was instrumental in
organising, and the publishing house later printed the translation of
the work as a small book. Borges was once again used as a translator.
Gide was a name that occurred frequently in Sur, though mainly in the
firm of epigrams, anecdotes or memoirs. Victoria Ocampo wrote an
essay in issue 1 0 (July 1 935) called 'Al margen de Gide', commenting
on his journal, and this title sums up the magazine's relationship with
this writer. He was never a major presence, but his name connoted the
golden age of the Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise and a style of literary
decorum to which the magazine aspired. Gide's influence can be seen
most directly in writers such as Jose Bianco.
More significant to one Latin American author in particular was
 THE YEARS OF C ONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40 79
the 'Contribuci6n surrealista especial para Sur', which contains a
picture inset by Valentine Hugo of Eluard, Breton, Tzara, Crevel,
Peret and Char, poems by Paul Eluard and an essay by Andre Breton,
'El castillo estrellado', a fragment of his Amour Jou . Jason Wilson
asserts that Octavio Paz read Breton for the first time in Spanish in Sur
and that this, together with his reading of William Blake's The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 'opened the doors of modern poetry' to
him.48 Octavio Paz would subsequently become a regular contribu­
tor. His first essay, published in the magazine in August 1 938,
reviewed a book published by Sur: Xavier Villaurrutia's Nostalgia de la
muerte. In this he offers an analysis of the Mexican's rootlessness and
sterile attitude towards death, which he would later develop into the
book ofessays: El laberinto de la soledad ( 1 950) . Paz always speaks highly
of Sur: indeed the Mexican cultural magazines Plural and Vuelta ,
edited by him in recent years, have much in common with the Sur
enterprise.Octavio Paz wrote recently ofthe fifth anniversary of Vuelta
and stated that the magazine opposed 'el poder lnstitucional' (the
State, that 'ogro filantr6pico') and 'la Doctrina' (especially Marx­
ism) . Between, or outside these twin poles of attraction, ' Vuelta se
propuso, desde su primer numero, crear un "espacio libre" donde se
pudiesen desplegar, simultaneamente la imaginaci6n de los escritores
y el pensamiento critico moderno. '49 This search for a literary Utopia,
a word which in Greek means 'no such place', is fundamental to both
magazines. Paz wrote of Sur: 'Lo que fue para los europeos la Nouvelle
Revue Fram;aise es, para mi, Sur: las letras concebidas como un mundo
propio - ni aparte, ni enfrente de los otros mundos - pero jamas
sometidos a ellos. '50
The special issue on surrealism did not reflect a general tendency in
the magazine and it is worth noting that Paz's work was always a
highly cerebral version. When Drieu la Rochelle suggested to Victoria
Ocampo in 1 929 that Aragon 'si charmant et si doux avec les femmes,
lui aurait mieux convenu que lui', he would not have been referring to
her literary tastes.51 Ocampo had little time for surrealism, especially
when it became increasingly fused with Marxism in the 1 930s. If she
can be said to have a literary model in these years, it was to be found in
the works, and particularly in the example, of Virginia Woolf.
Personal contact plays an important role here. Ocampo met Woolfon
several occasions, wrote her enthusiastic letters, sent her a lavish gift of
a case of gilded butterflies, tried to persuade her to travel to Buenos
Aires in 1 936 and finally succeeded (much to the annoyance ofWoolf)
80 SUR

in 'capturing' her image by commissioning the beautiful photographs

of Gisele Freund. For Ocampo, the whole Bloomsbury group was
fascinating, and Sur could strive to maintain the same standards across
the Atlantic. Both groups came, at least in part, from a narrow
educated sector of the upper classes, with wide and sustained contacts
with that class as a whole. There were, however, in both cases elements
of contradiction between some of these educated people and the ideas
and institutions of their class, especially with regard to the rights of
women. Finally, both responded to the general tensions ofa period of
social, cultural and intellectual crisis.52
Ocampo's relationship with Virginia Woolf was very one-sided.
After meeting at an exhibition of Man Ray's photographs in
November 1 934, Victoria sent Virginia a box of orchids as a visiting­
card. Several lavish presents followed - roses and a display-case of
butterflies, a reference to Woolf's literary conception of Latin
America: 'Those immense blue grey lands with the wild cattle and
the pampas grass and the butterflies.'53 The presents pleased and
embarrassed Woolf. She was attracted to wealth: 'She [Victoria
Ocampo, whom she calls Baroness Okampo (sic) in a letter to Hugh
Walpole] is a generous woman who sheds orchids as easily as butter­
cups'54, and was mildly glad that Victoria was interested in publishing
her books in Argentina - though she read no Spanish.55 Woolf
would use Victoria, her amorousness and her wealth, to make Vita
Sackville-West jealous. She wrote in a letter dated 1 9 December 1 934:
'I am in love with Victoria Okampo [sic]', and again on 29 December:
'I have had to stop Victoria Okampo [sic] from sending me orchids. I
opened the letter to say this, in the hope of annoying you.'56 But this
was a time when the Woolf-Sackville-West love-affair was really at
an end, and Woolfwould often write, teasing or snubbing Sackville­
West. Ocampo was not a close friend. Woolf described her to
Sackville-West in january 1 939: 'A woman, Victoria Okampo [sic] ,
who is the Sybil (Colefax) of Buenos Aires, writes to say she wants to
publish something by you in her Quarterly "Sur". She is in Paris
. . . She's immensely rich, amorous; has been the mistress of Cocteau,
Mussolini - Hitler for anything I know: came my way through Aldous
Huxley; gave me a case of butterflies; and descends from time to time
on me, with eyes like the roe of codfish phosphorescent: what's
underneath I don't know.'57 Victoria's 'hunger' - virtually a
declaration of love sent to Woolf in a letter in 1 935 - would not be
satisfied personally58 but, rather, in the splendid translations of
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40
Woolf's work published in Sur and in the example that Woolf could
give to a woman writer.
Even though A Room of One's Own ( 1 929) is a fairly light, sarcastic
text - taken from lectures she gave to a Cambridge undergraduate
audience - it expresses her strong conviction that women were placed
at a great disadvantage because of men. She developed these views in
two further works: The rears ( 1 93 7), an account of a Victorian
childhood; and Three Guineas ( 1 938, published by Sur in 1 94 1 ) , an
attack on war, as a form of male posturing, and an attack on
militarism which glorified the male principle and prevented women
from receiving an adequate education. The men of Bloomsbury have
always made light of the potential radicalism of Woolf's views. Nigel
Nicolson states: 'She confined her argument to the daughters of
educated men, who came from comfortable homes, and she thought
the working class pitiable but uninteresting.'59 Leonard Woolf
called her the least political animal that lived since Aristotle invented
the term. This view has been contested by feminist historians and
literary critics who see her writing as an essential part of a specifically
female literary tradition and her criticism as a necessary attack on
male, patriarchal values.60 This debate cannot be analysed here.
What is important for our argument is that Ocampo disseminated
Woolf's work in Latin America at a very early date and thus helped to
place on the agenda the problems of women in general (Argentine
women still did not have the vote) and women writers in particular.
Ocampo could thus use 'a publishing house of her own' to help
combat some of the injustices revealed by Woolf's analyses. Also, on a
purely literary level, Woolfwas a consummate artist and Ocampo was
lucky to find Borges as a translator for two ofher works: A Room ofOne's
Own and Orlando . She was an example ofwhat a woman could achieve
and, as such, Ocampo held her in awe. She was responsible for inviting
Gisele Freund to take the best series of pictures of Woolf in later life,
which are now used as frontispieces in many volumes of letters and
essays. Woolfhated being photographed and described the incident to
Sackville-West: 'That devil woman Giselle Freund calmly tells me
she's showing those d--d photographs - and I made it a condition
she shouldn't. Don't you think it is damnable? - considering how they
[Ocampo and Freund] filched and pilfered and gate crashed - the
treacherous vermin.'61 Yet although Victoria could only capture a
fleeting image of the person, she learned from and promoted the
writer.
 SUR

Surpublished Uncuartopropiooverfourmonths (Sur 1 5- 1 8, December

1 935 March 1 936) , an essay which lists the disadvantages that
-

women writers have faced throughout history: 'La independencia

intelectual depende de cosas materiales. La poesia depende de la
libertad intelectual. Y las mujeres han sido siempre pobres.'62 Victoria
took to heart in Sur Woolf's declaration that to write novels a woman
has to have money and a room ofher own.63 IfVictoria could solve the
economic problem, she would still have to fight with institutionalised
masculine power, in cultural institutions as well as society at large.
The pages of her magazine would therefore attempt to assess women
writers and offer them a forum for discussion. Shortly after A Room of
One's Own, the Sur publishing house brought out Orlando . This was to
be followed in 1 938 by To the Lighthouse ( 1927), an extract of which
appeared in the magazine in April 1 938.
If Virginia Woolf could be seen as an ideal 'European' woman
writer, Gabriela Mistral was her 'American' equivalent. In her speech
accepting entry to the Argentine Academy ofLetters in 1 977, Victoria
Ocampo talks of her friendship with both writers. Gabriela Mistral
spent time at Villa Ocampo: 'Paso en mi casa, en 1 938, toda su estadia
en Argentina y al cabo de algunos dias me escribi6 (nos escribiamos de
cuarto a cuarto) : "Vd. me ha hecho mucho bien: yo necesitaba saber,
saber (repite) que el blanco completo puede ser americano genuino"
. . . Y despues agregaba "Ha sido descomunal mi sorpresa de hallarla
a Vd. tan criolla como yo". '64 It seemed at first an unlikely friendship:
Gabriela Mistral was half lndian, half Basque and was bought up in
rural Chile, in the valley ofElqui. She started as a rural teacher, and
later - like so many other Latin American writers - became a
diplomat. Her poems deal with the problems of the Indian, the
landscape ofLatin America, thejoys ofchildhood, and talk ofa mystic
communion between God, men and nature. Victoria Ocampo
synthesised for her the best of Latin America:
Te quiero . . .
porque te pareces a bultos naturales;
a maiz que rebosa la America,
rebosa mano, rebosa boca,
y a la pampa que es de su viento
y al alma que es del Dios tremendo.65

With such judgements, Victoria could justify her own endeavour,

and, by extension, that ofSur, for how could someone so criolla be seen
as extranjeri�ante? In this astonishing analysis Proust and the Mapuche
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40
Indians become one: 'Gabriela, las "aubepines" respiradas por Proust
. . . son vecinos de tus almendros. No hay espacio tan grande, creeme
entre Combray y tu Valle de Elqui. Mi coraz6n ha medido la
distancia.'66 In her academy speech and in her autobiography,
Victoria produces an Indian ancestress Agueda, an Aguirre ancestor
who produced many illegitimate descendants, and mentions her in the
same breath as Woolfand Mistral: to be a woman is to be an Indian, is
to know suffering, is to feel elemental urges, is to be American. A neat
syllogism. Yet to counter this argument, it should be pointed out that
although Mistral published several poems and articles in Sur, and the
Sur publishing house brought out her book ofpoems Ta/a in 1 938, she
was one of very few Latin American authors to appear in its pages.
Victoria's Guarani-Indian 'voice' remained muted on most occasions.
Another Latin American woman writer - very different to Gabriela
Mistral - appeared briefly in the pages ofSur: the Chilean novelist and
short story writer Maria Luisa Bombal. Her writing appealed to all
the Sur group, not just to Victoria's feminine preferences. Her heroines
are often upper middle-class ladies condemned to frustration in a
society in which freedom is not even a possibility. In a story La
amortajada, which Borges praised in Sur as being structurally perfect,
she sums up the role ofwomen: 'Pero el destino de la mujer es remover
una pena de amor en una casa ordenada ante una tapiceria
inconclusa.'67 Sur published two short stories, 'Las islas nuevas' (no.
53, February 1 939) and 'El arbol' (no. 60, September 1 939), in this
period, at a time when it rarely published original works of fiction.
'Las islas nuevas' combines a traditional narrative with certain
elements offantasy. 'El arbol' is a more complex story, which tells of a
woman coming to terms with separation from her husband. In a
concert, the various musical scores trigger off different memories:
Mozart of youth, adolescence, hope that later becomes stifled in a
hasty marriage; Beethoven of marriage, grief, solitude, sterility and
acceptance; Chopin of the break with her husband. A tree grows
outside her house, and its shadow accentuates the loveless, conven­
tional marriage that the protagonist is forced to live. One day the tree
is cut down and the protective, fantasy life is removed. The
protagonist sees her situation in a new light and can leave home.68
Feminist critics today would see little to applaud in these stories that
condemn women to an intuitive, impulsive, instinctual role in society;
yet if read in their time, they do attempt to analyse typical feminine
conflicts in a society in which radical alternatives could not be
 SUR

considered as a possibility - where even the vote was a distant hope.

Victoria could applaud the themes, and Borges the craft, offiction - a
division between content and form that would become increasingly
important in the pages of the magazine.
It would be misleading in highlighting the best foreign fiction to
give the impression that every issue of the magazine contained
something new from Gide or Faulkner. A number ofarticles published
are long, tedius and of questionable value: the gems do have to be
mined. Yet at the same time the magazine was remarkably successful
in responding to new tendencies. It is possible to make a few general
points about the foreign contributors. There were very few Latin
Americans published, save for certain writers who were mainly
included through personal friendship (Mistral and Bombal) . The
Chilean Vicente Huidobro spent a number of months in Argentina
and published several ofhis best poems in the magazine, especially the
'Triptico a Stephane Mallarme' (no. 1 8, March 1 936) and
'Monumento al mar' (no. 32, May 1 937) . Two writers were
exceptions to this pattern: Octavio Paz began to contribute regularly
from Mexico, whilst Pablo Neruda started a dispute with the
magazine which would last for well over thirty years. Such extremes of
interest were rare: the main feeling was one of indifference. It is only
when one considers names and currents excluded from Sur - most
Latin American writers, Arlt, Lugones, Storni, Quiroga and all the
Boedo group of the River Plate - that the relative narrowness of its
editorial policy becomes clear. Its success as an arbiter of taste in this
period is not, however, in doubt.
Several North American writers appeared, but the major contribu­
tors came from Europe, in particular France, where most contacts
would be made. Sur could be up to date as long as its director, in
particular, could continue to travel. Victoria had a preference for
essayists and moral philosophers or writers: Jose Bianco had a better
eye for imaginative works. The arrangement worked well for a time,
but depended crucially on the free flow of information and the easy
passage of writers and their work, conditions that would not exist in
the Second World War. Ideological factors also determined choices.
The magazine would publish Benda or Maritain, but would not
consider Paul Nizan's defence of the committed intellectual. Sartre
would test the limits of liberalism in this respect. Ocampo claims to
have published Sartre in Sur almost before he was known in his own
country. This remark is quite accurate. In March-April 1 939, Sur
published 'El aposento', a translation of Sartre's short story 'La
 T H E YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40 85
Chambre'. This story was first published in Mesure in january 1 938
and Sartre's first published short story 'Le Mur' appeared in the
.Nouvelle Revue Fran,aise inJ uly 1 93 7. Sur was thus very quick to spot an
important new talent.
'La Chambre' is an interesting story to include, since it deals in part
with different forms ofperception, madness and fantasy, themes which
were of growing interest to Argentine writers at' that time. Eve
Darbedat's husband Pierre is going mad and she rejects her
conventional bourgeois parental advice and continues to live with
him. However much she tries to see the objects ofthe room through her
husband's eyes, she cannot do so. She cannot change her own normal
perception ofreality. This was to be the only work ofSartre's fiction to
appear in Sur. His later philosophical and literary essays would prove
a challenge to the magazine. They could admire his activity in the war
and read Les Temps Modernes, but became increasingly distanced from
his views on commitment. It would therefore be misleading to prove
Sur's openness by quoting the inclusion of Sartre. 'Which Sartre?' and
'When?' are also crucial questions. As in the case of Latin American
writers, taste was defined by artistic but also ideological
considerations.

Argentine contributors

The essayists
Alfonso Reyes has defined the essay evocatively as 'este centauro de los
generos donde hay de todo y cabe todo, propio hijo caprichoso de una
cultura que no puede ya responder al orbe circular y cerrado de los
antiguos, sino a la curva abierta, al proceso en marcha, al Etcetera.'69
The centaur here is half scientific, halfliterary: the essay is a hybrid
form, containing elements of poetry and persuasion, expressing truth,
but a particularly individual form of truth, giving information but
marshalling that information according to literary rather than
sociological laws. Octavio Paz, another significant essayist in Sur, also
points to the literary qualities of the essay: 'El ensayista tiene que ser
diverso, penetrante, agudo, novedoso y dominar el arte dificil de los
puntos suspensivos. No agota su tema, no compila ni sistematiza:
explora . . . La prosa del ensayo fluye viva, nunca en linea recta,
equidistante siempre de los dos extremos que sin cesar la acechan: el
tratado y el aforismo. Dos formas de la congelaci6n.'70
At a time when the disciplines of sociology and even literary
86 SUR

criticism were still in their infancy, the essay offered an artisan

approach to this data. Many different forms ofessay were published in
Sur: the magazine format was, of course, particularly appropriate to
the short essay and subsequently the short story. The essayists, in the
main, took up the dominant interest ofintellectual groups at the time:
the attempt to analyse the nature ofArgentina and the Argentine and
to explain the decline of the country throughout the 'Infamous
Decade'.
Sur published two of Argentina's most celebrated philosophers and
essayists: Carlos Alberto Erro and Bernardo Canal Feijoo. Erro
brought out two books with the Sur publishing house: Tiempo lacerado
( 1 936) and Dialogo existencial ( 1 93 7) . In an early book of essays -
Medida del criollismo ( 1 929) - Erro had explored the meaning of the
terms 'criollo' and 'universalist', stating that the Argentine could only
be truly universal by deepening his knowledge of his country oforigin
and not slavishly following European modes. Tiempo lacerado took up
these themes, exploring the depression of the mid 1 930s, but placing
faith in the Argentine ability to change these conditions. He follows
closely Spengler's and Frank's analyses of the decline of Europe and
the regenerative optimism of the New World,71 and is also influenced
by the personalists in their efforts to regalvanise Christian thought.
Stabb has traced the influence of Heidegger in Dialogo existencial.12
Although Erro's understanding of early existentialism is only hazy,73
his thought marks, as Anderson Imbert has pointed out in an early
review of the book, a significant rejection of positivism, which had
been for so long a dominant feature of Latin American thought.74
Bernardo Canal Feijoo wrote a number of pugnacious critical
essays in Sur over this period. Canal Feijoo was born in Santiago del
Estero and his writing reveals a constant preoccupation with the
plight ofthe northern provinces and the unequal relationship between
the capital and the interior. His most notable essay in these years was
his critique of Martinez Estrada's influential Radiograj{a de la pampa
( 1 933), 'Radiografias fatidicas' , published in Sur in October 1 937,
just after that book had won a national prize. Martinez Estrada was
always an ambivalent presence in Sur, as we will see in the following
two chapters: he was valued as a friend of Victoria and as a poet, but
was criticised for the pessimism of his views on Argentina. Canal
Feijoo rejected the telluric approach of the book, dismissing Keyser­
ling and Martinez Estrada in a few ironic phrases: 'Yo abrigo la
malicia de creer que, despues de cuatro afios, traspasada ya aquella
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40
celebre hora de los "analisis espectrales" del mundo "en el tercer dia
de la creacion", y otras truculencias, esta Radiografia se ha
desvanecido y velado mas de la cuenta. '75 He continued to quote
maliciously from the book: 'La selva, que viene extendiendose desde
Brasil, irrumpe oceanica y rica, "pero se cierra como pelvis en
repugnante castidad" . . . En verdad, no puede dudarse de que el
mundo americano hubiese resultado mejor si la vegetacion tropica
hubiese tenido "la plausible impudica" de "abrirse" hasta el polo.'76
He argues that Martinez Estrada's fatalism cannot begin to answer
the problems ofthe Argentine people, since it does not consider history
or the spiritual dimension of man.
In contrast to Martinez Estrada, Canal Feijoo extolled the work of
Eduardo Mallea, especially the enormously popular Historia de una
pasion argentina ( 1 937) . This is curious because Mallea's work is even
vaguer than that of Martinez Estrada, and the explanation must lie in
Mallea's rather desperate brand of optimism in this particular work.
Canal Feijoo's honeymoon period with Mallea lasted until 1 940,
when he wrote a critical account of Mallea's latest novel La bahia del
silencio ( 1 940) . In 1 937, Canal Feijoo, like many other critics, praised
the spiritualist intention and authentic passion: 'Pues nada mas que
de ese hundirse en el seno de la tierra, en la matriz del pueblo interior,
puede brotar el hombre nuevo de que mandaba revestirse Pablo. '77 In
the 1 93os, Mallea was acclaimed by everyone: it was only in the 1 94os
and especially in the 1 950s that a new generation would reveal and
dismiss his ideological assumptions and his rhetorical style. One writer
to be impressed by Mallea initially, only to be captivated later by the
imaginative work of Borges, was Jose Bianco. His article on Mallea,
published in the magazine in June 1 936 (no. 2 1 ) , reveals the
importance given to Mallea's writing in a certain liberal sector of
Argentine letters. For Bianco, Mallea is important firstly because he
embodies a true universalist spirit. The Argentine intellectual must
assimilate the sights and sounds of Europe, like the protagonist of
Nocturno europeo ( I 935) , for he cannot turn his back on such significant
models. In Bianco's analysis, Mallea, like Sur itself, had been wrongly
accused of ignoring the problems of Argentina. Such misplaced
criticism stems from a confused understanding of the term national­
ism.78 He goes on to gloss approvingly the quest ofMallea's anguished
protagonists for a meaning to life, in the megalopolis of Buenos Aires
or in the countryside. Mallea is a cosmopolitan, but has an Argentine
conscience; he reveals the misery and emptiness of everyday life, but
88 SUR

posits the possibility ofa love force arising out ofself-sacrifice. He is not
interested particularly in the formal aspects ofliterature, but his long,
anguished confessional novels and essays contain a necessary truth.
Bianco could approve all these aspects in the mid 1 930s: they would
only look increasingly archaic once the full impact of Borges' writing
was appreciated.
Mallea received further adulatory criticism in Sur from Amado
Alonso, Anita Berry and Francisco Ayala. Historia de una pasion
argentina, published by Sur's own editorial, became a best-seller and
seemed to sum up that moral side of Sur, which was particularly
evident in the mid 1 930s. Historia was appealing, precisely because of
its vagueness. It attacked a visible Argentina of false cosmopolitans,
who aped the worst of European trends, parvenus and materialists,
and discovered instead an invisible Argentina, firmly rooted in the
Argentine soil, respecting the old traditions of the country in a quiet
responsible way. It worked well at the level of passionate rhetoric. It
was, however, completely divorced from history or politics: who were
these stoic workers? Certainly not the immigrants pouring from the
boats whom the protagonist of Meditacion en la costa ( 1 939) looked at
with increasing dismay. Certainly not the cabecitas negras, the real
'invisible' Argentines who would become only too visible under
Peron, wading in the fountains of the Plaza de Mayo. Mallea posited
instead an extreme form ofaristocratic liberalism: regeneration could
be obtained, in the personalist model, through uncorrupted groups of
intellectuals, who would be attracted to each other, after each
individual had come to terms with himself through spiritual with­
drawal, or askesis. This positive aspect ofsolitude would allow men to
break through the falsity and lack ofcommunication in everyday life.
A U topia - but one felt to be realisable in Argentina. The intellectual
could offer a radical idealism: small revolutions taking place in the
consciousness ofeach man, who, drawing his inspiration from the land
and from others, would form an ideal spiritual community.
Mallea's 'pasi6n argentina' was always counterbalanced by his
European passion. The soil of Argentina in itself could not yield a
sufficiently varied spiritual diet. In a note in Sur 37, he attacks the
government policy ofoffering teaching jobs only to Argentines: 'En un
pais como el nuestro, donde los problemas de la cultura son
sistematicamente diferidos, todo esta por inventarse en lo que
concierne a cierta arquitectura de la inteligencia. '79 Such architecture
could only be planned by assimilating foreign models.
 THE YEARS OF CONSO LIDATION, 1 935-40 89
Although Mallea has now largely been relegated to critical
obscurity, in the 1 930s he seemed to express a very appealing kind of
truth. He sold in thousands at a time when Borges proudly announced
that he had sold exactly thirty-seven copies of Historia de la eternidad
( 1 936) . The pages of Sur were, however, to chart the progress of
Borges' work: the late 1 93os witnessed a stylistic revolution which was
to call into question Mallea's own ponderous rhetoric.
Whilst the articles published in Sur by Mallea and Erro, amongst
others, had a basis in contemporary philosophy, they were above all
essays of cultural synthesis. They did, however, draw on a strong
tradition of philosophical enquiry in Argentina, which was repres­
ented in the magazine by Francisco Romero, who taught philosophy
at the University of Buenos Aires and La Plata University, and to a
lesser extent by Carlos Astrada and Miguel Angel Virasoro. Sur would
never show the same interest in philosophy as the Revista de Occidente,
whose editor was a philosopher and who made sure that specialist
contributors appeared regularly, but it kept its readers informed on
modern philosophical tendencies. Stabb has argued, for example, that
Carlos Astrada was probably the first Latin American to use the term
existencialismo in an essay published in Sur in October 1 936.80 Astrada
had studied with Heidegger in Freiburg and would contribute
explanatory essays to Sur until ideological differences distanced him
from the magazine. In the 1 940s Astrada was a Nazi sympathiser. By
the 196os he had become a spokesman for the socialist nationalist left.
Francisco Romero was the most frequently published philosopher and
his work introduced contemporary figures (Max Scheler and later the
early German existential philosophers) , surveyed past tendencies and
developed its own original insights.81 It is beyond the boundaries of
this work to explore the development of each philosopher. It is
important, however, to point out the interest of the magazine in
publishing Argentina's most eminent scholars. Sur's links with
scholarly institutions, especially the university, require further inves­
tigation. Certainly the magazine published a number of philosophers
and literary critics linked to the university. The most significant
names in this period are Romero, Amado Alonso, Raimundo Lida
and Angel Battistessa. Just over a decade later, the magazine
published such important literary critics as Ana Maria Barranchea
and Jaime Rest. Yet their contributions on Argentine or 'universal'
literature were not frequent enough to constitute a school ofliterary
criticism in Sur. The magazine analysed books in every issue, in essays
90 SUR

and book reviews, yet for the most part such commentaries were
provided by the general men of letters (such as Gonzalez Lanuza) ,
rather than the specialist literary critic. Bianco greatly increased the
number of book reviews in Sur and this became a section in which
young writers and critics could learn their craft. They would learn the
value of elegant writing rather than assimilate any particular literary
theory; the model would be Borges rather than Amado Alonso.
Indeed Sur would be remembered not so much for its publication of
scholars as for its promotion of the writer who made scholarship, and
in particular philosophical enquiry, a teasing intellectual game: Jorge
Luis Borges.

Works offiction
The most significant events in this period were the publication of the
short stories 'Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote' in May 1 939 (no. 56)
and 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' in May 1 940 (no. 68) . The theory
and practice of 'fantastic' literature were to be evolved throughout
these years and were to reach their culmination in the creative
outburst ofBorges in the early 1 940s. Borges is the best-known writer
of this period, but it will be argued that the development of these
theories was very much a group practice, and that the contribution of
Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo and to a lesser extent Jose
Bianco should not be underrated.
Even though these stories were a significant new departure for
Borges, they brought together a number of elements that had always
been present in his fictional work: in Evaristo Carriego ( 1 930) he had
talked of the limited space of fiction, which occupied an intertextual
rather than a social world: 'Me crie en un jardin detras de una verja
con lanzas y en una biblioteca de ilimitados libros ingleses.'82 His
eccentric view ofliterature and life was combined with a disbelief in
character, as the various masks and disguises in the characters of
Historia universal de la infamia ( 1 935) reveal. He had also always
claimed the rights of a reader: most of his publications in Sur are book
reviews, and he evolved a style of fiction which endeavoured not to
create stories, but rather to generate meanings by reading other
accounts.83 The earliest stories would adopt the frame of a book
review, an implicit parody of one of Sur's central activities, and later
take up the theme of the search for knowledge in imaginary books.
In the pages ofSur he expressed two main concerns. The first was to
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION , 1 935-40 91
stress the specificity ofliterature; formal concerns which had nothing
to do with ultimate meanings. On the death of Leopoldo Lugones,
Borges could discount the old writer's increasingly right-wing politics
as literally superficial: 'Lo esencial de Lugones era la forma. Sus
razones casi nunca tenian raz6n; sus adjetivos y metaforas, casi
siempre.'84 He similarly mocked those critics who attempted a
political or social reading of literary texts: 'La interpretaci6n
econ6mica de la literatura (y de la fisica) no es menos vana que una
interpretaci6n heraldica del marxismo o culinaria de las ecuaciones
cuadraticas, o metalurgicas de la fiebre paludica.'85 Having estab­
lished the otherness of literature, Borges could select his preferred
readings, and reject the dominant literary model in Argentina at the
time, the realist novel. He rejected both the themes and the forms of
realism, in particular any reference to national concerns or local
colour.
In a mainly complimentary review of Luis Saslavsky's film Lafuga ,
Borges protests weakly: 'ldolatrar un adefesio porque es aut6ctono,
dormir por la patria, agradecer el tedio cuando es de elaboraci6n
nacional, me parece un absurdo. '86 Nationalism in any form should be
combated: in the political sphere it had aided the growth of
totalitarian regimes; in literature it was responsible for the excesses of
writers such as Manuel Galvez. In his film criticism and his short
notes, the same arguments were repeated.87
In place of the realist novel, Borges advocated literature of fantasy
and detective fiction. Two works of fiction by his young friend Adolfo
Bioy Casares were reviewed approvingly by Borges. The first, a series
ofshort stories Luis Greve, muerto ( 1 937) , is seen by Borges as a welcome
break from the tedium of much Argentine fiction: 'Nuestra literatura
es muy pobre de relatos fantasticos. La facundia y la pereza criolla
prefieren la informe "tranche de vie" o la mera acumulaci6n de
ocurrencias.'88 His review is an act of faith in the promise of Bioy,
rather than a commentary on his actual achievement in these rather
flimsy and clumsy short stories. Borges is more accurate when he extols
the perfection of a later story by Bioy La invencion de Morel ( 1 940) ,
published in part in the September 1 940 edition of the magazine. La
invencion de Morel is a beautifully wrought novel about a man on a
desert island who falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a
three-dimensional photographic image.89 Two points are important
for the argument at this stage: the quality of the work itself, and the
deliberately provocative defence of its merits by Borges.
92 SUR

Borges deals centrally with the ideas contained in Ortega's Ideas

sobre la novela , an essay published together with his famous La
deshumani;::,acion del arte in 1 928. Ortega had argued that for modern
readers, the adventure story had no appeal or, at best, pandered to
child-like instincts.90 Instead of such juvenile pursuits, the reader is
now interested in the psychological motivation of the character, and
the psychological novel - he gives the example of Proust and
Dostoevsky - is promoted as the model for future writers.91 Borges
ridicules these arguments, talking of the endless permutations of the
psychological novel, and attacking the central premises of realism:
'Prefiere que olvidemos su caracter de artificio verbal . . . La novela
de aventuras, en cambio no se propone como una transcripci6n de la
realidad: es un objeto artificial que no sufre ninguna parte
injustificada.'92 The vigour and invention of Bioy's pages (which, as
will be seen in the following chapter, were closely allied to his
development of the genre of detective fiction) , are used to give the lie
to Ortega's rather facile generalisations.
Bioy married Silvina Ocampo, Victoria's sister, in 1 940. Already
firm friends of Borges, they began to see each other almost daily and
began to collaborate on a number ofliterary ventures. They always
tried to remain outside the main orbit of Sur, laughing at many of its
pretensions, especially Victoria's cultivation of the great names of
contemporary letters, but they did publish their major work in Sur and
as such their views on literature should be seen as an important
development within the magazine. They edited an anthology of
fantastic literature, which was published by Sudamericana in
December 1 940. Bioy wrote an introduction which in rather haphaz­
ard fashion talks of techniques and themes of fantastic literature,
listing journeys through time, vampires, ghosts and gothic horror.
When he attempts to classify these stories according to the function of
fantasy, he uses categories which, to a surprising extent, appear to
anticipate those of a theorist like Todorov some thirty years later.93
His essay is significant not only in its definition of fantasy, which is
vague and amorphous, written to justify the inclusion of a range of
different texts in the anthology, but also in the analysis that it gives of
the recent fictions of Borges: 'Con "El acercamiento a Almotasim",
con "Pierre Menard", con "TIOn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Borges ha
creado un nuevo genero literario que participa del ensayo y de la
ficci6n; son ejercicios de incesante inteligencia y de imaginaci6n feliz,
carentes de languideces, de todo elemento humano, patetico o
sentimental, y destinados a lectores intelectuales, estudiosos de
 THE YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION, 1 935-40 93
filosofia, casi especialistas en literatura.'94 Even though Bioy was to
reject his own analysis some twenty-five years later,95 his remarks
point to what he calls a 'bien intencionado ardor sectario'. He
concluded: 'Lt>s compiladores de esta antologia creiamos entonces
que la novda, en nuestro pais y nuestra epoca, adolecia de una grave
debilidad en la trama, porque los autores habian olvidado lo que
podriamos Hamar el prop6sito primordial de la profesi6n: contar
cuentos.'96 Fantastic literature could serve as an antidote to the
psychological novel, but Borges, Bioy argued, developed a twentieth­
century form of the fantastic, one in which horror and fear have been
replaced by literary and metaphysical speculation. All fantastic texts
question and subvert the real, the monological vision of the realist
text, and single or unitary ways of perceiving the world. In the
nineteenth century, a gradual displacement of residual super­
naturalism and magic and increasingly secularised thought produced
very different interpretations of fantasy: demonology was gradually
replaced by psychology to explain 'otherness'. By the twentieth
century, as Bioy intuits, fantastic texts had become increasingly non­
referential, concerned not so much with the relationship between
language and the real world 'outside' the text, as with a quest for
fictional autonomy.97
Borges' stories constantly stress their fictional, non-referential
nature, yet this does not make them the property of purely formalist
criticism. It should be remembered that the stories were written in a
very specific ideological context. The stories are often juxtaposed with
comments on literature and politics. Borges published the short story
'TlOn' in Sur 68 (May 1 940) , and wrote in a book review two issues
later: 'Escribo enjulio de 1 940: cada mafiana la realidad se parece mas
a una pesadilla. Solo es posible la lectura de paginas que no aluden
siquiera a la realidad: fantasias cosmog6nicas de Olaf Stapledon,
obras de teologia o de metafisica, discusiones verbales, problemas
frivolos de Queen o de Nicolas Blake. '98 After this, passages such as the
1 947 Postdata to 'Tlon' (written of course in 1 940) make more sense:
Borges mistrusts Marxism, fascism or any other system that attempts
to offer a spurious order. In a world going mad, the intellectual
response could only be a radical form of askesis, enjoying the plots of
literature, but denying order to anything other than the autonomous
sphere ofliterature. These ideas became clearer in the 1 94os and will
be discussed in greater detail in the following two chapters.
Particular attention has been given to Borges, who only published
three short stories in Sur and to Bioy Casares, who only published one.
94 SUR

In these five years, we are tracing developing interests, rather than

analysing a substantial corpus of fiction. Silvina Ocampo published
stories very infrequently, but was to become more prolific in the 1 94os.
There is little else ofvalue. Only a dozen poems were printed by poets
of very mixed quality (Bernardez, Gonzalez Lanuza, Molinari,
Silvina Ocampo, Altolaguirre, Ballagas, Julio Casal) during this
period, which can be explained by the specific influence of Victoria
Ocampo herself: when other writers were given a greater say in the
magazine, fiction and poetry were published more extensively.
In the seventy-fifth anniversary edition, the magazine assessed its
own work and found it satisfactory. Waldo Frank locates Sur as part of
the Great Western Tradition of thought. With the problems in
Europe, Sur would keep the banner of intelligence aloft: 'Y el
crepusculo de Europa confiere a Sur una preeminencia mundial. '99
Guillermo de Torre recognises Sur's 'voluntarias limitaciones', that
the magazine can only deal with certain aspects of world culture, but
stresses that its work is on a par with the Revista de Occidente, the Nouvelle
Revue Frant;aise and The Criterion. He answers two criticisms: the
magazine is not just the whim of Victoria Ocampo and America is not
spiritually independent, for it needs to be in contact with European
culture.100 Patricio Canto correctly locates the magazine: 'La
tradici6n de Sur es el liberalismo criollo'101 and Mallea stresses that it is
particularly Argentine, not just a literary review but 'un modo
argentino de ir a las cosas.'102 Mallea hopes that the review will not
become too concerned with foreign literature, but states crudely that
no one else has a right to judge the magazine except for true Argentine
Creoles like himself: most criticism came from rather swarthy sons of
immigrants.
The issue is in fact a microcosm of the tensions that run through Sur.
It contains a number of general essays, expressing worthy liberal
sentiments; articles by two significant exiles, Roger Caillois and
Rafael Alberti; a literary essay by Alfonso Reyes; reviews of work by
Mallea and Bioy; a poem by Supervielle and a much weaker one by
Gonzalez ·Lanuza; and two short stories by the two precursors ofLatin
American modem fiction: William Faulkner and Jorge Luis Borges.
Argentine culture could only develop, in Sur's terms, through a
judicious balancing of European and Argentine texts. In its first years
the balance tipped towards Europe, but during the Second World
War Argentine writers would have a greater chance to be published in
the magazine.
 4
The war years
Para los europeos y americanos hay un orden - un solo orden - posible: el que
antes llev6 el nombre de Roma, y que ahora es la cultura del Occidente. Ser
nazi Uugar a la barbarie energica, jugar a ser un viking, un tartaro, un
conquistador del siglo XVI, un gaucho, un piel roja) es, a la larga, una
imposibilidad mental y moral.1

The Second World War influenced the development of Sur in two

important ways. In the first place, the magazine explicitly defended
the Allied cause and frequently implied that the Argentine policy of
neutrality was being formulated by fascist tendencies within the
government. The fears that fascism had taken root in Argentina
seemed confirmed by the rise of Peron. His electoral triumph in early
1 946 would cast a shadow over the celebrations that greeted the peace
in Europe and mark a turning-point in Argentine history which was to
affect all levels of society. This chapter will, therefore, trace the social
and cultural process in Argentina until the end of 1 945, the eve of
Peron's victory.
In the second place, the war interrupted the flow of contributions
from Europe and caused a situation which might be described, in the
language of economists, as cultural import-substitution. These were
the years in which Borges emerged as the finest prose writer in
Argentina: his output was considerable. His experiments were
supported by a small group offriends - Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo,
Jose Bianco, Juan Wilcock - who used the magazine as a forum for
their own considerable talents. Whilst their work would have been
recognised without the exceptional circumstances of the war, in these
conditions they became the main intellectual supports of the
magazine.

Sur and the war: an overview

Sur's support of the Allied cause, as Borges points out in the preface to
this chapter, was the only 'civilised' position to adopt. Yet we have
seen that it was at variance with the official Argentine policy of
neutrality throughout the war. Successive governments argued that
the country had little to gain from becoming involved in the war,
95
96 SUR

before or after Pearl Harbour. Britain was not anxious to involve

Argentina in the war, fearing that its meat supplies, vital for the war
effort, might bejeopardised. Argentina knew that even ifit entered the
war on the side of the Americans, it would not be defended: the North
American hemispheric defence line ended at Brazil. Equally it did not
make sense to mount a witch-hunt against its German population,
who controlled a number of important industries and could supply
technical expertise. For all these reasons Argentina held out against
American pressure at the Rio Conference in 1 942, and was made to
appear the pariah of the Western hemisphere. The American
Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, mounted a campaign to overthrow
the Argentine government after 1 943, imposing an arms embargo,
economic sanctions and credit freezes, and building up the power of
Brazil, Argentina's nearest rival in the Southern Cone.2 This hard­
line policy was accentuated by Spruille Braden, the United States
Ambassador in Argentina in 1 945, who virtually became the leader of
the parties opposed to Peron.
In this context, Sur's outspoken pro-Allied position was a specifi­
cally political intervention, as the British Embassy noted with respect
to Victoria Ocampo: 'The Braden campaign can resolve itselfinto an
attempt to unite against Peron the estanciero class, who have much to
lose, and intellectual Radicals (especially the rich ones like Victoria
Ocampo) whose leftist tendencies unite with their life of ease in their
desire to keep out fascism. '3 This surprising contemporary view of
Victoria Ocampo helps to focus the period. As on several occasions
throughout its history, Sur's ideas coincided with North American
perceptions of, and policies towards, Argentina. It supported in
lukewarm fashion Roosevelt's 'Good Neighbour' policy and North
American attempts to combat economic and political nationalism in
Latin America by offering to 'Give Them a Share' of the expanding
North American economy, a policy which would be reformulated as
the Alliance for Progress in the 1 96os. Throughout the war it benefited
directly from the United States' desire to stimulate the development of
modern intellectual elites in various countries. Nelson Rockefeller set
up the Office for the Coordination oflnter-American Affairs in 1 940
to orchestrate economic and cultural programmes in Latin America,
part of what Frank Ninkovich describes as a 'craze' for Pan­
Americanism by the winter of 1 941 .4 The policy of the Coordinator's
Office in the cultural sphere was to invite journalists, publishers and
democratic politicians to North America, and send materials, such as
films, newsprint and financial assistance, south.5
 THE WAR YEARS 97

Maria Rosa Oliver worked in the Coordinator's Office for two years
from 1 942 to 1 944, and presents a positive image of that organisation,
although she was well aware of the commercial imperatives behind its
interest: 'En cuanto a la "politica del buen vecino", los de la
Administraci6n parecen dispuestos a ponerla en pnictica . . .
jComparadas con las ideas de Hull, las de Rockefeller parecian
avanzadas!'6 Maria Rosa Oliver helped to prepare an issue of Sur on
Brazilian literature, and Victoria Ocampo travelled extensively in
North America in 1 943 to prepare an issue on North American
literature: these interventions, as we shall see, were stimulated by the
political climate. The Coordinator's Office was anxious to foster a
more sophisticated approach to the peoples south of the border, and
was to subsidise a further visit to Argentina by Waldo Frank in 1 942.
Through such contacts, groups north and south ofthe border asserted
the need for cultural relations to bring about a liberal Utopia. They
were also very aware that only certain regimes could help to realise
their social and cultural (not to mention economic) ambitions.
In December 1 94 1 , following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Sur
brought out an issue entitled 'La guerra en America' (no. 87) and
declared its support for the United States and for the concept of Pan­
Americanism. Victoria Ocampo voiced her enthusiasm with a stirring
rhetorical flourish: 'Es igualmente cierto que America, por primera
vez desde que le sofi.6 Bolivar, empieza a sentirse indivisible, desde el
estrecho de Behring hasta el Caho de Homos. '7 Maria Rosa Oliver
expressed similar sentiments and criticised the Argentine government
for not abandoning neutrality: 'Si en lugar de la voz de los gobiernos se
hubiese oido la voz de los pueblos, todas las respuestas hubieran tenido
la misma intensidad, la misma firmeza.'8 She uses here an argument
similar to that which would later justify North American intervention
in Argentina: policy is being dictated by a group which does not
represent the will of the people.9
Borges also stressed the righteousness of involvement with a direct
attack on clerical fascism: 'Dos siglos despues de la publicaci6n de las
ironias de Voltaire y de Swift, nuestros ojos at6nitos han mirado el
Congreso Eucaristico . . . No importa que seamos lectores de Russell,
de Proust y de Henry James: estamos en el mundo rudimental del
esclavo Esopo y del cacof6nico Marinetti.'10 To defend the United
States was to defend progress: Borges was aware ofthe many regressive
forces in Argentina, especially among the clerical establishment,
where Father Wilkinson and Monsignor Franceschi had the ear of
army officers who would help to lead the coup of 1 943. Only Carlos
98 SUR

Alberto Erro talked of the need for the defence of Argentine

sovereignty in an issue mainly given over to liberal euphoria. The
identification with the Allies is made most explicitly by Victoria
Ocampo in a homage to Winston Churchill, a great man, whose
greatness is underlined by the fact that he can understand T. E.
Lawrence, one ofVictoria's long-standing hero figures: 'Que Winston
Churchill sepa que hay aqui un grupo de argentinos fervientes de las
cosas del espiritu "sin las cuales todo es ceniza y fango". '1 1
The development of the war was a constant preoccupation in the
magazine, especially in the section 'Calendario', which appeared
irregularly throughout this period. The following section on foreign
contributors will continue this argument, but, for the purpose of
giving the general background to these years, it is necessary to look
forward to the issue dedicated to the liberation of Paris, which
appeared in October 1 944. For Sur , the North Americans had helped
to liberate Europe, and were worthy ofrespect, but the spiritual home
of the magazine was still Paris. Victoria Ocampo set the tone by
remembering the streets of Paris, and her friendship with Giiiraldes
there. In the lasting civilisation of this city, she looked for a spirit of
harmony, hope and optimism.12 Martinez Estrada also defined
France as a part of his spiritual homeland and warned of the dangers
of new Hitlers growing up at home. Using an analogy which might
upset contemporary Caribbean writers who see in Caliban a symbol of
nationalist revolt, and which was later to be contradicted by his own
acceptance of the Cuban Revolution in the 1 96os, he stressed the need
to 'Ver a Rosenberg y a Hitler como albaceas y mariscales de aquellas
inferioridades del despojado Caliban sublimadas a credo.'13
The nuances of the event were registered in complex fashion by
Borges: 'Esajornada populosa me depar6 tres heterogeneos asombros:
el grado fisico de mi felicidad cuando me dijeron la liberaci6n de Paris;
el descubrimiento de que una emoci6n colectiva puede no ser innoble;
el enigmatico y notorio entusiasmo de muchos partidarios de Hitler. '14
The first sentiment would be shared by all the Sur writers. The second
has provoked the wrath ofleft-wing critics, but it accurately reflects
Borges' rejection ofany notions ofcollectivity, which lead, in his view,
to totalitarian Marxist or fascist states. The collective feeling he talks
about in this instance is a reduced number oflike-minded individuals.
In fact, few people went to a rally organised to celebrate the liberation
of Paris, and the police broke up the meeting. It was a middle and
upper middle-class gathering, as Marfa Rosa Oliver noted with some
 THE WAR YEARS 99

dismay: the working classes were increasingly attracted by Peron.15

Borges' third observation, an habitual paradox, sees fascism as being
so intrinsically evil, that not even the Nazis could honestly hope for its
success.
The enthusiasm for the liberation of Paris was consolidated by an
issue on peace injuly 1 945. By this time, the warning that Argentina
might be about to embrace a system that Europe had just thrown off
was being voiced quite explicitly. Victoria Ocampo stated that: 'La
enfermedad se habia generalizado a tal punto que los focos de
infecci6n permanecen activos, aqui y alla, bajo las formas mas
imprevistas, mas nocivas.'16 Anderson Imbert expressed the hope that
the superpowers would respect individual rights and that Nazism
within Argentina, especially in the Argentine army, would be
eradicated. Anderson Imbert was at this time teaching at the Uni­
versity ofTucuman, after having spent two years in the United States
as a visiting scholar. His analysis echoes North American fears that
a fourth Reich might be established in Argentina. Anderson Imbert
was affiliated to the Socialist party and was the director of the literary
supplement of the party's paper, La Vanguardia , yet his analyses were
quite acceptable to Sur in this period of'democratic alliance' against
the growing strength of Peron.17 The issue counterposed searching
analyses by Sabato and Anderson Imbert, with the well-intentioned
effusions of Gonzalez Lanuza and Guillermo de Torre, and the
quirkiness ofBorges, who saw the war in terms ofthe 'cyclical' battle of
Waterloo.18 Rafael Alberti pointed out that there were still fascists left
in the world and that peace would be an:
. . . imperfecta Diosa
Basta que en mi pais tambien estalle.19

With the end ofthe war Argentina could once again have free access to
Europe, the only route to cultural modernisation. This optimism
would, however, be tempered by the increasing power of Peron, who
would open the gates to the forces of barbarism.
It has been seen, therefore, that Sur's support for the Allies, though
couched in natural terms as the only valid response of civilised men,
was a specific criticism of the government in Argentina. By 1 940, the
hesitant liberal opening of President Ortiz had failed and Argentina
fell under the rule first of the corrupt Castillo regime, and later of a
series of military governments after the successful coup of 1 943.
Victoria Ocampo was one of the founder members of 'Acci6n
I OO SUR

Argentina', an organisation to monitor Nazi infiltration in Argentina,

and she had little sympathy for the various Argentine regimes who
seemed to be collaborators.20 She and her group knew what to reject:
the corruption of the liberal model in the 'Infamous Decade' and the
growing populism of Peron. There was no clear idea, however, as to
what the alternatives should be. Ocampo, like other enlightened
members of her class, was attracted to the United States, but hers was
not a well-thought-out economic or political analysis. Her hatred of
Peron would lead her to a defence of eternal human values and of an
abstract meritocracy. The limitations of this position would become
increasingly apparent in the following decade. Laclau describes the
new historical conjuncture: 'In the mirror ofliberal ideological forms,
now broken and murky, new and unforeseen combinations were
possible. This was the breach opened at the ideological level, and with
it the possibility of populism.'21
These new combinations would emerge from the military coup in
June 1 943. This regime adopted a number of moralistic measures,
strengthening the grip of the Church in opposing divorce and civil
marriage. Women's rights were curtailed, as were their organisations:
the 'Committee for Victory' was forced to disband. The government
in 1 944 also clamped down on internal dissension and did not tolerate
criticism of its policies: the rally to celebrate the liberation of Paris, as
already mentioned, was broken up by mounted police. All these
measures affected Victoria Ocampo directly. More important,
however, after 1 943, was the increasing power of Peron, who
assiduously cultivated army and working-class support, in an attempt
to consolidate a new political alliance. All the Sur contributors
opposed him, for as Maria Rosa Oliver points out, 'El fascismo, para
nosotros . . . se encarnaba en Peron, sus epigonos los nacionalistas
(con o sin uniforme) y el clero, que hasta desde los confesionarios lo
apoyaba. '22 The alliance ofdemocratic parties that opposed him could
not, however, articulate a viable programme, despite the aggressive
support of Spruille Braden, the United States Ambassador.23 A rally
in opposition to Peron held on 1 2 October was a relatively minor
affair, despite its being immortalised in the rhetoric of the Brazilian
poet Augusto Federico Schmidt:
Yo os vi gentes de Buenos Aires
Vi a Victoria Ocampo, esplendida en el tiempo
Mezclada a las masas
 THE WAR YEARS IOI
Oi el canto del pueblo
Nacido del alma del pueblo
Clamando por la libertad.24

I t was during the mass rally of I 7 October, however, that the real 'voz
del pueblo' was heard, which helped to take Peron to an election
victory. Within this context, we can now consider the specific
contribution of Sur in the cultural field.
Foreign contributors
French writers were a determining absence in this period: theirs was a
silence that had to be broken before civilisation could be restored.
Contributions consisted mainly of reports from the front. The horror
and the heroism of war were graphically presented in two extracts
from Andre Malraux, published in July and August I 94I (nos.
85-6) ; Jean Malaquais published extracts from a war diary in three
issues of the magazine, from May to August I 943 (nos. 104-6); Leon
Paul Fargue contributed a short story, 'Caminar', describing France
just after the outbreak of the war (no. I I I , january I 940); and Jean
Paulhan, the former editor ofthe Nouvelle Revue Fran{aise, was free after
the liberation of Paris to tell of the conditions ofimprisoned writers in
occupied France and of his own arrest and questioning (no. I 23,
November I 944) · He was saved from the firing squad thanks to the
intervention of Drieu la Rochelle. As communications became easier,
Sur obtained another scoop, publishing Sartre's account of Paris
under the occupation (no. I 24, February I 945) · The Argentine public
was, therefore, kept well informed as to the nature of the war and its
impact on French culture. German writers were included if they
expressed anti-fascist sentiment. For this reason both Thomas Mann
and Bertolt Brecht appeared briefly in I 945.
Exiled French writers could contribute to a magazine financed by
Sur and edited by Roger Caillois, Lettres Fran{aises, which appeared
regularly throughout the war, from the middle of I 94 1 . In the
mythology of Sur, emphasis is placed on the fact that copies of the
magazine were dropped by the British over occupied France. Perhaps
more significant for this account is the appearance of the first
translations of Borges' stories into French, in the fourteenth issue,
October I944· The two stories, under the title 'Les Assyriennes' were
'La loteria en Babilonia' and 'La biblioteca de Babel'. A series ofbooks,
entitled 'La Porte Etroite ', was also edited to help fill the vacuum left by
the dislocation of French publishing houses.
1 02 SUR

Whilst patronage mainly consisted of the financial support given to

Lettres Fran(aises (the magazine bore the Sur arrow logo) , Victoria
Ocampo also invited the exiled writer Denis de Rougemont to lecture
in Buenos Aires.25 Rougemont once again stressed the spiritual 'third
position'. In an article, 'iPara que sirven los escritores?', he argued
that the duty of the writer was to maintain the quality and purity of
language.26 The conditions, however, required a more committed
response. In a radio broadcast given in the United States and
published by Sur in April 1 943 (no. 1 03), Jacques Maritain stressed
that the Americas had a crucial role to play in the developrrient of
Europe after the war.27 Victoria Ocampo and her magazine took
these words quite literally by organising, with the photographer
Gisele Freund, another temporary exile in Buenos Aires, a shipment of
clothes and food to be distributed in France through Adrienne
Monnier's 'La Maison des Amis des Livres'. Several tons of rationed
goods were sent in this way, whilst the spiritual fast suffered by Sur
began to be alleviated by the renewed availability ofFrench writers. It
published a debate between Benda and Gide (no. 1 23, April 1 945)
and an earlier homage to Jean Giraudoux (no. 1 1 5, May 1 944) .
Significantly, one epoch was closed with the death of Valery and
another began with the reappearance of Sartre.
The 'dedication' issue was always an important aspect ofSur's work
and would become increasingly frequent as the friends of the
magazine grew steadily older. Such issues served to canonise certain
writers, and Victoria Ocampo's personal reminiscences also firmly
placed the magazine within the orbit of universal culture. In Sur 1 32
(October 1 945) she told of her early meeting with Valery, in a self­
deprecating tone which only served to underline her particular
privileges: 'jQue oportunidad inaudita para una sudamericana -
cactus en maceta - que cree en la literatura religiosamente . . . ! Yo
vela en el el mas perfecto simbolo de Europa, de SU preeminencia, de SU
cultura, de su hechizo, de su calidad, de su exactitud soberanas.'28
Later in the magazine she published several of his letters which - as
with Virginia Woolfa decade earlier- mainly acknowledge a flurry of
gifts. A particularly pleasing item was a pair of slippers: 'Chose tres
admirable, il arrive que ces objets essentiels me vont comme des gants!
Cela tient du miracle!'29 This issue also contains poems in homage to
Valery by Supervielle, Pedro Salinas andJorge Guillen, and a notable
epitaph from Borges (which could serve equally well as a comment on
Borges' own literary production) : 'De un hombre que, en un siglo que
 THE WAR YEARS 103
adora los ca6ticos idolos de la sangre, de la tierra y de la pasi6n,
prefiri6 siempre los lucidos placeres del pensamiento y las secretas
aventuras del orden.'30
On a sadder note, Ocampo quietly acknowledged the end of her
stormy relationship with Drieu la Rochelle, who committed suicide at
the end of the war, having collaborated with the Nazis and edited the
Nouvelle Revue Fran<;aise during the hostilities. She comments on the
anguish of his life and remarks: 'A Pierre Drieu la Rochelle quiza le
hubiera valido mas haber muerto a los 20 aiios en Verdun.'31 Her
lengthy account of his life would appear some years later.
Valery, as Borges realised, symbolises a certain tendency in
literature, a purity of form, of art for its own sake. With the
reappearance of Sartre, such attitudes would be severely criticised, for
Sartre was to teach writers that it was not enough to warm their
slippers by the fire and engage in secret adventures of order. Sur's
appropriation of Sartre, its uneasy temporary acceptance of commit­
ment, will be discussed fully in the next chapter. This section should
close instead with the words of another member of an earlier
generation of French literature, Andre Gide, who symbolised the
aspirations of the first generations of Sur. Victoria Ocampo travelled
to France in mid 1 946, and Gide addressed a homage to her, referring
to her as the 'mythe argentin' who incorporated everything Argentina
could offer that was kind, generous and charming.32
England could offer little to the magazine, save its exemplary
behaviour. Ocampo and Borges defined 'exemplary' in different
ways. For Ocampo, the warrior-intellectual should be studied and
praised. Her model in this period was T. E. Lawrence. She published
an article on Lawrence, 'Misi6n de Lawrence de Arabia' in October
1 942; Lawrence's letters to Lionel Curtis in January 1 943; further
letters in November 1 945; and her own full-length book study, 338171.
T.E. , at the end of 1 942. It was enthusiastically reviewed by Martinez
Estrada in January 1 943. Lawrence becomes one of Victoria's life­
long obsessions and a source of ribald jokes for those who read her
interest out of context. In Lawrence she saw not an imperial spy, but
an ascetic, who was driven by his inner feelings to lead the revolt in the
desert. By mortifying the flesh and cultivating the spirit, man could
reach harmony, and only after such a spiritual journey could he be
justified in taking up righteous arms. In the main, Victoria Ocampo
supported the pacifism of Gandhi (see her article in no. 9 1 , April
1 942 ) , but the war against fascism justified the use of arms and the
104 SUR

ideal 'T.E.' could be contrasted, implicitly, with the Argentine

military which spawned such men as Peron.
Borges and his group of friends, however, found a very different
tradition in England. Sur published the work of Sir Thomas Browne
and Thomas De Quincey, both of whom Borges had read produc­
tively in his early years. Sir Thomas Browne had been the subject ofan
essay in lnquisiciones in 1 925, in which Borges stressed the clarity and
universality of such works as Urn Burial.33 In issue no. 1 1 1 (January
1 944) he and Bioy Casares translated and commented on the fifth
chapter of Hydriotaphia .34 De Quincey was also an important precur­
sor, as Borges remarked toJames Irby: 'I read De Quincey when I was
sixteen; since then I have read and reread him innumerable times. He
is a very suggestive writer, with an almost inexhaustible curiosity and
erudition. As an explorer ofdream life, he is unique in literature.'35 De
Quincey was one of the favourite authors of the Borges group. Silvina
Ocampo and Patricio Canto translated an extract from his Autobio­
graphical Sketches which tells of the death of one of his sisters and his
realisation of the horror of the world.36 Horror impinging on the
innocence of youth would be one of the favourite themes in Silvina
Ocampo's short stories.
Among the very few other references to English culture are the
publication ofT. S. Eliot on war poetry (no. 99, December 1 942), a
short story by Denton Welch on public school implicit homosexuality
(no. 1 22, September 1 944) and an important essay by Herbert Read
'Arte y crisis' (no. 1 2 1 , August 1 944) , taken from Cyril Connolly's
magazine Horizon .37
The influence of the Spanish exiles was to be found in two main
areas: book publishing and individual production. A number of
Spanish publishing houses moved to Argentina. Espasa Calpe began
its 'Colecci6n Austral' in Buenos Aires and one of the editors of that
house, Gonzalo Losada, set up his own publishing concern. Losada,
unlike Sur, had an Americanist perspective: he would soon attract
future Nobel Prize winners such as Miguel Angel Asturias and Pablo
Neruda. Another house, the Editorial Sudamericana, was set up by
Spanish emigres and had an agreement with Sur to use its imprint on
one of its collections. Sudamericana, as we have seen, published two
anthologies, Antologia de la literatura fantastica ( 1 940) and Antologia
poetica argentina ( 1 94 1 ) , edited by Borges, Bioy and Silvina Ocampo. It
was clear that the Sur publishing house was not willing to gamble on
becoming a large-scale commercial concern. At a time when
 THE WAR YEARS

publishing houses were mushrooming, it cut the number of its titles

from eighteen in 1 937 and also in 1 938, to two in 1939 and 1 940, eight
in 1 94 1 , six in 1 942, two in 1 943, four in 1 944 and one only in 1 945. It
still published Borges, but he was later wooed away by a small
publishing house, Emece, which has now become one of the largest
concerns in Argentina. Sur would only take risks in areas that it knew
well. It published the 'family' and a few foreign friends, but did not
cast its nets wide: it was difficult to defend standards if too many
different authors required definition. It was left, in the main, for the
Spaniards to take the risks and prosper, and Sur was to comment on
this increased production in its book review pages.36
Among the Spanish exile poets, Sur benefited from regular
contributions from Rafael Alberti. Alberti cannot be considered a
part of the Sur group, for they had an ambiguous relationship with his
poetry, praising his lyrical intensity, but unable to appreciate his
committed verse. Pablo Neruda had been responsible for organising
his journey into exile in South America, and Alberti had intended
living in Chile before his publisher, Losada, persuaded him of the
advantages ofremaining in the most dynamic cultural centre in Latin
America. In Buenos Aires, he became a good friend of Gonzalez
Lanuza, Pedro Henriquez Urefia and Maria Rosa Oliver, and the
magazine was the most prestigious journal in which the now penniless
poet could publish. Gonzalo Losada brought out his two main
volumes ofpoetry, Entre el clavely la espada ( 1 940) and A lapintura,poema
del colory la Unea ( 1945-48) ( 1 948) , and Sur published representative
poems from each of these phases. Initially, there was no ideological
discord, for Alberti's experiences of the Spanish Civil War found a
sympathetic audience. His major poem, a lament on the death of
Antonio Machado, was given pride of place in the September 1940
issue.39 Also in the early 1 94os, Alberti worked to rediscover the
rhythm and freedom of his verse, discarding the instant, declamatory
poems that he had written as a reaction to the shock of the Civil War.
In 'Arion', he invokes the sea as the source of this new verse.40 His
formal, rigorous 'sonetos corporales' could also be seen as a poet
rediscovering his craft.
The preferences of the Sur group were revealed in a homage to
Alberti written by Gonzalez Lanuza in issue 28 1 (March-April 1 963).
He argues that the volume of Alberti's verse on painting is the most
significant in his later <euvre , since it is the least interested in the after­
effect ofwar, and the need for commitment. Gonzalez Lanuza implies
1 06 SUR

that Alberti later became obsessed by exile and his poetry suffered
accordingly.41 The poems on painting, however, delight in formalism
and in the craft of culture, for Alberti's two main interests had always
been painting and poetry, as he describes in a visit to the Prado,
La ilusi6n de sofiarme siquiera un olvidado
Alberti en los rincones del Museo del Prado;
la sorprendente, ag6nica, desvelada alegria
de buscar la Pintura y hallar la Poesia,
con la pena enterrada de enterrar el dolor
de nacer un poeta por morirse un pintor.42
This series of poems attempts to express in another medium the
intuitions of a painter: to translate rather than comment on works of
art.43 He begins the poem on Goya, for example, with a series of
antithetical nouns which captures the paradoxes of Goya's art.44
The poem to Picasso, on the other hand, presents in different poetic
fragments the many stages of Picasso's artistic development. He uses
isolated words to recreate abstraction in painting, or recaptures the
apocalyptic vision ofGuernica. The final lines of the poem, however,
were the most problematic for Sur :
Y aqui el juego del arte comienza a ser un juego
explosivo.45

The explosive game could no longer be contained in the realm of art

and, as his political commitment grew, so Alberti was to become
increasingly distanced from the magazine.
Jorge Guillen, on the other hand, had always been a more cerebral
poet, a professor-poet, marginal to political debate. He published
several of his major poems in Sur and the first complete edition of
Cdntico in Buenos Aires with Sudamericana ( 1 950) . The first poem to
appear in Sur, 'Mundo en claro' (no. 8 1 , June 1 94 1 ) , was later
indexed in Cdntico with capital letters, Guillen's way ofnoting his most
significant poems. From his exile in the United States, in Wellesley
College, Guillen reworked the poems that would make up Cdntico, and
published these mainly in Latin American journals. Guillen's own
awareness of the importance of the work of Argentine writers can be
found in an unpublished poem, 'Al margen de Borges':
Sofiemos, alma, leamos
Entre figuras y signos
Sofiemos - en la memoria -
Ajedrez, alquimia, cabala,
 THE WAR YEARS

Palimpsesto, laberinto,
Sumo jardin: biblioteca

jMisteriosa Enciclopedia!46

Latin American contributors

Thanks to Maria Rosa Oliver's visit to Brazil, Sur prepared a special
issue in September 1 942 entitled 'Homenaje a Brasil'. It was a homage
not just to the literature, but also to the political initiatives of the
Brazilian regime. The political intention was made explicit in the
'Notas' section, which published a speech by Vargas on Brazil's entry
into the Second World War exhorting the American continent to
stand together against a common threat.47 A solidarity meeting for
Brazil took place in Buenos Aires in September 1 942 and the magazine
published one of the speeches: 'En esta hora en que, frente a la artera
agresi6n nazi, el Brasil ha debido erguirse en defensa de su honor y su
derecho, el pueblo argentino ha sentido la necesidad de expresar al
pueblo brasilefio su inequivoca solidaridad. '48 This was of course an
unpalatable sentiment for the government of Argentina which was
trying to preserve neutrality and was faced with a United States arms
embargo and a policy of supplying Lend-lease arms and a steel-mill to
Brazil. At a time when Sur discovered hemispheric solidarity, the geo­
political planners in the Argentine army feared Brazilian aggression in
the Southern hemisphere. Despite its serious political intentions,
certain articles reverted to Carmen Miranda stereotypes. Alvaro de
Silva spoke of the exoticism of the country, now faced by blackouts:
'Sin embargo, junto a las cosas serias que preocupan hoy al pueblo
brasileiro, esta esa constante de la raza - la inquietud sensual, la
emoci6n erotica, hijas del paisaje exuberante, del clima ardiente.'49
The anthology itself, introduced by Carlos Lacerda, contains
general essays on the novel and poetry in Brazil, a short, realist extract
by Jorge Amado dealing with dockside prostitution ('En el muelle') ,
and a poetry anthology (Manuel Bandeira, Mario de Andrade,
Anibal Machado, Ribeiro Couto, Cecilia Meireles, Murilo Mendes,
Jorge de Lima, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Adalgisa Nery,
Vinicius de Moraes and Augusto Federico Schmidt) . It also includes
an essay on painting in Brazil and short stories by Marques Rebelo
and Rubem Braga. The quality is uniformly high and a short literary
bibliography is provided for each author. It offers a cross-section of
108 SUR

Rio de Janeiro cultural life, for Rio was the main base for Maria Rosa
Oliver during her stay. Once again, the initiative was not sustained;
although the magazine rather surprisingly published Jorge Amado
and Gilberto Freyre's introduction to Casa Grandey Sen;:,ala on other
occasions,50 it had almost never included works by their Spanish
American regionalist equivalents.
Apart from this anthology there are only a few - but significant -
contributions from other Latin American writers. Gabriela Mistral
continued to publish occasional poems and Sur celebrated her award
of the Nobel Prize in its issue of December 1 945 (no. 1 34) , which
contains Victoria Ocampo's assessment of their friendship and
Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza's views on her poetry, comparing her with
Santa Teresa. Felisberto Hernandez, the Uruguayan fantasy writer,
published an early work, 'Las dos historias' (no. 1 03, April 1 943),
which reveals an attention to self-conscious narrativity: a narrator
monitors the attempts ofa young man to write the story ofhis love for a
girl. As her love fades, so the narrative fragments. Hernandez would
later be acknowledged as one of the most significant of the River Plate
fantasists, and learned much from the Argentinians throughout this
decade.
Octavio Paz continued to send in poems and notes from Mexico and
from his travels in the United States. Jose Bianco has stressed the
importance of these publications for Paz: 'Yo tenia una carta de
Octavio Paz y una carta, muy simpatica, que la debo tener
guardada, que me dice que el dia que apareci6 su primer articulo en
Sur . . esa noche no durmi6 de alegria. Son poemas, no se que era, y
.

yo le mande pedir que me hiciera unas notas sobre esta literatura

mexicana.'51 Paz published in this period a range of his literary
interests, a conversation with Robert Frost, during his first visit to the
United States, and an analysis ofLeopoldo Zea's book on positivism in
Mexico, which revealed a fine grasp of Mexican history and an early
radicalism.52 We are still far from the Utopian view of history
expressed in El laberinto de la soledad in 1 950.
He also published two of the poems that would later be included in
Libertad bajopalabra , 'Mediodia' (no. 85, October 1 94 1 ) and 'La caida'
(no. 1 09, November 1 943) . 'Mediodia' is Paz's earliest development of
the symbol ofnoon as that magic moment when time seems suspended
or when suspension appears most possible.53 The poem describes the
poet's feeling ofbecoming one with nature, through the sun's light and
the lengthening shadows. Interestingly, Paz radically revised the Sur
 THE WAR YEARS 1 09
version for its publication in book form. In the earlier version, there is
constant reference to the poet's responsibility to 'el pueblo':
Oh tembloroso pueblo no nacido
que por mi tacto llegas invisible,

pueblo, naciente pueblo no encarnado,

en la ag6nica espera, en el desvelo,
de una lengua que nombre lo innombrado.54
By 1 947, he was clearly embarrassed by such effusions and the poem
becomes a personal quest, and an attempt to synthesise opposites
through the vision of poetry. 'La caida' develops the theme of the
anguish of existence, the despair caused by the passing of time. Only
reason can offer an ambiguous source of strength:
Y nada queda, sino el goce impio
de la raz6n cayendo en Ia inefable
y helada intimidad de su vacio.55
Paz was one of very few Latin American writers to become closely
attached to the Sur group, especially the Bioys andJose Bianco. When
Danubio Torres Fierro travelled to Argentina to interview writers for
Paz's magazine Plural, in the mid 197os, he concentrated exclusively
on the Sur group. The rest of Latin America was an unknown
continent, despite the revival of Pan-Americanism, which led to a Sur
debate in October 1 94 1 , entitled '�Tienen las Americas una historia
comun?'. The debate reveals the level of generality at which such
concepts operated. Only Pedro Henriquez U refia and German
Arciniegas contradicted Victoria Ocampo's Europeanist stance:
'Nosotros no podemos buscar la explicaci6n de America y el destino de
America fuera de America misma.'56 The debate was opened by the
French visitor Roger Caillois and floundered in Good Neighbourly
sentiment. A more specific consideration of the problems of Latin
America was to be found in other magazines, in particular the
Mexican review Cuadernos Americanos . Cuadernos Americanos grew out of
a similar spirit ofPan-Americanism. Its first issue appeared injanuary
1 942, just after the attack on Pearl Harbour, at a time when all the
American States were meeting together at the Rio Conference. Its
opening dedication set out its intentions which have been followed,
with varying success, for the past forty years: 'En los actuales dias
criticos, un grupo de intelectuales mexicanos y espafioles, resueltos a
enfrentarse con los problemas que plantea Ia continuidad de la
cultura, se ha sentido obligado a publicar Cuadernos Americanos,
1 10 SUR

Revista Bimestral, dividida en cuatro secciones tituladas: Nuestro

Tiempo, Aventura del Pensamiento, Presencia del Pasado, Dimen­
sion Imaginaria.'57 It therefore differed from Sur in its explicit analysis
of contemporary affairs and in its Latin American and Inter­
American focus. Like Sur, it supported the North American war effort,
but it would also contain critical articles and offered a forum for
intellectual debate. Alfonso Reyes, who had been doubtful of the
Americanist intentions ofSur, gave his weight to the appearance ofthe
new magazine.58 The driving force behind the magazine has been
Jesus Silva Herzog, an economist who was a key figure in the
negotiations for the expropriation of oil in Mexico in the late 1 930s.
With such expertise, the magazine has paid as much attention to
developments in the social sciences as to the 'dimension imaginaria',
which had been for so long the preserve of Sur. It illustrated that an
alternative attitude to that of Sur was possible and coherent, and its
fortieth birthday has been recently celebrated with a large exhibition
in Havana. The Cubans ofthe Revolution see themselves as the heir to
this nationalist, Americanist tradition, as Fernandez Retamar pointed
out: 'Cuadernos Americanos, la revista donde han encontrado tribuna
antifascistas y antiimperialistas . . . nos da un ejemplo intelectual y
moral de como comportarse con dignidad y altura a lo largo de una
vida. '59 Sur could not have been considered by them in these terms.

Argentine writers

Narrative
It is in this period, perhaps for the only time in the history of the
magazine, that Argentine creative writing predominates. The interest
and dynamism come, in the main, from Borges who contributed
something new and original to almost every issue: the stories that
would make up the anthology Eljard{n de senderos que se bifurcan ( 1 94 1 )
or the amplified Ficciones ( 1 944) , essays and short, idiosyncratic film
reviews.Jose Bianco has remarked that Borges' contributions justified
the publication of the magazine by themselves: ' . . . elevaient son
contenu et certaines fois le denivelaient, produisant clans quelques
numeros d'angoissants trous d'air, telle etait la distance existant entre
les hautes preoccupations metaphysiques OU esthetiques de Borges, la
legerete et l'intrepidite de son style et le ton plutot plat, ou . . .
emporte ou furieux de certains collaborateurs. '60 Bianco wrote these
 THE WAR YEARS III

words soon after he had left Sur following his disputed visit to Cuba.
They were clearly intended to irritate Victoria, and succeeded, as a
letter from her to Borges shows.61 Yet there is a lot of truth in Bianco's
observations. It comes as a delight, after reading twenty pages of a
rather turgid general essay on universal culture, at this time, to come
across an aphorism or a few closely argued pages from Borges. It is as if
two worlds coexist in uneven development: the nineteenth-century
essay form and the self-conscious fictiveness of the twentieth century.
In several conversations with Adolfo Bioy Casares, he expressed
surprise that I should spend my time studying a magazine instead of
reading good literature. This reflects the group's rejection ofliterary
'history', but it also points to an ambivalence towards the magazine
itself. For all their reservations, however, it was in Sur that the group's
most substantial work was published.
The last chapter dealt with the elaboration ofa theory ofnon-realist
literature in two key texts: Borges' prologue to La invenci6n de More! and
Bioy's introduction to the Antologia de la literatura fantastica. In his
review of Eljardin de senderos que se bifurcan in Sur (no. 92, May 1 942) ,
Bioy attacks the conventions ofrealism. For him, the writing ofBorges
'creates and satisfies a desire for a literature which talks about
literature and abstract thought' .62 In its emphasis, Bioy's reading is a
precursor of structuralist analyses of Borges. He also heatedly attacks
the idea that Borges should refer to some ideal Argentine landscape or
tradition: 'De la pampa nos quedan los viajes largos y algunas
incomodidades. Estamos en la periferia de los grandes bosques y de la
arqueologia de America. Creo, sin vanagloria, que podemos
decepcionarnos de nuestro folklore . . . Es natural que para un frances
la literatura sea la literatura francesa. Para un argentino es natural
que su literatura sea toda la buena literatura del mundo.'63 Argentine
literature, it follows from this, is to be non-mimetic, conventional and
self-reflexive.
A form of literature particularly appropriate for an attack on the
mimetic is detective fiction. Edgar Allan Poe defined the genre in a
way that anticipated Borges and Bioy in his emphasis on form and
structure.64 The detective story, for these writers, is a fiction in which
the relevance or the necessity of the content should not be in doubt. Its
construction is such that every presence in the book, animate or
inanimate, is a clue and not a contingent intrusion for the purposes of
atmosphere or naturalism. The reader, like the detective himself, has
to interpret everything as evidence and, as the amount of evidence
II2 SUR
grows, so the hypotheses accounting for it must constantly be
renewed. In attacking the psychological novel, Borges and Bioy felt
that novelists had forgotten how to tell a story. They edited a series of
detective stories, 'El septimo circulo', in the 1 940s to counterbalance
this tendency; and Bioy and Silvina wrote their own, rather literary
detective novel Los que aman, odian in that series in 1 946. Borges has
remarked to Richard Burgin that the series was useful, since it
reminded writers that plots were important. According to Borges, if
one reads detective stories and takes up other novels afterwards, the
latter appear shapeless.65 The extent of their rejection of realism is
expressed by Bioy: 'De haber sido necesario proponerle un modelo a
un escritor joven, entre Ulysses y una novela policial, creo que
hubiesemos elegido sin titubear la novela policial.'66
The interest in plots and plotting is linked also to Borges' view of
history and of systems. Plots are seductive in themselves; they have a
formal elegance which captivates the reader through the writer's skill
and control. Yet at the same time Borges encourages the sceptical
conviction that any order is plotting and therefore contingent. In
fiction, the writer may control causality, but how can we know that
God has inscribed causality in history and in the world, especially a
world gripped by the evil plots of totalitarian regimes?67
The interest in detective fiction and its divorce from history is shown
in an acrimonious exchange between Borges and Roger Caillois.
Borges reviewed Caillois's socio-cultural study of le roman po/icier and
dismissed his argument that the genre was born when Joseph Fouche
established the Paris police force: 'Descreo de la historia; ignoro con
plenitud la sociologia; algo creo entender de literatura, ya que en mi
no descubro otra pasi6n que la de las letras ni casi otro ejercicio. En la
monografia c;\e Caillois, lo literario me parece muy valedero; lo
hist6rico-sociol6gico, muy "unconvincing". '68 Caillois attempted to
justify his approach, but in the following issue, Borges proceeded to
dismiss his methodology:
Los deterministas razonan que cualquier momento de la historia del universo
. . . es el resultado fatal de todos los momentos anteriores, que son
virtualmente infinitos. Planteado asi el problema, nadie puede negar una
relaci6n entre los "mouchards" napole6nicos de 1 803 y el fosforescente
mastin de la familia Baskerville. Planteado de cualquier otro modo, esa
relaci6n es "irrelevant" . . . La conjetura de Caillois no es err6nea; entiendo
que es inepta, inverificable.69
Poe, not Fouche, was the precursor of detective fiction: history has no
place in the plots of fiction and as a corollary, it might not obey such
 THE WAR YEARS 1 13
rigid laws. Caillois's promotion ofBorges was not therefore based on a
close friendship: Borges had little time for the rather serious
Frenchman, who nonetheless, as mentioned above, gave Latin
American literature a great boost in Europe by editing the series 'La
croix du sud' for Gallimard.
Borges and Bioy developed their interest in detective fiction and in
parodying the rather serious literati of Buenos Aires, in the Bustos
Domecq stories which first appeared in Sur in January and March
1 942: 'Las doce figuras del mundo' (no. 88) and 'Las noches de
Goliadkin' (no. 90) . It is no easy matter to decipher these texts and the
subsequent writing of Bustos Domecq (the first of whose 'collected
works' was published by the editorial Sur in 1 942) , for the references
depend very largely on recherche knowledge and private jokes. Whilst
it has been argued that the magazine Sur had a limited readership,
even many of these 'ideal' readers could not understand the esoteric
references and often gratuitous jokes. There is some degree of
author/reader complicity, for the reader can laugh at the ridiculous
characters depicted. At the same time, however, the reader's apparent
knowledge becomes part of the joke. There have been two main
readings of the Parodi texts. Silvia Molloy has argued cogently: 'Al
reconocer o creer reconocer, se conoce cada vez menos, y una vez
descifrado, el texto se vuelve impenetrable. Mas que de una parodia,
habria que hablar de la parodia de una parodia.' A parody ofa parody
or - at times it seems - sheer fun. A parody or satire implies control on
the part of the author and complicity with a reader who accepts the
author's criticism or condemnation of his characters. On occasions
Bustos Domecq seems deliberately to lose control and the resulting
caricature is completely gratuitous. Borges refers to this process in an
interview with Ronald Christ in the Paris Review in 1 967, when he
states that the stories are not parodies, but simply 'something' taken to
its ultimate consequences.70 In this interpretation, therefore, the
Bustos Domecq stories are literary games. A recent book by Andres
Avellaneda, however, questions such a reading.
In El habla de la ideologia, Avellaneda argues that the Bustos Domecq
stories reveal a set ofideological attitudes which were to become more
explicit in the satires Borges and Bioy wrote against Peron in the late
1940s. Avellaneda states that the earliest Parodi stories work at the
level ofliterary satire, exposing the cliches of modernismo , vanguardismo
and castizo nationalism, but that they also embrace a vision of society
in which the main characters are picaros , living a life ofdeceit and false
affectation. The reader is thus presented with a series ofreferences that
I 14 SUR
signify bad taste.71 The characters dress badly, eat unsubtle food, have
Italian surnames, live in the working-class suburbs of Buenos Aires,
display a crude nationalism and speak in a grotesque language
spattered with lunfardo (the argot of Buenos Aires) , Italianisms and
gauchesque slang. The reader ofsuch texts must supply the correct set
of ideal values which, in the context of Argentina in the early 1 940s,
were increasingly under attack as the narrow conservatism of the
Castillo regime was replaced by a military regime after I 943· The text
that Borges and Bioy wrote between 1 943 and 1 945, Un modelo para la
muerte (published in 1 946) , reveals a nightmare vision ofan Argentina
delivered up to military men, clerical fascists and nationalists who
propose an association for cultural development called 'AAA', the
Asociaci6n Aborigenista Argentina. Avellaneda's persuasive reading
adds the necessary social dimension to these early stories which are
most often read in terms of a purely literary intertextuality.
It is necessary, however, to trace the developing interest in the
detective genre. The 'Parodi' stories are a parody of the detective
novel in the style of Chesterton. The reference to Chesterton is
explicit, for we find Father Brown metamorphosed into a dangerous
gang leader. The stories adopt the Chesterton formula ofan intricate,
seemingly insoluble plot and a rational, common-sense answer. The
solutions are the work of pure intellect, for Parodi, an imprisoned
barber, does not, indeed cannot, move from one room. In this, as
Gervasio Montenegro points out, he is like Auguste Dupin who
captures the orang-outang in 'The Murders of the Rue Morgue': 'Sin
evadirse de su gabinete nocturno del Faubourg St. Germain. '72 Parodi
could not be more unlike Dupin - he is an old, balding, rather silly little
man - but his logical method has the same spectacular success. Such a
contrast undermines the self-conscious seriousness of Poe's character.
All the characters are obviously intended as parodies ofcertain sectors
of Argentine society, even if anarchic language sometimes deforms
them out of existence. The effect is produced precisely through the
characters' own observations: every word they utter implacably
denounces them. In 'Las noches de Goliadkin', Gervasio Montenegro
is a pretentious intellectual whose sentences are peppered with
Gallicisms and neologisms. In a spoof of the train mysteries such as
'Murder on the Orient Express', Montenegro unwittingly triumphs
over Father Brown's gang and recounts his adventures to great comic
effect. The attention to language is arguably the influence of Bioy
Casares, whose writing is always concerned with depicting colloquial
 THE WAR YEARS 1 15
language, unlike Borges, whose characters all speak in the same
oxymoronic way. Whatever the origins, the satire eventually became
stale, the jokes more arcane, and the two writers abandoned this
collaboration for a time. Bustos Domecq would, however, re-emerge
to cruel effect in a devastating critique of Peronism in 1 94 7, in a short
story entitled 'La fiesta del monstruo' .73
Rodolfo Walsh has argued that the Parodi stories introduced
detective fiction into the Spanish language.7'• In an interesting study
of the genre, Lafforgue and Rivera also signal the importance of the
Parodi stories, although they point to the earlier development of the
tradition in Argentina, but add that Borges and his friends were
always interested in the purest form of detective fiction and rejected
the later North American variant of intrigue and violence (Chandler
or Hammett) .75 Borges makes this preference explicit in a review of
Manuel Peyrou's stories La espada dormida : 'En estos cuentos
ejemplares, Manuel Peyrou demuestra comprender lo que no han
comprendido los individuos del err6neo y funesto Detection Club: el
cuento policial nada tiene que ver con la investigaci6n policial, con las
minucias de la toxicologia o de la balistica. Puede perjudicarlo todo
exceso de verosimilitud, de realismo; tratase de un genero artificial,
como la pastoral o la fabula.'76 Ricardo Piglia links the classic
detective plot with the Sur group's conception ofliterature: a fetishism
of pure intelligence, and a fascination with the investigator as pure
reasoner and great rationalist.77 Although Borges offers a critique of
pure reason, many of Piglia's insights can be verified. His reading
refers us once again to the purity and independence of 'plotting': if
everything is a plot, nothing is perhaps knowable.
Both detective fiction and fantastic literature, therefore, are
stripped of their emotional impact: fear or horror is alien to this
extremely literary mode, which Borges was to develop extensively
over the war years. The stories that now make up Ficciones are possibly
the most discussed pieces of writing in Latin American literature.
Rather than offer a new reading, this work attempts to foreground
what is usually seen as irrelevant literary history: the conditions of
literary production, which answer the questions, Why then? Why
there? Why thus? Borges' work has a deliberately polemical intention,
attempting to change the nature ofArgentine literature and support­
ing liberal elements within Argentine thought. In an essay, 'Sohre los
clasicos', he returns insistently to the theme of Argentine small­
mindedness, in the attempt to canonise Martin Fierro as the classic
1 16 SUR
work of Argentine literature: 'Nos propone un orbe limitadisimo, el
orbe rudimental de los gauchos.'78 The lack of tradition in Argentina
can, paradoxically, be an advantage: 'Carecemos de tradici6n
definida, carecemos de un libro capaz de ser nuestro simbolo
perdurable; entiendo que esa privaci6n aparente es mas bien un
alivio, una libertad . . . Gozamos de una tradici6n potencial que es
todo el pasado. '79 He states wearily at the end of the article that such
an argument will not find much favour with the nationalists in
Argentina. To be anti-national at this moment was to be mainly anti­
fascist. Borges would not, however, be able to distinguish later
between fascism and socialism, both of them ignoble collective
sentiments.
Nationalist writers, for Borges, could only write dull realist fiction.
In an essay published in October 1 942, he attacked the excesses of
literary description. He rejected two abuses: the overelaboration ofan
image ('no hay que multiplicar en vano las entidades') and the
tendency to ennumerate different parts of a whole, asking the reader
to combine these 'disjecta membra' into a coherent image.8° For
Borges, the only valid narrative process is 'el procedimiento indirecto'
captured by certain playwrights and his own favourite film director,
von Sternberg. An indirect style, a rejection ofrealism and nationalist
symbols, the use of purified motifs and techniques of detective and
fantastic literature, the emphasis on the importance of the reader
rather than the writer, the quest for knowledge to be found in elusive
books, the acknowledgement ofliterary criticism as the purest form of
detective work: all these aspects are to be found in the short stories and
they all refer to a specific period of cultural and social history. The
formal perfection of the stories also perfectly stifles any hope of
progress or order in the world. For Borges, as we have said, the world
seemed to be going mad, with the events in Europe and in Argentina.
His political statements condemn this process; his short stories strive
for extreme 'askesis' in the lucid and self-contained pleasures of art.
The degree ofBorges' (and indeed Sur's) isolation from government
patronage in Argentina was illustrated in 1 942, when Borges failed to
win the annual prize offered by the 'Comisi6n Nacional de Cultura' in
that year. Only Mallea voted for Borges and the prizes were awarded
to two minor realist writers, Eduardo Acevedo Diaz and Cesar
Carrizo, with Borges given second place. In July 1 942 Jose Bianco
organised a 'Desagravio a Borges' in the magazine, asking all the main
contributors to write short notes in support of Borges' memorable
 THE WAR YEARS 1 17
anthology, Eljardin de senderos que se bifurcan . Adolfo Bioy Casares sums
up the mood, in the wittiest and most acerbic note in the text:
Confiamos en que ningun lector confundira con libros los productos de los
seiiores Eduardo Acevedo Diaz y Cesar Carrizo. Si estos seiiores fueran
carpinteros y Cancha larga y Un lancero de Facundo fueran dos toquisimos
bancos, sentarse en ellos seria un acto de arrojo . . . En horas en que
solamente la hospitalidad con temas o paisajes nacionales puede aspirar al
reconocimiento en masa y a la recompensa oficial, Borges, guiado por la mas
pura vocaci6n, nos da, con Eljard{n de senderos que se bifurcan , los esplendores de
su fantasia y de su inteligencia.81

For the time being, Borges' literary innovations were appreciated

and shared by a small group ofwriters who also produced major work
in this period. In fact, the work of Borges appears to be part of a
tendency, rather than the creation of an isolated individual. Bioy
Casares published 'La trama celeste' inJune 1 944. Having written the
terse, ironic and elliptical fantasies, La invencion de Morel ( 1 940) and
Plan de evasion ( 1 945) , his work began to shift to a more relaxed,
humorous depiction of a familiar social setting. This story and others
later included in the anthology of short stories, La trama celeste (Sur,
1 948) , serve as a watershed in Bioy's narrative development: they are
still obsessed with metaphysical speculation, but the irony is more
good-natured. These stories (another was 'El otro laberinto', pub­
lished in Sur in January 1 946) advance the possibilities of infinite
worlds, the suspension of time, the negation of linearity, mutations
and parallel actions.82 Bioy uses the same narrative techniques as in his
earlier work: a series of unreliable narrators tell the story, basing their
accounts on fragments of documents, but now the emphasis lies not so
much in the complexity of the plot as in the delight in exploiting the
various narrative voices. The account in 'La trama celeste' of a
parallel Buenos Aires (one in which all Welsh influence has been
denied and in which the Carthaginian Empire still holds sway . . . ) is
less interesting than the ironic portrayal of Argentine test pilots and
Armenian scholars. It still conforms to Todorov's definition offantasy
- we are left swinging between consciousnesses, suddenly aware that
neither is 'reality' but only ways of looking at the world - but our
'hesitation' is stifled by laughter. Bioy always illustrates that man's life
is, by definition, a series ofmisunderstandings in works which are both
epistemological and humorous: epistemological, since they perceive
and explore human limitations, and humorous, since misunderstand­
ings by their very nature are rich in comic possibility.
1 18 SUR
Silvina Ocampo's development as a short story writer was similar to
Bioy's. Her early work, reflected in the short story 'Autobiografia de
Irene', published in Sur (no. 1 1 7, July 1 944) , is self-consciously
interested in the rigours of plotting, the craft of fiction and in
metaphysical speculation. The story is an elaborate intellectual
conceit: a girl can 'remember' the future, but not the past, for only
death will restore to her those memories. The world is a prison of
premonitions that the present serves to corroborate, such as the death
of her father. Yet she cannot escape from her prison. Near to death,
Irene meets the 'author' of the story and makes a final prophecy: she
announces that her testimony will begin with the words that do indeed
open the short story, and she is thus condemned constantly to be 're­
told' and will never achieve the prize of death. She is trapped in the
constant repetition of the story, just as the narrator in Bioy's La
invencion de Morel becomes part of a constantly repeated filmic reality.
She sets the story in Las Flores (where the Bioys have an estancia ) , but
the location is not important, despite occasional references to the
protagonist's longing and hatred for Buenos Aires. Las Flores is,
rather, a place where fictions and plots are elaborated, in endless
discussions with Borges and Bioy. The motif of the girl with a guilty
secret is, however, a constant in her work. Naivety is always false, the
innocence of childhood a mask for horror and brutality. She has
described her artistic practice in a poem, 'Acto de contrici6n':
Hay luz, hay rosas y hay basura
y repugnancia en la ambici6n mas pura,
como hay felicidad en mi dolor
y en mi dicha siempre algo aterrador.83
Even though 'Autobiografia de Irene' seems close to the work of
Borges and Bioy, most of her stories are very different in tone to the
decorum of these writers. The stories delight in cruelty, in colloquial
language, in revealing the seamy underside of middle-class morality.
Silvina Ocampo remains possibly the most underrated writer of the
Sur group. She lacked her sister's formidable social drive, and became
also a junior partner to Borges and Bioy, but continued to publish
cleverly crafted short stories and highly rhetorical poetry. (Her earlier
vocation as an artist - she studied under De Chirico - came to an end
when her mother was scandalised by a series of super-realist nude
canvases. )84
Jose Bianco must also be included as part of the group at this time:
his personal first edition ofEljard(n de senderos que se bifurcan contains a
 THE WAR YEARS 1 19
dedication from Borges, referring to him as a 'partner in fantasy'.
Unlike the others, however, Bianco is more interested in the
psychological development of his characters and in precise attention
to detail: closer to Henry James than Edgar Allan Poe. He has stated:
'Pero quiza yo prefiero los cuentos que admiten dos interpretaciones,
una racional y otra sobrenatural. Son cuentos que parecen enriquecer
al mundo. Asi hubiese querido que fuese "Sombras suele vestir" .'85
His stories are closer to a classical, nineteenth-century definition of
fantasy, in which the status of the real world is put in doubt, although
they remain self-consciously, almost preciously, literary. Bianco's
work as jefe de redaccion in Sur occupied most of his time and he has
produced few works of fiction: 'Sombras suele vestir' ( 1 94 1 ) and 'Las
ratas' ( 1 943) , both published in Sur, and a novel, La perdida del reino
( 1 972 ) . His influence has therefore mainly been felt in his careful
management of Sur, often acting as a counterweight to the very
specific literary and intellectual tastes of Victoria Ocampo.
The two stories, however, reveal a considerable artistic talent.
'Sombras suele vestir' was written for the anthology of fantastic
literature, but due to delays it was eventually published indepen­
dently in Sur. It deals with psychological obsession and leaves the
reader doubting whether the heroine really committed suicide and
lived on only in the imagination of her husband, or whether a
supernatural explanation is conceivable. Bianco pays close but
languid attention to details, and scenes blend with each other as the
worlds ofreality and unreality become merged. Careful, literary clues
are also left within the text. In 'Las ratas', a longer story published in
part in the magazine, the horror of suicide (or murder) builds up
slowly, through loving descriptions of the setting and of the narrator's
musical interests. Borges captures the tone well: 'En las novelas
policiales lo fundamental es el crimen, lo secundario la motivaci6n
psicol6gica; en esta el caracter de Heredia [the narrator] es lo
primordial; lo subalterno, lo formal, el envenenamiento de Julio . . .
Se trata enjames y Bianco de la premeditada omisi6n de una parte de
la novela, omisi6n que permite que la interpretemos de una manera o
de otra: ambas contempladas por el autor, ambas definidas.'86 Borges
again takes the opportunity to vilify contemporary Argentine
literature and offers Bianco as an example of one of the few writers
seriously engaged in renovating it.87 Another friend of Borges and
Bioy who must be included in this informal group is Manuel Peyrou
who also published fantastic and detective stories in Sur. The practice
1 20 SUR
of these five writers, together with the 'club' nature of the criticism of
each others' works, constituted an alternative aesthetic, defined both
in theory and practice, a practice which in its radical quest for fictional
autonomy denied .any social readings. Young writers were strongly
influenced by this new tendency and it often took a number ofyears for
them to find their own voice.
One such writer was Ernesto Sabato, who began to write notes and
book reviews in Sur at this time. Throughout the war years, Sabato
was slowly casting off his scientific background (he had a doctorate in
physics) in favour of letters. He first came to the attention of Sur
through Pedro Henriquez Urena, who had read a review by Sabato of
La invencion de Morel, published in a little magazine Teseo . Sur, in his
own words, became his university,88 and he tempered his solid
scientific background and his Marxisant-populist tendencies to the
aesthetics ofthe group. The influence is clear in one ofhis earliest notes
on science: 'Librado a la sola preocupaci6n de obtener un goce que en
el fondo no se diferencia del que siente un individuo que lee una
historia de detectives, el cientifico formula hip6tesis, hace experiencias
y funda teorias, sin estar dirigido las mas de las veces por un criterio
utilitario.'89 In two subsequent reviews, published in Sur no. 1 25
(March 1 945) and no. 1 33 (November 1 945) , he deals with the work
of Borges and Bioy and praises their experiments. Borges offers a
paradigm: 'Jorge Luis Borges ha creado, en nuestro idioma, un
paradigma de precision linguistica, de economia, de elegancia, de
majestad y estatuaria.'90
Yet Sabato would always feel uncomfortable working within this
paradigm, despite the clarity and economy of his first novel El tune/
( 1 948) . He grew increasingly apart from Sur, both aesthetically and
ideologically, as the complex process of Peronism began to affect
intellectual groups. This widening gap can be measured by compar­
ing Sabato's writings in the 1 940s with his autobiographical account
of those years in Abaddon el exterminador ( 1 974) . In the 1 940s, Sabato
edited 'Calendario' and offered a measured critique of Argentine
development in this period from a left-liberal perspective. His literary
notes were compact and economical. By the time of Abaddon, an
apocalyptic vision predominates, reflected in both the rhetorical style
and content of the work: a gnostic view of the power of evil in the
world. In Abaddon , his own attraction to art is seen as an early
meddling with the occult: 'Ahora comprendo que no fue por azar que
en aquel periodo iniciara mi abandono de la ciencia: la ciencia es el
 THE WAR YEARS 121
mundo de la luz.'91 The Second World War, once seen as a clash of
imperial powers, is now analysed in terms of the evil power of
Hanshofer, the Nazi geopolitician, and his relationship with Hess and
Hitler.92 Sabato would become the critical conscience of Sur over
Peronism and Cuba, but his writing could not remain within the
dominant literary mode. There is a perhaps apocryphal story told of
Witold Gombrowicz, the Polish writer who remained in Buenos Aires
in exile from 1 939 to 1 963. When he left Buenos Aires, it is claimed that
he shouted: 'J6venes, matad a Borges.' Sabato took his advice, but the
process required a number of years.
Attention has been given in an earlier chapter to the gap between
the aesthetics ofBorges and Mallea. This gap was to widen, as Mallea
wrote a series of lengthy agonised novels throughout the 1 940s. He
only published one extract in the magazine, 'Juego', a psychological
thriller, whilst Borges was to appear in almost every issue. The tone of
respect that had greeted Mallea's work also began to be modified.
Santiago Monserrat wrote in January 1 945 ofMallea's divorce from
history: 'Sin embargo, no prolonga sus esfuerzos hasta desarrollar una
doctrina capaz de revelar las Hneas fundamentales a que responde
hist6ricamente la realidad de ese hombre que constituye el objeto mas
hondo de su meditaci6n y de su arte. Sin ello resulta insuficiente la
inteligencia de cualquier tipo humano concreto.'93 These remarks
predate by some ten years the devastating critique of Mallea's work
offered by the following generation. Whilst the work of Borges would
later cause acrimonious debate, Mallea was simply ridiculed. The
form of prose fiction evolved in the early 1 94os made Mallea seem
irrelevant to many critics and exposed the vacuity of much of his
rhetoric.

The poets
Even though Sur can seem to be mainly concerned with narrative,
thanks to the energy of Borges and his colleagues, it also included a
number of significant Argentine poets. A poet and critic hostile to the
magazine, Cesar Fernandez Moreno, acknowledges that his genera­
tion had some access to its pages: 'La generaci6n del 40 habia sido bien
atendida por las revistas literarias, no solo utiliz6 sus propias
publicaciones, sino las de sus mayores, que le abrieron sus puertas con
amplitud.'94 Yet, at least in the period up to 1 946, Sur printed the work
of very few of these writers. Instead, the work of this younger group
1 22 SUR
was in the main disseminated by a number of short-lived but
important little magazines. A number of books and articles have
discussed the existence ofa 'generation' or a 'promotion' of 1 940.95 All
of these critics stress the neo-Romantic tone of these poets, their
melancholy and fondness for elegy, their divorce from the social world
and their appreciation of such poets as Valery, Rilke and Milosz.
Sur published a review essay by Novion de los Rios who, with
youthful hyperbole, makes sweeping claims for this new generation of
poets, unique in Argentine history: 'Seguro de que asi acontece por
primera vez dentro del panorama literario argentino . . . puede
aseverarse que una verdadera generacion de poetas comienza a
manifestarse con la voz profunda, secreta y unanime de nuestra
tierra. '9s His article attacks the lack of coherence of the so-called
generation of 1 92 5 (the martinjierristas ) and sees the beginnings of a
new poetry in the work of Ricardo Molinari, the Spanish poets, Rilke
and Neruda. He does not analyse the literary output of the young
poets, but gives a list of new names: Sabate, Ponce de Leon, Basilio
Uribe, Eduardo Calamaro, Enrique Molina, Miguel Angel Gomez,
Vicente Barbieri, Olga Orozco, Juan Rodolfo Wilcock, Alfonso Sola
Gonzalez and Castifieira de Dios. Only Barbieri and Wilcock
appeared in Sur in the first half of the decade, but the magazine
encouraged readers to find new writers in other publications: the
'Revistas' section always greeted new poetry magazines. In this way,
it could encourage but not endorse young writers until they learned
their craft.
Speaking with the benefit of ten years' hindsight, Leon Benaros
talked of the generation in an article published by the magazine El 40 ,
the first issue of which appeared in the spring of 1 95 1 . His generation
was more 'serious' than the martirifierristas and worked on the
discipline of poetry and evolved forms which could express their own
sense ofspiritual crisis and renewal: 'Que nuestra actitud . . . era mas
recatada, quiza mas profunda, menos ostentosa, mas vuelta sobre
nuestro ser . . . Y que todos nosotros sabiamos ya . . . que la literatura
no era un juego, un salir a romper faroles con animo deportivo, ni
siquiera una inutil discusion, sino la serena angustia.'97 The history of
this movement, which is still couched at a level of vague generalities,
must be traced in the little magazines, the most important of which
were Canto (Buenos Aires, 1 940) , Cantico (Tucuman, 1 940) , Verde
Memoria (Buenos Aires, 1 942-4) and the very different Arturo (Buenos
Aires, 1 944) ,98 all of them dedicating themselves with enthusiasm but
 THE WAR YEARS 1 23
few resources to a: 'combate por la poesia'.99 The pages of Sur only
reflect these processes indirectly.
The poets that were published most regularly in Sur were Vicente
Barbieri, Juan Ferreyra Basso, Silvina Ocampo, Eduardo Gonzalez
Lanuza and the young 'star' of the period, who became a great friend
of the Bioys in particular, Juan Rodolfo Wilcock. Barbieri was
perhaps the most respected poet of the time.100 Sur published five ofhis
poems in this period, including the significant 'La balada del rio
Salado', and the editorial brought out La columnay el viento in 1 942.
'La balada del rio Salado' deals with the river that passed through
the home town of Barbieri in the province of Buenos Aires. It is
structured around a child's memory ofthe river and the countryside, a
memory which can restore a lost innocence to the now mature poet:
Nombre de Dios, para mi geografia
Mi voz pide este cauce de inocencia.101
The various cantos trace the impact of the river on the child and
describe his feelings as he witnesses the flow of time and the almost
bucolic passage of the seasons.102 In this natural setting, he will learn a
language of clarity and simplicity, which eventually becomes his
poetic voice:
Y la canci6n estaba, yo sabia
Que estaba la canci6n, y mi destino
Y un esperar de siempre se cumplia.103

The providential mission ofthe poet in the world is thus accomplished.

The poem ends with an invocation, and the final vocative could refer
both to the river and to the poet, now completely united.
Su agricola pasi6n - raiz salada-
Crece en la pertinaz y alborozada
Comarca de mi sangre, oh, cristalina.104
Barbieri delights in symmetry: there are six cantos, each containing
ten six-line verses. The cult of symmetry - and it is in this that
Barbieri's poetry is characteristically Sur- is accompanied by a careful
use of certain repeated symbols, 'el oeste', 'el rio', 'la sangre', 'el giro',
'el niiio', which refer to the purity and order ofthe passing oflife and of
the seasons. This carefully crafted simplicity was taken up by another
poet of the countryside, Juan Ferreyra Basso, who also published on
several occasions in the magazine.105
In the main, however, the magazine published the poems ofwriters
who can be said to make up the Sur group, in particular Silvina
1 24 SUR
Ocampo and Juan Rodolfo Wilcock. Silvina's two books of poetry
published in this period, Enumeracion de la patria ( 1 942) and Espacios
mitricos (the only book edited by Sur in 1 945) , contained a number of
the poems earlier published in the magazine and received adulatory
reviews by Borges and Martinez Estrada.106 The early poems deal
ambiguously with Argentina:
Oh desmedido territorio nuestro
Violentisimo y parvulo. Te muestro
En un infiel espejo. Tus paisanos
Esplendores, tus campos y veranos.107
Language is an unfaithful mirror ofreality, and this is compounded by
Silvina Ocampo's own oblique and rather terrifying view of the
nature of reality. Some poems use the technique of chaotic enumera­
tion to build up a picture of the countryside and its inhabitants, others
deal in a more abstract way with the nature of good and evil in the
world. As Martinez Estrada states, 'Todo en la poesia de Silvina
Ocampo trae consigo su reminiscencia de paraiso perdido, de infierno
en suefios transitado.'108 Her shorter, more abstract poems are more
convincing than the long, passionate poems that make up her first
collection, which Borges has described hyperbolically as perfect. In
terms of the reading public in Argentina, her work was hardly
recognised outside a very small coterie. Other poets of her generation
never cite her, and Oscar Masotta could remark in the mid 1 95os: 'Por
mas conmovido que tuvieramos el animo, por mas levantado que
estuviese nuestro pundonor moral, nos cortariamos las manos antes de
suscribir, por ejemplo, la poesia de Silvina Ocampo.'109 This is, by
implication, an attack on what younger critics were later to perceive
as Sur's excessively intimate initial perspective - confined either to the
universe or to the work of a small inner circle.
There was no such ambivalence about the work ofJuan Rodolfo
Wilcock, who was christened the Argentine Shelley, as a result of his
neo-Romantic style and his extreme youth and precociousness. He
was awarded the Mart{n Fierro prize for poetry in 1 940, and published
regularly in Sur and all the little magazines of the period, founding his
own poetry magazine, Disco , in 1 945. Disco was very different to other,
more earnest magazines, and indulged in a hedonistic choice ofpoetry
from all eras and all literatures. It reflected the tastes of its director,
for Wilcock had no interest in partisan quarrels, or the work of self­
conscious generations. He was a Romantic, with a devotion to
classical forms, as he himself remarked in an essay on the craft of his
 THE WAR YEARS 1 25
writing. The essay makes two points: writing is a craft, an attention to
form, or, in Baudelaire's terms, 'l'inspiration n'est que le fruit d'une
journee de travail'. At the same time, however, his subject matter is
distinctly Romantic: 'la penetrante trasluminosidad de la liquida, de
la pluvial, de la fluvial ternura que aurolean y anuncian el sentimiento
que inspir6 estos versos y el ser que me inspir6 ese sentimiento' .1 10The
writer and poet Emilio Becher was treated with almost reverential
respect by those writers who knew him in the 1 goos. Wilcock is the
Becher of the 1 94os, a precocious talent who did not receive the
attention of later critics (in the case of Wilcock, because he left
Argentina for Italy in the late 1 940s and became a popular Italian
poet) . Wilcock was the Sur ideal: an original writer, a universalist, a
polyglot and a very skilful translator. Bianco recalls that Sur awarded
him a prize for a short story, and could not give him a further prize for
a translation of Stevenson's 'Markheim' because it would appear that
he was collecting all the awards.1 1 1 For Wilcock, however, the
boundaries of Argentina were too limiting, the cosmopolitanism of a
small group too stifling. He could tell Cesar Fernandez Moreno in the
1 950s that he was now writing in Italian and that his poems were not
'suficientemente mediocres como para interesar al publico de habla
espaiiola. '112
Sur thus began to publish substantial works of fiction and selected
important poets. It would be wrong, however, to view the magazine as
developing into a purely literary review. The comments on the Second
World War have shown that the essay was still an important medium.
Essays could still deal with general, universal themes, but the war
years brought with them a need to write more particularly on
developments in contemporary society. An example ofsuch awakened
interest is Sur's organisation ofdebates on sociology, which took place
roughly once a year. Victoria Ocampo acted as hostess in one of her
several residences and Argentine intellectuals would be called in to
debate specific topics, often with visiting intellectuals such as Denis de
Rougemont. The transcriptions of the debates reveal that the term
sociology is used very loosely, and that important issues are not
examined critically. Several intellectuals suggested that the concrete
problems of Latin America should be discussed. Anderson Imbert
even ventured that the role of Sur should be a topic for debate:
'c'.Permanecera Sur como revista literaria de minoria o se arriesgara a
una contaminable influencia sobre masas?'1 13 Such potentially dan­
gerous ideas were not received enthusiastically, and the debates
 SUR

remained on a level of generality. A provocative article by Archibald

MacLeish, accusing intellectuals of irresponsibility in the face of
growing totalitarian regimes, was discussed and rejected with re­
course to the traditional view of the intellectual as a critical outsider,
one who defends the purity of language and thought. Gonzalez
Lanuza argued the need to preserve an intellectual elite: 'El
intelectual de ahora tiene que especializarse precisamente porque el
hombre de cultura media no se especializa.' This man of middling
culture is duped by the mass media into thinking he knows everything,
and the whole democratic system is based on this profound error. To
correct the balance of the democratic system, the intellectual must
remain ever-vigilant.1 14 Even though at one point in the debate,
Carlos Cossio asked Victoria Ocampo to clarify one of her remarks -
'Lo interesante seria darle historicidad a su pregunta, y ver como
funciona en la epoca actual la influencia del intelectual'1 15 - such
clarification was not forthcoming. Other topics - commitment and
morality in literature - were also treated within the abstract realm of
universal letters. Sur's ideological position was not a subject for debate
since it seemed to manifest a natural view of the world. What could be
more legitimate than that excellence should assume leadership?

Sur and little magazines, 1 940--5

In the war years, there was little concerted opposition to Sur, either
ideologically or aesthetically. Most men of letters agreed with the
views ofliberalism, which had its supreme expression in Sur. Only a
small nationalist current within Radicalism - the FORJA group,
which will be discussed in full in the next chapter- questioned the elite
liberal model and would become attracted to Peronism.116 Sur would
become one of their targets in the work of such critics as Arturo
Jauretche. In the main, however, the left had not yet developed a
critique ofliberalism, and right-wing nationalism, although gaining
in strength, was still weak. In the mid 1 940s, there was an alliance
between the political parties in Argentina, in an attempt to stop Peron
from winning the elections. In such conditions, the liberal left could
welcome the initiatives ofSur, as is illustrated by a note from Leonidas
Barletta, published in his magazine Conducta ('al servicio del pueblo') .
I n this, Barletta thanks Victoria for sending him a cutting from a
French newspaper referring to his theatre company, 'el teatro del
pueblo'. He talks of 'La inteligencia y extraordinaria labor de
 THE WAR YEARS 1 27

acercamiento e intercambio intelectual que cumple esa cultisima

escritora que es Victoria Ocampo, en el extranjero, por amor a
nuestro pais y nuestra querida ciudad.'1 17
The small but vocal nationalist left-wing groups were less deferen­
tial. In their main magazine, Nueva Gaceta, they scorned the
pretensions of Sur, especially in its analysis of contemporary affairs.
The Sur debate on MacLeish was found to be sadly lacking in ideas;
the analysis of Denis de Rougemont was viewed as expressing an
'ut6pico y repudiable aristocratismo' .118 In a later issue, the magazine
also took to task the 'santa trinidad' of Borges, Bioy and Silvina
Ocampo for their very selective anthology ofArgentine poetry, which
excluded such writers as Enrique Molina, Jose Portogalo and Alvaro
Yunque.1 19 Nueva Gaceta called instead for committed intellectuals to
strive for the unity and liberation of Latin America, throwing off the
yoke of imperial powers. It appeared in the format of a newspaper,
and contained sombre but striking illustrations by Antonio Berni,
Raquel Forner and Emilio Pettoruti, amongst others. The magazine
attracted some old Boedo writers such as Alvaro Yunque, the brothers
Gonzalez Tuii6n and Roberto Mariani, together with a younger
generation of committed intellectuals including Rodolfo Puiggr6s,
who would much later play a significant role in the cultural politics of
the second Peronato . These writers would never be published in Sur,
but it is significant that their attitude towards the war, and later to the
rise of Peronism, was not significantly different to that of Sur. They
were more strident, stressed direct commitment and scorned the
aristocracy of the spirit, but their debates also operated on the level of
theoretical practice. It was Peron who would attract working-class
support, not the intellectuals of Nueva Gaceta .
A more radical critique would come from the right, who fell back on
anti-liberal, anti-European generalisations and put forward as an
alternative system, clericalism, Hispanicism and colonial values. One
commentary on the most significant magazine in this general
category, Sol y Luna , captures the spirit well: its ideology is that of:
'Castilla, pero la muy vieja, un olor de almidones aiiejos, el apagado
rumor de vigilia de gente en armas, el crepitar de los leiios en un auto
de fe; todo eso se desprende de las 200 paginas de cad a numero. '120 Yet
its contributors were distinguished right-wing intellectuals
(Castellani, Marechal, Derisi, Maximo Etchecopar) and its rejection
ofliberalism was coherent. The same can be said of a later magazine,
Antolog{a, run by Arturo Cambours Ocampo, with important contri-
1 28 SUR
butions from Carlos lbarguren and Leonardo Castellani, amongst
others.121 The right-wing nationalism so violently attacked by Borges
finds its clearest expression in the neo-fascist newspapers, El Pampero
and Cabildo, whose names alone invoke a strongly national tradition.
The first number of El Pampero contains a strident poem by Juan
Criollo, 'Ya esta soplando el pampero':
jLindo viento nacional
Que de la pampa hasta el rio
Barre el bicharraquerio
La fauna internacional!122

The 'fauna internacional' flourished in the pages of Sur, as Ramon

Doll made clear late that same year: 'No considero necesario la
directora de este bazar de importacion (Sur) ocuparse de todo lo que
esta pasando por aqui adentro, que se nos ha llenado de humo la
cocina y que las ratas carcomen los cimientos de la nacionalidad.'123
Pious articles on Eucharistic Congresses, combined with anti-Semitic
xenophobia and the crudest nationalist sentiments, abound in the
pages of these newspapers,124 and they are very much part of the
context of the war years. They illustrate a tendency totally opposed to
the ideals of Sur.
Terms such as 'left' and 'right-wing' still had relevance in the early
forties. The advent of Peron would, however, make such classifica­
tions appear superfluous, and would constitute the single most
important threat to the continuing high-cultural hegemony of Sur.
 5
Sur in the years of Peronism, 1 946-55

Sus mitos, sus fervores y sus banderias aullantes no tuvieron complicaciones

culturales: apenas pasaban la zona de los apetitos . . . La imagen mitica de
aquella mujer siniestramente instrumentada por el tirano, no tuvo mayor
perduraci6n que la de una prescindible letra de tango.1

An overview
The period 1 946-55 witnessed important changes in the intellectual
climate of Argentina. Sur's strategy had always been to blend select
cultural movements from abroad with a small group of Argentine
�riters. This hitherto successful arrangement became increasingly
problematic due to international and internal developments. With
the end of the war, the review could once again regularly receive
contributions from Europe, yet the post-war world raised important
questions which could not easily be answered by a small number of
like-minded, elite groups. Sartre in particular posed the problem,
What is literature? Sur could find no adequate response, since it knew
what constituted taste, value and standards: such matters could only
be felt, they could not be defined. This made the magazine
particularly vulnerable when asked to explain its premises in these
years. Sartre was one significant member of an intellectual commu­
nity which was now less familiar to the magazine: old friends died and
were not easily replaced. New tendencies - such as the theatre ofJean
Genet - were treated with suspicion. One element of continuity was
provided, however, by the persistent struggle against Marxism, with
the escalation of the Cold War in these years.
Within Argentina, the ten-year period of the first Peronato can be
seen as a deliberate assault on the aristocratic and liberal values which
were embodied in the magazine. Peronism claimed for itself a new
synthesis of democracy, nationalism, anti-imperialism and industrial
development and railed against the undemocratic, dependent Argen­
tine oligarchy.2 Whilst Peron's aggression remained at the level of
rhetoric - he stopped short of class confrontation - his use of
symbolism and mythology was deliberately populist. The image of
Evita, the studiously cultivated resemblance of Peron to the great
1 29
 SUR
tango singer Carlos Gardel, the descamisado, the cabecita negra, the
rhetorical manipulation of Peron's speeches and his use ofradio and
the press, all of this made up a new style which was anathema to Sur.
A comprehensive account of cultural development under Peron
remains to be written. This chapter will argue that Peron was not
interested in elite culture: Sur was not perceived as a threat, unlike the
mass cultural organs of the press and the radio which were intervened
and subjected to strict censorship. Opposition newspapers, for
example, were denied access to paper. In October 1 948 a decree
limited the two major newspapers, La Prensa and La Nacion, to sixteen
pages and this figure was later cut to twelve. La Prensa would later be
intervened in 1 95 1 . An anecdote by Macedonio Fernandez, the
mentor of many of the Sur group, underlines this censorship. When
Macedonio was lying ill, a friend noticed an insect under his bed and
asked for a newspaper to swat it. Macedonio asked her:
El bicho, tes grande o chico? iPara que quiere saberlo? Para darte, segun sea
el tamafio, un diario del gobierno, o de la oposici6n.3

In this climate ofincreasing restrictions, Victoria Ocampo and several

Sur contributors were imprisoned for a short time, but this was part of
a widespread purge after a bomb attack on Peron in 1 953, rather than
the result of the magazine's cultural policies.
If Sur's liberal values were largely ignored, Peronism produced no
strong cultural alternative. Supporters included some ex-Boedo
writers (Olivari, Castelnuovo, Cesar Tiempo) , popular nationalists
(Scalabrini Ortiz, Jauretche) , Catholics (Marechal, Arturo
Cambours Ocampo) , tango and lunfardo specialists (Jose Gobello,
Homero Mansi) and some poets of the 1 940 generation - a rag-bag of
different ideological tendencies whose only common denominator was
their rejection of liberalism. The ideologues of revisionism were
divided between those aristocratic nationalists (Doll, the lrazusta
brothers) who supported the illiberal anti-imperialist rhetoric of
Peron, but not his cultivation of the working classes, and the more
populist treatises of Jauretche or Hernandez Arregui, who would
concentrate their attack on liberalism in the cultural field by vilifying
Victoria Ocampo and Sur:· Even Peronist critics admit that in
cultural terms the pro-Peronist writers produced very little of value
and that they represented a small section of the intelligentsia.
It will be argued that the impact of Peronism in the cultural field
can be measured in the late 1 95os and 1 96os with the development ofa
 THE YEARS OF P ERONISM , I 946-55

generation that grew up under Peron. In the late forties, however, the
regime could not offer a strong high cultural alternative to Sur. The
critic Avellaneda has stated that a coherent Peronist aesthetic can be
found in the magazine Sexto Continente, which began publication in
July 1 949. Whilst Avellaneda's observation that this magazine, unlike
Sur, published a number of Latin American authors can be verified, it
is something of an exaggeration to posit Sexto Continente as a coherent
alternative to Sur. Many essays adopt a nationalist and Latin
American rhetoric, but they offer a confused mixture of socialist
realism, Catholic nationalism, anti-communism and support for
Peron's vaguely internationalist 'third position'. In this version of
culture, the breeders and fatteners oflivestock are as important to the
spiritual development of the country as artists and intellectuals.
Pues es una enorme mentira que la dignificaci6n de la Patria y su resonancia
en el mundo exterior se halla unicamente a cargo de los artistas e intelectuales
. . . Para nuestro criterio actual, el primer ganadero que se fue a Inglaterra a
importar toros de raza era un soiiador de tanta alcurnia, y su obra fue tan
patri6tica y trascendente como pudo serlo en su hora la de Rivadavia,
Ameghino o Leopoldo Lugones.5
Little wonder that the magazine was ignored by the liberal press, as an
editorial complained in issue 3-4 (October-November 1 949) .
Most intellectuals, therefore, were opposed to Peron. Sur, as will be
examined in detail below, saw itselfliving through a similar historical
moment to that of its illustrious forefathers, the 'generation of 1 837',
forced into internal exile by a dictator and his guarango followers. To be
anti-Peronist, however, by no means implied passive acceptance of
Sur's attitudes and preferences. The University of Buenos Aires can
offer a model for analysing intellectual currents throughout this
period. Halperin's study of that institution brings out two main
points. The number of university students increased greatly, yet they
were given few facilities and inadequate teaching. The university was
seen as a political threat; a number of students and teachers were
expelled and a general climate ofintimidation was maintained. About
one-third of the teaching staff was dismissed in 1 946 and a number of
inadequate teachers replaced them. These teachers were known as
'ftor de ceibo', named after cheap, government-controlled merchan­
dise. Certain new faculty buildings were added in this period, but in
the main few resources were given to maintain and develop the
university infrastructure. University entrance tripled for undergrad­
uates in the period 1 946-55, although the number of graduates
 SUR
remained the same. The Peronist regime, according to Halperin, was
not interested in scientific expansion: it created a climate in which
increasing numbers were being educated, but within strict limits.6
The attack on intellectual freedom would cause these students to
question Peronism, but equally they would begin to question the
traditional structure of Argentine society. At a time of intellectual
crisis, part of the young generation reappraised their own history to
find the causes of this general stagnation. Increasingly, they devel­
oped a critique of elite/oligarchical society, and branded the Sur
writers as the cultural spokesmen of that class. This was to be the
attitude ofa group ofcommitted cultural critics who were educated at
the university in the 1 950s and began to produce their own little
magazines, Verbum, Contorno and Conducta .
Sur had its own house 'young Turk', H. A. Murena, and attempted
in this way to assimilate new tendencies; yet the confused nature of
Murena's fulminations only served to show up much of the weakness
ofSur's position: it could not alter its tone to adjust to new conditions.
In this way, Peronism can be seen to define a generation, as Rodriguez
Monegal perceived in 1 956: ' 1 945. Ese afio es el afio clave, el que
marca la separaci6n de los j6venes. U nos se van a encerrar en si
mismos, a cultivar SU jardin, cada vez mas desinteresados de la
realidad circundante; van a viajar a Europa, van a medir
endecasilabos, van a repetir las formulas aparentemente escapistas de
Borges. Otros se van a hundir en la realidad, van a recorrer su
contorno, van a querer llegar a la raiz. '7 The first group would remain
loyal to Sur, the second would attempt to weaken its hegemonic
position in Argentine culture. As a result of these attacks that now
came from many fronts, Sur became entrenched in its defence of
minority civilisation, attempting to hold off the barbaric hordes.
Pressures on the magazine in this period were not only ideological
but also financial. In this restricted climate, directly after its twentieth
anniversary issue (nos. 1 92-4, October-December 1 950) , Sur came
out in a reduced format with a plain white cover, and a year later it
began to appear once every two months. In this way, it hoped to
overcome financial difficulties and maintain standards, even though
the scale of the operation was somewhat curtailed.

The opening to Europe

With the end of the war, Sur could revert to its traditional strategy of
openness to European intellectual currents. One immediate task was
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 33
to get 'up to date' once again. This could be achieved partially by the
journey of Victoria Ocampo to France and Britain, which was
reflected in two commemorative issues ofSur published on her return.8
Both were comprehensive anthologies of contemporary fiction,
proudly bearing the flags of England and France on the covers. The
visit to England was paid for by the British Council and she took the
advice ofT. S. Eliot, Cyril Connolly and Stephen Spender, amongst
others, on the selections. It was a very complete edition: an enormous
volume of 500 pages, with some excellent translations, especially of
poetry, by Silvina Ocampo and J. R. Wilcock. The French volume
was another triumph of scale. Victoria talked of publishing names
relatively new to the Spanish-speaking world, names which at the
time included Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau Ponty and Albert
Camus. Both issues were declarations offaith and intention: Sur would
resume its task ofcultural 'bridge-building' which had been interrup­
ted by the war. It is one thing, however, to produce anthologies and
quite another to select writers over a period of time that would have a
direct influence on the aesthetic and ideological orientation of the
magazine. Of the two cultures, Sur followed most closely the
developments in France.
At first, the magazine could share in the general euphoria of post­
liberation France. It was a time when Malraux, Camus and Sartre
(the first two had become close friends of Victoria Ocampo) had still
not made explicit their differences and all appeared in the pages ofSur
as post-war literary heroes. At this moment (early 1 946) all three had
a difficult relationship with the Communist Party and were
rethinking their relationship both to State power and to the
international situation. Malraux, as Lottman points out, had set out
to support de Gaulle and became increasingly sceptical of left-wing
intellectuals, who were romantic and juvenile.9 Camus was appar­
ently shocked to hear Malraux declare that too much attention was
paid to the working class, 10 and he watched from a distance as
Malraux became increasingly involved with de Gaulle. Malraux
would always be a presence in Sur, as a man of action and cultural
critic, rather than practising politician, although Victoria Ocampo
always mentioned with approval the strength of Gaullism.
The increasing distance in the relationship between Camus and
Sartre is of more particular importance to Sur, since it was related to
Sartre's espousal of Marxism and his uneasy relationship with Russia
during the period of the Cold War. Both writers had contributed to
the Resistance magazine Combat in the later stages of the war and
1 34 SUR
immediately after the liberation of Paris. Yet Sartre soon set out to
found a new literary magazine to fill the gap left by the temporary
demise of the Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise, after the suicide of its editor,
Ocampo's friend Drieu la Rochelle, and its subsequent investigation
over collaboration. Les Temps Modernes, October 1 945, was prefaced
with a long presentation by Sartre. In it, �e formulated the need for
the writer to reject art for its own sake and commit himself to his
immediate surroundings.1 1 He was not interested in changing souls
(an oblique attack on Esprit) , but rather in examining the social
conditions of man. The magazine would analyse political events, but
also remain true to literature: 'Je rappelle, en effet, que clans la
"litterature engagee", }'engagement ne doit, en aucun cas, faire
oublier la litterature et que notre preoccupation doit etre de servir la
litterature en lui infusant un sang nouveau, tout autant que de servir
la collectivite en essayant de lui donner la litterature qui lui
convient.'12 Sur would reprint articles from Les Temps Modernes -

Sartre's article 'Portrait de l'antisemite' (Les Temps Modernes, Decem­

ber 1 945) was an early case in point - but it would, like Camus, always
be wary ofthe definition ofcommitment in literature. It thus managed
to abstract the specific social intervention of the magazine into the
timeless world ofliterature, and it was left to the younger generation,
such as the editors of the magazine Contorno ( 1 953-9), to develop a
strategy of committed literature. A recent issue ofLes Temps Modernes
took as its theme the problems ofcontemporary Argentina, and one of
the guest editors, David Vinas, talked of the magazine's influence on
his generation in Argentina.13 This influence, he argued, should not be
seen as another form of cultural colonialism, paying homage to
another great French intellectual: 'Car si quelqu'un s'effor�a de
denoncer - depuis l'Europe - l'eurocentrisme et sa sequelle de
deformations, ce fut bien Sartre.'14 It should be remembered, as an
important biographical detail, that Vinas worked at the Losada
publishing house, which translated Sartre's Qu'est-ce que la littlrature?
Under Sartre's influence, in Vinas; Romantic phrase, the 'generation
of Che' grew up in Argentina.
While it is true to say that these young critics would have read
Sartre for the first time in Sur, it is important to point out which texts
they would have read, and how Sartre's work was contextualised. In
April 1 946 (no. 1 38) the magazine published 'Retrato del antisemita',
which, although exhorting class struggle, is mainly concerned with
exposing the destructive Manichean views of anti-Semites. A review
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM , I 946-55 1 35
of his book, Rejl.exianes sabre la cuestion jud{a, also appeared in Sur in
December 1 948. The only other original contribution by Sartre
appeared in the French issue, nos. 147-g, entitled 'El existencialismo
es un humanismo'. At this time Sartre had yet to make his peace with
the communists. Communist intellectuals attacked existentialism as
being anti-Marxist: Pravda vilified him, and Roger Garaudy, in Les
Lettres Fran,aises (28 December 1 945) , had accused Sartre of being a
false prophet of a reactionary philosophy.15 In selecting his essay on
existentialism, Sur was choosing a Sartre who was still at odds with the
main Marxist party. He could be seen, like them, as an independent
intellectual under the threat of totalitarianism. The Sur publishing
house brought out El existencialisma es un humanisma in 1 947 and
Rejlexiones sabre la cuestion jud{a in 1 948.
Yet the 'third way' (in the European, not Peronist, definition of the
term) between an expansionist, Stalinist Soviet Union and an equally
embattled, expansionist United States, became increasingly imposs­
ible to sustain in the late 1 94os, as it had in the 1 93os. Lottman writes:
'The neutralist movement had failed. "Between the two blocs",
concluded Simone de Beauvoir, "there was definitely no third way".'
Merleau Ponty reacted to the Korean War, to the violation by the
communists of the image he had chosen to give them, by simply
turning away from 'combat' to 'apolitisme'.16 In these conditions,
Sartre joined the communist peace movement and declared himself a
fellow-traveller. As such, his views became increasingly unacceptable
to Sur. His analysis of committed literature, Q.u'est-ce que la littlrature?
( 1 947) , was reviewed by the magazine, though the tone was distant:
'Tales, algunas de las ideas originalisimas y gravidas de porvenir de
este libro, en el que Sartre esclarece cabalmente lo que haya de
entenderse por "literatura comprometida".'17 When Jeanson and
Sartre savaged Camus's book L'hamme revaltl ( 1 95 1 ) in Les Temps
Madernes (May and August 1 952), Sur came out in favour of Camus by
printing a long article by Thierry Maulnier vindicating Camus's main
criticism of the Communist Party,18 and in particular attacking
Sartre's bad faith in closing his eyes to so many abuses, such as the
Soviet labour camps. Even though, later in the issue, Maria Rosa
Oliver defended Soviet peace initiatives (she was often published as a
house radical due to her close friendship with Ocampo) , the balance of
the magazine was strongly anti-Soviet, despite Maria Rosa Oliver's
pleading that Sur had always sought to be an objective publication.19
The article by Maulnier was juxtaposed with Camus's account of
 SUR
Oscar Wilde's imprisonment, 'El artista preso' . This article referred
by implication to Victoria Ocampo's own imprisonment earlier in the
year. Both artists achieved spiritual peace through suffering: 'La
belleza surge en ese instante de los escombros de la injusticia y del mal.
El fin supremo del arte es entonces confundir a los jueces, suprimir
toda acusacion, y justificarlo todo, la vida y los hombres, en una luz
que es la luz de la belleza porque es la luz de la verdad.'20 Peron was a
fascist threat to art, just as the communists attempted elsewhere to
stifle creativity with a different form of totalitarianism.
Camus rather than Sartre, therefore, could serve as a mentor for the
decade. Sur published his play Caligula in March and April 1 946 (nos.
1 3 7 and 1 38) , soon after it had been revived in Paris at the end of the
war. The publication clearly had a political intention, for it is a play
about a young, half-mad Roman emperor who, following the death of
the sister with whom he was having an incestuous affair, murdered his
courtiers and made his horse consul. In this picture ofa barbarian, one
could see reflected at the literal level the face of Peron. Obviously the
play is more complex than a simple indulgence in horror: Caligula
attempts to rebel against the gods through murder or enforced suicide:
yet this offers no escape. Only at the end of the play, when faced by
death, does Caligula realise his mortality and come to terms - in part­
with the complexity of the world. No such existential choice could be
expected, perhaps, of Peron, whose regime mirrored the buffoonery
and wilful destruction of Caligul a's court. Three issues later, the
magazine published several of Camus's 'letters to a German friend',
which extol the moral vision of French intelligence, clarity and
classicism, triumphing over the chaos of barbarism. This classicism,
together with his scepticism of all systems and his almost pantheistic
love of the Mediterranean world, would be very acceptable to Sur
readers.
Camus became a close friend of Victoria Ocampo and travelled to
Argentina in 1 949, where he remained in the house of Victoria and
refused to give any lectures. He refused to talk publicly since, in that
year, the Municipality of Buenos Aires had banned the Margarita
Xirgu company from putting on his play El malentendido. The
magazine continued to act as host to his publications, especially his
declarations of freedom of the intellectual (published in no. 1 78,
August 1 949) ; eight extracts in all were published by him in this
period. The Camus of L'homme revolt! sought to understand how
revolutionary ideals had been destroyed by modern totalitarian
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 37
systems that rely on doctrine to justify murder and brutality. The
argument could be used against Peron, for 'revolutionary ideals'
could be defined as the constant fight for intellectual freedom.
In this way, Sur took sides in the Cold War and transferred some of
the general lessons ofinternational politics to the context ofArgentina
(for totalitarian, read Peron) . It published a number of specifically
anti-communist articles from older contributors such as Denis de
Rougemont, Roger Caillois and Julien Benda, and newer names like
the by now rabidly anti-communist Arthur Koestler (Sur 1 36,
February 1 946) , Victor Gollancz (no. 23 1 , November-December
1 954) and the refugee from Poland, Czeslaw Milosz. Koestler argued
against the possibility ofintellectuals becoming state functionaries, as
in Russia or Hitler's Germany: 'Los sucesivos movimientos filosoficos
y artisticos en el Estado Sovietico parece como que se hubieran
ejecutado segun la consigna: "lzquierda-Derecha-Firme". En la
Reichshultierkammern alemana la transformacion del Parnaso en un
cuartel fue igualmente completa.'21 The task of the intellectual was
not to choose between 'capitalism or revolution', but to save some of
the values of democracy and humanism, lest they be lost completely.
Occasional voices were raised against such an apocalyptic vision, but
these were usually buried in the 'Notas' section (see for example
Arturo Sanchez Riva's short critical review of Koestler's Darkness at
Noon22 ) . For the most part, the lead articles told of the horror of war,
of concentration camps, of Korea, and warned of dangers to
democracy (Julien Benda's essay, 'La democracia debe aprender a
conocerse', or George Orwell's devastating critique of Burnham's
theories concerning managerial revolution) . The Mexican Octavio
Paz contributed to this debate by exposing the nature of Soviet labour
camps.23
These dire warnings from other intellectuals were at least as
significant as the publication of original work in this period: the essay
made up the bulk of the non-Latin American publications. Two
tendencies in particular can be perceived in the magazine: the move
towards 'anthologies' which, of course, began the period with such
style, and the need to commemorate contemporary or past writers. In
both cases, Sur located itselfwithin a universal tradition, as an arbiter
oftaste. The problem was how to keep up to date, as the original group
of Argentine contributors were ageing with the century, like their
initial group of friends from abroad. Whilst attempting to keep in
touch with new tendencies, Victoria Ocampo was well aware of the
 SUR
passing of time. She wrote with sadness after the war: 'Mi regreso,
mayo de 1 946, iba a encontrar en esa capital, como en Paris, muchos
amigos ausentes . . . Virginia Woolf (suicidio) , Drieu la Rochelle
(suicidio) , Benjamin Fondane (asesinado en un campo de
concentraci6n) , Hermann Keyserling . . . Paul Valery (enfermedad y
hastio de la vida) , Cremieux . . . Al volver a Buenos Aires son Pedro
Henriquez U refia y Anita Berry quienes han dejado vado el lugar que
habitualmente ocupaban en mi vida material. '24 The obituary and
the commemorative issue would appear with increasing frequency
and the magazine had to attempt to keep a balance between
innovation and tradition. The latter would include immediate
contemporaries such as Gandhi, Henriquez Urena or Drieu la
Rochelle, and also the great names in cultural and social history: Rilke
(no. 223, July-August 1 953), Cervantes (no. 1 58, December 1 947),
SorJuana Ines de la Cruz (no. 206, December 1 95 1 ) and San Martin
on the Rights of Man (nos. 1 90- 1 , August-September 1 950) . Sur had
never really been a vanguard magazine: it occupied a place in the
mainstream of contemporary writing and it set out to be at once
innovative and traditional. It initially showed a fl.air for finding what
was new; but this fl.air would be difficult to maintain over several
decades. In this period the magazine's contributors seemed to have a
self-conscious tendency to observe the landmarks ofcultural history as
if they themselves were writing their own history, inscribing them­
"
selves into a Great Tradition of letters, aware of their function as a
cultural institution.
And yet the critical eye was still usually acute, even if aesthetic
criteria differed among the contributors. Sur had always maintained a
strong moral slant (thanks mainly to Victoria Ocampo) , while at the
same time trying to defend the purely aesthetic value of good writing.
This contradiction came to the surface when Sur published Genet's Les
Bonnes in August 1 948. Jose Bianco had read the play and asked
immediately for translation rights. The choice was not to the liking of
a number of Sur's readers, as Jose Bianco points out: 'Victoria si
hubiera leido Las criadas en la Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise, era distinto,
pero, como salian Las criadas en una revista que era una revista de ella
y que ella sabia que se dirigia a toda clase de publico, bueno entonces
se crey6 en la obligaci6n de decir, "ha aparecido, le cloy a Uds esta
muestra de lo que interesa en estos momentos en Paris . . . Jean Genet,
pero no es un autor con el cual yo me sienta vinculada moralmente o
espiritualmente".'25 It was, in fact, not at all to the liking of his
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 39
managing editor, who distanced herself from Bianco's criteria, and
was offended by the seemingly relentless nihilism ofthe piece: 'Que nos
hable de la m- cuanto le de la gana, si tanto le place, pero que por
algun rinconcito deje asomar a la rosa. '26 Victoria Ocampo was always
happier with the essays of known contributors, and the Genet piece
was one of the few European works ofliterature to appear outside the
anthologies. The other important anthology not previously men­
tioned was published on Italian literature in November-December
1 953 (no. 225) , and contains everyone, from Croce (who had just
died) to Guido Piovene, who had become one of the favourite writers
of Sur in this period, with the serialisation of La Gaceta Negra from
1 94g-50 and the inclusion of a short story, la droga, in 1 95 7, and
Alberto Moravia, who became close to a number ofArgentine writers,
and published several extracts of stories and novels in Sur in the early
1 950s.
The Italian issue features several prison letters from Gramsci,
included in the aftermath of Victoria Ocampo's own release from
gaol. The selection of letters shows Gramsci as a fellow-suffering
intellectual, a victim of fascism (the note on the author points to the
exemplary moral tone of his writing) , rather than one of the most
original Marxist thinkers ofthe twentieth century. Gramsci, ofcourse,
has warned against the seemingly liberal, all-embracing nature of
such anthologies: his work shows that hegemony is not maintained by
imposing a uniform ideology, but by the way in which different
ideological viewpoints are absorbed by the dominant discourses. Sur
published 'ideas', but it was also a cultural institution occupying a
specific place in Argentine letters. It could be argued that the context
in which the articles are read can often determine how they are read.
Thus, it is not just by analysing ideas, but the institutions that uphold
these ideas, that the cultural and social impact of Sur can be fully
understood. In the case of Gramsci, as in the case of Sartre, the
universal moral significance of his writing displaced his particular
political significance. Such writers would have to escape the pages of
Sur before their particular importance could be understood in
Argentina.
In the main, French writers dominate this period. The English
edition was not followed up by regular contributions: only Graham
Greene, one or two articles by Orwell, the ubiquitous T. E. Lawrence
(no. 235, July-August 1 955) and the occasional reprint of English
classics (a Kipling story introduced by Borges in no. 2 2 1 ,
 SUR
(March-April 1 953) ) represent the development of English letters.
Eliot's award ofthe Nobel Prize caused Victoria Ocampo to ruminate
on the influence ofEliot's magazine, The Criterion , and the difficulty of
maintaining a 'revista de minorias' in a world increasingly reluctant
to accept such values. On reading Eliot's 'Last Words' in The Criterion ,
she wrote:
Recordaba, tambien, lo mucho que me desasosegaron pues lo que podia
aplicarse a una revista de minoEias como The Criterion publicada en un pais de
antiquisima tradici6n y cultura, no podia dejar de aplicarse (con mayor
raz6n) a Sur. La situaci6n de nuestra revista, publicada en un pais de nivel
cultural deficiente, con posibilidades literarias muy inferiores . . . tenia que
ser tragica, ya que se proponia, como programa fundamental, no transigir en
materia de calidad.27

Of the few 'quality' English writers, Greene became a personal friend

and Sur translated his books into Spanish. Greene dedicated his novel
The Honorary Consul to 'Victoria Ocampo, with love and in memory of
the many happy weeks I have passed at San Isidro and Mar del Plata.'
In a recent interview in London, Greene talked with affection about
his long friendship with Ocampo and emphasised her dynamism and
enthusiasm.28 Gollancz was also printed for his horrific descriptions of
the war in Korea from his book, Timefor Timothy , and his criticism ofa
British Communist Party which could only offer dishonesty in matters
of conscience.29
In the same way, the Americanism of the war years all but
disappeared. Virtually no North American writers were published,
save for the ever faithful Waldo Frank. The commemorative issue to
celebrate Sur's twentieth birthday (nos. 1 92-4, October-December
1 950) , included an essay by Mary McCarthy on 'Norteamerica la
hermosa'; an attack on the simplistic view ofNorth American culture
shared by many foreign visitors. Victoria Ocampo led a discussion on
the article, and included commentaries by Martinez Estrada and Luis
Emilio Soto, yet the article was slight and the comments equally
mundane, a gesture towards Pan-Americanism, rather than a serious
consideration ofproblems affecting both North and South America.30
Borges occasionally included North American writers in his
intertextual world (an article on Hawthorne in no. 1 74, April 1 949) ,
but for the rest, there was silence. America would remain an ally
during the Cold War, but its cultural development remained
uncharted.
Spanish contributors continued to be chosen from among the exiles,
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55

especially Alberti, who published several more of his 'painter' series,

and Juan Ramon Jimenez. Hostility towards Spanish government
cultural policy surfaced in April 1 949, when Sur commented on the
difficulty Argentine publishers encountered in selling books in Spain.
It reprinted an attack earlier published in Cuadernos Americanos by the
Mexican historian Daniel Cosio Villegas: 'Espana contra America en
la industria editorial'. The article was also published in order to
embarrass the government, for Peron, according to Cosio Villegas,
was too interested in courting Franco to protest against the dirty
practices of the Spanish authorities, which included censorship and
the denying of import licences. Whilst Spanish publishers had free
access to the whole Latin American market, Latin America could only
enter Spain with difficulty.31 Not only did the Spanish become rich:
they also managed to impose a form of spiritual and ideological
hegemony: 'Espana lucharia usando todas las armas no solo para
rehacer una industria que significa millones de capital, sino la
hegemonia espiritual y politica sobre la America espaiiola.'32 The
book trade was in some financial difficulty in Argentina and Sur took
few risks in this period, publishing only a small number of titles.

Latin American writers

Latin American writers continued to appear infrequently, although
Cosio Villegas, via Cuadernos, offered interesting insights on Truman's
doctrine, Point Four, and the Korean War (the twentieth anniversary
issue) . Brazil disappeared as an area of interest, and contributions
were once again confined to a few individuals. One notable polemic
occurred in this period when Sur once again had to defend itself
against the barbs of Pablo Neruda. In late 1 952, Neruda gave an
interview in which he accused Sur ofpublishing the works ofspies and
colonialists (T. E. Lawrence) and spreading the influence of such
writers as the 'perverse' Faulkner, the 'reactionary mystic' T. S. Eliot
and the 'ideological Nazi' Heidegger. Although his remarks were
excessive, Sur's opposition to Latin American communist parties and
its notes on Neruda's own work were bound to spark resentment.
Gonzalez Lanuza had written a long poem to Neruda in November
1 94 7, which adopted Neruda's various poetry styles and exhorted him
to remain a poet, rather than the mouth-piece of a party.
Cuando se tiene voz como la tuya, crimen sera si se te pudre dentro.33
1 42 SUR

Several years later, Murena wrote an ambiguously favourable review

ofthe Canto General, in which he applauded Neruda's epic treatment of
the history and geography of Latin America, but decried his political
bias and his anti-imperialist stance: 'Ha ido a caer Neruda en el viejo
engafio, sostenido en los ultimos afios por Cesar Vallejo yJorge lcaza,
de que la literatura latinoamericana debe ser social . . . '34
The interview, therefore, allowed Neruda to give vent to his scorn
for the magazine, which he had felt since its inception. Sur refuted his
arguments with Olympian disdain: 'Sus consideraciones sobre la
cultura en general y en particular estan viciadas por la triste ortodoxia
del Partido.'35 Neruda answered with a poem published in Las uvasy el
viento ( 1 954) , in which he compared the aristocratic decadence of Sur
with the former decadence of the leisured classes in Bucharest, who
turned their backs on the people:
Pastoril eras y sombria
Espinas y asperezas resguardaban
tu miseria terrible,
mientras Mme. Charmante
divagaba en frances por los salones.36

Sur's liberal outrage against the advance of Marxism betrays its own
class position, he declares. The people will win through and the
aristocracy will have to move to another area of exploitation:
iQue haremos, chere Madame?
En otra parte haremos
una revista "Sur" de ganaderos
profundamente preocupados
de la "metaphysique" .37

These were Cold War sentiments, expressed in the most virulent

terms. Sur's anti-communism - as seen in Gonzalez Lanuza's appeal
to Communist Party intellectuals not to support Stalin's opposition to
Prokofief and Shostakovitch ('Lo de la musica "antidemocratica" es
de un absurdo delirante')38 - had become intolerable to Neruda, who
increasingly saw himself as the spokesman for the party in Latin
America. Only in the late 1 960s would a partial reconciliation take
place between Neruda and Victoria Ocampo.
Of those writers sympathetic to the magazine, Octavio Paz
continued to publish major work, including his most important poem
of that period 'El prisionero', on the Marquis de Sade.39 Sade can be
seen as exemplary since his writing overturned the old order of
'nuestra siniestra realidad' . Paz views him, however, as trapped, not
merely in a physical prison, but in an ego-prison, imprisoned by his
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM , I 946-55 143
own system of hate. He exhorts him to transcend himself, by being
aware ofthe 'other', by opening up to passionate, erotic love. The final
stanza, as Jason Wilson has pointed out, is a manifesto of surrealism,
proclaiming poetry as the solution to life's problems, a state which can
evoke desire, madness and dreams and thus break through the masks
of everyday existence.40
His essay on Tamayo reveals a similar interest in the surrealist
painter, who broke with the muralist school of revolutionary
orthodoxy: 'No se puede ser al mismo tiempo pintor oficial de un
regimen y artista revolucionario sin introducir la confusion y el
equivoco. '41 He does not condemn the muralist movement, for each of
the three great artists could express their original vision through that
form, buthefavours Tamayo's revolutionary questfor apure essence.42
The valley of Mexico could also provide the site for a discovery oflost
innocence, where the dualism of life could become fused in the
'instante' of the midday sun.43Paz's Utopian poetics are illustrated in
each of these extracts and Sur would also comment favourably on El
laherinto de la soledad, a work which synthesised many of the themes that
had been present in his writing in Sur throughout the 1 94os.44
The review was written by Sebastian Salazar Bondy, a Peruvian
writer who spent five years in Argentina between 1 947 and 1 952.
Mario Vargas Llosa has spoken ofthe envy he and his contemporaries
felt in Peru when Salazar Bondy began to publish in Sur .45 He explains
how this came about:
Su prolongada permanencia en Buenos Aires, donde los primeros meses tuvo
que luchar duramente para vivir - trabaj6 como vendedor callejero de
navajas de afeitar, fue redactor de publicidad, corrector de pruebas y varias
cosas mas antes de ingresar al suplemento literario de La Nacion y al cuerpo de
colaboradores de la revista Sur, ese reducto de evadidos - revela una
energica, perseverante voluntad de destierro.46
In Sur he published mainly book reviews, but the books he surveyed
were by important young writers: Girri, Paz and Cortazar. He also
included a short story and several poems which would later go to make
up his collection Los ojos del prOdigo ( 1 95 1 ) . In Buenos Aires his poetry
evolved from what Vargas Llosa has called 'poesia de un hermetismo
premeditado y glacial'47 to an awareness of the life and sufferings of
others (see the poems in no. 1 97, March 1 95 1 ) . This growing concern
would cause him to return to Lima, where he became an important
intellectual and cultural critic who would later wholeheartedly
support the Cuban Revolution.
At this time he shared the outlook ofSur and supported the initiative
1 44 SUR
ofother young writers. Vargas Llosa has also stated that the impact of
Sur in Peru was considerable: it was like a breath of fresh air in an
intellectual community stifled by documentary realism. IfSur did not
publish many Latin American writers, it influenced large numbers.
The writers ofthe boom would have read some significant translations
of European and American writers in Sur. The recent edition of the
conversation between Garcia Marquez and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
for example, illustrates on several occasions the importance of Sur in
Colombia. The arrival ofbooks was a major event which often led to a
party: 'Eran los libros de Sudamericana, de Losada, de Sur, aquellas
cosas magnificas que traducian los amigos de Borges.'48 Garcia
Marquez also underlines the importance of reading Virginia Woolf
and Graham Greene, translations made available by Sur. In a recent
interview, Guillermo Cabrera Infante has acknowledged that his
generation of writers in Cuba was greatly influenced by Sur. Even
though in his work Tres tristes tigres there are ironic references made to
Derrota Ocampo, he acknowledges his debt, especially to writers such
as Borges and Bioy Casares. Carlos Fuentes has also stated that he felt
he knew Julio Cortazar a number ofyears before they met - through
the pages of Sur. It has obviously been impossible to interview all the
'boom' writers systematically, but these scattered remarks do point to
a community of young Latin American readers of Sur. It is very
difficult to quantify the influence of a magazine in this respect,
especially without access to lists of subscribers, but Buenos Aires was
the publishing centre of Latin America at this time, and Sur its most
influential literary magazine. Through its pages, aspirant writers
from Latin America could become familiar with certain literary
tendencies which they could profitably read in translation.
Miguel Angel Asturias also appeared briefly in Sur, publishing a
poem, 'La catedral', and an extract from Hombres de ma{;:, ( 1 949) . His
work was reviewed favourably by two of Sur's most socially aware
critics, Maria Rosa Oliver and F. J. Solero as well as by Vicente
Barbieri in 1 950. Asturias lived in Buenos Aires from 1 94 7 to 1 950 and
his second wife was an Argentine. In general terms, therefore, Latin
American writers only appeared in Sur if they were resident in Buenos
Aires or had spent time in that capital. Octavio Paz was, exception­
ally, the only writer to send contributions regularly from abroad. Sur
did not have an Americanist perspective: it did, however, seem to have
a faithful readership throughout Latin America.
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 45

Argentine writers
The reaction to Peron
The introduction to this chapter has sketched in the main outline of
the debate: Sur defended elite liberal values; Peron, at least rhetoric­
ally, was anti-liberal, nationalist and populist. In the issue of
July-August 1 954 (no. 229), Sur published as its leading article a short
story by Adolfo Bioy Casares entitled 'Homenaje a Francisco
Almeyra'. It was written, according to Bioy, at a time of near despair;
'En Pardo, en marzo o abril 1 952, en un momento de extrema
desolacion, pense que para quienes mueren durante una tirania, el
tirano dura eternamente.'49
The story is set in the time of Rosas. Almeyra is a young writer, an
ethereal being in the best tradition of the nineteenth-century writer
Jose Marmol's idealised heroes. His hands, like those of Daniel in
Amalia, are a symbol of his sensibility and noble intelligence. He is
irritated by his enforced exile and longs to fight, despite the warning of
an experienced coronet that an artist can only seek to preserve culture,
and not directly overthrow dictators: 'Entregarse del todo a la
obsesion de combatirlo es contribuir a su pasajero triunfo: mantener
integro el interes en lo hello, en lo armonico, en lo razonable, es
contribuir a derrotarlo. '50 Yet Almeyra goes off to fight, is captured
and has his throat cut: his gesture is futile but brave, as he meets his
own 'American destiny'. Before dying, Almeyra meditates on the
misplaced nationalism of the Rosas regime: 'Almeyra penso que ese
enfasis de encono puesto en la palabra "extranjero" traslucia una de
las pasiones que siempre fl.ameaban al lado de los despotas.'51 The
parallel between Rosas and Peron is obvious, despite Bioy's ironic
defence of the present: 'En aquellas epocas infaustas, y por fortuna,
para mi y para ti, querido lector, preterita.'52 The story maintains the
Manichean division of the literature of the Rosas regime, and encodes
many of Sur's attitudes towards Peron.
Peron was viewed as a neo-fascist dictator, as the quotations
analysed in the previous chapter made clear. Borges, recently
dismissed from his post in the Miguel Cane library, spoke out against
the new regime in Sur August 1 946 (no. 142): 'Las dictaduras
fomentan la opresion, las dictaduras fomentan el servilismo, las
dictaduras fomentan la crueldad; mas abominable es el hecho de
fomentar la idiotez . . . Combatir esas tristes monotonias es uno de los
14.6 SUR
muchos deberes del escritor.'53 According to Borges, the Argentine
does not identify with the State: he is an individual, not a citizen.
The policeman Cruz will change sides and fight with Martin Fierro
in the epic poem of Hernandez. Borges postulates a vision of an
Argentine party that would govern as little as possible, and utterly
rejects what he sees as the growth of Peronist State control: 'El
nacionalismo quiere embelesarnos con la vision de un Estado
infinitamente molesto; esa utopia, una vez lograda en la tierra, tendria
la virtud providencial de hacer que todos anhelaran, y finalmente
construyeran, su antitesis.'54 Unfortunately for Borges, Peron kept
control of the State for ten years, and returned to haunt his later life in
the early 1970s. Borges is perhaps right to see Argentina as a stage on
which a number of muddled actors pursue different aims: later
developments have given ample proof of his statement. Yet whereas
Borges has always sought withdrawal as an answer to these problems,
politics must deal with the real world. The real world ofArgentina in
the mid 1 94os, with which Sur could not come to terms, was that a
strong leader controlled a military, working-class coalition, and paid
little attention to traditional liberal values.
Borges would write several specifically anti-Peronist poems and
essays. The essay 'El escritor argentino y la tradicion', published in
issue no. 232 (January-February 1 955) , was not a timeless statement
about the nature of art, but rather a contribution to the acrimonious
debate between 'universalists' and, for Borges, idiotic nationalists. He
also resurrected Bustos Domecq with Bioy Casares and penned two
savage attacks on the regime: 'La fiesta del monstruo' and 'El hijo de
su amigo', which were circulated among friends and only published at
the fall of the regime.55 A poem written in 1 953 evoked coronet
Suarez, one ofhis ancestors who was engaged, like himself, in a cyclical
battle against tyrants:
La batalla es eterna y puede prescindir de la pompa
de visibles ejercitos con clarines;
Junin son dos civiles que en una esquina maldicen a un tirano
o un hombre oscuro que se muere en la carcel.56
As well as justifying resistance to a tyrant, a point taken up
repeatedly by Borges, Bioy's story illustrates the gap between
civilisation and barbarism, elite and mass taste. Civilisation had to be
defended in the face of the chaotic, primitive and stupid forces
unleashed by mass Peronism. Civilisation was a matter of education,
but it also connoted refinement in manners and taste.57 The Peronists
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 47
were beyond redemption since they either aped unconvincingly or
deliberately ignored the forms and values of traditional civilisation.
Instead, they were manipulated by the radio and other forms of mass
entertainment, such as sporting events. Peron was the first Argentine
president to make systematic use of the radio and he gradually
brought all the private radio stations under State control.58 Under
such conditions, Sur could continue to educate the minority reader. In
the twentieth anniversary issue of the magazine, Ocampo argued,
using the terminology of an American critic James Laughlin, that it
was her hope to raise one per cent of readers to the 'level' of Henry
James.59 Yet the same issue spoke of 'estrechamientos inverosimiles'
suffered by intellectuals at the time.60 These restrictions can be
examined by studying more closely the personal history of Victoria
Ocampo.
Ocampo has become inscribed in the hagiography ofanti-Peronism
both as a saintly victim of the regime and as a true feminist, as
compared to Evita Peron.61 The comparison is revealing: Sur made
almost no reference to Evita, living or dead. There was no obituary
following her death in 1 952, only a small black borderline placed on
the cover ofissue nos. 2 1 3- 1 4 (July-August 1 952) to comply with the
government decree on national mourning. For all her interest in the
rights of women, Ocampo could not recognise or debate with the
woman who gave women the vote and held such extraordinary power
in the country as a political figure and as a symbol. Ocampo remained
almost completely silent on the subject of Evita, save for a reference in
her eighth volume of Testimonios . In this article, 'El derecho de ser
hombre', Ocampo denies that Evita was interested in women's rights:
'Veanse las despectivas declaraciones que aparecen en La. razon de mi
vida . . . Cito el libro porque su mal informada autora tuvo tan insolito
poder en nuestro pais. Desde luego, no se preocupaba de la batalla por
los derechos de la mujer . . . El voto importaba principalmente
porque era un instrumento para el jefe de su partido politico.'62 The
Manichean polarity Victoria Ocampo/Eva Peron is useful to the
analysis of Argentine social development in this chapter, for it
illustrates Sur's profound fear and loathing of mass culture, personi­
fied in a histrionic leader. One ofthe great problems of these years was
that liberal groups, even of the left, could not see beyond this vision of
Peronism.
Ocampo was known to be an opponent of Peron and his wife, but
the magazine and publishing house were never threatened with
 SUR
closure, even if a degree of self-censorship operated. She continued to
publish articles which showed her disapproval of the regime and its
assault on civil liberties. In a series of notes on the environment, she
complained about the noise of radios, as purveyors of cacophonous
music and propaganda, and also remarked on the vulgar architecture
beginning to appear in Buenos Aires, abuses that could only be put
right by people of taste. In an explicit reference to Peron she
explained: 'lncluso establecer una dictadura no vendria mal. Pero
tendria que ser una dictadura de los que mas saben. Y a estos, salvo
raras excepciones, les repugna el papel de dictador.'63
Ocampo also defended the historical tradition of Argentine
liberalism equated with Independence struggles. Peron made con­
stant references to San Martin and declared 1 950 to be the 'Afio del
libertador General San Martin', a title that every newspaper and
magazine had to carry throughout the year. San Martin was a figure
that all shades of the ideological spectrum tried to claim as their own,
and Ocampo saw him as a soldier who had supported basic freedoms.
In August-September 1 950, Sur dedicated an issue to the rights of
man. The issue contains two pictures of San Martin, an obvious
attempt to counterpose him to Peronist iconography. The reference to
the Perons, especially to their appearance in school-books, is made
explicit in the sly opening sentence: 'iComo festejar el centenario de
San Martin (el que nuestros ojos de nifios veian a caballo sobre las
tapas de un cuaderno rosado)?'64 The rest of the issue made worthy
statements about the need to respect the rights of man everywhere in
the world (the United Nations Universal Declaration of 1 948 was
included in full), though the implication throughout is that these
rights should be respected at home. San Martin was succeeded,
naturally, by the liberal generation of Esteban Echeverria, whose
centenary was commemorated by Carlos Alberto Erro.65 The
Principles of May and the Constitution of 1 853 were the political
ideals that could refute the revisionist theories of Peron.
Victoria Ocampo thus waged a constant, though rather indirect,
campaign against Peron. There were no outright statements of
opposition, and it was hardly the stuff out of which martyrs are m;:ide.
However, she was one of perhaps a thousand people taken in for
questioning in April 1 953, and those troubled weeks that saw a bomb
attack on Peron, and violent reprisals during which the Jockey Club
was looted and burned down and the offices of the Socialist and
Conservative parties were wrecked.66 Both Victoria Ocampo and the
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, 1 946-55 1 49
Jockey Club were symbols ofthe oligarchy and she was arrested at her
house in Mar del Plata. Unlike many other prisoners, however, she
had the range of contacts to become a cause celebre and her friends
throughout the world organised their protests. Ironically, however,
the most persuasive and influential plea came from Gabriela Mistral,
a voice ofAmerica rather than one of Sur's foreign friends, and Peron
found in her appeal an excuse for freeing Ocampo, whose meddling in
politics had certainly never stretched to bomb conspiracies. The issues
of Sur during and after this period printed more regular, indirectly
hostile attacks on the regime.
It was not surprising, therefore, in these circumstances, that Sur
greeted the downfall of Peron with a special issue entitled 'Por la
reconstruccion nacional' (no. 237, November-December 1 955) . It
gave Victoria Ocampo the opportunity to record publicly for the first
time her experiences in prison. Sur published a number of essays
calling for reform of the university system and primary and secondary
education after the interference of Peron. Others argued for the
restoration of the liberal system and democracy, forgetting that
Peronism was arguably one of the few truly democratic regimes in
Argentine history. The term 'masses' is seen as distinct from
'democracy' : the first refers to a mindless, manipulative horde, the
second to the behaviour ofright-thinking citizens. This issue stressed
the need to support 'democracy' then, but did not mention the logical
conclusion of such arguments, which was in fact put into practice by
Aramburu and successive governments: the banning of the Peronists
from elections.
Whilst some essays tried to analyse the specific historical conjunc­
ture, most of the regular Sur contributors saw the events in
Manichean, culturalist terms. Peronism was quite literally bad art, a
substandard music-hall act. For Borges: 'Hubo asi dos historias: una,
de indole criminal, hecha de carceles, torturas, prostituciones, robos,
muertos e incendios; otra, de caracter escenico, hecha de necedades y
fabulas para consumo de patanes.'67 For Victor Massuh, the values of
Peronism: 'Eran suburbanos y su expresion no alcanzo a ser
literatura. '6s Most contributors were optimistic that the country could
begin again with a new government. Only Girri gloomily wrote:
Hemos sido hechos salvos
tY ahora que?
tras el breve gusto de la euforia
el pasado retomara su marcha
 SUR
el mismo funeral de hace cien aiios

olvidando que entre tiempo y tiempo

el espiritu repite sus infecciones.69
In most cases, however, enthusiasm took the place of self-analysis. It
was difficult to agree with Sabato that everyone shared in the guilt of
Peron that: 'Todos somos culpables de todo, y en cada argentino
habia y hay un fragmento de Peron. '70 The nightmare was over and
the intellectual could return to the universities or to the pages of
journals, unhampered by censorship. The issue is profoundly reveal­
ing in its inability to come to terms with Peronism, as Oscar Masotta
pointed out in a savage critique ofits contents: 'Peron . . . el comico, el
"monstruo", el "personaje craso" . . . el falso, el hipocrita, el hombre
de la voz "que conocia el registro de todas las infamias", en fin, el
payaso - no explica ni determina los diez afios de peronismo que
hemos vivido.71 For a time, however, such limitations did not threaten
the structure or ideological coherence of the magazine. The relief and
the euphoria were overwhelming and the magazine could resume its
work, having acquitted itself with honour in a difficult time.

Generational differences within Sur

It would be wrong to read the output of Argentine writers purely in
terms of their relationship to Peronism, yet it would be equally
misleading to ignore the ideological conflicts of the period. In these
years Sur was subject to a great deal of criticism, both inside and
outside its pages. For perhaps the first time, we can talk of
generational differences within the magazine: the original contribu­
tors remained, but space was also given to younger writers and critics,
who would question the prevailing values. They were given more
scope to publish thanks to the change in the format of the magazine,
which included a longer book review section when it appeared bi­
monthly. Young writers increasingly contributed short notes, and a
few would later be printed as main articles.
The original group of writers continued to hold sway, however,
with Borges as the main contributor. Borges did not confine himself to
writing in Sur, for other magazines such as Realidad and Ana/esde Buenos
Aires offered outlets. He edited Anales for nearly two years between
1 946 and 1 948, publishing a number ofarticles and short stories there.
Yet he always remained in contact with Sur, the magazine which
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55

offered the greatest sense of continuity in Argentine letters (Realidad

brought out seventeen issues over two years, Ana/es twenty-three �n
roughly the same time) . He published 'Deutsches requiem' in
February 1 946 (no. 1 36) , 'El muerto' in November 1 946 (no. 1 45),
'La busca de Averroes' in June 1 947 (no. 1 52 ), 'Emma Zunz' in
September 1 948 (no. 1 67), 'La escritura de Dios' in February 1 949
(no. 1 72), 'Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva' in May 1 949 (no. 1 75)
and 'Abencajan el Bojari, muerto en su laberinto' in August 1 95 1
(no. 202 ) .
For Borges, as for Victoria Ocampo, the history ofArgentina was a
family affair, a conflict between the civilisation of his father's side,
equated with books and the English language, and the barbarism of
his mother's lineage, synonymous with men ofaction and the Spanish
language. Barbarism expresses both desire and shame. A desire for a
simple world of hoodlums, knife fighters and military ancestors:
'Battles fought, the fatherland established, the great city created and
"the streets with names recurring from the past in my blood".'72
Activity is always susceptible to being equated with barbarism, yet it
can have a positive value in itself, as ancestors die gloriously engaged
in righteous battles against dictators (coronet Suarez, mentioned
above, was Borges' maternal grandfather) . A simple man can meet his
American destiny, as in the short story 'El Sur', first published in La
Nacion on 8 February 1 953. This was another clear reference to the
courageous individual struggles against the brute forces of Peronism.
Yet barbarism is at the same time shameful. It reminds the writer of a
country which can spawn the cyclical dictatorships of Rosas and
Peron. Martin Fierro, the noble gaucho, can be at the same time a
sordid pistol fighter: 'It was during this period of the Peron regime
that Borges revised his own earlier inclination to consider the gaucho
Martin Fierro a national hero and declared that had Argentina
celebrated Sarmiento instead of Martin Fierro another and better
history would have been ours.'73 In the 'Historia del guerrero y de la
cautiva', Borges' paternal grandmother Fanny Haslam tells a frontier
tale about an English girl who married an Indian and was converted
to barbarism. Fanny Haslam tried to persuade the girl back to
civilisation, but could not do so. One woman returned to the life of the
Indians, the other to her marriage with a cavalry officer. Both women,
the story concludes, share the same destiny: English women held
captive and transformed by the 'implacable continent' of Latin
America. The father's library of 'limitless English books' could still
 SUR
provide a source ofconsolation and a place ofretreat, but the struggle
between literature and history, and thought and action, was complex
and became more acute in this period.74
The remainder of the Borges group - Bianco, Silvina Ocampo and
Bioy Casares - published only occasional stories in the magazine and
tended to repeat the same formulae. Silvina Ocampo's best story ofthe
period, 'El impostor', was serialised between June and September
1 948 (nos. 1 64 and 1 67), and took up the by now familiar themes of
premonitions in dreams, the cruelty and possible madness of adoles­
cents and the narrative device of an unreliable narrator whose
account is corrected and contradicted by another observer. The
dominant mode of fantastic/detective literature found a worthy
amanuensis in Mario Lancelotti, but in general the output lacked the
spontaneity and polemical intensity of the work of the late 1 930s.
Sabato confined himselfin the main to essays and became involved in
a bitter polemic with Victoria Ocampo over sexual difference and
sexual stereotyping, which ended startlingly with him accusing
Ocampo of being a 'furiosa bacante, dispuesta a desgarrarme vivo y a
comerme crudo.'75 No spirited debates can be found within the
narrative at this time, save in the satirical attacks on Peron mentioned
above. The magazine badly needed fresh contributors and new voices.
Among the young writers, two groups can be defined: one which
supported and developed the traditions of Sur; the other which, at
least superficially, was to question the assumptions of this text. An
analysis of the impact of these young writers and critics is of
fundamental importance to the appreciation of the magazine, for it is
necessary to consider the criticism levelled by Fernandez Moreno,
amongst others, that the magazine atrophied throughout the 1 95os. It
was argued that Sur had relied on the promise of a few writers, but
these had not developed sufficiently and the magazine could not
attract new talent.76
The most strident intervention was offered by H. A. Murena, who
became the house parricide in Sur for a number ofyears, following his
first publication in 1 948. The term is deliberately chosen, for
Murena's verbal assaults did little to shake the structure of the
magazine. Rather, they reinforced it by seemingly allowing space for
an open dialogue with, and criticism from, the younger generation,
while at the same time limiting the range ofcriticism to the effusions of
a rather eccentric, conservative individual. For a time, in the late
forties and early fifties, Murena appeared to be everywhere in the
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 53
magazine, provoking enthusiasm and marked hostility with his essays
and diary observations entitled 'Los penultimos dias'. Ernesto Goldar
recounts an assessment ofSur at this time, supposedly made by Patricio
Canto, a critic who was moving outside the sphere of the magazine, as
his commitment to socialism became more pronounced: 'Sur es una
monarquia constitucional. Victoria Ocampo es la reina que reina
pero no gobierna. Pepe Bianco es el primer ministro, Murena es el
favorito del primer ministro, quien es el que realmente gobierna.'77
What, then, was the nature of his contribution?
Murena's direct intellectual precursor was Martinez Estrada, as he
declared in an essay, 'La lecci6n de los desposeidos: Martinez
Estrada', published in Sur in October 1 95 1 (no. 204) as the lead
article. Murena couches his analysis in the form of an autobiograph­
ical discussion ofhis childhood and intellectual formation. He was self­
taught, an avid but seemingly chaotic reader (as can be seen from a
number of his curiously misplaced lapidary statements), who was
growing ever more weary with the inauthenticity oflife in Argentina,
when he discovered the work of Martinez Estrada. In Martinez
Estrada's key essay, Radiograj{a de la pampa ( 1 933) and in La cabeza de
Goliat ( 1 940), Murena saw confirmation of the original sin of Latin
America: 'Los americanos somos los parias del mundo . . . Fuera de la
historia en este nuevo mundo, nos sentimos solos, abandonados,
sentimos el temblor del desamparo fundamental, nos sentimos
desposeidos.'78 He perceived that Latin America lacked history and
lacked a father figure, but that its inhabitants had not faced up to that
fact until Martinez Estrada articulated his theory of desposesi6n .
Martinez Estrada could therefore be seen as a new prophet of the
resurrection ofAmerica, ofgreater significance than the other writers
in Murena's pantheon: Borges, Mallea and Marechal. His only
criticism ofMartinez Estrada was that after denouncing the problems
of Argentina, he had retreated from history into an abstract,
universalist world. Murena had to break with this father figure, yet his
mystical quest was the same.79
Murena thus shared the enthusiasm, the apocalyptic vision and also
the wordiness and imprecision of his mentor. Both treated the nature
ofArgentine development as an ontological, rather than a sociological
problem, and both avoided any serious examination of history.
Having established his intellectual precursors, Murena set out to
reassess Argentine literature. His first significant statement in the
magazine came in an article 'Condenaci6n de una poesia' (nos. 1 64-5,
1 54 SUR
June-July 1 948) . He began by clarifying the term 'national litera­
ture', coming up with the rather imprecise definition that 'lo que en
verdad la caracteriza, es el "sentimiento nacional" .'80 This national
'feeling' was not the same as nationalist criticism, which is often
superficial and misplaced. The martitifi,erristas are described in the
essay as one such nationalist group, who in fact betrayed the nation by
their 'nacionalismo europeista'. Borges is here seen as a representative
poet of the Martin Fierro group insofar as he uses the symbols of
Argentine nationalism, without any genuine feeling: 'El poeta
describe los simbolos del sentimiento nacional, pero no experimenta el
sentimiento nacional.'81 Murena contrasts Martin Fierro 's backward
looking, folkloric view of the country with the necessary vision of the
artist, who must 'encarar desnudamente la realidad presente' .82 The
Argentine must face up to the nature of his solitude, which is
metaphysical, but also geographically determined.83 Murena's argu­
ment, ifone can be disentangled from the verbosity and imprecision of
the style, is based on very selective reading. He attacks Borges' poem
'El truco' for being a transformation rather than a transcription of
reality. Yet Borges never pretended otherwise. The criticism is used
rather as a pretext to support Murena's own idealist model ofcreative
solitude.
Murena was a provocative critic, who had pretensions to being an
original thinker. At best these provocations could show up the
complacency of some of Sur's work, as when he justifiably argued
against Gonzalez Lanuza's dismissal of Adan Buenosayres . In an article
published in November 1 948, Gonzalez Lanuza had accused
Marechal of being a functionary of the Peronist State, intent on
writing a 'novela genial': 'lmaginad si podeis, el Ulises escrito por el
padre Coloma y abundantemente salpimentado de estiercol, y
tendreis una idea bastante adecuada de este libro.'84 Of the liberal
writers, only Cortazar recognised the true value of the book, as
Murena pointed out in a note countering Gonzalez Lanuza's
criticism.85 The attack was well made but much of its impact was lost
by the time the reader had come to the end of the article, . which
included comments on Murena's own spiritual journey: 'Oh noche,
noche, entonces se que solo ascendere hasta tu pasion cuando libere la
sangre de mis venas, e inunde con ella tu oscuro, calido corazon
insondable. '86 The great writer coexists uncomfortably with the
literary critic.
Within the magazine, then, Murena generalised about Latin
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 55
America and offered some outlandish ideas, which provoked com­
ment. Yet in the main the polemics were tame and unthreatening (see
Sur 1 69, 1 8 1 and 1 83 ) . His was a revolution of words within a tight
editorial system. He could criticise Mallea by implication, stating that
his novel Chaves ( 1 953) was the first true examination of the Argentine
soul in Mallea's twenty year career.87 Yet an earlier issue had printed
a long correspondence between Gonzalez Lanuza and Mallea
praising his previous novel Los enemigos del alma ( 1 950) .88 Sur would not
vilify its own writers within its pages. This task would be left to little
magazines such as Contorno and Centro .
Murena cannot be seen as part of an innovative new generation,
since most ofhis contemporaries ridiculed his writing and despised his
politics. There had been temporary alliances among young critics,
most of whom were studying at the University of Buenos Aires. The
magazines edited by these critics, in particular Centro and Contorno ,
will be analysed later in this chapter. Murena contributed to several
little magazines in this period. In 1 948, in the student journal Verbum ,
he published for the first time his famous essay on 'el pecado original
de America'. Several years later he came to an agreement with left­
wing critics such as David Vinas to edit a single issue of the magazine
Las ciento y una (June 1 953) . In this issue, the vagueness of the
Americanist aspirations ofMurena and two other critics, Solero and
Kusch, are at variance with the precise analyses of Vinas and his wife
Adelaida Gigli. Such a shaky alliance could not last long and,
according to popular memory, the split between Murena and Vinas
was made very visible in a brawl between the two that took place in the
1 950s intellectual cafe, the Florida. Certainly Murena's declarations
did not endear him to the group of socially committed critics. For
example, he explained why the activists in the Socialist Party had
failed: 'No entendieron que el pueblo solo es capaz de gestos heroicos
cuando tiene un alcohol de cualquier indole adentro y no sabe que
hace.'89 The criticism of Murena within Sur, however, tends to be
fairly gentle, although Carlos Viola Soto pointed out that the ideas
contained in El pecado original are vague and immature, and Enrique
Pezzoni ridiculed Murena's analysis of Borges.90 Pezzoni's essay is
important, since it was an early attack on those critics who deal with
the ethical context rather than the literary texts of Borges. He
instigated a subtle line of formalist criticism, analysing the text-in­
itself, free from ideological or social restraints.
The severest judgements of Murena were made outside Sur. The
 SUR
most telling ofhis critics, Ramon Alcalde, reviewed Murena's play, El
juez (the first act of which had been published in Sur) , in a long article
in Buenos Aires Literaria . Alcalde opened his remarks by pointing to the
unfortunate influence of much ofMurena's thought: 'Murena puede
hacerse culpable de retraer a muchos a un misticismo telurizante que
anula todo esfuerzo por comprender e interpretar "de un modo
verificable y eficaz para la accion", nuestra realidad argentina.'91 The
review shows convincingly how in Murena's thought, psychological,
historical, economic or social facts become transformed arbitrarily
into an abstract metaphysical world (for example, our surgeons are
good, because Argentines fear death!) . It questions Murena's loose use
of the term 'God' and his generalisations about 'American' solitude
and lack of communication. It pays particular attention to Murena's
central thesis of the difference between the 'lenguaje de tu' and the
'lenguaje de vos', showing that it is a much more complex relationship
than Murena perceives. If national theatre should attempt to blend
the two - allowing theportefio to escape from the limited world ofthe vos
form - then Murena's own artistic practice is sadly limited by
characters who all speak the same unreal language. Finally, Alcalde
condemns Murena, not for his metaphysics as such, but for being a
half-baked metaphysician, seeming to claim the last word on God,
death, sin and history. He accurately points out how the essay has just
become an empty exercise in style: 'Se abalanzan ansiosas esos
hibridos pintorescos que suelen ser nuestras revistas literarias . . . Su
ambigua situacion entre la filosofia, la ciencia y la creacion literaria
permiten que se lo valore mas por el estilo que por las ideas que
contiene y su rigor. No interesa tanto la coherencia, validez y
fecundidad de los contenidos como su "actualidad" e "interes" .'92
With these words he dismisses the pretensions of Murena and
questions the value of reviews like Sur which allow room for such
lucubrations. Sur gave Murena a lot of space, but their faith in his
abilities was largely misplaced. He went on to make a significant
contribution to the Sur publishing house, but did not instigate any
serious critique or move for reform within the magazine. Instead, he
helped to confirm Sur's traditional, conservative image in the eyes of
many young critics.
One critic who spanned such intergenerational conflict was Juan
Jose Sebreli: he wrote for a time in Sur, but also contributed to Contorno
and other magazines. It should be pointed out that he soon turned his
back on the Sur group, and from the mid fifties would be one of
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 1 57
Ocampo's severest critics, opposing her to the militant figure of Eva
Peron in his book, Eva Peron (°aventurera o militante? ( 1 966) , and much
later assessing her caustically in a glossy edition of the magazine Lyra,
dedicated to women writers. According to Sebreli, Ocampo's interest
in women's rights would always stop short of any serious analysis of
society and class.93 Yet he had to admit that Sur had been hospitable to
him at one point, between 1 952 and 1 955, and to other writers later
radically opposed to the review.94 He saw the change of format of the
magazine in 1 952 as the time when a new generation of writers
appeared, who would never be identified with the main group. Sur
tried to incorporate these writers, but with little success.95
Sebreli's contributions were lively and well directed; in some dozen
book reviews, he attacked fascists and Trotskyists alike, dealing
severely with the right-wing nationalism of Ernesto Palacio, and
ridiculing Abelardo Ramos' revisionist history of Argentine culture,
Crisis y resurreccion de la literatura argentina : 'El libro solo sirve para
desvalorizar el materialismo dialectico que se pretende sustentar.'96
His appreciation of Roberto Arlt in Sur is the only reference to that
novelist to appear throughout its history.97 Sebreli gave the magazine
some of the intellectual rigour lacking in Murena, yet his contribu­
tions were short-lived: he would publish the lead article in Contorno
when it first appeared in November 1 953, and increasingly a gap
would open between the aesthetics of Sur and Contorno . This meant
that the most important literary critics to emerge at the time - the
Vifias brothers, Adolfo Prieto, Portantiero, Noe Jitrik, Leon
Rozitchner - would write in opposition to, rather than within, Sur.
The young Sur writers thus consisted ofa handful ofcritics bound by
friendship and personal taste to the Ocampo-Borges generation.
Fryda Schultz de Mantovani became a close friend of Victoria
Ocampo and wrote on women's rights as well as on Latin American
writers such as Martinez Estrada and Gallegos. Estela Canto was
closer to Borges than was Victoria Ocampo, both in her personal life
and her literary interests. She was a personal friend, and he dedicated
the short story 'El Aleph' to her. She wrote interestingly on the
collection in which it appeared in October 1949. Lacking the
sophistication of Pezzoni's later defence of Borges, she argued that
fantasy was a specifically Argentine phenomenon for geographical
reasons.98 Following Borges' example, she wrote a fairly regular film
column in the magazine, sharing his distaste for many Argentine films
and their audiences: 'El cine nacional pertenece, socialmente, a la
 SUR
torpe clase media. Como a la clase media, le falta naturalidad, le sobra
empaque y rigidez. '99 Her film comments are sometimes laconic, but
often embrace different aspects of socio-cultural development in
Argentina and abroad, while her book reviews show her affinity to
Borges, the same aesthetics and the same lapidary style.100 Thus in the
main young critics shared the prejudices and assumptions of their
elders.
Enrique Pezzoni perhaps epitomises the young critic in Sur at this
time. He was a gifted linguist, able to translate from Italian, French
and English, and took on many ofSur's translating tasks. He began by
writing book reviews and published a major article in defence of
Borges, as seen above. The essay is incisive and well documented, but
does not attempt to distance itself critically from Borges' own
aesthetics. Rather, it enters the skin of the writer and praises his
literary experimentation and the radical autonomy of his texts. By
rejecting 'social' readings and extolling the literariness of the text,
Pezzoni brings up to date Borges' own views on literature which had
developed since the 1 920s. Pezzoni would later become a 'modern'
critic in Sur, a man who understood structuralism and had a good
sense of the best of modern fiction in the 1 960s, yet he would never
overtly question the liberal universalist tradition. He was one of the
true heirs of the magazine, but unfortunately for the group few other
critics shared his sympathies, as the balance of cultural power moved
away from Sur in the late 1 950s.
If few new critics emerged within the magazine, were young
creative writers encouraged? Reviewing this ten-year period, it seems
that prose fiction continued to be published in the main by the old
generation. There are occasional stories by Murena, Estela Canto or
Rosa Chacel, but these appear infrequently and are of very variable
quality. Critics mention the apprenticeship served by Cortazar, but in
fact Cortazar can only be claimed marginally as a member of Sur: he
contributed eight times, mainly in the form ofbook reviews. It is clear,
however, that at the time he supported the magazine and shared its
literary and ideological assumptions. His note on Carlos Gardel
specifically refers to the problems of the decade, when he compares the
golden age ofthe tango in the 1 920s with the degenerate, populist form
heard daily over the radio.101 He wrote a laudatory account of
Victoria Ocampo's book of essays, Soledad sonora ( 1 950), and freely
acknowledged the influence of Sur: 'Si la llamo Victoria es porque asi
se nombra entre nosotros . . . desde hace tantos afios, desde que Sur nos
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, 1 946-55 1 59
ayud6 a los estudiantes que en la decada del 30 a 40 tentabamos un
camino titubeando entre tantos errores, tantas abyectas facilidades y
mentiras.'102 The review is an extended homage to Ocampo, one ofthe
first 'Cartas de mama', to which Cortazar would later refer in a short
story which dealt with the continuing influence ofBuenos Aires on an
intellectual living in Paris.103 Cortazar also stressed the importance of
the creative reader (or 'lector macho', as he would later put it in
Rayuela ) : 'Soledad sonora no reflejara sino la imagen de un lector que sea
como el, calido, limpio, activo. '104 He spoke of the same necessity for
the reader actively to transform the symbols on a page in his review of
the poetry ofOctavio Paz.105 He was already close to Paz in his interest
in surrealism ('surrealismo es cosmovision, no escuela o ismo ') 106 and
its attempt to break with the solitude of the self through poetry. His
later work would continue to use surrealist motifs. At this time,
however, Cortazar had still not broken out ofhis own solitude, like the
artist Masaccio, portrayed in a poem published in Sur:
Masaccio esta solo, en las capillas solas
eligiendo las tramas del reves en el lodazal de un cielo de mendigo.107

It would require a number of years' residence in Paris, and a break

with the dominant mode ofArgentine literature, for Cortazar to reject
a very self-conscious askesis, in favour of plural, experimental texts.
Once again we can say that he, too, is 'written' by Sur and especially by
Borges throughout his early career.
With regard to poetry, only one writer became firmly established in
Sur: Alberto Girri. The magazine would publish single poems by most
of the 'generation of 1 940', but it was left to specialist poetry
magazines, in particular Poes{a Buenos Aires, to consolidate and
disseminate new talent.108 Girri was perhaps closer to Sur, since his
work rejected the dominant modes of Argentine poetry. He wrote
approvingly of Cortazar that his work was 'mas contaminado de
ascetismo que de efusi6n'109 and this remark could apply equally well
to his own poetry. He established a distance between the elegiac tone
of the generation of 1 940, and their favourite poets - Neruda,
Apollinaire, Valery, Milosz and Rilke - and his own interest in poetry
written in English: Eliot, Pound and Wallace Stevens. He also
mentions the determining influence of Borges: 'Me mostr6 la
posibilidad de una concision epigramatica, de una sintaxis estricta en
el espaiiol, cosas que en un principio me parecian inalcanzables. Por
eso, leer la prosa de Borges me fue absolutamente decisivo.'1 10 At this
1 60 SUR
time, Girri wrote both short stories, in the style ofBorges, and poetry.
He began to publish in Sur in 1 948, and that publishing house edited
his books throughout the 1 950s. The structure of his poems admits
certain variations - a narrative mood, a gloss or a dramatic
monologue - but they are dominated by a tone of neutrality,
impersonality, ambivalence, an oblique vision of the world and a dry,
often sarcastic, mode of expression. A poet who radically rejected any
easy correspondence between himself and the man in the street and
who stressed that no simple regeneration of the world was possible
through art, would obviously provoke an acerbic critical debate. The
writers of Contorno and Centro in the mid 1 95os criticised his hollow
asceticism: 'Su hermetismo no es mas que deseo de exclusion, de
encastillamiento orgulloso, aunque, lo sospecho, sin mayor
fundamento . . . Usar el tono y el nombre de las grandes cosas e ideas
para ocultar la desnudez primordial o bien vulgar que no se quiere
asumir ni menos publicar. Ocultamiento, urbanidad, palabras,
palabras, palabras'. 1 1 1 The Sur critics, in particular Enrique Pezzoni
and, by extension, Octavio Paz, have always stressed the vigour
and passion that lay beneath the intellectual surface of Girri's verse.
Girri showed paz that 'la oscuridad tambien es luminosa, que la
sequedad es tambien humedad espiritual' .112 As the main poet in Sur
from the late 1 940s, his complexity and obscurity had clearly found a
spiritual home in a magazine where a few could read, understand and
promote him. Other poets appeared only irregularly.
By 1 955, therefore, there were few signs that young writers had
managed to gain positions of power within Sur. The magazine had
survived thanks to the enthusiasm of a small group, but that group
could not expect to enter its third decade without feeling the corrosive
effects ofnew ideas. Unfortunately new ideas would be associated with
new magazines and tradition would cease to be valued positively. All
these factors would lead to the ultimate demise of the magazine.

Sur and other literary magazines 1946-55

A study of magazine production in this decade reveals a growing
sophistication in journals, both those which adhered to and those
which opposed the basic tenets of Sur. In earlier years, Sur had been
the only element of continuity in a world of very short-lived literary
reviews. Now, several magazines have to be considered equally as
important as Sur. None had its institutional strength, for at best they
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55 161
lasted only a few years, but in that time they helped to shape the
development of Argentine letters.
Two magazines continued and supplemented the work of Sur:
Realidad and Anales de Buenos Aires. Rodriguez Monegal's view of
Realidad as a very different departure is unconvincing: 'The leading
Argentine journal at the time was still Sur, although its position had
been challenged by Realidad, a magazine whose subtitle 'Review of
Ideas' attempted to subtly underline not only its main characteristics
but one ofSur's weaknesses. '113 Sur was also a review ofideas, however,
and Realidad shared its dislike of Peronism - its founder Francisco
Romero also spent time in a Peronist gaol - and the need to support
democratic development in Argentina. Realidad did publish more
essays on Argentine society and on the problems of Great Power
Rivalry (see issues 2 and 3, March-June 1 947), and additional space
was given to Romero's own analysis ofphilosophical developments. It
was also less interested in publishing foreign writers almost for their
own sake, but it certainly never scorned the universalist model. The
Argentine contributors were the same in both magazines, though
their views were normally expressed in a more dynamic form in
Realidad. Sur saw this magazine as complementary rather than a
threat and published a long appreciation by Francisco Ayala in its
issue of September 1 95 1 (no. 203) .
Anales de Buenos Aires was transformed under the editorship ofBorges
from an intellectual anthology produced by the Argentine Anna/es
school into a dynamic literary magazine. Borges himself published a
number of stories and articles there and, together with Adolfo Bioy
Casares, edited a section called 'Museo', a miscellany ofliterary texts
and aphorisms from real and apocryphal authors. The journal was
exquisitely produced and mostly attracted Borges' friends from
among the Sur contributors. Like Sur, it dedicated an issue - number 7
(July 1 946) - to French literature. It also published Alberti's
'painterly' poems and had articles on Borges' favourite authors:
Chesterton and De Quincey. Issue 9 (September 1 946) contained a
number ofessays commemorating the death ofH. G. Wells, written by
Borges, Bioy, Ricardo Baeza and Martinez Estrada. Bioy's article on
Wells makes a very explicit attack on Peronism: 'En este mundo de
ecos y sombras, de tiranos que repiten a tiranos, de poetas que repiten
a poetas, de muchedumbres que repiten a un solo imbecil que repite
las mal medidas cantilenas plagiadas por mon6tonas canallas, la clara
inteligencia de Wells incontaminadamente buscaba la verdad' (p. 6) .
 SUR
Cortazar was also treated seriously as a short story writer and in
November 1 946 he published 'La casa tomada', a story which in the
context ofthe time was clearly anti-Peronist: it tells ofthe nightmare of
an unknown power taking over a house, forcing the inhabitants to live
in a state ofnervous apprehension. In general, Ana/es can be seen as the
best ofliterary Sur in this period, just as Realidad can be seen as the best
of Sur as a review of ideas.
Another magazine that should be included within this area of
intellectual concern is Cabalgata , a fortnightly publication in the
format of a newspaper, which published short critical essays, poetry,
short stories, book reviews and sections on theatre, cinema and art. It
drew its contributors in the main from Sur, Realidad and Ana/es, but
aimed at a wider audience. It remained lively and interesting
throughout the two and a half years of its regular publication.
The orthodox left had its own magazine throughout the late 1 940s,
Expresion , which appeared eight times. It suffered, however, from the
increasing censorship of the Peronist regime, which attacked the
Communist Party and persecuted left-wing intellectuals. The first
issue of Expresion (December 1 946) declared its solidarity with Latin
America and published a substantial extract from Neruda's work
'Alturas de Macchu Picchu'. Later issues included the work of Giusti,
Eichelbaum, Gonzalez Tunon, Alvaro Yunque and Ulises Petit de
Murat, among others. The short-lived nature of this publication does
not permit an appreciation of the scope and development ofleft-wing
thought at the time. There seems to be little flexibility in the articles,
however, which generally take up an orthodox Communist Party
approach to modernism and existentialism. Ritually, also, the issues
attack Mallea: 'Expresa mejor que ningun otro el divorcio existente
entre nuestra clase intelectual, entre nuestros escritores y el pueblo.'1 14
It is clear, however, that although its content was radically different to
that of Sur, the magazine felt that there should be a common front
against Peronism, and refrained from damaging polemics. Leonidas
Barletta could approve ofBorges at this time, and Sur even wrote an
appreciation of one of Barletta's books.1 15 Cold War attitudes would
harden by the late 1 940s but in the beginning at least, the common
enemy was Peron. The first issue of the magazine declared that
internationalism should not exclude Europe - to be American was to
be open to all intellectual trends. This was a time in which a member of
the Communist Party, Arturo Sanchez Rivas, could write in Sur and
Manuel Peyrou, a great friend of Borges, could contribute to
Expresion .
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55

Sexto Continente was the only magazine to express the contradictory

views of Peronism, though right-wing Catholic journals such as
Criteria were vocal in their support of the regime, until the peronistas
began to assault Church values from 1 952. We find also scattered
writings from a number of revisionist cultural critics, who directed
their attack on Sur. The three most significant are ArturoJauretche,
Jorge Abelardo Ramos and Juan Jose Hernandez Arregui, writers
whose popularity increased enormously in the late 1 960s, when
populist-nationalist sentiment was shared by many middle-class
intellectuals. In the 1 940s, their voices were isolated, and they were
granted little intellectual respect. Ever since the 1 940s, Arturo
Jauretche had attempted to define the nature and the effects of elite
hegemony and had focused on Victoria Ocampo as the cultural
handmaiden to the dominant economic groups. In his analysis,
published in the mid 1 960s, the literary model for the Argentine medio
pelo (a term used by Jauretche to ironise the parasitic aspirations
of the Argentine middle sectors) would continue to be Victoria
Ocampo and her group:
Asi a Victoria Ocampo, durante mucho tiempo no le perdonaron su
modernismo, oponiendole la reticencia de la gazmoiieria y tardan bastante
en comprender en que medida la dama culta, por el simple hecho de
transferir su vision europeizante y formar nucleo en su redor era . . . un
aliado tacito del sector de donde provenia y que vino a cumplir en el terreno
de las letras, la tarea que la Sociedad Rural cumplia respecto de la burguesia
. . . Un prestigio, con el sello de 'las formas tradicionales' 1 1 6
.

Hernandez Arregui and Abelardo Ramos provided little elaboration

or refinement to this rather crude analysis of cultural hegemony.
Ramos sets out as follows the division which is at the basis of such
criticism:
lmperialismo Emancipaci6n
Urquiza, Mitre, oligarquia terra­ Rosas, caudillos federales del interi­
teniente porteiia, liberal, cultura or, revoluci6n proletaria y popular.
europeizante: Sur, La Nacion ; Indo-america, Peron. Conciencia
Ocampo, Mallea, Borges nacional, literatura americana
popular revolucionaria: Hernandez,
Galvez, Quiroga.117
This model identifies Peron with a proletarian ideology, and expresses
the simple faith that popular consciousness, if left to itself, free from
European influences, will spontaneously intensify cultural exchange,
deepen free communication and liberate creative expression. The
note by Sebreli in Sur, mentioned above, points out that this argument
 SUR
works more at the level of romantic idealism than of historical
materialism.
Imperialismo y cultura by Hernandez Arregui is directed almost
exclusively at Sur, but does not rise above generalities.118 It offers a
basic analysis of the 'neo-colonial' status of Argentina and then a
reading ofSur in this light, focusing on a few individual writers and on
the issue: 'Por la reconstrucci6n nacional'. It similarly posits values
such as 'el sentimiento nacional latente', but the vagueness ofsuch an
idea is only too apparent. Any 'essentialist' argument is open to
question, but it has proved much easier for writers to put a convincing
case of this kind for literature of the Caribbean, where the essential
'otherness' can be defined in terms of colour, rhythm, landscape,
'marvellous realism' and the like. In Argentina, this is a more difficult
generality to advance.
A partial way out of the problem was offered by the group ofyoung
critics who were to form the magazines Centro and later Contorno .
Centro appeared in November 1 95 1 and was sustained over fifteen
issues by a group of university students interested in Argentine and
European literature. It published essays, some translations, poetry
and short stories and it marked a break - albeit tentative - with the
dominant traditions of Argentine literary criticism, with Peronist
control in the universities and with the intuitive, origins-obsessed
criticism ofMurena. Its guiding force was Ramon Alcalde, its 'centre',
a series of key essays by Alcalde, Ismael and David Vinas, Jitrik,
Prieto, Sebreli, Adelaida Gigli and Jaime Rest, and its tradition, the
free spirit of the university. In terms of political affiliation, the
magazine subscribed in broad terms to the ideals of intransigent
radicalism, that fraction of the Radical Party which supported
national and popular economic and political developmental models.
The Vinas family, in particular, had a history of involvement in
Radical politics. The issues contain excellent essays which reassess the
work of Mallea, Sabato, Borges and Lugones amongst others with a
subtlety which belies the tender years of many of the contributors.
A parallel and more sustained initiative was to be found in the
magazine Contorno , which united the same group of critics under the
editorship of the Vinas brothers. A great deal of attention has been
focused on Contorno . Argentine critics see it as the first modern journal
of Argentine literary criticism. The attention is deserved, for the
magazine analysed specific literature forms in their politico-cultural
context, through a detailed reading ofkey Argentine literary texts and
 THE YEARS OF PERONISM, I 946-55

contexts.1 19 They reinterpreted Arlt and Martinez Estrada (no. 4,

December 1 954) , and offered a reading of nineteenth- and twentieth­
century Argentine novels (nos. 5-6, September 1 955) . Sur was seen as
a product of the personal tastes of Ocampo, as is shown in Adelaida
Gigli's comment: 'Porque V.O. no descubre sino que verifica sus
gustos largamente cultivados; no crea sino que se identifica con las ya
determinadas cosas perdurables en un cerciorarse constante, no
lanzada a la verdadera vida espiritual . . . sino a la sociedad de la gente
espiritual.'120
Ocampo's review was also considered the repository of anti­
Peronism, as is seen in Oscar Masotta's article, 'Sur o el anti­
peronismo colonialista' (issue 7-8, July 1 956) . This piece is part of a
well-balanced issue on Peronism and again takes exception to Sur's
'Por la reconstrucci6n nacional'. Masotta's reading of even one
number is confined to only two articles, however, and there is no
attempt to see the development of the magazine over a period of time.
Labels such as 'V.O.' and 'anti-peronismo' simply point towards
important ideas, rather than developing them critically. The maga­
zine had its blind spots: the most noticeable was its inability to come to
terms with the work of Borges and of Sur. This group has been
responsible for perhaps the most substantive criticism of Argentine
literature, often reworking its earlier Contorno insights, and has
revealed much that was weak in Sur's criticism in the 1 95os and 1 96os.
Yet certain key questions - how to analyse a composite text, the nature
ofthe Surgroup, the importance ofcultural institutions, the European
cultural matrix - were not answered in any meaningful way.121
It was, however, extremely important that such questions should be
raised. Contorno showed that there were no such things as sacred texts
and that the assumptions of liberalism were not universal truths. As
Sur continued relatively unchanged into its third decade, the voices of
protest became more persuasive. Sur itself would not play any major
part in the national reconstruction it had demanded.
 6

Sur 1956-70: the failure of reconstruction

Pero la difusi6n de la cultura no me parece ser el camino elegido por la
mayoria de la turbulenta juventud contemporanea.1

Argentine cultural development, 1 956--70

In I 955, Sur was still the most influential literary magazine in
Argentina. It had, by its own lights, defended the liberal tradition
bravely during the Peronist years and could still command the respect
of most intellectual groups. No dominant cultural alternative to
liberalism had emerged in the decade 1 945 to 1 955, although young
critics were beginning to question the traditional structures ofliterary
production and consumption. Yet a significant transformation of
society had taken place under Peronism, the results of which would
become apparent in every aspect of culture. The post-Peronist years
can be seen as heralding a process ofmodernisation, but Sur was not to
be in the vanguard ofthe movement. To explain why this modernising
elite was displaced by other forces will require a closer look at
Argentine development from the downfall of Peron until 1970, when
Argentina was experiencing the shock of the Cordobazo, the growth of
youth protest and guerrilla violence. It was a cultural climate that Sur
could no longer influence or even understand: its dreams of national
reconstruction would evaporate before Peron himself returned as the
much vaunted saviour of the nation. What went wrong?
The success of Sur had been due to the quality of its foreign and
national contributors, and the relative stability of what a strategic
minority accepted as taste and value. For such a project to endure, it
would be necessary either to incorporate new writers or to maintain
critical acceptance for established contributors, or both. Yet all these
factors were becoming increasingly problematical: it was difficult to
sustain the internationalism of Sur's early years, when European
friends were ageing and were not replaced by a younger selection.
There is a story told often in Buenos Aires - and whether it is true or
apocryphal does not alter the point of the argument - that when
1 66
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 167
Robbe-Grillet came to Argentina through an invitation from the PEN
Club in 1 962, he was taken on the 'de rigueur' visit to Villa Ocampo in
San Isidro. When asked what he thought of this repository of famous
literary memories, he replied that it reminded him ofa brothel. That a
well-respected literary Maecenas should be branded as a cultural
'Madame' illustrates anecdotally a serious problem oflegitimacy. The
younger members of Sur Maria Luisa Bastos, Enrique Pezzoni and
-

Edgardo Cozarinsky - tried to assimilate new tendencies into the

magazine, with limited success. Young Argentine writers also chose to
found their own magazines rather than help towards a renovation of
Sur . A magazine which had for so long only treated Latin American
culture selectively, now found itself unable to adapt to the new
conditions of revolutionary Cuba, which served as a focus for
emerging Latin American writers. Sur chose to turn its back on Cuba
and thus rejected much that was innovative in Latin American
culture in the 1 960s. The scattered writings of Severo Sarduy in that
period could not compensate for the loss of many important names
caused by the magazine's anti-revolutionary stance. In this way the
liberalism of Sur would be seen retrospectively, in a paraphrase of
Fidel Castro, as the freedom of the oppressor,2 and the younger
generation ofcritics would become increasingly nationalistic, 'Third­
Worldist' and socialist. It is necessary to look in greater detail at the
shifts which took place within Argentine cultural life in this period,
shifts that would weaken considerably the position of Sur.
In crude terms, this period sees a movement from elite to mass
culture, and an expansion of the market-place for cultural products.
Peronism had increased the numbers in higher education, but had cut
them off from scientific innovation. The downfall of the regime
provided these people with an opportunity to update and expand
their knowledge. Most intellectual groups had opposed Peron, but
with his downfall the tenuous alliance fell apart. Halperin Donghi
observes the phenomenon: 'Entre ese prestigioso pasado y los derechos
de un futuro que debia ser necesariamente diferente, se daba una
tension, particularmente dolorosa porque los contendientes habian
atravesadojun to y en el mismo bando la experiencia peronista y ahora
comenzaban a encontrar que corria entre ellos mas distancia que la
que los separaba de ese regimen tan aborrecido.'3 Sur had long
expected to remain the arbiter of taste, but now other modernising
groups were anxious to corrode and displace what they began to view
as traditional values. There is, of course, a danger in over-simplifying
1 68 SUR
social processes into an antagonism between traditional and modern
values. There is no truth in the argument that Argentina was
transformed from a traditional, elitist society into one marked by
chaotic mass consumerism in the space ofa few years. Obviously one of
the distinguishing features of a community such as that of Buenos
Aires, in comparison with the capitals of other Latin American
countries, has been the persistence of a large, important middle-class
sector. It should be stressed, however, that certain groups which held
power after 1 955 saw themselves as different from the elite groups that
had held sway for so long. The 'winds of change' in the 1 960s would
blow away the remaining vestiges of traditional Argentine society.
There would be a new image - a word which begins to be used
increasingly in the 1 950s - of positive, efficient, creative and classless
values embodied in new politicians such as Frondizi, and in
industrialists such as the Di Tella family, which established an
important cultural foundation in 1 958. The movement towards
scientific and cultural modernisation in this period was, to paraphrase
Peter Gay, an idea attempting to become a reality.4 If modernisation
proved to be, in the long run, a myth, it was one which beguiled a
number of intellectuals. Buenos Aires could, with a correct develop­
ment strategy, compete with the developed world in terms ofscientific
and cultural progress. In this world, Sur would be dismissed as
oligarchic and amateurish. Portantiero has made the following
observation: 'La emergencia de ese estrato era indicativa de una
modernizaci6n general de la sociedad argentina, presente tanto en el
tipo de consumos . . . de las clases medias cuanto en la estructura anti­
tradicionalista que comenz6 a darse durante ese periodo a los patrones
ideol6gicos dominantes . . . '5 This new spirit can be defined in a series
of images of Buenos Aires in the late 1 95os.
The military government of the Revolucion Libertadora and the
civilian government ofFrondizi did much to encourage the expansion
of cultural and scientific research.6 Universities were given grants to
improve equipment and manning levels, and intellectuals who had
been dislodged by the Peronist regime came back to occupy positions
of importance in the educational and technical apparatuses. Socio­
logy as a discipline became firmly rooted at this time under the
guidance ofGino Germani. The word that the new discipline began to
use about the process of which it was a part was desarrollismo , which
was given further weight by Frondizi and Frigerio in the pages of the
magazine iflui?
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 69
The State offered some aid, but allowed space and freedom for new
forms of enquiry to be explored. State support was complemented by
grants from North American foundations. Such support for certain
forms of social democratic development in Latin America became
formalised in the Alliance for Progress in the early 1 96os, following the
perceived threat of Cuba, but it was already apparent by the late
1 95os. In fact, this policy was a reworking of the same 'Give them a
share' dictum which had suffered setbacks in Argentina during the
war years - due to Argentina's non-cooperation with American
foreign policy - and under Peron. United States investment began to
flow again into Argentina and the interest shown by foundations was
part of this general movement. In the late 1 950s both the Rockefeller
and Ford foundations promoted development projects in Latin
America, while the Museum of Modern Art in New York greatly
expanded and enlarged its international section, exhibiting American
art abroad as the liberal face of the Cold War.7
These were 'boom' years in Argentina.8 Just as the sale of fridges
and washing machines increased and considerable sums were spent on
advertising, so visits to the psychoanalyst became an integral part of
middle-class Buenos Aires life, people flocked to the films of Ingmar
Bergman and began to buy the works of boom novelists such as Julio
Cortazar in tens of thousands, whereas the traditional print run had
been between two and three thousand. Publishing houses expanded,
the renovated Museo de Bellas Artes under the art critic Jorge
Romero Brest exhibited young artists and travelling foreign exhibi­
tions. Argentine artists experimented with local versions of abstract
expressionism and 'art informel', theatre workshops sprang up, and
the successful newsweekly magazine Primera Plana influenced politics,
commented on books and cultural activities (through its section 'Arte
y Espectaculos') , and directed fashion. This was the atmosphere that
Buenos Aires breathed as part ofa general mood ofexpansion. In such
a climate, intellectuals who supported modern culture could, in Tom
Wolfe's facetious words, help to 'lead the vanguard march through
the land of the philistines' .9
'Boom' is a North American term which reflected the modern
marketing methods of the late 1 95os. Even though economists have
shown that personal prosperity did not increase dramatically in the
period - it was subject to the rise and stagnation of the Argentine
economy - there was certainly an overall increase in consumption.10
In the cultural field, it was a time in which the middle classes took up
1 70 SUR
practices which for years under Peronism they had been allowed to
experience only surreptitiously, ifat all. Many more people had access
to what had been previously conceived as 'high-brow' culture. One
guide to this is the number of publishing houses active in Buenos Aires
in the 1 g6os. The large houses - Emece, Losada, Sudamericana- were
joined by a number of smaller concerns: Fabril, Centro Editor, Jorge
Alvarez and La Flor. Each of these was interested in promoting
contemporary authors. Aside from such literary publishing houses,
EUDEBA, the university press, began to produce cheap copies of
textbooks and classics in print runs of tens of thousands. Angel Rama
has provided revealing figures on the sales of Cortazar novels,
mentioned above.1 1 One cannot just talk ofa qualitative difference in
the work of the new novelists who appeared in the sixties, with respect
to their predecessors, for it is at this time also that Borges began to be
read by a wider public. The market conditions of the sixties were
evidently very different. There was an increasing public, a more
aggressive editorial policy (as documented in the memoirs of Carlos
Barral)12 and a number of writers, such as Tomas Eloy Martinez and
Ernesto Schoo, who would adapt their literary skills- developed in Sur
- to the new demands of literary journalism. It was a world that
Victoria Ocampo found increasingly difficult to understand:
Al mismo tiempo, hecho ins6lito, el vulgo compra las obras de Cortazar (tan
luego de Cortazar) y se pasea con sus libros en Torino o en subte o en
colectivo. Sin embargo, Cortazar es netamente un autor para minorias, no
para lectores a quienes ha de aburrir fabulosamente . . . porque no estan
preparados para digerirlo y saborearlo. Y q ue nadie se me ofenda. Frente a la
maquina (sin ir mas lejos, la de mi auto, que manejo), soy el vulgo y
requetevulgo.13
Primera Plana reflected and directed the taste of this vulgo in the
sixties. It was enormously popular and influential, and it has even
been argued that it helped create the climate for the coup of 1 966 by
constantly ridiculing and criticising government strategies and
democratic politicians (one famous interview made a mockery of
President Illia's wife) . It exuded sophistication and modernity and
was up to date with all the latest fashions. In its section on books, the
world of authors and novels became news. Sur was threatened by a
different style of cultural magazine which would cater for new tastes.
Primacy was given to the interview, to highlighting the writer as a
star. The author became a type of brand-name, a mark of industrial
quality, by which new products could be sold: 'the latest book by
 I 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION I 71

Garcia Marquez, author ofCien aiios de soledad' . A favourable review in

Primera Plana would sell books, and a literary interview would help
market the product named Cortazar or Garcia Marquez. This is not
to decry the quality of the writing - Primera Plana published literary
journalism of a high standard - but this was no longer Sur's familiar
world.
In these conditions, Sur could not complain when its judgements
were ignored or simply not read. One example illustrates the widening
gap between the new and old arbiters of taste. The publication of Cien
aflos de soledad was greeted as a major literary event: Primera Plana
published extensive interviews with Garcia Marquez and treated the
occasion as headline news. Sur responded to the occasion with a short
review by one ofits oldest and most traditional contributors, Gonzalez
Lanuza, who wrote enthusiastically of the book but could not disguise
his own distance from new tendencies: 'Mi ignorancia con respecto a
su autor, no deja de ser un grave sintoma, mas que por lo que
personalmente me afecta, por el indice de ese insensato
desconocimiento mutuo de la labor literaria entre paises de tan
cacareada fraternidad cultural.'14
If Sur's traditional role of informing a minority about new
tendencies was superseded by Primera Plana , it could not fall back on a
developed canon of literary criticism with which to combat the new
literary journalism. Sur had never really worked on what Leavis
would call the 'business' of criticism: it relied on the problematical
notion of taste. Standards, as we have seen, were 'known', they were
not defined, in fact probably could not be defined. Undefined
standards, however, were increasingly dismissed as amateurish, as
serious young critics read of developments in structuralist theory in
magazines such as Airon, in Marxist theory and practice in Los Libros
or of new writers in El Escarabajo de Oro. Sur, to a large extent, had lost
its traditional role. It would be an exaggeration to say that the
combination of increased specialisation in other critical journals and
the extension of the market-place made Sur's position completely
untenable: these factors did, however, create a climate in which Sur
was made to appear increasingly irrelevant to the younger genera­
tions, and its attitude towards the Cuban Revolution added further to
this disenchantment.
The impact of 'Cuba' has sometimes been reduced in the history of
the magazine to a clash between the wills ofJose Bianco and Victoria
Ocampo. The issues were, however, much broader than that. The
 SUR
cultural significance of the Revolution should not be underestimated.
In the early years, especially, Cuba invited young writers, awarded
literary prizes and promoted discussion. The generation later to be
called that of the 'boom' was closely identified with this cultural
renaissance offered by the Revolution. To take an anti-Cuban line in a
Latin American literary magazine at the time was virtually to
condemn that magazine to the wilderness. Jose Bianco had been
invited to Cuba to take part in cultural activities organised by Casa de
las Americas . He stressed that he went as a private individual and not as
a representative ofSur, but Victoria Ocampo heavy-handedly printed
in Sur a statement that the magazine rejected his initiative. Bianco
found himself in an intolerable position and offered his resignation as
jefe de redaccion . He has spoken ofhis irritation at Ocampo's actions: 'Le
mande contestar indirectamente a Victoria . . . que no hiciera
ninguna declaraci6n, y que si se hada una declaraci6n yo iba a
renunciar. Eso le mande decir porque me pareci6 una cosa muy
inusitada y un poco absurda hacer una declaraci6n diciendo que me
invitaron por ser mi mismo.'15
This resignation had important consequences. It robbed the
magazine of its guiding spirit through twenty-three years, for Bianco
had performed the invaluable task of contextualising the enthusiasms
ofVictoria Ocampo, insinuating other writers and balancing tenden­
cies. It was not an exaggeration when Octavio Paz called him, in
conversation with Rita Guibert, 'una figura esencial en la historia de
nuestra literatura moderna'.16 Maria Luisa Bastos took over Bianco's
role for several years, and was replaced by Enrique Pezzoni, who had
resigned his job at the university following the intervention of
Ongania in 1 966, but both found the task of renovation virtually
impossible: the interests were too entrenched to allow for any radical
changes. Equally important, the anti-Cuban stance lost Sur the
cooperation of many of the boom writers, the Cubans themselves, and
a whole generation of Argentine intellectuals who were closely
identified with the Revolution. Perhaps for the first time in Latin
American cultural history, events in that continent were more
significant than tendencies in Europe. Sur had always read Latin
American texts selectively and could interpret Cuba only at a most
literal level: as a communist, totalitarian regime. The complexities of
Latin American cultural developments in the sixties were to be found
in the pages of Casa de las Americas and in the celebration of the boom
writers in the issues ofMundo Nuevo , edited in Paris by Emir Rodriguez
 I 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION I 73

Monegal. Sur could only react defensively, approving certain authors

and remaining silent on many matters.
Political events in Argentina itselfalso moved in a bewildering way
for the magazine. The democratic experiments of Frondizi and lllia
could not come to terms with the ever-present threat of Peronism, or
the economic stagnation of the country. The military intervened in
self-confident style in 1 966, and Ongania was given the post of
dictatorial President with no limits to his power. It was felt that only
the military could truly modernise Argentina, putting an end to
inflation, low economic growth and labour unrest. In this task it had
no obligation to the political sectors. The military were disillusioned
with the democratic process, had firm ideas as to how the country
should be run, but little expertise in the cultural field. The attitude to
certain areas of intellectual enquiry was frankly obscurantist. In the
end, both economic modernisation and cultural repression would lead
to a radicalisation of politics which defeated military plans and
created the conditions for the return of Peron.
The military regime's economic model, the Krieger Vasena plan,
sought to stabilise the economy with strong measures to curb inflation
and increase the flow of foreign capital. It was an ambitious and
sophisticated project, but it directly affected the unions, who saw it as
an attack on wages and consumption, and small domestic entrepre­
neurs, who feared that stabilisation measures would cause a recession
and put them out ofbusiness.17 The military also came to be opposed
by middle-class intellectuals and student groups, who objected to the
government's heavy-handed measures. The universities had come
under severe attack in the face of the government's objectives:
'Reestructurar y actualizar la ensefianza en todos los niveles y
campos, para la consolidaci6n de la cultura nacional . . . Neutralizar
la infiltraci6n marxista, erradicar la acci6n del comunismo e impedir
la acci6n de todo otro extremismo.'18 Faculties were closed down and
teaching staffwere dismissed or resigned in protest. Ongania' s officials
also seized magazines, closed theatres on morality grounds, ordered
imported political textbooks such as works by Marx and Engels to be
burned by the Post Office, closed radio news services and television
shows.
In the cultural field this had two main effects: a number ofartists left
the country, but many others became more politicised and fought the
government in all areas of cultural activity. Their analyses varied in
sophistication, but the dominant strands of thought were again
1 74 SUR

nationalist, populist and in many cases Marxisant. Solanas' film La

hora de loshornos ( 1 968) is a model ofsuch thought. It works with a series
of simple contrasts: 'lo nacional', 'la conciencia n.acional', 'lo
humano', 'los indios', Latin American identity as defined by exploita­
tion and suffering versus imperialism, a dependent extranjerizante
oligarchy and a medio pelo middle class. The film speaks of the
'violencia cultural' perpetrated by those who ape universal models
instead of investigating national problems. One cruel image sees
Mujica Lainez launching a book centred on the Italian aristocracy in
the institutional heart of'swinging Buenos Aires': the arts centre ofthe
Di Tella Institute. Mujica Lainez and the Di Tella represented the old
and new forms of cultural dependency. Sur could only be treated with
hostility in such a climate.
In 1 969 working-class unrest fused with student radicalism in a
series ofrevolts in Argentina, the most important of which took place
in Cordoba in May and eventually brought the government down.
The anti-government alliance was aided indirectly by the spectacular
successes of the Peronist and Marxist guerrilla groups which sprang
up and began a series ofraids on military targets and banks. Guerrilla
violence, nationalist, radicalised middle-class sectors, a combative
trade union movement, the likely return of Peron: all these elements
struck at the heart of Sur and caused Sur's proprietress finally to give
up her unequal struggle against the tide of time.

Foreign contributors to the magazine

Victoria Ocampo commented on the decline of her internationalist
strategy in the 1 96os and blamed the economic climate: 'Con los afios,
con la perdida creciente del poder adquisitivo de nuestra moneda, ha
ido perdiendo nuestra revista la posibilidad de comprar o encargar
colaboraciones al extranjero.'19 Financial difficulties, which had
always plagued the magazine, became, according to its editors,
intolerable in the 1 96os.20 Although the Sur publishing house edited
Lolita in 1 959 and defended its choice, Nabokov never received a
penny in royalties and eventually withdrew the rights. At a time when
Sur's finances were problematic, writers were becoming increasingly
aware of their value in the market-place: small reviews could not
compete effectively with weekly news journals.
Yet although the financial argument can be sustained, it cannot be
seen as the only cause of the decline in foreign contributors. Another
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 75
important point is that in view of the advancing age of the main Sur
group - for the foreign articles had been chosen mainly among the
friends of Victoria Ocampo and Jose Bianco - their sense of world
culture was becoming less organic. Victoria Ocampo could claim to
know 'tout Paris' in the 1 920s and 1 930s. In the 1 960s, however, her
friendship with Malraux, one of the main instigators of French
cultural politics at the time, was not enough to bridge the gap: the
French new wave would be less interested in exotic patronage and in
the artisan nature oflittle magazines. The younger members of Sur -
Pezzoni, Cozarinsky, Maria Luisa Bastos, Silvia Molloy - could
perhaps have made the transition, but they were not given the space or
the power. The internationalism of the 1 920s was very different from
the internationalism of the 1 960s.
Another factor which might have affected the process is mentioned
by Lottman in his book on the Left Bank, namely the decline in
importance of 'universalist' French intellectuals after the early 1 95os:
Although this was not understood by even the most lucid observers while it
was happening, and it remained for the sociologists and cultural historians to
announce it, the decline ofthe impact ofParisian intellectuals coincided with
the decline of Paris as capital of Europe and intellectual capital of the world.
It happened in the 1 950s, when city planners gave priority to economic
growth, at the expense of cultural institutions and of the city scape itself.21
Sur's sense of universalism required the collaboration of other
intellectuals who believed in the same values; the dialogue between a
few trained minds across national boundaries. As intellectuals turned
inward and homeward, they became less interested in articulating
these confident general truths which had sustained Sur for so long:
when they spoke out, it would be on sharply defined national issues.22
One way to attempt to capture and freeze an elusive reality was by
codifying it and producing an anthology. The anthology became
increasingly important to Sur in these later years, and attempted to
embrace many aspects of world culture. Special editions were
dedicated to countries and also to great authors. The early choices
were clearly intended to be pioneering: an edition on Canadian
literature appeared in Sur no. 240 (May-June 1 956) , and Victoria
Ocampo talked once more of a kindred American spirit. Octavio Paz
wrote the introduction to the edition onJapanese literature (no. 249,
November-December 1 95 7), and selected the texts, together with the
North American critic Donald Keene. Paz claimed that Japanese
literature was one of the most dynamic in the world and used it to
 SUR
intervene in what he saw as a useless debate between nationalist and
cosmopolitan writers. Japanese culture was both nationalist and
universal: 'La verdad es que ninguna gran literatura ha sido casta; la
castidad es esteril, segun se ve en el ejemplo del casticismo espafiol, que
ha empobrecido a Espafia.'23
Several months later, an issue on Israeli literature appeared, this
time with a prologue by Borges. This anthology was appropriate in a
city with one of the largestJewish populations in the world (served by
cultural magazines such as Davar) , but Borges made the broader
claim that all Western civilisation is descended from the Greeks and
the Jews.24
Argentine intellectuals thus combined with Jewish writers in a
thorough coverage oflsraeli literature. The same thoroughness can be
seen in the double volumes covering German contemporary literature
(nos. 308- 1 0, September 1 967-February 1 968) and young North
American writers (no. 322,January-February 1 970) . Each served as a
valuable source of information, but also pointed to the increasingly
anthological and rather eclectic nature of the magazine. Sur built its
bridges with other cultures, not through travel and personal contacts
as in the early days, but in a more deliberate and more academic way.
The issues can be seen as source-books, rather than part of a dynamic
cultural debate within the pages of the magazine. Perhaps the most
important source-book is the Indice published in Sur nos. 303-5
(November 1 966-April 1 967) . In this, thirty-five years' work was
classified and codified: the magazine recognised its own sense of
making history, and also, perhaps, that that history was nearing an
end. When a magazine begins to review past triumphs, it is often a sign
that its appetite for future battles is diminished.
The issues dedicated to individual writers also, in the main, referred
to past friendships. Of these friends the most important is Ortega, who
had sustained a love-hate relationship with Victoria Ocampo since
1 9 1 6, and whose magazine, the Revista de Occidente, had served as some
kind of blueprint for Sur in the Spanish-speaking world. Sabato, for
example, has underlined the importance of both magazines to his
generation.25 The Revista de Occidente had always been an ideal model
for Sur, and it was appropriate that a year after the closure of her own
magazine, Victoria Ocampo was asked to edit a special edition of the
Revista de Occidente dedicated to Argentine letters.
The homage to Ortega, published in July-August 1 956 (no. 24 1 ) ,
glossed his work as a philosopher and a sociologist in eulogistic form.
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 77
Rosa Chacel expressed a sentiment which was reiterated throughout
these essays. Ortega 'estableci6 esa especie o casta - no hay que
asustarse de la mala palabra - intelectual que consiste estrictamente en
vivir poniendo el honor en la misi6n del pensador' .26 The critical essay,
by Argentine and Spanish intellectuals, was amplified by the personal
reminiscences of his two Argentine literary Maecenas, the devoted
Bebe Sansinena de Elizalde, director of the Amigos def Arte, and the
slightly more cautious Victoria Ocampo. Both referred to a golden age
ofletters which was now passing. The problem was how to adapt to the
new.
For her part, Maria Luisa Bastos, the managing editor in the early
1 960s, has argued that the magazine did not lose its way totally, as
some critics have implied. 'La revista no qued6 estancada, como se ha
solido afirmar - los sumarios de esa decada registran los nombres de
Samuel Beckett, Osamu Dazai, Marco Denevi, Juan Goytisolo,
Eugene Ionesco, Yukio Mishima, Vladimir Nabokov, Alejandra
Pizarnik, Mario Vargas Llosa. '27 A content-analysis of this period
proves her correct, but only up to a point.
Intellectuals could still be called out to judge abuses in the sphere of
literature. In September-October 1 959, Sur no. 260 dedicated part of
an issue to 'el caso Lolita' to contest a decree issued by the
municipality ofBuenos Aires that the novel be banned as immoral. It
was argued that Britain had waived its censorship and that Argentina
should do the same. Various internationally renowned critics were
quoted in defence of the novel, and the Sur group responded in
numbers to a questionnaire which sought to define the limitations of
State power in the cultural field. Some had not read the book - Borges,
Sabato and Mallea - but this did not prevent an impassioned defence
of the right ofintellectual freedom. Victoria Ocampo set herselfapart
from the aesthetics of the book, but recognised that it had merit. She
acknowledged that she was not at home with modern fiction,
preferring the moral world of Pasternak to Nabokov: 'No soy, desde
hace afios, asidua lectora de novelas "a la page" . . . Voy siempre
hacia los autores a cuyo grupo sanguineo pertenezco. Es decir que
para mi, la posibilidad de "transfusiones" es primordial. '28 Despite
this spirited defence - in the tradition of the 'Desagravio a Borges' -
there were insufficient transfusions of the quality of Nabokov to keep
Sur in the forefront of literary experimentation in the 1 96os.
The PEN Club gathered once again in Buenos Aires in 1 962, but it
had none ofthe quality or the passion ofthe 1 936 event, which Sur had
 SUR
been able to report almost as a gathering ofintimate friends. Graham
Greene was present, as was Ignazio Silone and Stephen Spender, but
their conference papers were brief and uninspiring. Significantly no
mention was made of the ungrateful Robbe-Grillet at the time or
subsequently. The universalism of these meetings now seemed
somewhat irrelevant in the new conditions in Latin America,
although Victoria Ocampo had always found in the UNESCO
Charter a creed that mirrored her own practices. (She would
subsequently leave her house in San Isidro to UNESCO, to become a
centre for translators.) Translation, indeed, had always been funda­
mental to the project ofSur, and the anniversary issue on Shakespeare
(no. 28g-90, September-October 1 964) contained a long essay by
Ocampo herselfon the difficulty of the art, in which she analysed how
Gide and Madariaga had interpreted and rendered into French and
Spanish certain lines of Shakespeare. Translation was rarely theorised
in those days: those with the gift oflanguages offered a service which
was 'transparent'.
After the magazine had ceased regular publication and was
publishing half-yearly thematic volumes, however, it dedicated a
special issue to problems of translation. The main bulk of the text is
made up ofpapers reprinted from a PEN Club publication, The World
of Translation, but the Argentines also talked about the importance
and complexity of the activity. Victoria Ocampo argued that
standards could only improve if translators were paid adequately and
could dedicate sufficient time to the rigours of the task. She looked
forward to an increased professionalisation. Borges talked of the
difficulty ofrendering a source language into a target language (not,
ofcourse, using those terms) and gave several examples ofproblems of
equivalence. He concluded that a translator must have a thorough
knowledge of each culture, for dictionaries are mendacious: 'Los
diccionarios bilingiies, por otra parte, hacen creer que cada palabra
de un idioma puede ser reemplazada por otra de otro idioma. El error
consiste en que no se tiene en cuenta que cada idioma es un modo de
sentir el universo o de percibir el universo.'29 None of the contributors
viewed translation as a secondary activity, a mechanical rather than a
creative process, within the competence of anyone who has a basic
understanding of other languages. Jose Bianco argued that good
translations are works of transformation.30 Sur could justifiably argue
that in Borges, Bianco, Girri, Pezzoni and Victoria Ocampo herself
they had some of the finest translators in the Spanish language.
 I 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION I 79

However much Marxisant critics might argue that a 'translating'

mentality was a developed form of cultural dependency, the quality
and accuracy of the translations themselves were rarely in doubt.
As she became more uncertain ofmodern values, Ocampo returned
insistently to old friends, Tagore (no 2 70, March-April 1 96 1 ) and
Nehru (no. 29 1 , November-December 1 964) , and Sur readers were
forced to relive her attachment to these men, and their quietist creeds.
The 1 96os could offer few such thinkers, although the magazine
focused for a time on Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who, from a
solitary monastery in Gethsemani in the United States, wrote
prolifically on the contemplative life, oriental religion and Christian
humanism. There were two aspects of Merton's work, the contempla­
tive and the committed. Sur tended to publish the former, leaving
Argentines such as Miguel Grinberg or the Nicaraguan poet-priest
Ernesto Cardenal to explore a theology of liberation.31 For Merton,
the conditions of the 1 960s demanded a fresh appraisal of commit­
ment, but the institutional structure of Sur did not allow for a similar
renovation. Maria Luisa Bastos is right to quote a smattering of'great'
names - Sartre on Nathalie Sarraute; Ionesco or Godard on cinema;
Trilling on the Profumo Affair; Barrault; Goytisolo (several stories);
Dylan Thomas; Butor; and Beckett - but these names appeared very
infrequently, as an eclectic gathering rather than as a developed
aesthetic of modernism. In this period, the magazine could still
produce anthologies, review old friends and print the occasional
important poem or article, but internationalism as a shaping strategy
had ceased to function adequately.

Latin American contributors

Melquiades no habia ordenado los hechos en el tiempo convencional de los
hombres, sino que concentr6 un siglo de episodios cotidianos, de modo que
coexistieran en un instante.32

This observation by Garcia Marquez aptly describes the enormous

popularity of Latin American fiction in the 1 96os, after many decades
of obscurity. It was a 'boom' catalysed by the quality of the writers
themselves, but also by aggressive marketing techniques and an
increased middle-class readership. In Mario Vargas Llosa's deroga­
tory phrase, Latin American writers had moved from the primitive
stage to become successful 'creators'.33 No literary magazine could
ignore this unprecedented flowering of talent. Yet since Sur had
1 80 SUR
traditionally paid little regard to cultural development within the
continent, and since these new writers were often identified with the
Cuban Revolution, the magazine could not respond quickly to
incorporate new writers and, by extension, new readers. Nothing
could highlight Sur's function and limitations more starkly. Only in
the late 1 960s under Enrique Pezzoni did the magazine attempt to
include modern Latin American writers systematically. By then,
however, it was near to closure.
Octavio Paz continued to publish in Sur throughout the period.
Issue no. 265 (July-August 1 960) included an extract from Corriente
alterna , on poets and drugs, with particular relation to Michaux and
Huxley. Paz was also one ofthe few friends to be included in the thirty­
fifth anniversary issue (nos. 298-9, January-April 1 966) with another
extract from Corriente alterna . Sur also published his letter to the
Olympic Committee after the massacre of students at Tlatelolco. He
had been asked to write a poem in praise ofthe Olympic spirit and had
declined, but the massacre prompted an immediate response of grief
and anger:
La vergiienza es ira
Vuelta contra uno mismo:
Si
Una naci6n entera se avergiienza
Es le6n que se agazapa
Para saltar34
Jose Donoso was one ofseveral writers to spend time in Buenos Aires
as a voluntary exile. He has referred to his two years in Argentina as
decisive in his literary development, after the claustrophobia of the
literary world in Chile. The Sur group played its part in this
transformation: 'Rosa Chacel di6 a conocer Coronacion desde las
paginas de Sur. Me habia evadido de la ju ala, y aunque volvi a vivir en
Chile, creo que despues de este viaje a Buenos Aires mi vision literaria
cambi6 definitivamente.'35 He remembers Jose Bianco as the guiding
intelligence of the period.36 It was Bianco who invited him to publish
in Sur, even though at that time he was a virtually unknown writer
(the recognition of Coronacion was to occur several years later) . He
published two stories, 'Paseo', in Sur no. 26 1 (November-December
1 959) , and 'Santelices', in issue no. 280 (January-February 1 963) .
'Paseo' is perhaps the best of his short stories, taking up a theme that
would become obsessive in his novels: the sterility and repression ofthe
Chilean middle and upper middle classes, whose lives are often
 1 956-70: THE FAI LURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 181
transformed by members of the more instinctual working class.
Themes ofdominance and dependence, economic, social and psycho­
logical, recur in Donoso's work, often through the central metaphor of
cannibalism. In 'Santelices' the repressed narrator is hypnotised by
lions at the zoo tearing at raw flesh, equating cannibalism with
extreme forms of sexual union. These interests would be developed
further in the mature novels, El obscenopajaro de la noche ( 1 970) and Casa
de campo ( 1 978) . These stories were part of a tendency in the magazine
at this time (see the Argentine section below) to move away from the
abstract fantasies ofBorges, by treating more complex social themes.
Virgilio Pinera spent sixteen years in Buenos Aires and became
attached to Sur in the late 1 95os. He had been an earlier contributor to
the Cuban magazine Origenes, but soon fell out with its editor, Lezama
Lima. Cabrera Infante, who has written amusingly on the feud
between the two writers, takes up the story: 'Virgilio dej6 el pais en
una suerte de exilio literario. Escogi6 Argentina como destino y alli
vivi6 dieciseis anos, trabajando en el consulado como mero escribano,
viviendo en Buenos Aires una vida tan precaria como en La Habana,
pobre payador.'37 During this stay, he was published several times in
Suras a short story writer, though his review ofjarry's Ubu Roi (no. 255,
November-December 1 958) revealed his interest in theatre - he was a
precursor ofthe theatre ofthe absurd. His stories were well received by
the small group offantasy writers in Buenos Aires, and appreciated by
the critics.38 His most successful story, 'La gran escalera del palacio
legislativo' (no. 25 1 , March-April 1 958) , is a mock panegyric to
bureaucracies, in one of which he was caught as a scribe at the Cuban
Embassy in Buenos Aires, and another of which would later hound
him as a homosexual when he returned to Cuba. Despite Sur's
acceptance he had little success in Argentina. Losada published
Cuentosfrios ( 1 956), but the edition was paid for by Rodriguez Feo, the
Cuban playboy and patron of the arts, and sold badly. Jose Bianco
was later to talk of his friendship with Pinera and offered a critical
appraisal ofhis work in an anthology, El que vino a salvarme, published
in Buenos Aires in 1 970. Pinera, for a time, was distantly attached to
the Sur group. This, then, was the pattern for enlisting Latin American
contributors: a few writers would get to know members of the
magazine and would be published. The magazine made rare attempts
actually to investigate for itself new writing in the continent.
Even Sur, however, could not fail to observe the increasing interest
in Latin America, especially with the North American 'Alliance for
 SUR
Progress'. Within this context, a major attempt to come to terms with
Latin American historical development in the 1 96os was made in issue
no. 293 (March-April 1 965) . This is a genuinely liberal assortment of
essays, with only the vituperative tones ofHumberto Pinera resorting
to superficial slogans rather than measured argument concerning the
Cuban Revolution: 'De Cuba desapareci6 la libertad tan pronto
como lleg6 al poder la horda comunista que rige Castro.'39 The
introduction declares Sur's continuing interest in the problems of
Latin America, but it is perhaps significant that a journal published in
that continent should dedicate a special issue to Latin America in the
same way as it would surveyJapanese or Canadian literature: in many
ways Peru or Bolivia remained more foreign than Japan. It was the
growing international interest in Latin American history and culture,
together with the appearance of a number of talented writers, which
helped prompt this issue. There are essays on the cultural heritage of
Mexico, the military coup in Brazil and violence in Colombia.
Martinez Estrada is seen as embodying the spirit of Latin America in
an essay by Aldo Prior, and Salazar Bondy contributes a very full essay
on the development of the term indigenismo in Peru. A measured essay
by Francisco Perez on the presidential elections in Chile reveals a
slight bias towards the Christian Democrats, though the left are
treated to a careful analysis. Only in the section on Cuba does the
attempt at fair play reveal some inadequacy. Two sides of the
argument are put: Alejo Carpentier includes several pages listing the
achievements of the Revolution in the cultural sphere, but these are
systematically refuted, with passion, by Humberto Pinera, who paints
the familiar picture of a culture overrun by communist hordes. The
weakness of Pinera's argument lies in his inability to demonstrate the
richness of pre-revolutionary Cuban culture. Pinera had been
dismissed from his post at Havana University after the Revolution
and talks of the dismantling of the educational system: 'Para
consumar la destruccion de la U niversidad, los comunistas llevaron a
ella miles de campesinos analfabetos, a los cuales incorporaron como
estudiantes. '40 Pinera argues that in the artistic field the writer cannot
function without liberty, a liberty systematically denied him, and he
convincingly describes the marginalisation of his group within the
Revolution, for he is unable to come to terms with Fidel Castro's
critique of liberalism.
The balance in the issue is, however, restored by an anthology of
Venezuelan poets selected by Juan Liscano, and two provocative
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 83
articles by Angel Rama and Roa Bastos on Uruguayan and
Paraguayan literature. Rama talks of the fundamental importance of
the magazine Marcha in the development of Uruguayan culture. In a
later full-length study, he would contrast the elite cosmopolitanism of
Sur with the more serious national and Latin American perspective of
Marcha,41 but on this occasion, within the pages of the host magazine,
he only mentions the differences indirectly. One possible critique of
the Sur model is to be found in the 'descubrimiento indiscriminado de
la literatura moderna . . . y por lo tanto, a un esfuerzo para veneer el
provincianismo a traves de la mas facil apelaci6n a lo anglosaj6n. Fue
necesario un ingente esfuerzo de correcci6n para no perder el rumbo
de ese momento.'42 Unlike Sur, Marcha had a Latin American focus,
adopted an anti-imperialist, pro-Cuban stance and had a wide
readership. The whole article, in fact, seems to be a description of a
practice which is the antithesis ofSur: 'El encierro de las elites empez6
a ahogarlos [the writers] , los acontecimientos de una realidad dificil
los golpearon, y es asi que, a mediados de la pasada decada,
irrumpieron mas vitalmente a la realidad nacional.'43 Rama's
critique ofelite Iiberalism is a strange contribu tion for the magazine to
publish, perhaps included as part ofa self-critique by elements within
Sur. More likely, however, is the probability that Sur would not
perceive the relevance of Rama's analysis to its own country,
which was more advanced culturally and less dependent than
Uruguay. Whatever the reasons, Rama's comments are percep­
tive and corrosive. His insights would be more fully developed within
Marcha and Casa de las Americas (especially in the famous essay 'Diez
problemas para el narrador latinoamericano' published in Casa de las
Americas in 1 964) . They appear eccentric within Sur.
The solitary writer Augusto Roa Bastos, who had lived since 1 94 7 in
Buenos Aires, wrote several trenchant pages comparing the idyllic
conception of his native Paraguay written by George Bernanos, and
published in Sur in 1 938 (see Chapter 2 ) , with the reality of brutality,
underdevelopment and extreme poverty. Developing a technique
which would later be central to ro el supremo ( 1 974) , Roa Bastos
contrasts travellers' accounts with the real conditions of the country,
in a critique which could easily have been applied retrospectively to
much of Sur's content over the years. In a country controlled by a
land-owning oligarchy in alliance with foreign capital, argues Roa
Bastos, where elections are a farce and most of the inhabitants are
condemned to poverty and illiteracy, the problems of a writer are
 SUR
acute: Why write? Who are the possible readers?44 His own agony at
being, like many, a writer in exile - 'inoperantes, ausentes, hasta para
si mismos'45 - comes out clearly. There is, perhaps, a ray ofhope in 'el
sentimiento nacional' which is a 'sentimiento esencialmente
humanista' ,+6 but which must lead inevitably to revolution.
As a prelude to this issue, Sur had published an anthology of
Peruvian poets, selected by Jose Maria Oviedo in no. 287
(March-April 1 964) . Oviedo's essay indicates two generations in
Peruvian poetry and illustrates each tendency. The selection includes
the guerrilla poetJavier Heraud as well as the more traditional names
in Peruvian letters. The anthology, once again, helps to disguise the
lack of regular contributors.
Enrique Pezzoni gave a further impetus to Latin American writers
in Sur after 1 968. In the last fourteen issues of the magazine, for which
he was responsible, he published important essays by Paz, extracts
from Sarduy's Cobra and a book review by Sarduy ofBoquitas pintadas.
Ten years before many North American critics discovered Bakhtin,
Sarduy points to the use of'carnival' language and parody in the work
of Puig.47 The analysis of contemporary fiction is continued in
Rodriguez Monegal's review of Tres tristes tigres (no. 320,
September-October 1 969) . As well as assimilating the new, Pezzoni
attempted to forge links with the past. Sur 3 1 2 (May-June 1 968)
contains a number of articles on Cesar Vallejo, the first time that the
Peruvian poet had been analysed seriously in the magazine (apart
from a brief review of his Poes(as completas by Daniel Devoto in Sur
1 92-4) . After several decades ofdispute, Pablo Neruda was published
again in Sur in October 1 968, a poem in homage to Oliverio Girondo.
His dispute with Ocampo had been partially settled when he publicly
acknowledged the value of her work at a meeting of the PEN Club in
New York in the 1 96os. Sur also was in a forgiving mood. The poem on
Oliverio Girondo was accompanied in the same issue by a review of
Neruda's La Barcarola . The reviewer could not resist hinting at past
difficulties: 'Era algo mas profundo: la angustia frente a un gran poeta
que parecia haber enajenado la esencial libertad del creador. La
Barcarola confirma que el regreso de Neruda ha sido tambien la
recuperaci6n de esa libertad.'48 For the first time, also, Sur published a
full-length article on Quiroga, one of the most notable absences in the
text. Pezzoni's impetus could not, however, do more than postpone
the inevitable: with regard to Latin American writers, it was a case of
too little, too late.
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 85
Of the writers who were critically acclaimed in the 1 96os, Carlos
Fuentes never appears in Sur, Vargas Llosa published one extract,
Cortazar is completely absent in the 1 96os, Sabato quarrels for a time
with the magazine and publishes extracts ofSohre heroesy tumhas in Casa
de las Americas as well as in Sur. Carpentier is barely referred to, Garcia
Marquez is 'discovered' - much to his own bewilderment - by
Gonzalez Lanuza in 1 967, Rulfo is never mentioned, and Onetti
appears only infrequently. The list of omissions is long and significant
for the 1 96os: the history of the 'boom' is to be found in other
magazines.
The two major Latin American cultural magazines in the 1 96os
were Casa de las Americas and Mundo Nuevo , as has been said. They
represented the two major poles of attraction for Latin American
intellectuals: towards revolutionary social practice or towards a
revolution in style. Casa de las Americas, magazine and publishing
house, evolved slowly to its role as would-be revolutionary conscience
of the continent. For the first five years of publication under the
editorship ofAnton Arrufat and Fausto Maso, the writers of the Lunes
de revolucion group had a considerable influence in the running of the
magazine. A number of critics have examined the growing tensions
between the younger more apolitical members of the Lunes group and
the more committed writers, young and old, who felt that the
intellectual should be the servant rather than the critical conscience of
the Revolution.49 Fidel Castro's 'Palabras a los intelectuales' ( 1 96 1 )
had sounded a warning note, and criticism gradually increased of
Arrufat's apolitical stance. The final ideologicalfauxpas came with the
invitation Casa issued to Allen Ginsberg in 1 965. Ginsberg publicly
made playful advances to Haydee Santamaria and suggested, also
playfully, that he would like to sleep with Che Guevara as soon as
possible. Overt homosexuality and beat poetry were not considered
apposite to Cuba in the mid 1 96os and Arrufat resigned his editorship.
Fernandez Retamar gave the magazine a clearer Marxist,
internationalist and Third-World stance, which it has retained ever
smce.
Latin American writers were represented in both phases of the
magazine's development. Perhaps the most significant anthology of
new Latin American writing was published in issue no. 26
(July-August 1 964) and included extracts from Cortazar, Rayuela;
Fuentes, Camhio depiel; Sabato, Sohre heroesy tumhas; Carpentier, El afio
59; Onetti, Juntacadaveres; and Vargas Llosa, La casa verde, together
1 86 SUR
with a series of perceptive critical articles by Desnoes, Arrufat, Casey
and, most importantly ofall, by Angel Rama ('Diez problemas para el
novelista latinoamericano') . This is arguably the single most impor­
tant collection of Latin American fiction published in the decade. As
ideological positions hardened, the magazine would publish and
support the more openly committed writers: Mario Benedetti, Roque
Dalton, Enrique Lihn,Julio Cortazar and Angel Rama. It was left to
another magazine, Mundo Nuevo , to explore the formal and aesthetic
triumphs of the boom. Casa was faithful to its friends in other parts of
Latin America, especially the magazines Cuadernos Americanos,
jSiempre! , Punto Final, and Marcha , but barely mentioned Sur. The
obituary to the Argentine magazine viewed Ocampo as faithful to her
class and times, but remarked that these times had been superseded.
At least, however, she had spent her money partly in a good cause:
'Fue la obra de una mujer que envejeci6 en su ley, y que en vez de
dedicar sus abundantes dineros a perfumarse, los consagr6 en parte a
hacer que la Argentina tuviera una revista y luego una editorial al
dia.'50
Mundo Nuevo, edited by Rodriguez Monegal in Paris, was the most
'up-to-date' literary journal of the mid 1 960s. It did what Sur might
have done, had its contributors been young in that decade: printing
contemporary foreign fiction and significant works of Latin American
literature. It was certainly the mirror of a certain aspect of the 1 960s,
and it is difficult to disagree withjose Donoso's assessment that Mundo
Nuevo was the most important periodical of the 'boom' .51
The publication of the magazine caused a fierce polemic within
Latin America, especially when it was revealed that the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, which supported the magazine, received its funds
from the CIA. Other magazines funded in this way included Encounter,
Preuves and Cuadernos . Sur had always been close to the aims of the
Congress for Cultural Freedom, in its attempt to combat Bolshevism
and Stalinism and convert intellectuals to commitment to the West.52
Its first president, Denis de Rougemont, was an old friend ofOcampo.
The excesses of McCarthyism, as we have seen, were rarely criticised.
The activities of the Congress became more significant in Latin
America with the threat of Cuba and its seductive appeal to many
intellectuals, and it now seems clear that North America funded
countervailing cultural foundations and supported the development
of modernising elites within Latin America, who were less interested
in crude Marxist debate. The new mood was amply reflected in Mundo
 I 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 87
Nuevo , and Rodriguez Monegal was able to argue cleverly that the
Cold War and CIA infiltration had no place in Latin America in the
late 196os. He showed that intellectuals had been duped by the CIA in
the past, but that they had not been bought off, just because they had
unwittingly received a small subvention of tainted money. The
integrity of intellectuals was not in question, but they had to be ever
vigilant: 'La bondad de la causa del intelectual independiente no esta
ni ha estado jamas en cuesti6n en el mundo actual. Esta crisis no hace
sino poner mas en evidencia la necesidad de defenderla cada dia, a
toda costa y contra todos los enemigos.'53 Mundo Nuevo thus managed
to divert criticism for a time and remained a liberal journal until
Monegal resigned several years later. It was, however, perceived by
the Cubans as an instrument of imperialist penetration.
Mundo Nuevo avoided discussion of concrete political commitment
and treated the new novelists as part of a cultural renaissance, free
from ideological disputes. It gave support to the boom by favourably
reviewing the latest texts, conducting interviews with the authors and
printing short extracts of new work. In this, it revived the earlier
traditions of Sur, accomplishing what that magazine could not
achieve in the 1 960s. Sur could not adjust to the radicalism of these
years, either politically or in the abstract sphere ofletters. Its moment
was at an end.

Argentine contributors
Pero como en los matrimonios, o en los grand es amores, en las revistas que por
un motivo u otro perduran, se crean lazos de una indole nueva, que ya no
dependen del ser j6venes . . . o del estar completamente de acuerdo en los
gustos o las ideas.54
This section will survey briefly the developments in the magazine of
narrative and poetry. It will be seen that the review clung to the past,
in the main repeating the same debates and the same ideological and
aesthetic tendencies. The espousal of the liberal tradition was
reasserted in Sur 267 at the end of 1 960, when the magazine judged the
development of Argentine history since the revolution of 1 8 1 0.
Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza spoke ofliberalism as being: ' "muy Sur",
es decir, muy representativo de una actitud generalizada en las capas
de la actual intelectualidad argentina. '55 Borges also saw this tradition
as natural, interrupted by curious and barbarous mass movements led
by Rosas or Peron: 'A esta curiosa "nostalgie de la boue"
1 88 SUR
corresponden, segun es fama, el culto de la voz de Gardel y el hecho
ciclico de que cada cien afios nuestra ciudad, como si renegara de su
destino, impone a la Republica el mismo dictador cobarde y astuto y
entonces Entre Rios o Cordoba tienen que salvarse y salvarnos.'56 In
this examen de conciencia , Sur' s conscience was found to be clear: even old
nationalist writers such as Luis Emilio Soto could be found to give
grudging praise, talking ofits heroic years of publication in the 1 930s
and 1 94os.57 Yet the consensus could not be maintained for long, even
among the same generation of writers. A polemic in 1 956-7 among
Borges, Martinez Estrada and Sabato had illustrated the limits of
liberalism in a polarised political climate, and set a pattern for the
future.
The anti-Peronist enthusiasm, articulated in the issue 'Por la
reconstruccion nacional', was not shared by all the writers of the Sur
group. Both Martinez Estrada and Sabato had long questioned the
Manichean model being operated by such writers as Borges, as
became clear in the polemic among the three writers at that time.
Martinez Estrada attacked Borges in the magazine Propositos over a
speech he had made in Montevideo condemning Peron and his
followers. Borges replied by ridiculing Martinez Estrada for his
dishonest defence of a tyrant.58 Saba to took up the attack two months
later in an article which accused Borges ofbeing forced by Peronism to
declare his politics: 'Nuestro refinado literato olvida ahora sus juegos
monistas y se instala violentamente en el dualismo mas vulgar y
silvestre, en el maniqueismo mas policial.'59 In a deliberately
provocative article, Saba to accuses Borges of a lack of philosophical
rigour, ofreducing history to mere contingency and ofrefusing to see
the iniquities of political systems that preceded Peronism.60
Borges' reply is a masterpiece ofmalice. It repeats a denunciation of
Peronism as a nightmare and accuses the apologists of the regime of
being in league with torturers and the rampant masses ('Las turbas
que entre un saqueo y un incendio, daban horror a las noches de
Buenos Aires vociferando: "jMi general cuanto vales!" y los otros
servilismos del repertorio') .61 He accuses Sabato of using emotive
Peronist phrases such as 'pueblo insurrecto' and 'enajenacion de la
patria a los consorcios extranjeros', and of not denouncing the abuses
of the regime. He ends with a lapidary phrase of a sort which would
make him increasingly unpopular in the 1 960s: 'Por lo demas, la etica
no es una rama de la estadistica; una cosa no deja de ser atroz porque
millares de hombres lo hayan aclamado o ejecutado.'62 Sabato's self­
defence illustrates the widening gap between the two writers. He
 I 956-70: THE FAILURE OF R E CONSTRUCTION 1 89
accuses Borges of sophistry and details his own militancy within the
anti-Peronist ranks. His defence is based on a materialist analysis of
history, stressing that Peronism must be understood not just as a
barbarous aberration, but as a mass movement which articulated in a
confused fashion genuine needs.63 Both Sabata and Martinez Estrada
would be drawn to the Cuban Revolution, and thus outside the
orthodoxy of Sur: Sabata resigned from the comite de colaboraci6n in
sympathy withjose Bianco, and Martinez Estrada went to Cuba and
wrote enthusiastically on the Revolution and its writers.
Here then was an ideological split which widened throughout the
1 960s, as these authors and a new generation of Argentine writers
were attracted by other influences. Witold Gombrowicz, the eccentric
Polish writer who spent twenty-four years in Argentina, unrecognised
by Sur, commented wryly on the new mood. He was recognised by
younger critics like Miguel Grinberg and saw his brand of anarchy as
assailing the stronghold of Sur:
L'echo de ces esclandres arrivait-il jusqu'aux salons europeens de la senora
Ocampo . . . ? Ne se sentaient-ils pas un peu clans la peau de Macbeth
lorsqu'il voit, de son chateau de Dunsinane, la verte foret s'approcher de lui
. . . et, aux aguets clans cette verdure, la sauvagerie, l'anarchie, la derision, le
tout pourtant ni assez cuit, ni assez frit, situe decidement au-dessous d'un
niveau quelconque, emanant presque des bas-fonds?64
Even though Victoria Ocampo was one of the main butts of
Gombrowicz's sarcasm (an attack on this arbitrariness is made in a
review of the Journal in Sur by Gonzalez Lanuza) ,65 his words point to
a change of mood in Argentine culture, in which the values of Sur did
not have universal prestige.
Sur responded by analysing the strengths and weaknesses of its
dissident writers. The magazine brought out an issue to commemo­
rate the death of Martinez Estrada, and forgave the later enthusiasms
of the great writer. He could be unjust, but he was basically honest.66
Even one of Martinez Estrada's most outspoken critics, Bernardo
Canal Feijoo, could appreciate his work in retrospect, although it
lacked a 'voluntad positiva de trascendencia hacia adelante.'67 In this
way Martinez Estrada was allowed to rejoin the spiritual fold, his
blemishes and outspokenness in Cuba having been forgiven and
forgotten. The life of the spirit was rescued on this occasion from the
world of commitment, but by now the gap between Sur and the
majority of the educated reading public, especially the young, was
widening.
It was not just the ideological focus of the magazine that caused its
1 90 SUR
demise. For many years, Sur had been graced by the remarkable
contributions of Borges and his small group. This group now
published very little and the younger generation seemed mainly to
repeat weary formulae. In prose fiction, the main absence was Borges
himself, for growing blindness made it difficult for him to compose and
structure the short story. He turned instead to poetry.68 He did write,
however, two stories in the mid 1 950s, both ofwhich are significant for
different reasons. The 'Parabola del palacio' ( 1 956) , like the earlier
'La busca de Averroes' ( 1 947), seems clearly to have had a direct
influence on Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The ending of Borges' short
story is very similar to that later used by the Colombian novelist on the
last page of Cien afios de soledad: 'Bast6 (nos dicen) que el poeta
pronunciara el poema para que desapareciera el palacio, como
abolido y fulminado por la ultima silaba.'69 'Ragnarok', another
clearly anti-Peronist text, narrates, as a dream, the destruction of
corrupt gods.70 Yet the rebellion of these few lines is confined to the
dream narrative ofthe story. In the same issue ofthe magazine, Borges
reviewed the autobiography of Bioy Casares' father, Adolfo Bioy, in
protective terms: 'Es innegable, sin embargo, que los hombres del
patriciado argentino - lo que el rencor hoy llama la oligarquia -
conocieron intensa y personalmente dos plenitudes antag6nicas del
vivir: la urbana y la rural.'7 1 The 'generation of 1 880' could still, it
seemed, offer a patriarchal model of social harmony.
Borges himself reached almost god-like status in the 1 960s, after
many years of relative obscurity. The process began when he was
awarded the Formentor prize in 1 96 1 , an annual award that had been
recently established by six progressive publishing houses in Europe
and the United States. Borges directly benefited from the mood of
cultural optimism and the modernisation and marketing of the
literary product,72 for he received a substantial cash sum and was
translated, with great success, in six different countries. The cultural
world at last recognised Ficciones, twenty years after its initial
publication. Borges' success caused increased critical attention to be
focused on his work and he rapidly became the 'star' of Buenos Aires
literary life. His glory could not, however, help the magazine that had
done much to promote his work. He published no new stories in the
1 960s and critics increasingly ignored the conditions of his literary
production. Borges was heralded as a precursor of post-modernism,
whilst Sur became relegated to obscurity. Herein lies the success of the
enterprise ofBorges, which has been outlined throughout the previous
 I 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTIO N 191
chapters. He had found a perfect way to codify the tensions and
preferences ofhis group: whilst the rest were condemned as traditional
and elitist, Borges became a luminary of the Western world, his
radical form of intertextuality creating a whole school of structural
and deconstructionist critics.73
While Borges was lionised, not only Sur but also his friends were
largely ignored. Bioy Casares printed several relaxed, humorous
stories, delighting in parodies of colloquial language, and illustrating
the dangers his vulnerable narrators experience once they leave the
club or the barrio to venture into a world of enigma and mystery.74
Silvina Ocampo continued her macabre exploration of the terrible
world of children, in which doctors come to spread viruses, mysterious
deaths occur at birthday parties and young girls predict the horror of
the future.75 Sabato maintained an ambiguous relationship with the
magazine, Bianco published nothing there in the 1 960s and Cortazar
disappeared from its pages. There was little, therefore, of inter­
national literary quality being published by the established Sur group,
and the magazine itself was no longer essential reading for its critical
or translatory-anthological contributions.
The younger generation, writers such as Eugenio Guasta, Elvira
Orphee and the critic and short story writer Mario Lancelotti,
developed the short story, but did not innovate thematically or
technically. These writers found it difficult to avoid the influence of
Borges or the refined cruelty ofSilvina Ocampo.Juanjose Hernandez
is an example of a writer who attempted to experiment within a tight
system. He was a close friend ofJose Bianco and was involved with the
magazine for several years in the late 1 950s. His writing revealed a
new brutality and a willingness to deal with taboo subjects. 'El disfraz'
treats the theme of frustrated lesbian love, one of several short stories
and essays in which Sur partially 'came out' on the matter of
homosexuality, a factor that had structured many of the personal
relationships within the magazine.76 (Hernandez's story was juxta­
posed with a letter from Thomas Merton, 'Carta a un joven
espectador', and the religious master wrote to the magazine com­
menting wryly on this unfortunate coincidence. )77 Its treatment was
only fleeting and oblique, however, and Murena was left to explain
the problem away: 'La homosexualidad es uno de los factores
preponderantes en el zeitgeist en que vivimos.'78 Murena argued that
homosexuality had a revolutionary potential insofar as it broke with
the strict hierarchies which had dominated the world for so long. Its
 SUR
rebellion gave primacy to the animal rather than the rational element
in man. It was a form of illness, of autarkic self-satisfaction, but it
might also lead to a healthier attitude towards sexuality in general:
'Ese ser capaz de cumplir con el sexo, pero liberado de problemas
sexuales, ino sera la forma nueva de salud que la presente enfermedad
del homosexualismo prepara?'79
No new forms of development, either inter-textual or inter­
personal, were seriously considered in the pages of Sur. Eugenio
Guasta wrote conventional horror stories, Elvira Orphee modelled
herself on Borges and Mario Lancelotti theorised the short story, but
wrote in markedly convention} forms himself. It is interesting that
recent novels by Ernesto Schoo and Gudino Kieffer have been
structured around affectionate parodies of Victoria Ocampo, the
strong woman cultural Maecenas.80 Ocampo's enthusiasms could be
seen as humorous, but she was still treated with respect. Tomas Eloy
Martinez, for example, wrote a long sympathetic article on her work
in Primera Plana in 1 966,81 and was to contribute several times to Sur in
the late 1 g6os. Some younger writers were, therefore, sympathetic,
but their work was not sufficient to sustain an interest in the magazine.
The absences became important: writers as significant as Marco
Denevi and Haroldo Conti were published only once in this period.82
Equally, the older generation of socially committed writers -
Bernardo Verbitsky, Roger Pia - and the younger David Vinas,
began to increase in popularity. Verbitsky could write slightingly of
Sur: 'Es una revista sin duda interesante y hasta necesaria, pero . . . no
hara ninguna falta consultarla para escribir la historia de nuestra
literatura en los ultimos veinte anos, siendo perfectamente 16gico que
susj6venes lectores hayan llegado a creer que la literatura argentina se
compone de Camus, Borges y Lanza del Vasto.'83 His assessment is
crude, but it illustrates the growing confidence of'realist' writers, who
had been removed from the pages of literary history by Borges.
Continuing an overview of the genres published in Sur, we can see
that in poetry the situation was very similar to that of the short story.
The old guard, Silvina Ocampo and Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza,
published infrequently. Borges concentrated on poetry and used
conventional verse forms and metres, in particular the sonnet, to take
up a number of themes that had been explored in his short stories.84
The poems published in Sur (an average ofabout one a year) refer to
Gracian, the tango, Sarmiento, his time spent in Texas and his
growing interest in Old English and Norse legend. The ambiguity
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 93
between civilisation and barbarism is caught in the contrast between
Sarmiento and the tango. The liberal leader is seen as a divine
patriarch:
El que ve nuestra infamia y nuestra gloria
La luz de Mayo y el horror de Rosas.85
On the other hand, as the darker side of the liberal dream, the rhythm
and lyrics of the tango conjure up more brutal sensations:
. . . El tango crea un turbio
Pasado real que de algun modo es cierto,
Un recuerdo imposible de haber muerto
Peleando, en una esquina del suburbio.86

Borges takes the reader once again into his imaginary south-side,
populated by strong, silent men of courage, and individual acts of
heroism, a time before that grotesque parody ofa tango singer, Peron,
would organise the lumpen forces of mass Argentine society, a time
when the chusma could still be 'valerosa' .B7 More abstract themes also
predominate. Borges imagines the first sonnet writer, in the thirteenth
century, laboriously fashioning a new form that was to become an
archetype, hearing echoes of the great sonnets of the future.BB
Borges, like Girri, constantly searched for the key to the enigma of
language and literature. Any written words will, however, be a
translation and thus a betrayal of a lived experience. Girri points out
the shortcomings of the reader, and, by extension, the writer.
Nunca conseguiriamos
llegar a la medula,
atrapar
que signific6 exactamente,
Dante con amor
que quiso Socrates
con arete'89

Even though it must be a betrayal, poetry is also a life-force. The poet

strives to harness 'the beast' of poetic creation:
Enumerense, incontables,
todas las inmediateces
que sin la bestia
se nos escaparian
reducido nuestro andar
a viciosas contemplaciones
afioranzas del eunuco.90
1 94 SUR
Girri continued to be the most regular contributor of poetry to the
magazine. Although the poems strive in vain for ultimate meaning,
some hope remains as the poet considers the classical harmonies of the
Graeco-Roman world in his Eleg{as Italianas . In these classical forms, a
refuge might be built against the turmoil of the present day, the
invasion of the new barbarians .
. . . Atila vuelve
.!bastaria hoy el genio de! romano
para edificarnos un refugio?91
The Argentine poet Jorge Paita sums up well the exasperated
intellectual poetry of Girri: 'Girri concibe el mundo y la vida como
una corrupci6n o enfermedad de lo eterno y es por ello que los simbolos
de lo absoluto . . . desbordan lo etico y apuntan a lo metafisico. Tales
entidades no son necesarias para salvaguardar un orden moral
(inexistente o en disoluci6n) sino para sostener, con su apariencia de
inmutabilidad, lo fantasmal de una vida que ha cortado sus vinculos
con el espiritu.'92
Girri's nostalgia for unity in a world structured by contradiction
was echoed by perhaps the most important young poet to appear in
Sur in the 1 96os, Alejandra Pizarnik.93 Pizarnik's verse returns
insistently to a world made up of memories of innocence and love,
fleetingly captured in disparate images.94 In a short poem, 'Formas',
she talks of her own doubts and fears with respect to language:
No se si pajaro o jaula
mano asesina
o joven muerta entre cirios
o amazona jadeando en la gran garganta oscura
o silenciosa
pero ta! vez oral como una fuente
tal vez juglar
0 princesa en la torre mas alta.95

The poem is not a surrealist game in which contradictions are

assembled to expose an absurd reality, nor does it suggest that the
separate images are parts of a coherent whole. Instead, the reader
learns to appreciate the value of each part and consider that reality
might be one thing, but also another. Her poetry is fascinated by its
own inadequacies: 'Ha tornado el viejo terror; haber hablado nada con
nadie.' A constant death-wish also recurs, a wish that was satisfied
when she committed suicide in 1972: 'El dorado dia no es para mi.
Penumbra del cuerpo fascinado por su deseo de morir. '96 Pizarnik was
the most complex and accomplished young poet to be published in the
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 95
magazine, although she left Buenos Aires to live in Paris for a number
of years. Other poets attached to the magazine at this time included
Antonio Porchia, Jorge Paita, Carlos Viola Soto and Juan Jose
Hernandez.
Although the magazine published these poets and reviewed much
modern poetry, it had no sustained critical practice with regard to
these tendencies. If it published Dylan Thomas, it was left to Poes(a
Buenos Aires to explore the influence of Thomas on modern writers. It
published several beat poets, but it would be Miguel Grinberg's
'generaci6n mufada' who would develop beat poetry in the magazine
Eco Contemporaneo . The magazine also ignored those poets that dealt
with social problems: Ramiro de Casabellas,Juan Gelman, Francisco
Urondo, NoeJitrik, Mario Trejo and Alberto Vanasco. The develop­
ment of these writers must be traced in Eco contemporaneo , El Escarabajo
de Oro , Hoy en la Cultura or Zona . Other poets continued to publish their
own little magazines. Julio Llinas experimented with late surrealism
in the magazine Boa and the remarkable, solitary poet Roberto
Juarroz edited his own journal Poes(a poes(a for a number of years.
=

Poets did not need the recognition of Sur, for editorials were willing to
publish young writers and little magazines would support new
tendencies. The former mark of tradition and quality, publication in
La Naci6n or Sur, ceased to have much meaning.
The poets published by Sur either came from the capital or made
Buenos Aires their spiritual home. The interior of the country, except
on very rare occasions, was not considered. One spirited defence of
popular values by Maria Elena Walsh is interesting because of its
rarity and because of the vehemence of her arguments. Walsh had
published in the magazine on several occasions in the late 1 940s and
she was invited to write an article for the Sur commemorative issue of
the 1 5oth anniversary of the Republic in 1 960. This particular issue
made a deliberate effort to extol the collective voice of the people and
criticise the indifference of city-based intellectuals to their cultural
heritage: 'El sudamericano ilustrado sujeto a ciertas convenciones de
elite no acepta el folklore sino una vez maquillado y de etiqueta. Suele
desconocerlo en su verdad, pero cuando lo conoce se cuida de
exportarlo pues teme que en el extranjero se deduzca que su pais esta
culturalmente "subdesarrollado" . '97 Hers is an impassioned plea to
recognise the value of folk-culture, in particular in the north-east of
the country. Such a task was clearly beyond the self-imposed limits of
Sur; folk-lore in any form was felt to be outside its scope. Not since its
first issues had the magazine ventured into the Interior.
 SUR
Once again it was left to other groups of committed artists and
intellectuals to bring to the attention of Buenos Aires the miserable
conditions, but also the organic culture, of remote rural areas.
Solanas' La hora de los homos , mentioned above, contrasts images of
'swinging Buenos Aires' and aristocratic writers with the poverty of
the northern regions, especially Tucuman. A group of artists together
with the trade union movement put on an exhibition in 1 968 entitled
'Tucuman arde', which displayed photographs, films and recordings
of the brutal conditions suffered by workers and peasants in that area.
This was not Sur's world and Maria Elena Walsh moved away from
the magazine, becoming, by the late I 96os, the leading figure of the
Argentine 'new song' movement.
The magazine could still rely on a number of good young critics -
Yvonne Bordelois, Miguel Dolan, Silvia Molloy, Florinda
Friedmann, Luis justo, Edgardo Cozarinsky and Enrique Pezzoni ­
who reviewed the latest trends in modern culture. These coexisted
rather uneasily with the more traditional views of Gonzalez Lanuza or
with Ocampo's pessimistic analysis of the development of Argentine
culture. It still might have been possible to develop along the lines of
Mundo Nuevo if the magazine had been prepared to make substantial
changes. In the brief interregnum of Pezzoni as jefe de redaccion , Sur
published several issues of very high quality. Issue 3 1 6- 1 7
(January-April 1 969) , for example, contains a poem by Borges, essays
by Allen Tate and Octavio Paz, an extract from Sarduy's Cobra , an
essay by Merton, a story by Tomas Eloy Martinez and an essay by
Susan Sontag on the cinema of Godard. Primera Plana , always anxious
to help friends such as Pezzoni, wrote a short article in October 1 968,
which referred to the 'resurrection' of Sur. Such judgements were,
however, sadly misguided. To continue, Sur would have had to
incorporate new personnel, trust in the judgements of other writers
and pay more particular attention to problems in Argentina and
Latin America. In other words, it would have ceased to be Sur.
Victoria Ocampo realised this and, beset by financial worries, but
above all, by a great sense offutility, she ceased regular publication of
the magazine. Even Eliot's last words in The Criterion , that culture
should be maintained by a few, seemed irrelevent and little consola­
tion in Argentina in 1 970, where quality seemed to be despised.
Perhaps as a concession to the times, but more likely to show her
contempt for them, the great society hostess chose a humble image to
describe the closure of the magazine: 'En toda mujer se oculta una
ama de casa que ejerce su vocaci6n de fregona en los mas variados
 1 956-70: THE FAILURE OF RECONSTRUCTION 1 97
menesteres . . . Barramos pues el piso, enjuaguemos los platos,
colguemos las cacerolas, apaguemos las luces (cuestan caro), abramos
la ventana para ventilar.'98
The magazine ceased to appear, but no one seemed to notice. It
thereupon proceeded to tell its own history, by bringing out issues
dedicated to the 'best of' its essays, short stories, poetry and film
criticism or on special interests, such as women's rights or Gandhi and
non-violence. In these anthologies, foreign and Argentine writers
coexist, for 'en arte y en ciencia no hay fronteras . . . Esta actitud
premeditada, deliberada, no fue nunca la de ese "colonialismo
cultural" tan zarandeado, sino un acto de fe en la (mica verdad
innegable en esta materia: el colonialismo espiritual no existe puesto
que los bienes espirituales como el verdadero amor (de que habla
Shelley en Episychidion ) no disminuyen con el reparto.'99 So exquisite
an analysis could expect only derisive laughter in the early 1 97os, in
the confused rhetoric of nationalism, populism, Marxism and 'Third­
World-ism'. The second Peronato disintegrated into bloody chaos, left­
wing culture was attacked, writers - including Haroldo Conti,
Rodolfo Walsh and Francisco Urondo - were killed, went in to exile or
remained silent. The military came in to restore order and waged a
campaign of systematic murder under the guise of a war against
terrorism. Cultural liberalism, as it had done in 1 955, made a brief
reappearance. There were a number of articles on Victoria Ocampo
and one enterprisingjournal ( Viernes sabado domingo) managed to have
on its front cover in July 1978 a photograph of Borges talking to the
Argentine football coach Menotti, the two stars of the late 197os. Yet
what could these writers offer, since they were now in their seventies
and eighties and could no longer even share in the optimism that
military rule would restore civilisation once again?100 This fai;ade of
cultural dynamism was destroyed with the death ofVictoria Ocampo
in 1979, for it was now clear that very little remained. The demise of
Sur and its founder's death leave a vacuum in Argentine culture. How
this will be filled, in the aftermath of an event like the
Falklands/Malvinas dispute - a war which was the systematic
negation of everything Sur had attempted to achieve - is an open
question. The Radical Party won the elections in 1 983 and there are
signs that once again Buenos Aires is becoming a dynamic cultural
centre. New literary magazines are being formed and it will be part of
their task to reassess the work of Sur, the major cultural journal in
Argentina in the twentieth century.
 Conclusion
Las historias de la literatura argentina propenden a la acumulaci6n de
nombres propios y de fechas prolijas . . . Alguien, en un porvenir no lejano,
tendra el valor de reducir esta historia a sus grandes lineas y entonces
resultara evidente la compleja y benefica labor que Sur ha ejecutado en
America. Eticamente, ha defendido la causa de la democracia contra las
dictaduras; intelectualmente ha mantenido viva esa curiosidad universal
que, segun declare, es acaso el rasgo mejor de los argentinos.1

This study has attempted to outline the history ofSur, a history which
has spanned (if we include the irregular production over the past
fifteen years) halfa century and some three hundred and fifty issues. In
order to make sense of this complex, heterogeneous material, it has
isolated several factors which, taken together, can be said to define the
magazme.
The first of these is suggested by Borges, who does not differentiate
between politics and intellectual enquiry. Sur's universalist stand­
point implied that 'ethically' it would have to be against any form of
dictatorship: this was conceived as a natural view of the world, which
had nothing to do with political commitment. Another member of the
Sur group, Ernesto Sabato, repeated Borges' argument: 'Jamas hubo
alli ningun filtro ideol6gico o social, solo habia un filtro literario, que
en ocasiones pudo ser equivocado, lo que es humano.'2 Yet the
magazine's claim to be apolitical cannot be seen as an objective
reality. It aspired to be the expression of a clerisy uninterested in
everyday affairs and yet it was deeply rooted in a liberal aristocratic
tradition. There was clearly an ideological filter working more or less
smoothly at every stage of the magazine's development.
The history of Argentina could be seen as a family history, formed
by a small, wealthy and cultured elite. In this way the political and
ideological became merely secondary or 'public' adjuncts to the
content ofa real 'private' life which alone was authentic and genuine.3
The private life of the spirit was, however, sustained by the wealth and
power of this group, which defined from the mid nineteenth century
the particular liberal economic, social and cultural development of
the country. The Argentine elite managed successfully to neutralise
any potential antagonism to their project until 1 930: the thesis traces
the ramifications of this reality within the cultural sphere in the first
1 98
 CONC LUSION 199
chapter. However, after 1 930, that 'natural' vision was shattered by
the world recession, and the political elite had to resort to control
through naked power.
Sur was founded at this time of crisis, and could appeal only to an
'ideal' social and political order, for liberalism was on the defensive
everywhere in the face of nationalist and authoritarian regimes. The
magazine knew what to oppose: the corruption of the 'decada infame';
the growth of clerical fascism during the Spanish Civil War; the
spread of'totalitarian' regimes, both Nazi and communist, during the
1 93os; the threat of Hitler in the war years; the spread of fascism at
home under Peron; the Marxist shadow in Latin America after the
Cuban Revolution; the growth of nationalism and socialism in
Argentina in the 1 960s. It could not, however, support positively any
concrete political movements, retaining instead the idea of an
intellectual 'third position' between warring fractions, a little ahead
and to the side of the rest of mankind. I t would intervene in disputes,
but always in defence of an abstract sense of justice.
Liberalism could best be defended by claiming it to be above or
beyond politics, and reconstituting it in eternal terms and on a purely
cultural level. Literature could demonstrate the superiority ofart over
life and set up an alternative tribunal against which events could be
judged. Even in literature, however, an ideological filter worked:
Marxists and fascists were excluded, as were many social and realist
texts. There was no defence of these choices: standards were 'known'
rather than defined. At the same time, it was asserted that the virtues
ofliterature were inaccessible to the masses; cultural standards could
only be maintained by a few.
One determining factor in the magazine was, therefore, the
apparent contradiction between commitment and withdrawal. The
intellectual had a right to protect the conditions in which art could
continue to act as a civilising force: yet civilisation could only be
maintained by those few who were competent enough to appreciate
art. Another factor was the European Ideal: a constant preoccupation
ofArgentine cultural groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
has been that their country and in particular Buenos Aires should be
recognised internationally as an important cultural centre. It was felt
that Argentine writers and artists could benefit greatly from closer
contact with those from other countries. One way was to act as host to
visiting intellectuals, as Ocampo did on a number of occasions,
inviting her often reluctant colleagues ('Cuando Victoria queria que
200 CONC LUSION

fuesemos a San Isidro, no nos invitaba: she summoned us') .4 The more
logical way, given the scarcity of visitors, was to translate ideas and
fiction. It was to this second task that Sur would dedicate much of its
attention.
This selection has caused a ferocious, but rather superficial polemic
within Argentina. Borges feigns surprise: 'Europeismo o
extranjerismo, es el misterioso delito que suelen imputar a Sur. Tai
deli to, si no me engafio, se reduce a la circunstancia de que la cultura
occidental, que es la nuestra, le interesa mas que los pieles rojas o los
querandies.'5 The point has some force, but the contemptuous tone
does not allow room for measured debate. Only the most vulgar
nationalist critics can talk of the harmful effects of translating foreign
authors such as Faulkner, Woolf, Sartre and Malraux. A critique of
this model cannot be advanced by adapting indiscriminately, in the
cultural sphere, theories of dependency or underdevelopment, but
rather by examining the select and selective nature of Sur's contribu­
tors. Once again, ideological and aesthetic factors predominate. As we
have seen in some detail, only certain writers were published by Sur
and in some cases, only certain aspects of their <Euvre (Sartre and
Gramsci are two notable examples) . Equally, the magazine very often
did not develop a critique of its own choices: writers were simply
included as random instances of universal culture. In this way, it is
necessary notjust to look at the absences in the text, but also at how the
magazine managed to combine dissonant elements within its dis­
course. Sur published 'ideas', but it was also a cultural institution
occupying a specific place in Argentine letters. It must be argued that
the context in which articles are read can often determine how they
are read. It was successful with a number of its literary translations
and created a community ofLatin American readers, as Vargas Llosa
and Garcia Marquez have pointed out, yet at the same time it set
certain limits on the dissemination and acceptance of different
European and North American ideological and aesthetic tendencies
in Latin America. This eager assimilation of 'universal' models is not
extranjerizante, then, but a very particular Argentine trait.
Sur spoke ofbeing a bridge between the cultures. Yet it soon became
clear that the traffic on this bridge would flow largely one way: of the
Sur writers, only Borges would be taken up with enthusiasm abroad,
and even in his case not until the 1 960s. Borges emerges as a central
figure in the study precisely because of the quality and extent of his
contributions. With his attack on realism and specularity, his
 CONC LUSION 20 1
transformation of history and politics into the abstract 'plots' of art
and his vehement but humorously disguised elitism, he evolved a
literary form which 'solved' many of the problems and tensions of his
group. A small circle ofideal readers would be able to unravel his plots
to eternity in the self-contained world of literature. Ocampo rather
ingenuously realised the importance ofBorges to Argentine and world
literature. Ironically, a writer with whom she never felt comfortable,
had come to justify her magazine: 'Era tener en mano un as de triunfo,
un futuro pasaporte que nos daria acceso a la alta sociedad literaria
contemporanea, a nosotros, los argentinos que hablamos el idioma de
los argentinos, con toda nuestra argentinidad y nuestra universalidad
irrenunciable (que es uno de los rasgos de los mejores argentinos) .'6
Borges was the most successful of the 'mejores argentinos', but it
would be quite wrong to read the magazine merely as the expression of
his eccentricity,just as it would be mistaken to read it exclusively as a
reflection ofVictoria Ocampo's very particular literary tastes or class
background. Sur found ways of combining the moral, idealist and
essentially unstructured work ofVictoria Ocampo, Mallea, Martinez
Estrada, Gonzalez Lanuza and Murena, with the more intellectual­
ised, structured linguistic experiments of Borges, Bioy, Silvina
Ocampo, Jose Bianco and Alberto Girri. For the second group, all
that redeems the content of a Mallea essay from the realism of Boedo
was its spiritualist dimension and intention. Yet all these different
writers comprised a civilising minority with similar views as to the
nature of universalism and the role of the intellectual. The pages of
Sur, in this way, represented more than a random sample of
heterogeneous texts and offered a view on literature and life which
became extremely influential, yet increasingly vulnerable to attack.
As a cultural institution with considerable power, the magazine
helped to shape the course of Argentine letters in the twentieth
century. It was constantly vilified, yet its detractors provided no
lasting alternative strategy: the 'modernisers' of the 1 96os were in
many ways repeating what Sur itself had been able to accomplish in
the 1 930s and 1 940s. An alternative culture, paying more attention to
national and Latin American problems, and more particularly
committed to radical political alternatives, was possible in other
countries ofLatin America, but appeared only weakly in Argentina at
certain political junctures: 1 920-9; 1 945-55; 1 966-73. The third of
these periods was the most dynamic but it became lost in internecine
disputes and enveloped in the morass of Peronism. It is for this reason
202 CONCLUSION

that Ocampo's death is felt most acutely, for it does leave a vacuum.
However the magazine is judged, Sur is one of the most important
achievements in the cultural life of Latin America. In this way its
founder Victoria Ocampo can still be said, in Waldo Frank's early
words, to have 'prophesied for her country'.7
 Notes

Introduction
1
Andre Gide, Ainsi soit-il ou Les jeux sont faits, 52nd ed. (Paris, 1 952) , p. 1 98.
2 For a general survey of Argentine literary magazines, see Hector Lafleur, Sergio
Provenzano and Fernando Alonso, Llis revistas literarias argentinas ( 189j-1g6o)
(Buenos Aires, 1962).
3 The most detailed examinations of a Latin American literary magazine are to be
found in Judith Weiss, 'Casa de las Americas': An Intellectual Review in the Cuban
Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1 977), and Manuel Duran, Antologfa de la revista
'Contempordneos' (Mexico, 1 973). Both of these are interesting, but brief accounts.
Important work is beginning to appear in short critical articles, especially on the
1920s in Latin America. See the issue of the Revista Iberoamericana, 1 1 8-19
(Jan.-June 1 982), and the Revista de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, 1 5 ( 1 er
semestre, 1 982) . In Europe, two comprehensive accounts of the development of
specific magazines can be found in Francis Mulhern, The Moment of 'Scrutiny'
(London, 1 979), and Auguste Angles, Andre Gide et le premier groupe de la '.Nouvelle
Revue Fram;aise' (Paris, 1 978) . The most readable accounts of literary magazines are
to be found in the autobiographies of the protagonists. See, in particular, two
North American writers: Margaret Anderson, My Thirty Years War, An Autobio­
graphy (New York, 1 930) , on The Little Review , and William Barrett, The Truants:
Adventures Among the Intellectuals (New York, 1 982), on The Partisan Review. For a
general bibliography of magazines see Frederick J. Hoffman et al., The Little
Maga;:.ine (Princeton, 1946), and for Spanish America, Boyd G. Carter, Historia de
la literatura hispanoamericana a traves de sus revistas (Mexico, 1 968) .
• Mulhern, p. ix.
5 See Raymond Williams, 'The Bloomsbury Fraction', Problems in Materialism and
Culture (London, 1 980), pp. 1 48-50, and Williams, Culture (London, 1 98 1 ) , p. 68.
For a consideration of Williams' methodology as applied to the Argentine context,
see Carlos Altamirano and Beatriz Sarlo, Literatura, sociedad (Buenos Aires, 1 983),
pp. 96-100.
6 Lewis Coser, Men of Ideas (New York, 1965), p. 1 2 1 .
7 Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant Garde (Massachusetts, 1 968) , p . 22.
8 Poggioli, p. 23.
9 For an examination of the concept of the 'intellectual field', see Pierre Bourdieu,
'Intellectual Field and Creative Project', in Michael F. D. Young (ed.), Knowledge
and Control: .New Directionsfor the Sociology ofEducation (London, 1 97 1 ) . There is an
excellent short introduction to the work of Bourdieu in Altamirano and Sarlo, op.
cit ., pp. 77-g6.
10 Williams, 'The Bloomsbury Fraction', pp. 148-9.

203
204 N O T E S TO P A G E S 3- 1 I

11
Jean de Milleret, Entretiens avec Jorge Luis Borges (Paris, 1 967),
p. 60.
12
John Sturrock, Paper Tigers: The Ideal Fictions ofJorge Luis Borges (Oxford, 1 977) ,
p. 4.
" Edward Said, Orienta/ism (London, 1980) , pp. 1 1- 1 4.
14
Williams, p. 149.
1 5 Beatriz Sarlo, 'La perseverancia de un debate' in the issue of the magazine Punto de

Vista dedicated to national and popular culture in Argentina, no. 1 8 (August

1983), pp. 3-5.
16
David Vinas, Apogeo de la oligarquia: literatura argentina y realidad poUtica (Buenos
Aires, 1975), p. 8.
17
'Colaboradores de Sur', Sur, 192-4 (Oct.-Dec. 1 950), 8-1 0; Guillermo de Torre,
'Evocaci6n e inventario de Sur', Sur, 192-4, 1 5-24; 'lndice', Sur, 303-5 (Nov.
1966-April 1967) .
18
Mulhern, p. 3.
19
The best general history of Argentine literature is the five-volume Historia de la
literatura argentina , published by Centro Editor (Buenos Aires 1980-2). Reference
to specialist work on Argentine culture will be made at appropriate points
throughout the book.
20
Sur had three major art critics, Attilio Rosi,Julio Payr6 and Hugo Parpagnoli, and
also published occasional works by the most important critics of the 1 950s and
196os,Jorge Romero Brest and Damian Bayon. These would write short notes on
travelling international exhibitions at Amigos del Arte or the Museo de Bellas
Artes, and on Argentine artists. In music, the critics tended to be the composers
themselves, and Sur included the two major figures of Argentine contemporary
music, the avant-garde Juan Carlos Paz (who introduced Schonberg to Argentina
at a very early time) and the more traditional Alberto Ginastera. As has been said,
these were, in the main, brief reports on contemporary cultural events in Buenos
Aires and can be linked to Sur's promotion of certain national and international
artistic developments. They are not, however, sufficiently detailed to be included
in the main body of the text.

1 The cultural context

1
Victoria Ocampo, Testimonios ( quinta serie) (Buenos Aires, 195 7) , p. 28.
2 Victoria Ocampo, 'Sarmiento', Sur, 48 (Aug. 1938), 7-9.
3 SeeJames Scobie, Argentina, a Ciry and a Nation (New York, 1 97 1 }, andJohn Lynch,
Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas (London, 198 1 ) .
• Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London, 1977), pp. 1 78-9.
5 David Rock, Politics in Argentina, 18�1930 (Cambridge, 1 975), p. 1 .
6 ibid., p. 3.
7 Gino Germani, Estructura social de la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1955), p. 8 1 .
8
See Rock, pp. 67-95, and Laclau, pp. 1 8 1-8.
9 Vinas, Apogeo de la oligarquia , pp. 97-1 38.
10
Roberto Giusti, Visto y vivido (Buenos Aires, 1965), p. 1 00.
11
Angel Rama, Ruben Dario y el modernismo (Caracas, 1 970) ; and Noe Jitrik, Las
contradicciones del modernismo: productividadpoeticay situacion sociologica (Mexico, 1978) .
12
Vinas, p. 1 1 3.
13 Quoted in Carlos Altamirano, Beatriz Sarlo, 'La Argentina del Centenario: cam po
intelectual, vida literaria y temas ideol6gicos', Hispamlrica , 25-6 ( 1 980), 33-59
(p. 43). Their analysis of the development of the professional writer is coherent and
convincing.
 NOTES TO PAGES I 1-19 205
1
4 See two excellent accounts of the 'immigrant' novel in Argentina: Evelyn
Fishburn, The Portrayal of Immigration in Nineteenth Century Argentine Fiction
(1845-1902) (Berlin, 198 1 ); and Gladys Onega, La inmigracion en la literatura
argentina, J/JBo-1910 (Buenos Aires, 1 968).
is
La redacci6n, 'Suplemento explicativo de nuestro "Manifiesto'', A prop6sito de
ciertas criticas', Martin Fierro, 8-g (6 Sept. 1 924), n.p.
16 For a full discussion of the nationalist revival of the 1 9 1 0s, see Carlos Paya and
Eduardo Cardenas, El primer nacionalismo argentino en Manuel Galvu:.y Ricardo Rojas
(Buenos Aires, 1978) .
17 Altamirano and Sarlo, p. 55.
1
8 See Francis Korn's enthusiastic picture of Buenos Aires in 1 895, Buenos Aires 1/Jf}5 :
una ciudad moderna (Buenos Aires, 1 98 1 ) .
19 Interview with Dr Roberto Giusti, Di Tella Institute, Oral History Project, 197 1 ,
p. 1 2.
20 See the discussion in Hector Lafleur, Sergio Provenzano and Fernando Alonso, Las
revistas literarias argentinas ( 1/Jf};-1!fi>) , pp. 23-3 1 . See also Paya and Cardenas,
pp. 25-g.
21 Giusti, Di Tella Oral History Project, p. 1 4.
22 Giusti, Visto y vivido , p. 1 05.
23 ibid., p. I 1 3.
24 An example of this was the famous 'Magny' dinners in Paris in the 1 860s and 1870s.
See Robert Baldick, Dinner at Magny's (London, 197 1 ) .
2s The terms are used by Regis Debray in Teachers, Writers, Celebrities: The Intellectuals
of Modem France (London, 198 1 ) , p. 65.
26 Giusti, Di Tella Oral History Project, p. 1 4.
27 Beatriz Sarlo, 'Vanguardia y criollismo: la aventura de Martin Fieffo ', Revista de
Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, 1 5 ( 1 982) , 33-69 (p. 50).
28 Jorge Luis Borges, 'An Autobiographical Essay', The Aleph and Other Stories
193J-1¢9 (London, 1 973), pp. 1 40-- 1 .
29 Included in Martin Fierro, 33 ( 3 Sept. 1926) , n.p.
30 'Opiniones sobre Claridad: de Alfredo Bianchi', Claridad, 200 (Feb. 1 930), n.p.
1
3 Interview withJose Bianco, Buenos Aires, August 1976; Marfa Luisa Bastos, Borges
ante la crftica argentina (Buenos Aires, 1974), p. 147.
32 'Revista de revistas', Claridad, 326-7 (June-July 1 938), n.p.
33 'Encuesta sobre el teatro', Claridad, 1 30 ( 1 8 Feb. 1 927), n.p.
34 See in particular, Nelson Osorio, 'Para una caracterizaci6n hist6rica del
vanguardismo literario hispanoamericano', Revista lberoamericana, 1 14-1 5
(Jan.-June 1 98 1 ) , 227-54.
ss
Perry Anderson's comments on modernism are contained in a review 'Modernity
and Revolution' of Marshall Berman's book, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, in New
Left Review , 144 (March-April 1984), 96-1 1 3. Anderson's articles and Berman's
reply, 'The Signs in the Street', ibid., pp. 1 1 4-23 are very relevant to the debate on
modernism in Latin America.
36 See Gerald Martin, 'Boom, Yes; "New" Novel, No: Further Reflections on the
Optical Illusions of the 1960s in Latin America', Bulletin ofLatin American Research ,
3, 2 ( 1 984), 53-63.
37 The best brief account of the period is Gerald Martin, 'The Literature, Art and
Music of Latin America, 1 870-- 1 930', The Cambridge History ofLatin America , 1v, ed.
L. Bethell, 1986 (forthcoming) .
38 For an overview of literary magazines in Latin America, see Boyd G. Carter,
pp. 98- 1 2 1 .
3� Introduction to Michel Foucault, Les mots et Les choses (Paris, 1 966).
206 N O T E S TO P A G E S 20-7
40 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Pagina sobre la lirica de hoy', Nosotros, xx1, 2 1 g-20 ( 1 927),
75-7 (p. 77).
41 For a general survey of the period, see Nelida Salvador, Revistas argentinas de
vanguardia (192<>-1930) (Buenos Aires, 1962), and Bastos, pp. 1 7-74. See also
Eduardo Romano, 'Las revistas argentinas de vanguardia en la decada del 20',
Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 41 l (Sept. 1 984), 1 77-200.
42 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Autobiographical essay', p. 149·
43 Maria Rosa Oliver, La vida cotidiana (Buenos Aires, 1 969), pp. 2 1 4- 1 5. Another
memoir is to be found in Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, Los martinfimistas (Buenos
Aires, 1961 ).
44 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (London, l 973), pp. l 5 7-202, and Terry Eagleton,
Walter Benjamin; or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London, l 98 1 ) , p. 26.
45 In this section, my analysis broadly concurs with the observations of Beatriz Sarlo,
pp. 55--g.
46 Roberto Mariani, 'Martin Fierro y yo', Martin Fierro , 7 (25 July 1 924), n.p.
47 Evar Mendez, 'Extrema Izquierda', Martin Fierro, 8--g (6 Sept. 1 924), n.p.
48 Frank Field, Three French Writers and the Great War (Cambridge, 1 975), pp. 3g-78.
49 See Nelida Salvador, Revistas argentinas de vanguardia , p. 36.
50 Beatriz Sarlo, p. 49.
51 See the essays on the development of artistic movements in Aldo Pellegrini,
Panorama de la pintura argentina contempordnea (Buenos Aires, 1 96g) and La pintura
argentina. Edited by Fermin Fevre (Buenos Aires, 1 975).
52 Leopoldo Marechal, 'Retrueque a Leopoldo Lugones', Martin Fierro , 26 (29 Dec.
1925), n.p.
53 Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Parnaso satirico: epigramas', Martin Fierro , 4 ( 1 5
May 1924), n.p.
54 'Manifiesto de Martin Fierro', Martin Fierro, 4, n.p.
55 Macedonio Fernandez was a profound influence on Borges at this time. He was
interested in paradox, metaphysical conjecture and, above all, the craft of fiction.
But perhaps the supreme lesson Borges learned from him was the need for
economy: 'Por diminutivo que sea, un trabajo debe empezar. Pero los Directores
no lo entienden asi; no pueden ver que un articulo se empiece. Es un alarmismo tal
que solo se tranquilizan de que no sera largo si uno les promete no comenzarlo.
Todo lo que puedo es empezarlos cortos.' (Macedonio Fernandez, 'Un articulo
que no colabora', Martin Fierro, 22 ( 1 0 Sept. 1 925) , n.p.)
56 Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Jorge Luis Borges. A Literary Biography (New York, 1 978),
p. 192.
57 See Field, pp. 61-78, and Nicole Racine, 'Une revue d'intellectuels communistes
dans les annees vingt: Clarti 1 92 1- 1 928', Revue Fr�aise de Science Politique, XVII, 3,
(June 1 967), 484-5 1 9.
58 Leonidas Barletta sardonically pointed out that none of the writers actually lived
in Boedo, an example of much misdirected 'workerist' criticism. See Leonidas
Barletta, Boedo y Florida: una version distinta (Buenos Aires, 1 967), pp. 41-65.
59 Barletta, pp. 52-6.
60 Adolfo Prieto, 'La literatura de izquierda: el grupo Boedo', Fichero, 2 (April l 959) ,
1-22 (p. 20). See also Jose Barcia, 'Claridad, una editorial de pensamiento', and
Ernesto Giudici, 'Claridad en la decada del 30', Todo es historia, 1 7 1 (Sept. 1 98 1 ) ,
8--46.
61 Los Pensadores, 1 1 1 (2 June 1 925) . Quoted in Bastos, p. 5 1 .
62 'Opiniones sobre Claridad: de Luis Emilio Soto', Claridad, 2 00 (Feb. 1 930), n.p.
63 Ricardo Tzernardoni, 'ilgnorancia supina o desconocimiento de nuestras fuerzas
vivas?', Claridad, 233 (27 June 1931 ), n.p.
 NOTES TO PAGES 28-34 207
64 Quoted in Mirta Alcibades, 'Mariategui, Amaula y la vanguardia literaria', Revista
de Crftica Literaria Latinoamtricana, 1 5 ( 1 982), 1 23-39 (p. 1 37).
65 La Direccion, 'Asociacion Amigos del Arte', Proa, 1 (Aug. 1924), 28-g (p. 28). For
a list of the various cultural activities of Amigos del Arte, see La obra de Amigos del
Arte en los aflos 192/-32 (Buenos Aires, 1 933) and La obra de Amigos del Arte en los aflos
193JP (Buenos Aires, 1937), both published by the Institute itself.
66 Jorge Luis Borges: Interview with Gudino Kieffer, 'La violencia: miradas
opuestas', La .Nacion (6 Aug. 1 972), 3rd section, 2.
67 Ramon Gomez de la Serna, 'Matices de Buenos Aires. Conferencias y
conferenciantes', Anales de Buenos Aires, 1 (Jan. 1 946) , 1-3 (p. 3).

2 Sur: the early years

1 Jorge Luis Borges, 'El Sur', Ficciones, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires, 1 96 1 ) , p. 1 95.
2
Cyril Connolly, 'Little Magazines', The Evening Colonnade (London, 1973), p. 427.
3 Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: .Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
(London, 1 98 1 ) , p. 1 80.
• Victoria Ocampo, Autobiogrefia Vol. l: El archipiilago (Buenos Aires, 1979), p. 10.
5 Victoria Ocampo, 'Malandanzas de una autodidacta', Testimonios: quinla strie
( 1950--1957) (Buenos Aires, 1 957), p. 20.
6 Victoria Ocampo, Autobiograffa Vol. n: El imptrio insular (Buenos Aires, 1 g8o),
pp. 65-75.
7 Maria Rosa Oliver, Mundo mi casa (Buenos Aires, 1 965), gives an interesting
account of Oliver's childhood and her early friendship with the Ocampo family.
8 On Latin American culture in Paris in this period, see Paulette Patout, 'La cultura
latinoamericana en Paris entre 1 9 1 o y 1936', in M. A. Asturias, Ptriodismo parisino
1924-1933 (Klincksieck, Paris and Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico.
Forthcoming).
• See David Vinas' account of the growth of the theatre in Buenos Aires in Grotesco,
inmigracion y fracaso: Armando Discipolo (Buenos Aires, 1 973) .
10 Victoria Ocampo, Autobiograffa Vol. 11: El imperio insular, p. 1 04.
11 The third volume of her autobiography, La rama de Sal;:,burgo (Buenos Aires, 1 98 1 ) ,
is dedicated t o a description of the long-standing relationship she had with another
man, when her marriage had become a mere fa�ade. It illustrates well the
restrictions placed on women of her class, and the rigid rules of social behaviour.
12
Anne Chisholm, .Nancy Cunard (London, 1 979), and Peggy Guggenheim, Out ofthis
Century: Confessions ofan Art Addict (London, 1 98o) . An analysis of the relationship
between Tagore and Victoria Ocampo is being written by Dr K. Dyson of Oxford
University. As yet no publication details are available.
13 An account of Tagore's stay in Argentina can be found in Doris Meyer, Victoria
Ocampo: Against the Wind and the Tide (New York, 1979), pp. 63-73.
14 Ocampo's account of their relationship is to be found in Victoria Ocampo, El
viajeroy una de sus sombras (Buenos Aires, 195 1 ) . Vols. IV and v of her autobiography,
Viraje (Buenos Aires, 1 982) and Figuras simbOlicas, Medida de Francia (Buenos Aires,
1g83), recount her meetings with 'remarkable men' in this period.
15 Jung's interpretation reads as follows: 'Your excellent description of the fateful
intermezzo with X [Ocampo] clearly shows that it is an encounter with an "earth­
woman" fraught with meaning. Concealed and revealed in it is one of the most
beautiful animus-anima stories I have ever heard . . . X's longing for identification
refers to the animus which she should like to possess in you, but she mixes it up with
you personally and then of course is deeply disappointed. This disappointment will
208 N O T E S TO P A G E S 34-44
be repeated, always and everywhere, until man has learnt to distinguish his soul
from the other person. Then his soul can return to him. This lesson is a hellish
torture for you both, but extremely useful, the experience one would have wished
for you, and assuredly the most important torture of all for X, who is still possessed
by her earth demons. Perhaps she prefers to be torn to pieces by the titans, as
happens in many such anima figures.' C. G.Jung, Letters, 1 (Princeton, 1 973), 72-3.
16 Victoria Ocampo, Autobiograj(a Vol. III: La rama de Sa/zburgo (Buenos Aires, 1 98 1 ) ,
p . 1 1 5.
17 Pierre Andreu and Frederic Grover, Drieu la Rochelle (Paris, 1979) , p. 220.
18 Victoria Ocampo, 'Despues de cuarenta afios', Sur, 325 (July-Aug. 1 970), 1-5
(p. 1 ) .
19 'Travel books . . . are about as "natural" a kind o f text, as logical i n their
composition and in their use as any book one can think of, precisely because of this
human tendency to fall back on a text when the uncertainties of travel in strange
parts seem to threaten one's equanimity.' Said, Orienta/ism, p. 93.
20
Tzvetan Todorov, La Conquete de l'Amirique: la question de l'autre (Paris, 1 982). See
also Percy G. Adams, Travel Literature and the Evolution ofthe Novel (Kentucky, 1 983).
2
1 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (London, 1973), p. 1 1 .
2
2 Oswald Spengler, The Decline ofthe West, Vol. I: Form and Actualiry (London, 1 928) ,
p. 3 1 .
2
3 ibid. p. 34·
2
'
4 See Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (Cornell,
1977), pp. 34-96, and Denis Sardinha, The Poetry ofNicolas Guillen (London, 1 976),
p. 65.
2
5 Patout, n.p.
2
6 Paul Fussel, Abroad (Oxford, 1 980), p. 74.
2
7 'George Bernanos escribe para Sur', Sur, 48 (Sept. 1938), 7-1 9. Roa Bastos's reply
to this article, some thirty years later, is to be found in: Augusto Roa Bastos,
'Cr6nica paraguaya', Sur, 293 (March-April 1965), 102- 1 2 (p. 1 02) .
28
Jose Ortega y Gasset, 'La pampa . . . promesas', Obras comp/etas, 11 (Madrid, 1946),
63 1 .
2
9 See Martin Stabb, In Quest of Identiry (Chapel Hill, 1967), pp. 67-72.
30 See Evelyne Lopez Campillo's exhaustive content analysis of the magazine, La
Revista de Occidentey laformacion de minorias 192J-19j6 (Madrid, 1972) .
31 Frank Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: US Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations
1938-1950 (Cambridge, 1 98 1 ) , pp. 1-7.
2
3 Waldo Frank, Waldo Frank in America Hispana (New York, 1 930), p. 6.
33 ibid., p. 5·
34 See Jesus Mendez's excellent account in 'The Origins of Sur, Argentina's Elite
Cultural Review', Revista Interamericana de Bibliografia, xxx1, 1 ( 1 98 1 ) , 3-15.
35 Maria Rosa Oliver, La vida cotidiana, p. 259.
36 Mendez, p. 1 o, talks of Glusberg's attempts to embarrass the Sur group politically.
37 Memoirs of Waldo Frank, ed. Alan Trachtenberg (Amherst, 1 973) , p. 1 7 1 . Victoria
Ocampo's sixth volume of autobiography 'Sur'y Gia (Buenos Aires, 1 984) expands
on this point.
38 Victoria Ocampo, 'Carta a Waldo Frank', Sur, 1 (Summer 193 1 ) , 7-1 8 (p. 1 1 ) .
39 Even though an enraptured Victoria Ocampo was to be found dancing with the
Prince of Wales when he was sent down to open a British Trade Exhibition in the
late 1920s, it was clear that the British were increasingly calling the tune in their
relations with the Argentine economic elite groups.
•0 Williams, 'The Bloomsbury Fraction', pp. 1 48--5 2.
 NOTES TO PAGES 45-60
41 Quoted by Iain Wright, 'F. R. Leavis, the Scrutiny Movement and the Crisis',
Culture and Crisis in Britain in the 1930s (London, 1 979), p. 4 1 .
42 Oliver, p. 260.
43 Debray, p. 16.
44 Oliver, p. 276.
45 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Entretiens avec Napoleon Murat', L'Herne ( 1 964), 371-87
(p. 377).
46 Victoria Ocampo, 'Carta aJorge Luis Borges', Cuadernos del Congresopor la Libertad
de la Cultura , 88 (Sept. 1964), 41-2 (p. 42).
47 Victoria Ocampo, 'Carta a Waldo Frank', Sur, 1, 1 6.
48 Waldo Frank, 'La selva', Sur, 1, 1 g--5 2.
49 Alfonso Reyes, 'Un paso de America', Sur, 1, 1 49-58.
50 Jorge Luis Borges, 'El coronel Ascasubi', Sur, 1 , 1 2g--40.
51 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Seneca en las orillas', Sur, 1 , 1 74-9. Beatriz Sarlo, 'Borges en
Sur: un episodio de formalismo criollo', Punto de Vista , 16 (Nov. 1 983), 3-6.
52 P. Drieu la Rochelle, 'Carta a unos desconocidos', Sur, 1 , 53-63 (p. 54).
53 Conde Hermann de Keyserling, 'Perspectivas sudamericanas', Sur, 2 (Autumn
193 1 ) , 7-1 5 (p. 8).
54 Victoria Ocampo, 'Contestacion a un epilogo de Ortega y Gasset', Sur, 2, 16-50.
See also the discussion in Meyer, pp. 50-63.
ss Eduardo Mallea, 'Sumersion', Sur, 2, 86-1 33 (p. 92) . On Mallea, see Jorge A.
Warley, 'Un acuerdo de orden etico', Punto de Vista , 1 7 (April-July 1983), 1 2-14.
56 Jorge Luis Borges, 'El Martin Fierro', Sur, 2, 1 34-45 (p. 1 38) .
57 Langston Hughes, 'Tres Poemas', Sur, 2, 1 64-89 (p. 164).
58 Francisco Romero, 'Al margen de La rebelion de las masas', Sur, 2, 192-205.
s9 Victoria Ocampo, 'Ramon Gomez de la Serna en Buenos Aires', Sur, 2, 205-8
(p. 206).
60 Victoria Ocampo, 'Palabras francesas', Sur, 3, (Winter 193 1 ) , 7-25.
61 Alfonso Reyes, 'Los dos augures', Sur, 3, 26-48 (p. 29) . On americanismo in Reyes,
see Sarlo, 'La perspectiva americana en los primeros aiios de Sur', Punto de Vista , 1 7
(April-July, 1983), 10- 1 2.
62 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Nuestras imposibilidades', Sur, 4 (Spring 193 1 ) , 1 3 1 -4.
63 Waldo Frank, 'El mundo atlantico', Sur, 4, 7-82, (p. 52).
64 Jorge Luis Borges, 'El arte narrativo y la magia', Sur, 5 (Summer 1932), 1 72-9
(p. 1 79) ·
65 Eduardo Mallea, 'Suerte de Jacobo Uber', Sur, 9 Uuly 1934), 6g-- 1 1 3 (p. 104) .
66 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Noticia a las Kenningar', Sur, 6 (Autumn 1932), 202-8.
67 Elfas Castelnuovo, 'La vida de los escritores rusos', Sur, 5 (Summer 1932), 1 94-8.
68 Leo Ferrero, 'Carta de Norteamerica, <!Crisis de elites?', Sur, 8 (Sept. 1933), 1 07-16
(p. 1 1 4).
69 Victoria Ocampo, 'Noticula', Sur, 8, 157-8 (p. 1 58).
70 Waldo Frank, South of Us, 3rd ed. (New York, 1940), pp. 1 26-7.

3 The Years of consolidation, 1935-40

1 'Posicion de Sur', Sur, 35 (Aug. 1937), 7-9 (pp. 7-8) .

2
Interview with Jose Bianco, August 1 978.
3 Jose Bianco, 'Victoria', Vuelta , 53 (April 1 98 1 ) , 4-6 (p. 6).
4 ibid., p. 6.
s In advertisements, Sur, 1 1 (Aug. 1935).
6 Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley: a Biography, n (London, 1973-4), 75.
2 10 NOTES TO PAGES 60-73
7 Aldous Huxley, 'Naturaleza y limite de la influencia de los escritores', Sur, 1 1 ,
7-29.
8 Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley: A Biography, 1 (London, 1 973-4) , 3 1 1 .
9 Andre Gide, Journal Illgfr-1939 (Paris, 1940), p. 1 1 38.
10 See M. Winock, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit, 19:J<>-1950 (Paris, 1 975), for the
political impact of personalism; M. Kelly, Pioneer ofthe Catholic Revival: The Ideas
and ITljluence of Emmanuel Mounier (London, 1 979), pp. 27-80, for the intellectual
development of Mounier; and David L. Schalk, The Spectrum ofPolitical Engagement
(New Jersey, 1 979), on twentieth-century committed intellectuals in France in
general.
11 Correspondance: Jacques Maritain - Emmanuel Mounier (I92f.rl939) (Paris, 1 973) ,
pp. 3 1-1 72.
12 Ernesto Palacio, 'La experiencia de Andre Gide', Sur, 3 7 (Oct. 1 93 7) , 77--80
(p. 79).
13 Guillermo de Torre, 'El suicidio y el superrealismo', Revista de Occidente, 145 (July
1 935), 1 1 7-28.
14 Guillermo de Torre, 'Literatura individual frente a literatura dirigida', Sur, 30
(March 1 937), 8g-104 (pp. 98-g9) .
15 Roger Caillois, 'Arte y propaganda', Sur, 72 {Sept. 1 940), 72-4 (p. 73).
16 ibid., p. 74·
17 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77
(New York, 1 980) , pp. 10g-33.
18 See Alberto Ciria, Partidos y poder en la Argentina moderna (Buenos Aires, 1 964),
pp. 2 1g-5 1 .
19 Part of the evidence of Consultation Among the American Republics with Respect to the
Argentine Situation (Washington, 1 946). This text is commonly referred to as The
Blue Bool e
2° Carlos Ibarguren, La historia que he vivido (Buenos Aires, 196g), pp. 466--7 .
21 Rodriguez Monegal, pp. 296--g.
22 For a discussion on the Spanish exiles, see Emilia de Zuleta, 'Letras espaiiolas en la
revista Sur ', Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecasy Museos, Lxxx, 1 (Jan.-March 1977),
1 1 3-45.
23 Jose Bergamin, 'DeJose Bergamin a Victoria Ocampo', Sur, 32 (May 1 937) , 6]--9
(p. 68).
24 Victoria Ocampo, 'De Victoria Ocampo a Jose Bergamin', Sur, 32, 6g-74.
25 Quoted in Victoria Ocampo, 'El proletariado de la mujer segun Mounier y segun
Bergamin', Sur, 33 (June 1 937), 1 03-5 (p. 1 04) .
26 See Mark Falcoff, 'Argentina', in Mark Falcoff and Frederick Pike, eds., The
Spanish Civil War 19j6-1939: American Hemispheric Perspectives (Nebraska, 1 982),
pp. 324-7.
27 Maria Rosa Oliver, Mift es el hombre (Buenos Aires, 1 98 1 ) , p. 1 1 .
28 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Una pedagogia del odio', Sur, 32 (May 1 937), Bo-1 (p. 8 1 ).
29 Jorge Luis Borges, 'De regreso', Sur, 38 (Nov. 1 937), 92-3 (p. 93).
30 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Ensayo de imparcialidad', Sur, 61 (Oct. 1 939) , 27-g (p. 29).
31 Enrique Anderson Imbert, 'Hitler corre el amok', Sur, 6 1 , 41-5 (p. 43).
32 See the essays in the commemorative issue on Caillois, Sur, 343 (July-Dec. 1 978).
33 Tucidides, 'Oracion fUnebre de los atenienses', Sur, 6 1 , 1 07-14 (pp. 1 10-- 1 1 ) .
34 ibid., p . I 14.
35 Fabian Escher andJulia Thomas, 'Notas sobre Victoria Ocampo y Sur', Nudos, 6
(Dec. 1979), 3--8 (p. 5) .
36 See Mark Falcoff, 'Intellectual Currents', in Falcoff and R. Dolkart, eds., Prologue
 NOTES TO PAGES 73-83 21 1

to Peron (Los Angeles, 1975), p. 1 1 9. On nationalists, see Marysa Navarra, Los

nacionalistas (Buenos Aires, 1 968) .
87 Julio Irazusta, Memorias (Buenos Aires, 1 974) , p. 1 84.
38 ibid., p. 227.
39 ibid., p. 1 48.
40 Margarita Aguirre, Pablo .Neruda, Hector Eandi: Correspondencia durante 'Residencia en
la tie"a' (Buenos Aires, 1980) , pp. 100 and 1 23.
41 Maria Luisa Bastos, 'Escrituras ajenas, expresi6n propia: Sur y los Testimonios de
Victoria Ocampo', Revista Jberoamericana , 1 1 0-1 1 (Jan.-June 1 980), 1 23-37
(p. 1 30) .
42 Preface to Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, 'Horacio Quiroga', Sur, 29 (Jan. 1 937),
100-1 1 (p. 108).
43 John King, 'Towards a Reading ofthe Argentine Literary Magazine Sur', Latin
American Research Review, 2 ( 1 98 1 ) , 5 7-78 (p. 7 1 ) .
44 Leopoldo Marechal, 'Don Segundo Sombra y el ejercicio ilegal de la critica', Sur, 1 2
(Sept. 1935), 76-80 (p. 78) .
45 See most recently G. Garcia Marquez and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, El olor de la
guayaba (Colombia, 1 g82), pp. 4g-65.
46 Malcolm Cowley, The Faulkner-Cowley File (London, 1 966) , p. 5.
47 Emir Rodriguez Monegal, p. 373.
48 Jason Wilson, Octavio Pa;:.: A Study of His Poetics (Cambridge, 1 979) , p. 2 1 .
49 Octavio Paz, 'Quinta Vuelta', Vuelta, 60 (Nov. 198 1 ) , 4-5.
50 Octavio Paz, 'De Octavio Paz', Sur, 346 (Jan.-June 1980) , 92-3 (p. 92) .
51 Dominique Desanti, Drieu la Rochelle (Paris, 1978) , p. 1 46.
52 See Raymond Williams, p. 1 62.
53 Virginia Woolf, The Sickle Side ofthe Moon. The Letters of Virginia Woolf1932-1935 ,
Nigel Nicholson ed. (London, 1979), p. 439.
S.f ibid., p. 350.
54 ibid., p. 358.
56 ibid., pp. 355 and 359.
57 Virginia Woolf, Leave the Letters Till We're Dead: The Letters of Virginia Woolf
19j6-1941 , ed. Nigel Nicolson (London, 1 980) , p. 3 1 0.
58 Meyer, pp. 1 25-6.
59 Introduction to Woolf, The Sickle Side , pp. xv and xvm.
60 See two articles in Feminist Studies 4, no. 1 (Feb. 1 978) : Jane Marcus, 'Art and
Anger', and Bernice A. Carroll, 'To Crush Him in Our Own Country: The
Political Thought of Virginia Woolf'. For a more sceptical feminist reading, see
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own (London, 1978), pp. 263-g7.
61 Leave the Letters, p. 35 1 .
62 Virginia Woolf, 'Un cuarto propio', Sur, 1 8 (March 1936), 46-8 1 (p. 75).
63 Virginia Woolf, 'Un cuarto propio', Sur, 15 (Dec. 1 935), 7-29 (p. 8).
64 Victoria Ocampo, 'La mujer en la academia', La Prensa ( 1 7 July 1 977) ,
suplemento cultural, 1 .
65 Gabriela Mistral, 'Recado a Victoria Ocampo en la Argentina', Sur, 43 (April
1 938) , 3 1-3 (p. 32) .
66 Victoria Ocampo, 'Gabriela Mistral en mi recuerdo', Testimonios 111 (Buenos
Aires, 1946) , pp. 1 7 1-8 1 (p. 1 8 1 ) .
67 Jorge Luis Borges, 'La amortajada', Sur, 47 (Aug. 1 938), 80-1 ; Maria Luisa
Bomba!, La amortajada, 9th ed. (Santiago, 1 973) , p. 1 03.
68 Lucia Guerra-Cunningham, La na"ativa de Maria Luisa Bombal (Madrid, 1 980),
offers a good introduction to this writer.
212 NOTES TO PAGES 84--94
69 Quoted in El ensayo hispanoamericano del siglo xx, ed. John Skirius (Mexico, 198 1 ),
pp. 10-1 1 .
10 Octavio Paz, 'Jose Ortega y Gasset: El ,'.Como? y el ,'.para que?', Vuelta, 49 (Dec.

1 980), 3 1 -4 (p. 3 1 ) .
1
7 See Carlos Alberto Erro, 'Un filosofo americano: Waldo Frank (con motivo de
America Hispana)'. Sur, 7 (April 1933) , 45-g5.
1 2 Stabb, pp. 1 50-60.

73 Carlos Alberto Erro, 'La filosofia existencial', Sur, 66 (March 1 940) , 56-73.

74 Enrique Anderson Imbert, 'La Argentina, Erro y la filosofia existencial', Sur, 45

(June 1 938), 75-g.

75 Bernardo Canal Feijoo, 'Radiografias fatidicas', Sur, 37 (Oct. 1 937), 63-77

(pp. 63-4).
76 ibid., pp. 68-g.

77 See Bernardo Canal Feijoo, 'Historia de una pasion argentina ', Sur, 38 (Nov.

1 937) , 74-82 (p. 80) , and 'La bahia del silencio', Sur, 75 (Dec. 1940) , 1 5 1 -8.
78 Jose Bianco, 'Las ultimas obras de Mallea', Sur, 2 1 (June 1936), 3g-7 1 (p. 39).

79 Eduardo Mallea, 'Maestros extranjeros', Sur, 37 (Oct. 1 937) , 39-76 (p. 50).

80 Stabb, p. 1 72. The essay he refers to is Carlos Astrada, 'De Kierkegaard a

Heidegger', Sur, 25 (Oct. 1 936), 5o-g.

81 For an analysis of Romero's philosophy, see Marjorie Harris, Francisco Romero on
Problems of Philosophy (New York, 1 960).
82 Jorge Luis Borges, Evaristo Carriego , 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires, 1 955), p. 9.

83 Gerard Genette, 'La litterature selon Borges', L'Herne ( 1 964), 323-7 (p. 327).

8 4 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Leopoldo Lugones', Sur, 4 1 (Feb. 1938), 57-8 (p. 58). It is

interesting to notice that this is the only time Lugones is mentioned in Sur. His
increasingly polemical work was ignored.
85 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Jack Lindsay: A Short History of Culture', Sur, 60 (Sept. 1 939) ,

66-7 (p. 67) .

86 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Lafuga', Sur, 35 (Aug. 1937), 1 2 1-2 (p. 1 2 1 ) .

8 7 Borges' film criticism in Sur in the 1 930s has been collected and analysed by

Edgardo Cozarinsky. See Borgesy el cine (Buenos Aires, 1974).

88 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Luis Greve, muerto', Sur, 39 (Dec. 1 937), 85-6 (p. 86).

"" John King, 'The novels and short stories of Adolfo Bioy Casares', Oxford, B.Phil.
thesis, 1974, pp. 1g-28.
90 Jose Ortega y Gasset, La deshumaniz:,acion del arte - Ideas sobre la novela , 2nd ed.

(Madrid, 1928), p. 89.

9 1 ibid., p. 1 33.

92 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Prologo' to Adolfo Bioy Casares, La invencion de Morel, 2nd ed.

(Buenos Aires, 1968), p. 1 2.

93 A. Bioy Casares et al., Antologia de la literaturafanttistica, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires,

1967), p. 1 3, and Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction a la littiraturefantastique (Paris,

1970) .
94 Adolfo Bioy Casares et al., Antologia de la literaturaf anttistica, p. 1 3.
95 ibid., p. 1 5.

96 ibid., p. 16.

97 Rosemary Jackson, Fantas y, the Literature ef Subversion (London, 1 98 1 ) .

9 8 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Ellery Queen: The New Adventures efEllery Q.ueen ', Sur, 7 0 (July

1 940) , 61-2 (p. 62).

99 Waldo Frank, 'Saludo a Sur en su cumpleafios', Sur, 75 (Dec. 1 940), 7-1 0 (p. 9) .

100 Guillermo de Torre, 'Conmemoracion extraoficial', Sur, 75, 36-42.

1 0 1 Patricio Canto, 'Vaticinio de America', Sur, 75, 43-7 (p. 45).

1 02 Eduardo Mallea, 'El hombre gordo de South Kensington', Sur, 7 5, 16-35 (p. 16).
 N O T E S T O P A G E S 95- 1 04 213

4 The war years

1 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Anotaci6n al 23 de agosto de 1 944', Sur, 120 (Oct. 1944) , 24-6
(pp. 25-6).
2 See Callum MacDonald's lucid account, 'The Politics of Intervention: The
United States and Argentina 1 941-1946', Journal ef Latin American Studies, 12, 2
(November 1980), 365--96; and Cordell Hull, Memoirs (New York, 1 946) ,
pp. 1 390--9.
3 British Foreign Office dispatch, Hadow to Perowne, 1 3 December 1 945 (AS 65 72-
3 1 7-5 1 .F.o. 370-450 19, Public Record Office, Kew, London).
4 Ninkovich, pp. 35-60.
5 Government Printing Office, History efthe Office efthe Co-ordinator efInter-American
Affairs (Washington, 1947), pp. 3-JO.
6 Maria Rosa Oliver, Mife es el hombre, pp. 96 and 1 00.
7 Victoria Ocampo, 'America indivisible', Sur, 87 (Dec. 194 1 ) , 7--9 (p. 9).
8 Maria Rosa Oliver, 'El dia marcado en los anales de la infamia', Sur, 87, 1 7-20
(p. 20).
9 MacDonald, p. 391.
10 Jorge Luis Borges, ' 1 94 1 ', Sur, 87, 2 1-2 (p. 2 1 ) .
11 Victoria Ocampo, 'Homenaje a Winston Churchill', Sur, 87, 67-9 (p. 68).
12 Victoria Ocampo, '23 de agosto de 1 944', Sur, 1 20 (Oct. 1 944), 1 3-1 7.
13 Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, 'Francia en la salvaci6n', Sur, 1 20, 1 8-23 (p. 22).
14 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Anotaci6n al 23 de agosto de 1944', Sur, 1 20, 24-6 (p. 24).
15 Maria Rosa Oliver, Mife es el hombre, p. 330.
16 Victoria Ocampo, 'Declaraciones sobre la paz', Sur, 1 29 (July 1945), 7-8 (p. 8).
17 Enrique Anderson Imbert, 'Los derechos del hombre', Sur, 29, 16-20 (p. 1 7).
18
Jorge Luis Borges, 'Nota sobre la paz', Sur, 1 29, g--1 0 (p. IO).
19 Rafael Alberti, 'La paz', Sur, 1 29, 1 1 .
20 Meyer, pp. 1 44-5.
21 Laclau, p. 1 88.
22 Maria Rosa Oliver, Mije es el hombre, p. 330.
23 See Spruille Braden's memoirs, Democrats and Demagogues (New York, 197 1 ) ,
pp. 3 1 6-37.
24 A. F. Schmidt, ' 1 2 de octubre de 1 945', Sur, 1 37 (March 1 946), 73-8 (pp. 74 and
78).
25 Carlos Alberto Erro, 'Denis de Rougemont en Buenos Aires', Sur, 83 (Aug. 194 1 ) ,
67-74 (p. 67) .
26 Denis de Rougemont, 'lParaque sirven los escritores?', Sur, 86 (Nov. 194 1 ) , 3 1-48
(p. 43).
27 Jacques Maritain, 'El papel de America en la nueva Europa', Sur, w3 (April
1 943), pp. 7-1 4.
2• Victoria Ocampo, 'Paul Valery 1871-1945', Sur, 1 32 (Oct. 1945), 10-29 (pp. 1 5
and 23) .
29 'Lettres de Paul Valery a Victoria Ocampo', Sur, 1 32, 80-w4 (p. wo).
30 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Valery como simbolo', Sur, 1 32, 30-2 (p. 32) .
31 Victoria Ocampo, 'Pierre Drieu la Rochelle: enero de 1 893 - marzo de 1945 ', Sur,
1 26 (April 1::,...5), 38-4 1 (p. 40) .
32 'Palabras pronunciadas por Andre Gide en un homenaje a Victoria Ocampo',
Sur, 142 (Aug. 1946) , 8g--90 (p. 90) .
33 Jorge Luis Borges, lnquisiciones (Buenos Aires, 1 925), pp. 30-8.
34 Sir Thomas Browne, 'Quinto capitulo de la Hydriotaphia', Sur, 1 1 1 (Jan. 1944),
1 5-26.
 N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 04- 1 3

35 Rodriguez Monegal, p. 1 26, quotes Irby.

36 Thomas De Quincey, 'Aflicci6n de la niiiez; muerte de la hermana', Sur, 1 1 2 (Feb.
1 944), 59-74·
37 Ian Hamilton, The Little Magazines: A Stutfy of Six Editors (London, 1 976), pp.

1 25-46, offers an analysis of Horizon which reveals how dynamic Sur was in this
period, in comparison to its British counterpart.
3 8 Victoria Ocampo, 'lntroducci6n', Sur, 1 1 3- 1 4 (March-April 1 944), 7-1 0.

39 Rafael Alberti, 'De los a.Iamos y los sauces; en recuerdo de Antonio Machado', Sur,

72 (Sept. 1 940), 7-1 5.

40 Rafael Alberti, 'Arion', Sur, 1 03 (April 1 943), 49-56 (p. 49).

4 1 Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Homenaje a Rafael Alberti', Sur, 28 1 (March-April

1 963), 5o--62.
42 Rafael Alberti, 'Museo del Prado', Sur, 1 45 (Nov. 1 946), 38-4 1 (p. 4 1 ) .

4 3 Rafael Alberti, 'Goya', Sur, 1 2 7 (May 1 945) , 23-6 (p. 23) .

44 ibid., p. 23.

45 Rafael Alberti, 'Picasso', Sur, 1 30 (Aug. 1 945), 40--4 (p. 44) ; see also Ana Maria

Winkelmann, 'Pintura y poesia en Rafael Alberti', in Rafael Alberti, Manuel

Duran, ed. (Madrid, 1 975), pp. 265-74. Alberti in Buenos Aires is discussed in
Jose Miguel Velloso, Conversaciones con Rafael Alberti (Madrid, 1 977), pp. 1 1 8-20.
46 Quoted inJ. Ruiz de Conde, El cantico americano de Jorge Guillen (Madrid, 1 973),

pp. 94-5.
47 'Palabras del presidente del Brasil', Sur, 96 (Sept. 1 942), 93-4 (pp. 93-4).

48 'Mensaje de los argentinos al presidente del Brasil', Sur, 96, 94.

49 Alvaro de Silva, 'Luz y black-out en Rio', 96, 95-8 (p. 96) .

50 Jorge Amado, 'Liberaci6n de la literatura brasileiia', Sur, 89 (Feb. 1 942), 5g-64;

and Gilberto Freyre, 'Casa Grande y Senzala', Sur, 1 05 Ouly 1 943), 7-15.
51 Interview with Jose Bianco, Buenos Aires, August 1 976.
52 Octavio Paz, 'Leopoldo Zea: Elpositivismo en Mexico', Sur, 107 (Sept. 1943), 78-83

(p. 82).
53 Rachel Phillips, The Poetic Modes of Octavio Paz (Oxford, 1 973), pp. 96-7.

54 Octavio Paz, 'Vigilias: Mediodia', Sur, 85 (Oct. 194 1 ), 1 3- 1 4.

55 Octavio Paz, 'La caida', Sur, 1 09 (Nov. 1943), 26-7 (p. 27) .

56 'iTienen las Americas una historia com(m?', Sur, 86 (Nov. 1 94 1 ) , 83-103 (p. 94) .

57 Cuadernos Americanos, 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1 942), 1 .

58 Alfonso Reyes, 'America y los Cuadernos Americanos ', Cuadernos Americanos, 2

(March-April 1 942), 7- 1 0 (pp. 7-8) .

59 'Al pie de la letra', Casa de las Americas, 1 32 (May-June 1 982) , 1 78.

•0 Jose Bianco, 'Des souvenirs', L'Herne ( 1964) , 33-43 (p. 42).

6 1 Victoria Ocampo, 'Carta a Jorge Luis Borges', pp. 4 1-2.

62 Adolfo Bioy Casares, 'J. L. Borges: Eljardin de senderos quese bifurcan ', Sur, 92 (May
1 942), 6o--5 (p. 6o) .
63 ibid., pp. 64-5.

64 Edgar Allan Poe, 'Twice-Told Tales', Selected Writings (London, 1 967) ,

pp. 437-47 (p. 446) .
85 Richard Burgin, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (New York, 1 968), p. 5 1 .

66 Interview with Adolfo Bioy Casares, August 1 976.

67 Jean Franco, 'The Utopia of a Tired Man: Jorge Luis Borges', Social Text, 4 (Fall

1 98 1 ) , 52-78.
68 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Roger Caillois: Le roman policier', Sur, 91 (April 1 942), 56-7

(p. 56).
69 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Observaci6n final', Sur, 92 (May 1 942), 72-3 (p. 73) .

70 Silvia Molloy, 'Borges y la distancia literaria', Sur, 3 1 8 (May-June 1 968) , 26-37

 N O T E S T O P A G E S I 1 4-22 215

(p. 27). Ronald Christ, 'The Art of Fiction', Paris Review, 39 (Winter-Spring
1 967), 1 16-64 (pp. 145-6) .
7 1 Andres Avellaneda, El habla de la ideolog{a (Buenos Aires, 1 983), p. 64.

72 H. Bustos Domecq, Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi (Buenos Aires, 1 942), p. 1 3.

73 John King, 'The novels and short stories of Adolfo Bioy Casares', pp. 7g-87.

74 Rodolfo Walsh, Diez cuentos policiales argentinos (Buenos Aires, 1953), p. 7.

75 J. Lafforgue and j. Rivera, Los asesinos de papel (Buenos Aires, 1 977), pp. 1 3-46.

76 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Manuel Peyrou, La espada dormida ', Sur, 1 2 7 (May 1945), 73-4

(p. 74) .
77 Lafforgue and Rivera, p. 63.

78 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Sohre los clasicos', Sur, 85 (Oct. 194 1 ) , 7- 1 2 (p. 1 1 ).

7 9 ibid., p. 1 2.

80 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Sohre la descripci6n literaria', Sur, 97 (Oct. 1942), 1 00-2

(p. 1 0 1 ) .
8 1 Adolfo Bioy Casares, 'Desagravio a Borges', Sur, 94 Uuly 1942), 22.

8 2 Olaf Stapledon offers an interesting point of comparison to Bioy. See Stapledon's

essay in Adolfo Bioy Casares et al., Antolog{a de la literaturafantdstica , p. 397.

83 Silvina Ocampo, 'Acto de contrici6n', Lo amargo por dulce (Buenos Aires, 1 962),

p. 5·
84 Interview with Silvina Ocampo, Buenos Aires, August 1 977. The work of Silvina

Ocampo is now receiving some critical attention. See Noemi Ulla, 'Silvina
Ocampo' in Historia de la literatura argentina, v (Buenos Aires, 1 98 1 ) , 385-408 and
her interviews with Ocampo, Encuentros con Silvina Ocampo (Buenos Aires, 1982).
Also Enrique Pezzoni, 'Estudio Preliminar', Las mejores paginas de Silvina Ocampo
(Buenos Aires, 1 984), pp. 1 3-77. The cruelty in Ocampo's work is analysed in
Daniel Balderston, 'Los cuentos crudes de Silvina Ocampo y Juan Rodolfo
Wilcock', Revista lberoamericana, 1 25 (Oct.-Dec. 1983), 743-52.
8 5 Danuhio Torres Fierro, 'Conversaci6n con Jose Bianco', Plural, 52 Uan. 1 976),

23-7 (p. 26).

86 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Jose Bianco, Las ratas ', Sur I I I u an. 1 944) 76-8 (pp. 76-7).
' '
On the work of Bianco, see Antonio Prieto Taboada, 'El poder de la ambiguedad
en "Somhras suele vestir" de Jose Bianco', Revista lberoamericana, 1 25, op. cit.,
7 1 7-30.
87 ibid., p. 78.

88 Interview with Ernesto Sahato, Buenos Aires, August 1 976.

89 Ernesto Sahato, 'George Russell: Atamos en accion ', Sur, 93 Uune 1942), 62-7

(p. 67) .
90 Ernesto Sabato, 'Los relatos deJorge Luis Borges', Sur, 1 25 (March 1945), 6g-75

(p. 74) .
91 Ernesto Sabato, Abaddon el exterminador (Buenos Aires, 1 974) , p. 297.
92 ibid., p. 82.

95 Santiago Montserrat, 'Eduardo Mallea y la Argentina profunda', Sur, 1 23 (Jan.

1 945), 72-83 (p. 8 1 ) .

9 4 Cesar Fernandez Moreno, La realidady Los papeles (Madrid, 1 967), p. 322.

9 5 Luis Soler Canas, La generacion poitica del 40 (Buenos Aires, 1 g8 1 ) ; Carlos

Giordano, Eduardo Romano and Horacio Becco, El 40 (Buenos Aires, 1 969) ;
David Lagmanovich, 'Dos revistas argentinas de poesia, Canto y Cantico', Revista
lnteramericana de Bibliograj(a, 25 (June 1 975), 3-1 2.
96 Novi6n de los Rios, 'Una generaci6n de poetas argentinos', Sur, 84 (Sept. 1 94 1 ) ,

57-62 (p. 57).

97 Leon Benar6s, 'La generaci6n de 1940', El 40 (Spring 1 95 1 ), n.p.

98 Lafleur, Provenzano and Alonso, pp. 1 70-2 10.

 N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 23-30

99 Canto, 1 Oune 1 940), Introduction, n.p.

1 0° Cesar Fernandez Moreno, 'La poesia de Vicente Barbieri', Sur, 1 J O (Dec. 1 943),
70-92 (p. 92) .
101 Vicente Barbieri, 'La balada del rio Salado', Sur, 86 (Nov. 1 94 1 ) , 49-65 (p. 5 1 ) .
1 02 Fernandez Moreno, 'La poesia de Vicente Barbieri', 80- 1 .
10
3 Barbieri, p . 64.
JO+ ibid., p. 65.
1 05 See for example Juan G. Ferreyra Basso, 'Paisano muerto en el rio', Sur, 1 25
(March 1 945), 42-5.
1 06 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Silvina Ocampo: Enumeracion de lapatria', Sur, J O I (Feb. 1 943),
64-7; Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, 'Silvina Ocampo: Espacios mltricos ' , Sur, 1 37
(Feb. 1 946), 82-6.
101
First published in Bioy Casares et al., Antologfa de la poesfa argentina , p. 28 1 .
1 08 Martinez Estrada, p. 86.
1 09
Oscar Masotta, 'Sur o el antiperonismo colonialista', Contorno, 7-8 (July 1 956),
3g-45 (p. 40). '
1 10
J. R. Wilcock, 'Historia tecnica de un poema', Sur , 1 72 (Feb. 1 949), 25-42 (p. 26) .
111
Jose Bianco. Interview with Daniel Balderston, Buenos Aires, August 1 978.
1 12
Fernandez Moreno, La realidady los papeles, p. 258.
1 13 Enrique Anderson Imbert, 'Debates sobre temas sociologicos', Sur, 81 Oune
1 94 1 ), 86.
1 14 Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Debates sobre temas sociologicos: Comentario a Los
lrresponsables de Archibald McLeish', Sur, 83 (Aug. 1 94 1 ), 9g- 1 26. Both
quotations, p. 1 1 2.
11
5 Enrique Anderson Imbert, 'Debates', Sur, 8 1 , 23.
1 1
6 Peron, however, was rather scathing about FORJA. He once remarked, 'There
are fourteen of them and they make as much noise as fourteen thousand.' Quoted
in ass reports. Research and Analysis 3007' National Archive, washington, 2 I
April 1 945.
11
7 Leonidas Barletta, Conducta, 6 (April 1 939), n.p.
118
N�eva Gaceta, 1 1 (Dec. 1 94 1 ), p. 3.
1 19 Nueva Gaceta, 1 3 (March 1 942), p. JO.
1 20 Lafleur, Provenzano and Alonso, p. 1 2 1 .
1 21
See David Lagmanovich, 'Sur y revistas literarias argentinas de medio siglo', Sur,
348 (Jan.-June 198 1 ), 25-33 (p. 28).
1 22 El Pampero , I (4 Nov. 1 939), p. I .
1 23 Ramon Doll in El Pampero (25 Dec. 1939), p. 5.
12
4 For one remarkable editorial on the Eucharistic Congress of 1 944, see Cabildo ( 1 3
Oct. 1944), p . 8.

5 Sur in the years of Peronism, 1946--55

1
Victor Massuh, 'Restitucion de la verdad', Sur, 237 (Nov.-Dec. 1 955), J 07-9
(p. J07).
2 Laclau, p. 1 89.
3 Quoted in Felix Luna, Peron y su tiempo (Buenos Aires, 1 984), p. 1 22. For an
overview of the period, see Luna and Alberto Ciria, Polftica y cultura popular: la
Argentina peronista, 1946--1955 (Buenos Aires, 1983) . Two pro-Peronist accounts
written at the time of Peron's return to power in Argentina are Norman Briski et
al., La cultura popular del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1 973), and Ernesto Goldar, El
peronismo en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires, 1971 ) .
4 Tulio Halperin Donghi, El revisionismo historico argentino (Buenos Aires, 1 970).
 NOTES TO PAGES 1 30-42 217
5 Sexto Continente, l (July 1949), 4. For Avellaneda's analysis, see Avellaneda,
op. cit ., pp. 1 5-54.
6 Tulio Halperin Donghi, La Universidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 196 1 ) , p. 62.
See also Luna, pp. 385-92.
7 Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Eljuicio de los parricidas (Buenos Aires, 1 956) , p. go.
8 Sur, 1 47-g (Jan.-March 1947), the French edition; Sur, 1 53-6 (July-Oct. 1947),
the English edition.
9 Herbert R. Lottman, The Left Bank (London, 1982), pp. 231-6 1 .
10 Patrick McCarthy, Camus (London, 1 982), p . 2 1 0.
11 Jean-Paul Sartre, 'A Dolores: presentation', Les Temps Modernes, l (Oct. 1945),
l-2 1 (p. 7).
12
ibid., p. 2 1 .
13 David Vinas, 'Les Temps Modernes et nous', Les Temps Modernes, 420-1 Ouly-Aug.
198 1 ) , pp. 5 1 -5 (p. 5 1 ) .
14 ibid., p. 5 1 .
15 Lottman, p. 236.
1
6 ibid., p. 28 1 .
1
7 Norberto Rodriguez Bustamante, 'Jean Paul Sartre: (Que es la literatura?', Sur, 202
(Aug. 195 1 ) , 63-7 (p. 67) .
18 Thierry Maulnier, 'El problema moral del comunismo', Sur, 222 (May-June
1953), 7-33.
19 Maria Rosa Oliver, 'Sobre una nota del "Calendario'", Sur, 222, 1 44--6 (p. 1 46).
20
Albert Camus, 'El artista preso', Sur, 222, 2-7 (p. 5).
21 Arthur Koestler, 'La intelligentsia', Sur, 1 36 (Feb. 1946), 26-43 (p. 42) .
22 Arturo Sanchez Riva, 'Arturo Koestler: Oscuridad a mediod{a ', Sur, 1 59 (Jan.
1948), 1 29. Sanchez Riva was a member of the Communist party. For several
years, the major political parties forgot their ideological differences in their
opposition to Peron. Sur would publish anti-Peronists, even radicals, as long as
their contributions were not too strident.
23 Julien Benda, 'La democracia debe aprender a conocerse', Sur, 1 87 (May 1950),
7-g; George Orwell, 'James Burnham y la revoluci6n de los directores', Sur , 1 45
(Nov. 1946), 7-37. On Paz's analysis ofSoviet labourcamps, seeSur, March 1 95 1 ,·

and Octavio Paz, Pasion cr{tica (Mexico, 1985) , p . 1 5 1 .

2• Victoria Ocampo, 'Presencia de los ausentes', Sur, 1 5 1 (May 1947), 91-4 (p. 9 1 ) .
25 Interview with Jose Bianco, Buenos Aires, August 1 978.
26 Victoria Ocampo, 'A prop6sito de Las criadas', Sur, 168 (Oct. 1 948), 1 2- 1 7 (p.
I ]) .
27 Victoria Ocampo, 'T. S . Eliot', Sur, 169 (Nov. 1948), 7-10 (pp. 7-8) .
28 Interview with Graham Greene, London, Oct. 1984. Graham Greene, The
Honorary Consul (London, 1973), contains the dedication. Greene's account of his
travels in Latin America and in particular Argentina, can be found in Ways ef
Escape (London, 1980).
29 Victor Gollancz, 'Mentalidad comunista, conciencia y traici6n', Sur, 231
(Nov.-Dec. 1 954), 25-60.
30 See the articles by Victoria Ocampo, Mary McCarthy, Ezequiel Martinez
Estrada and Luis Emilio Soto in Sur, 192-4 (Oct.-Dec. 1950) , 1 43-70.
31 Daniel Cosio Villegas, 'Espana contra America en la industria editorial', Sur, 1 74
(April 1949), 74-88 (p. 87) .
32
ibid., p. 87.
33 Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Epistola a Pablo', Sur, 157 (Nov. 1 947), 66-72
(p. 70).
34 H. A. Murena, 'A prop6sito del Canto General de Pablo Neruda', Sur, 198 (April
195 1 ) , 52-8 (p. 58) .
2 18 NOTES TO PAGES 1 42-8
35 'Pablo Neruda y Sur', Sur, 2 2 1 (March-April 1 953), 1 2 1-5 (p. 1 25).
36 Pablo Neruda, 'Ahora canta el Danubio', section XIX of Las uvasy el viento , Obras
Completas (Buenos Aires, 1967) , p. 904.
37 ibid., p. 905.

38 Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'A los intelectuales comunistas de Hispanoamerica',

Sur, 160 (Feb. 1 948), 65-6 (p. 65).

39 Octavio Paz, 'El prisionero', Sur, 1 74 (April 1949), 31-4.

40 Wilson, p. 37.

41 Octavio Paz, 'Tamayo en la pintura', Sur, 202 (Aug. 1951), 67-77 (p. 69).
42 ibid., p. 76.

43 Octavio Paz, 'Valle de Mexico', Sur, 162 (April 1 948), 66-8 (p. 67).

4 4 Sebastian Salazar Bondy, 'Octavio Paz, El laberinto de la soledad', Sur, 1 95-6

(Jan.-Feb. 195 1 ), 64-67.

45 Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, Warwick, 1978.

46 Mario Vargas Llosa, 'S.S.B. y la vocacion del escritor en el Peru'. Introduction to

Obras de Sebastian Salazar Bondy (Lima, 1967), p. 20.

47 ibid., p. 53·

48 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El olor de la gua yaba, p. 47. The interview with
Guillermo Cabrera Infante took place in London in Nov. 1 984. Carlos Fuentes'
observations on Sur can be found in the New York Times Book Review , 4 March,
1 984, P· IO.
49 Interview with Adolfo Bioy Casares, Buenos Aires, July 1 976.

50 Adolfo Bioy Casares, 'Homenaje a Francisco Almeyra', Sur, 229 (July-Aug.

1954), 1-16 (p. 1 0).

51 ibid., p. 8.
52 ibid., p. 6.

53 'Palabras pronunciadas por Jorge Luis Borges en la comida que le ofrecieron los

escritores', Sur, 1 42 (Aug. 1946), 1 1 4- 1 5.

54 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Nuestro pobre individualismo', Sur, 141 (July 1 946), 82-3

(p. 83).
55 It is interesting to notice that these stories were republished as part of the Nuevos

cuentos de Bustos Domecq (Buenos Aires, 1977) only months after the military had
taken power after the disastrous second Peronato .
56 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Pagina para recordar al coronel Suarez, vencedor enJunin',

Sur, 226 Oan.-Feb. 1 954, 47-8 (p. 48).

57 See July Taylor, Evita Peron, the M yths of a Woman (Oxford, 1 979), p. 1 20.
58 H. A. Murena wrote a savage parody of the Peronist regime as a bloody football

match, in which the referee is murdered: 'Fragmento de los anales secretos', Sur,
169 (Nov. 1948), 38-5 1 . For once, Murena's criticism is incisive. No account of
Peronist cultural practices can ignore State intervention in sport, for example
Peron's refusal to send the Argentine football team to the World Cup in 1 950 and
1 954, in case of defeat by Uruguay. Such an analysis is, however, beyond the scope
of this study.
59 Victoria Ocampo, 'Sur: Verano 1 930-3 1 - Verano 1 950-5 1 ', Sur, 1 92-4
(Oct.-Dec. 1950), 5-8 (p. 7) .
60 Guillermo de Torre, 'Evocacion e inventario de Sur', Sur, 1 92-4, 1 5-24 (p. 1 6) .

6 1 For the saintly myth of Ocampo, see Doris Meyer's biography. For a
counterposed hagiographical view of Evita Peron, seeJuanJose Sebreli, Eva Peron
iaventurera o militante? (Buenos Aires, 1 966) .
62 Victoria Ocampo, 'El derecho de ser hombre', Testimonios 8 (Buenos Aires, 1 97 1 ) ,

1 86-95 (p. 190).

63 Victoria Ocampo, 'Sobre pergolas, bancos, faroles y otras hierbas', Sur, 163 (May
 NOTES TO PAGES 1 48-57 219
1 948), 97-101 (p. 1 0 1 ) ; see also Victoria Ocampo, 'La cared del ruido en el siglo
'
xx , Sur, 164 Oune-July 1 948), 87-g3.
64 Victoria Ocampo, 'lntroducci6n', Sur, 190-- 1 (Aug.-Sept. 1 950) , 7-g (p. 7).
65 Carlos Alberto Erro, 'Centenario de Echeverria: el hombre y el soci6logo', Sur,
1 95-6 (Jan.-Feb. 1 95 1 ) , 42-53.
66 For an account of these later troubled years, see Alexander Whitaker, Argentine
Upheaval (New York, 1 956), and Frank Owen, Peron: His Rise and Fall (London,
1957) , pp. 2 1 8-20.
67 Jorge Luis Borges, 'L'illusion comique', Sur, 237, g-1 0 (p. 9).
68 Victor Massuh, 'Restituci6n de la verdad', Sur, 237, 107-g (p. 1 07).
69 Alberto Girri, 'Acto de fe', Sur, 237, 48-g (p. 49).
70 Ernesto Sabato, 'Aquella patria de nuestra infancia', Sur, 237, 1 02-6 (p. 1 03) .
1
7 Masotta, p. 42.
72 V. S. Naipaul, The Return of Eva Peron (London, 1 980), p. 1 29.
73 Franco, 'The Utopia of a Tired Man', p. 57.
74 This argument is developed more fully in John King, ' "A Curiously Colonial
Performance". The eccentric vision of V. S. Naipaul andJ. L. Borges', rearbook of
English Studies, 1 3 ( 1 983), 228-43.
75 Ernesto Sabato, 'Sohre la metafisica del sexo', Sur, 2 1 3-24 Ouly-Aug. 1952),
1 58-61 (p. 1 59). See his original article and Ocampo's reply in the two previous
issues of the magazine.
76 Fernandez Moreno, p. 323.
77 Ernesto Goldar, Buenos Aires: vida cotidiana en la dicada del50 (Buenos Aires, 198o),
p. I O I .
78 H. A. Murena, 'Martinez Estrada: la lecci6n de los desposeidos', Sur, 204 (Oct.
1 95 1 ), 1-18 (pp. 6--7 ).
79 ibid., p. 1 8.
80 H. A. Murena, 'Condenaci6n de una poesia', Sur, 1 64-5 Oune-July 1 948), 6g-86
(p. 7 1 ) .
81 ibid., p. 77·
82 ibid., p. 82.
83 ibid., p. 83.
84 E. Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Leopoldo Marechal, Adan Buenosayres', Sur, 16g (Nov.
1948), 87-g3 (p. 9 1 ) .
85 H. A . Murena, 'Los penultimos dias', Sur, 1 77 Ouly 1949), 93-6 (p. 94).
86 ibid., p. 96.
87 H. A. Murena, 'Chaves, un giro copernicano', Sur, 228 (May-June 1 954), 27-36.
88 Published in Sur, 1 97 (March 1951), 38-48.
89 H. A. Murena, 'Los penultimos dias', Sur, 1 77, 93-6 (p. 94) .
9° Carlos Viola Soto, 'A prop6sito de Murena y Elpecado original de Ammca', Sur, 2 3 1
(Nov.-Dec. 1 954) , 83-g3; and Enrique Pezzoni, 'Aproximaci6n al ultimo I ibro de
Borges', Sur, 2 1 7- 1 8 (Nov.-Dec. 1 952), 10 1-23.
91 Ramon Alcalde, 'Teoria y practica de un teatro argentino', Buenos Aires Literaria,
1 7 (Feb. 1 954), 1-2 1 (p. 2).
92 ibid., pp. 2 1-2.
93 Juan Jose Sebreli, 'Victoria Ocampo', Lyra, 231-3 ( 1 976), n.p.
94 Juan Jose Sebreli in La Opinion Cultural, 4 March 1 979, p. 2.
95 ibid., p. 2.
96 JuanJose Sebreli, 'J. A. Ramos: Crisisy resurreccion de la literatura argentina ', Sur, 230
(Sept.-Oct. 1954), 1 1 g-20 (p. 1 20) .
97 Juan Jose Sebreli, 'Inocencia y culpabilidad de Roberto Arlt', Sur, 223
(July-Aug. 1953), 10g-19.
220 NOTES TO PAGES 1 57-68
98 Estela Canto, 'Jorge Luis Borges: El Aleph ', Sur, 1 80 (Oct. 1949) , 93-8 (p. 94) .
99 Estela Canto, 'Arrabalera', Sur, 1 88 Oune 1 950), 85-6 (p. 85).
1 00 Estela Canto, 'Benito Lynch o la inocencia', Sur, 2 1 5- 1 6 (Sept.-Oct. 1 952) ,
1 0g-1 3 (p. 1 09)
101 Julio Cortazar, 'Gardel', Sur, 223, 1 2 7-9.
1 02 Julio Cortazar, 'Victoria Ocampo: Soledad sonora', Sur, 1 92-4, 294-7 (p. 295).
1 03 Julio Cortazar, 'Cartas de mama', Las armas secretas, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires, 1 964) ,
pp. 7-36.
1 04
Julio Cortazar, 'Soledad sonora', p. 29.
105 Julio Cortazar, 'Octavio Paz: Libertad bajo palabra', Sur, 1 82 (Dec. 1 949) , 93-5.
106 Julio Cortazar, 'Muerte de Antonin Artaud', Sur, 1 63 (May 1 948) , 80-2 (p. 80) .
10
7 Julio Cortazar, 'Masaccio', Sur, 1 95-6 (Jan.-Feb. 1 95 1 ), 24-7 (p. 25) .
1 08
See Raul Aguirre's anthology of Poes(a Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1979) .
10
9 Alberto Girri, 'Julio Cortazar: Los reyes', Sur, 1 83 (Jan. 1 950), 55-7 (p. 57).
no Danubio Torres Fierro, 'Alberto Girri: repaso a una obsesion', Plural, 58 (July
1976), 48-5 1 (p. 5 1 ) .
111
NoeJitrik, 'Desencuentro con la poesia', Centro , 1 1 (July 1956), 1 1-22 (pp. 1 7 and
22)
1 12
Octavio Paz, a short note, untitled, published in ,(ona Franca , 3ra epoca, no. 7
(May-June 1978) 18; see also Enrique Pezzoni, 'Sobre la poesia de Alberto Girri',
ibid., pp. 1 3- 1 4.
113
Rodriguez Monegal, Jorge Luis Borges, p. 399.
11
4 Raul Larra, 'Testimonio de un escritor: El vfnculo por Eduardo Mallea', Expresion,
6 (May 1947), 26 1 .
115
Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Leonidas Barletta: El barco en la botella ', Sur, 1 38
(April 1946) , 96-9 (p. 99) .
116
A. Jauretche, El medio pelo en la sociedad argentina , 6th ed. (Buenos Aires, 1 967),
p. 292.
11
7 J. A. Ramos, Crisis y resurreccion de la literatura argentina, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires,
196 1 ) . The synopsis of his ideas, included here, is given in Ramon Alcalde,
'lmperialismo cultural y literatura nacional', Contorno, 5-6 (Sept. 1 955), 57-60.
1 18
J. J. Hernandez Arregui, lmperialismoy cultura , 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires, 1 973) .
n9 On Contorno' see in particular, Beatriz Sarlo, 'Los dos ojos de Contorno', Punto de
Vista 1 3 (Nov. 198 1 ) , 3-8, and Carlos Magnone and Jorge Warley 'La
modernizacion de la critica. La revista Contorno', in Historia de la literatura argentina,
5 (Buenos Aires, 198 1 ) , 433-55.
1 20
Adelaida Gigli, 'V.O.', Contorno, 3 (Sept. 1 954), 1-2 (p. 2).
121
One text that deals with the complexity of Sur is David Vinas, De Sarmiento a
Cortazar (Buenos Aires, 1974) .

6 Sur 1956-70: the failure of reconstruction

1 Victoria Ocampo, 'Despues de cuarenta afios', Sur, 325 Ouly-Aug. 1 970), 1-5
(p. 5).
2 Fidel Castro, 'Words to the Intellectuals', in Lee Baxandall, ed., Radical
Perspectives in the Arts (London, 1 973) , pp. 267-g8.
3 Tulio Halperin Donghi, Argentina, democracia de masas (Buenos Aires, 1 967) ,
p. 1 56).
• Peter Gay, Weimar Culture (London, 1 969) , pp. xiv-xv.
5 Juan Carlos Portantiero, 'Economia y politica en la crisis argentina, 1 958-73',
,(ona Abierta , 1 4- 1 5 ( 1 978), 1 1 g-44 (p. 1 26) .
 NOTES TO PAGES 1 6g-80 22 1
6 Technical institutes such as the Consejo Nacional de lnvestigaciones Cientificas y
Tecnicas, El Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria and the lnstituto
Nacional de Tecnologia Industrial were set up with government funds. The
Fondo Nacional was founded in 1 958 to provide state funding for the arts.
7 R. Lynes, Good Old Modern: An Intimate Portrait ofthe Museum ofModem Art (New
York, 1972).
8
For developments in the late 1 950s, see Goldar, Buenos Aires, vida cotidiana en los aflos
50.
9 Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (New York, 1 980), p. 36.
10
Gary Wynia, Argentina in the Postwar Era (New Mexico, 1978), pp. 1 66-99.
11
Angel Rama, 'El boom en perspectiva', Mas alld del boom. Literatura y mercado
(Mexico, 1 98 1 }, p. 98. For an analysis of various aspects of 1 960s cultural
production, see the papers by King, Martin, Gonzalez, Frenk, Rowe, Johnson
and Fairley in the Bulletin of Latin American Research, 3, 2 ( 1 984), 47-1 1 5. For an
overview of the 1 960s in Argentina, see John King, 'El Di Tella' y el desarrollo
cultural argentino en la decada del sesenta (Buenos Aires, 1985).
1
2 Carlos Barral, Los aflos sin excusa. Memorias 11 (Barcelona, 1978).
19 Victoria Ocampo, 'Despues de cuarenta afios', p. 1 .
14
Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Cien aflos de soledad de Gabriel Garcia Marquez', Sur,
307 (July-Aug. 1967) , 50-2 (p. 5 1 ) .
15 Jose Bianco. Interview with Dan Balderston.
1
6 Rita Guibert. Siete Voces (Mexico, 1 974) , p. 222.
17 Argentina in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Rock. See in particular Rock's essay on
the survival of Peronism, pp. 1 7g-2 2 1 .
18
Cr6nica, 1 3 (July 1 966) , 1 .
1
9 Victoria Ocampo, 'El premio Maria Moors Cabot', Sur, 297 (Nov.-Dec. 1965),
3-7 (p. 6) .
20 I was unable to consult the accounts of the magazine, if indeed they have been kept
in any systematic way. One of the features of the magazine was the family nature of
the enterprise, a family in which spiritual matters had primacy over base
economics. Questions I addressed on matters of distribution and finance were
always viewed as uncouth.
1
2 Lottman, p. 287.
22 ibid., p. 288.
29 Octavio Paz, 'Introducci6n', Sur, 249 (Nov.-Dec. 1957), 1-3 (p. 2) .
24 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Testimonio argentino israel', Sur, 254 (Sept.-Oct. 1958), 1-2
(p. 2) .
25 Ernesto Sabato, 'Exculpaci6n' Revista de Occidente ' 2nda epoca, I 00 (July I 97 I ) '
'
1 92-4 (p. 192).
26 Rosa Chacel, 'Respuesta a Ortega', Sur, 241 (July-Aug. 1 956), 97- 1 19 (p. 99).
27 Maria Luisa Bastos, 'Escrituras ajenas . . . ', p. 1 33.
28 Victoria Ocampo, 'El caso Lolita', Sur, 260 (Sept.-Oct. 1 959), 45-48 (p. 47).
29 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Problemas de la traducci6n', Sur, 338-9 (Jan.-Dec. 1 976),
I 1 8-29 (p. 1 20) .

90 Jose Bianco, Sur, 338-9, 1 20-2. For a critical guide to translation theory, see Susan
Basnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London, 1980) .
1
3 Monica Furlong, Merton. A Biography (London, 1980) , pp. 236--69.
32 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cien aflos de soledad, 6th ed. (Buenos Aires, 1968), p. 350.
33 Mario Vargas Llosa, 'Primitives and Creators', Times Literary Supplement, 348 1 ( 14
Nov. 1968) , 1 287-8.
34 Octavio Paz, 'Mexico: Olimpiada de 1968', Sur, 3 1 4 (Sept.-Oct. 1968) , 1 7- 1 8
(p. 1 7) .
222 NOTES TO PAGES I 8Q-9
35 Jose Donoso, Historia personal de/ 'boom' (Barcelona, 1972), p. 4 1 .
36 ibid., p. 39·
•7 Guillermo Cabrera Infante, 'Vidas para leerlas', Vuelta, 41 (April 1980), 4-1 6
(p. 7).
38 Ernesto Schoo, 'Virgilio Pinera: Cuentos frios ', Sur, 245 (March-April 1 957),
1 o8-1 1 (p. I08).
39 Humberto Pinera, 'Cultura y revolucion en Cuba', Sur, 293 (March-April 1 965),
68-78 (p. 74).
40 ibid., p. 72.
41 Angel Rama, La generacion critica 193!}-1¢9 (Montevideo, 1 972), pp. 88-g and
1 1 8-2 1 .
42 Angel Rama, 'La cultura uruguaya en Marcha ', Sur, 293, 92-I01 (p. 96).
43 ibid., p. 100.
44 Augusto Roa Bastos, 'Cronica paraguaya', Sur, 293, rn2- 1 2 (p. rn9).
45 ibid., p. 1 08.
46 ibid., p. I I O.
47 Severo Sarduy, 'Boquitas pintadas ' , Sur, 32 1 (Nov.-Dec. 1 969), 7 1-7 (p. 73).
48 Florinda Friedmann, 'Neruda canta el reciente viajero', Sur, 3 1 3 (July-Aug.
1 968), 57-61 (pp. 6�1 ) .
49 Judith Weiss, 'Casa de las Amlricas' - An Intellectual Review in the Cuban Revolution
(North Carolina, 1 977); G. Cabrera Infante, 'Bites from the Bearded Crocodile',
London Review of Books (4- 1 7 June 1 98 1 ) , pp. 3-8.
50 'Al pie de la letra', Casa de las Americas, 65-6 (March-June 1 9 7 1 ) , 1 72-3.
51 Donoso, Historia personal de/ 'boom', p. 1 1 3.
52 Christopher Lasch, 'The Cultural Cold War: A Short History of the Congress for
Cultural Freedom', in Towards a .New Past. Dissenting Essays in American History, ed.
Barton Bernstein (New York, 1 968), pp. 322-59.
53 Emir Rodriguez Monegal, 'La CIA y los intelectuales', Mundo Nuevo, 14 (Aug.
1 967), 1 1-20 (p. 20).
54 Victoria Ocampo, 'A los lectores de Sur', Sur, 268 (Jan.-Feb. 196 1 ), 1-7 (pp.
2-3) .
55 Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Examen d e conciencia', Sur, 267 (Nov.-Dec. 1 96o),
1 6--20 (p. 16).
56 Jorge Luis Borges, ' 1 81�1960', Sur, 267, 1-2 (p. 2).
57 Luis Emilio Soto, 'Crisis de responsabilidad', Sur, 267, 41-47.
58 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Una efusion de Martinez Estrada', Sur, 242 (Sept.-Oct. 1 956),
52-3.
59 Ernesto Sabato, 'Una efusion deJorge Luis Borges', Ficcion , 4 (Nov.-Dec. 1 956),
8�2 (p. 80).
60 ibid., p. 82.
61 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Un curioso metodo', Ficcion , 6 (March-April 1 957), 55-6
(p. 55) .
62 ibid., p. 56.
63 Ernesto Sabato, 'Sohre el metodo historico de Jorge Luis Borges', Ficcion, 7
(May-June 1 957), 86--g.
64 Witold Gombrowicz, Journal Paris Berlin (Paris, 1 968), p. 1 7.
65 'La consecuencia forzosa de ta! doctrina es el sarcasmo contra todo lo que
considera preocupacion por elevar un nivel intelectual, de lo que nose salvan . . .
ni Proust, ni desde luego nuestra revista, cuya polaridad negativa, conviene no
olvidarlo, corresponde a su actitud de apertura espiritual, de "sospechosa"
madurez.' Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, 'Witold Gombrowicz y su Diario argentino ',
Sur, 3 1 4 (Sept.-Oct. 1 968), 83-5 (p. 85).
66 Victoria Ocampo, 'Cortina de alas', Sur, 295 (July-Aug. 1 965), 1-2 (p. 1 ) .
 NOTES TO PAGES 1 90-7 223
67 Bernardo Canal Feijoo, 'Los enfermos de la patria', Sur, 295, 20-5 (p. 25).
68 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Autobiographical Essay', p. 159.
69 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Parabola de! palacio', Sur, 243 (Nov.-Dec. 1 956), 1-2 (p. 2).
70 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Ragnorok', Sur, 257 (March-April 1959), 50.
71 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Adolfo Bioy: Antes del novecientos ' , Sur, 257, 61-2 (p. 6 1 ) .
72 Barral's memoirs, Los aiios sin excusa , paint a fascinating picture of the enthusiastic,
artificial world of international publishing in the early 1960s: 'Unos y otros,
grandes patrones y vedettes de la clerecia editorial, estaban continuamente
encontrandose, cuando no reuniendose, y conspiraban todo el tiempo' (p. 26 1 ) .
On the development o f the Formentor prize, see pp. 23g-3 1 1 .
73 For a critique of these tendencies see Franco, 'The Utopia . . . ' , pp. 52-3.
74 King, 'The Novels and Short Stories of Adolfo Bioy Casares', pp. 70-8.
75 Silvina Ocampo, 'El medico encantador', Sur, 265 (July-Aug. 1 96o), 22-5; 'Las
fotografias', Sur, 255 (Nov.-Dec. 1 958) , 25-8; 'Yo', Sur, 272 (Sept.-Oct. 196 1 ) ,
45-57.
76 Juan Jose Hernandez, 'El disfraz', Sur, 256 (Jan.-Feb. 1959), 30-6.
77 Interview with Jose Bianco, Buenos Aires, August 1 976.
78 H. A. Murena, 'La erotica de! espejo', Sur, 256, 1 8-30 (p. 2 1 ).
79 ibid., p. 30.
80 Ernesto Schoo, Funcion degala (Buenos Aires, 1976); and Eduardo Gudino Kieffer,
Medias negras, peluca rubia (Buenos Aires, 1 979).
81 Tomas Eloy Martinez, 'Victoria Ocampo: una pasion argentina', Primera Plana,
1 68 ( 1 5-2 1 March 1 966), 5 1 -5.
82 Marco Denevi, 'Las abejas de bronce', Sur, 269 (March-April 1 96 1 ) , 1 1-18; an
extract of Haroldo Conti's prize-winning novel Sudeste was published in Sur, 279
(Nov.-Dec. 1 962), 35-53. For the subsequent, very different development of this
novelist, which culminated in his 'disappearance', in May 1 976, see John King,
'Haroldo Conti. A Profile', Index on Censorship , 9, 2 (April 1 980) , 4g-52.
83 Bernardo Verbitsky, 'Proposiciones para un mejor planteo de nuestra literatura',
Ficcion, 12 (March-April 1958), 3-20 (p. 1 9).
84 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Autobiographical Essay', p. 1 60.
85 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Sarmiento', Sur, 273 (Nov.-Dec. 1 96 1 ) , 1-2 (p. 1 ) .
86 Jorge Luis Borges, 'El tango', Sur, 253 (July-Aug. 1958) , 1-3 (p. 3).
87 ibid., p. I .
88 Jorge Luis Borges, 'Un poeta de! siglo XIII', Sur, 25 1 (March-April 1958), 1-3
(p. 2).
89 Alberto Girri, 'Semantica', Sur, 288 (May-June 1964), 44.
90 Alberto Girri, 'Una metafora', Sur, 288, 42-3 (p. 42) .
91 Quoted in Jorge Paita, 'La poesia d e Alberto Girri: rigor de un intelecto
exasperado', Sur, 285 (Nov.-Dec. 1963), 92--g (p. 94). See also Gordon
Brotherston's analysis of Girri's poetry, especially the Elegfas italianas in Latin
American Poetry: Origins and Presence (Cambridge, 1 975), pp. 9o--g.
92 Paita, p. 95·
93 See her review of Girri's poetry: Alejandra Pizarnik, 'Alberto Girri: El ojo ', Sur,
291 (Nov.-Dec. 1964), 84-7.
94 Enrique Pezzoni, 'La poesia como destino', Sur, 297 (Nov.-Dec. 1965), 1 0 1 -4
(pp. 102-3).
95 Alejandra Pizarnik, 'Poemas: Formas', Sur, 284 (Sept.-Oct. 1963), 67.
96 Alejandra Pizarnik, 'En honor de una perdida', Sur, 284, both quotation�, p. 69.
97 Maria Elena Walsh, 'Vox populi', Sur, 267 (Nov.-Dec. 1960) , 62-9 (p. 68) .
98 Victoria Ocampo, 'Despues de cuarenta aiios', Sur, 325, 1-5 (p. 5).
99 Victoria Ocampo, 'Ayer, Hoy, Maiiana', Sur, 332-3 (Jan.-Dec. 1973), 1-4 (p. 4) .
1 00 AIDA, Argentine: une culture interdite. Pieces a conviction 1976-19/JI (Paris, 1 98 1 ) ,
traces the impact o f military rule on Argentine culture.
224 NOTES TO PAGES 1 98-202

Conclusion
1 Jorge Luis Borges, untitled, boxed quotation in Cuadernos del Congresopor la Libertad de
la Cultura, 55 (Dec. 1 96 1 ) , 20.
2 Ernesto Sabato, untitled homage to Victoria Ocampo, La Prensa , cultural
supplement (8 April 1 979), p. 1 .
3 Jameson, p. 289.
• Emir Rodriguez Monegal quotes Borges in 'Victoria Ocampo', Vuelta, 30 (May
1 979), 44-7 (p. 46) .
5 Borges, Cuadernos . . , 20.
.

6 Victoria Ocampo, 'Vision de Jorge Luis Borges', Cuadernos . ., 1 7-23 (p. 1 7) .

.

7 Frank, South of Us, p . 1 28.

 Select bibliography

With a subject as wide-ranging as a literary magazine, a bibliography must

be selective and critical. This bibliography only includes works of direct
relevance to the development of the periodical. It takes as primary sources,
the magazine itself, a number of other little magazines published in Buenos
Aires, and interviews with writers. The only secondary sources listed focus on
criticism of Sur. Full references to works dealing with Argentine history and
the intellectual background to the period appear in the notes to the main text.

Primary Sources
Sur, 1-349 ( 1931-81)
Literary magazines and newspapers
Extensive use was made of the following publications:
Airon, 1 960-6.
Anales de Buenos Aires, 1 946-8.
Arturo, 1 944.
Biblioteca, La, 1 896-8.
Cabalgata, 1 946-8.
Centro, 1 95 1-6.
Ciento y Una, Las, 1 953.
Claridad, 1 926-4 1 .
Columna, 1 937-42.
Conducta, 1 938-43.
Contorno, 1 953-9.
Criterio, 1 928-present.
Destiempo, 1 936.
El 40, 1 95 1-3.
Escarabajo de Oro, El, 1 96 1-75.
Expresion, 1 946-7.
Gaceta Literaria, 1 956-60.
Huella, 1 94 1 .
Los Libros, 1 969-7 1 .
Martin Fierro, 1 924-7.
Nosotros, 1 907-34; 1 936-43.
Nueva Gaceta, 1 94 1-3.
225
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pensadores, Los, 1 922-6.

Poes{a Buenos Aires, 1 95o-60.
Primera Plana, 1962-7 1 .
Proa, 1 924-6.
Realidad, 1 94 7-g.
Sexto Continente, 1 94g-50.
Soly Luna, 1 938-43.
The following Buenos Aires newspapers were also consulted selectively: La
Nacion, La Prensa, La Opinion, Clarln, El Pampero.

Interviews
The writers, with few exceptions, were unwilling to be taped. The interviews
were therefore recorded, for the most part, in note form. Valuable
information was obtained from:
Adolfo Bioy Casares, on several occasions during each visit to Argentina,
July-Sept. 1 973 ; July-Sept. 1 976; July-Sept. 1 977 ; July-Sept. 1 978;
July-Sept. 1 980.
Jose Bianco, as above.
Jorge Luis Borges, as above.
Silvina Ocampo, as above.
Enrique Pezzoni, as above.
Maria Rosa Oliver, four interviews, July-Sept. 1 976.
Victoria Ocampo, many conversations, July-Sept. 1 976, July 1 977.
Ernesto Sabato, one interview, Aug. 1 976.
Mario Vargas Llosa, Warwick, April 1 978.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, London, Nov. 1 984.
Graham Greene, London, Oct. 1 984.
Secondary Sources
Criticism on Sur
Avellaneda, Andres. El habla de la ideolog{a (Buenos Aires, 1 983) .
Basaldua, Hector, ed. Testimonios sobre Victoria Ocampo (Buenos Aires, 1 962) .
Bastos, Maria Luisa. Borges ante la crltica argentina (Buenos Aires, 1 974) .
'Escrituras ajenas, expresi6n propia: Sur y los Testimonios de Victoria
Ocampo', Revista Iberoamericana , 1 1 0-1 1 (Jan.-June 1 980) , 1 23-37.
'Dos lineas testimoniales: Sur, los escritos de Victoria Ocampo', Sur, 348
(Jan.-June 1 98 1 ) , g-23.
'lmagenes de Sur', Revista de la Universidad de Mexico, xxxm, 1 2 (Aug.
1 979) , 37-8.
Bianco, Jose. 'Victoria', Vuelta, 53 (April 1 98 1 ), 4-6.
Briante, Miguel. 'Sur: pared6n sin despues', Primera Plana, 4 1 3 (29 Dec.
1 970), 50-4.
Clar{n. 'Las revistas literarias' ( 1 5 April 1 976) .
Esher, Fabian, and Thomas, Julia. 'Notas sobre Victoria Ocampo y Sur',
Nudos, 6 (Dec. 1 979) , 3-8.
Fernandez Moreno, Cesar. La realidady Los papeles (Madrid, 1 967) .
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 227

Hernandez Arregui, JuanJose. lmperialismoy cultura, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires,

r973).
La formacion de la conciencia nacional ( 193cr-1g6o) , 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires,
1973) .
Jauretche, Arturo. El medio pelo en la sociedad argentina, 6th ed. (Buenos Aires,
r967) .
Jurado, Alicia. 'Sur y Victoria Ocampo: algunos recuerdos personales', Letras
de Buenos Aires, 2 (Jan.-March 1 98 1 ) , r 35-8.
King, John. 'Towards a Reading of the Argentine Literary Magazine Sur',
Latin American Research Review, 1 6, 2 ( r 981 ), 57-78.
'Victoria Ocampo, Sur y el peronismo', Revista de Occidente, no. 37 (June
r984) , 30-44.
King, John, Balderston, Daniel, and Bianco, Jose. 'Las revistas y Buenos
Aires: una pequefia entrevista', Escandalar, 3, 3 (July-Sept. 1 980), 84-6.
Lafleur, Hector, et al. Las revistas literarias argentinas (189�1g6o) (Buenos
Aires, 1 962) .
Lafleur, Hector, and Provenzano, Sergio. Las revistas literarias: Capftulo 57
(Buenos Aires, 1 968) .
Lagmanovich, David. 'Sur y las revistas literarias argentinas de medio siglo',
Sur, 348 (Jan.-June r98 r ) , 25-33.
Martinez, Tomas Eloy. 'Victoria Ocampo: una pasi6n argentina', Primera
Plana , r 68 ( 1 5-2 1 March 1 966), 5 1-5.
Masotta, Oscar. 'Sur y el anti-peronismo colonialista', Contorno , 7-8 (July
r956) .
Matamoro, Blas. Oligarquia y literatura (Buenos Aires, r 975).
Mendez, Jesus. 'The Origins of Sur, Argentina's Elite Cultural Review',
Revista Interamericana de Bibliografia, 3 r , r ( r 98 r ) , 3- r 5.
Meyer, Doris. Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and the Tide (New York, 1 979) .
Ortega, Julio. 'Victoria Ocampo y Sur', Lexis, 5, r (July r 98 1 ) , 1 87-g2.
Paz Leston, Eduardo. 'El proyecto de la revista Sur', Historia de la literatura
argentina, v (Buenos Aires, 198 1 ) , 28g-3 1 2.
Prieto, Adolfo. Literaturay subdesarrollo (Rosario, 1968) .
Punto de Vista. 'Dossier: la revista Sur'. Articles by Maria Teresa Gramuglio,
Beatriz Sarlo and Jorge Warley, r 7 (April-June 1 983), 7-r 4.
Ramos, Jorge Abelardo. Crisis y resurreccion de la literatura argentina, 2nd ed.
(Buenos Aires, 1 96 r ) .
Rodriguez Monegal, Emir. El juicio de Los parricidas (Buenos Aires, 1 956).
Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography (New York, r 978) .
'Victoria Ocampo', Vuelta , 30 (May r 979), 44-7.
Romano, Eduardo. 'Julio Cortazar frente a Borges y el grupo de la revista
Sur', Cuademos Hispanoamericanos, 364-6 (Oct.-Dec. r 980), ro6-38.
Rosa, Nicolas. 'Sur, o el espiritu y la letra', Los Libros, 1 5- r 6 (Jan.-Feb.
r 97 1 ) , pp. 4-6.
Sarlo, Beatriz. 'Borges en Sur: un episodio del formalismo criollo', Punto de
Vista, 1 6 (Nov. r 982) , 3-6.
'Sohre la vanguardia, Borges y el criollismo', Punto de Vista , r r
(March-June, r 98 r ) , 3-8.
 SELECT BIBLIOGRA P H Y

'Los dos ojos de Contorno', Punto de Vista, 1 3 (Nov. 1 98 1 ), 3-8.

'La perseverancia de un debate', Punto de Vista , 1 8 (Aug. 1 983) , 3-5.
'La izquierda ante la cultura: del dogmatismo al populismo', Punto de Vista ,
20 (May, 1984), 22-5.
Schoo, Ernesto. 'Victoria Ocampo, la viajera y una de sus sombras', Pajaro de
Fuego, 1 (Sept. 1 977), 1 3-1 7.
Torres Fierro, Danubio. 'Entrevista a Victoria Ocampo', Plural, 51 (Dec.
1 975) , 18-25.
Verbitsky, Bernardo. 'Proposiciones para un mejor planteo de nuestra
literatura', Ficcion , 1 2 (March-April 1 958) , 3-20.
Vinas, David. De Sarmiento a Cortazar (Buenos Aires, 1 974) .
Apogeo de la oligarqu{a (Buenos Aires, 1 975) .
Zuleta, Emilia de. 'Letras espafiolas e n la revista Sur', Revista de Archivos,
Bibliotecasy Museos , 80, 1 (Jan.-March 1 977), 1 1 3-45.

Three major Argentine newspapers commemorated the death of Victoria

Ocampo in their Sunday cultural supplements. Each contains information
on Sur:
La .Nacion , 25 Feb. 1 979.
La Opinion , 4 March 1 979.
La Prensa, 8 April 1 979.
 Index

AIHul44tt el exkrmilwultr, 120 Becher, Emilio, 14, 125 Cambaceres, Eugenio, 11

Abelardo Ramos, Jorge, 157, 163 Beckett, Samuel, 1 77, 1 79 Uuribio tk f>iel, 185
'Abencajin cl Bojari, muerlo en su Bedfonl, Sybille, 6o Camus, Albert, 1 33, 1 34, 135-6, 19•
labcrinto', 151 BcnarOs, Lebo, 122 Canal Feiji>o, Bernanlo, 46, 71, 86, 87,
Acciim Argentina, 69 , gg- 1 oo Benda, Julien, 44, 84, 10•, 137 189
'acercamiento a AlmotUim, El', 92 Benedetti, Mario, 186 Cancela, Arturo, 29
Acevedo Diaz, Eduardo, 1 16 Benjamin, Walter, 2 1 Cane, Miguel, 9, 14
A'4o BWM.Ulpu, •5, JG, 154 Benliaeff, Nicolas, 60-3 Cd>Uico (Jorge Guilli:n), to6
Air6't, 1 7 1 Bergamin, Joo<, 65, 66 CMlit• (magazine), 122
Albenli, Juan Bautista, 59 Bergman, Ingmar, 1 6g Cm.to, 122
Alcalde, Ramon, 1 56, 164 Bcmanos, George, 38, 66 , 183 C..la GmnaJ, 142
Alonso, Amado, 55, 59, 88, 8g, go Bcmi.rdcz, Francisco Luis, 55, 94 Canto, Estela, 15 7-8
Altamirano, Carlos, 12 Berni, Antonio, 12 7 Canto, Patricio, 94, 1 O.f., 153
Aholaguirrc, Manuel, 9-f. Berry, Anita, 88, 138 Capdcvila, Arturo, 15
'Alturas de Macchu Picchu', 162 Bianchi, Alfredo, 1 1, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 29 Caraffa, Brandin, 24, 25
Amado, Jorge, 107, 1 o8 Bianco, Joo< 16, 44> 5 1 , 58, 59, 78, 84, Canlenal, Ernesto, 1 79
A...JU., 7, 145 87-8, go, 95, 1o8, 109. 1 1 0- 1 1 , 1 16, Carpentier, Alejo, 18, 37, 51, 182, 18s
A"'°"'41, 18, 28, 41 1 18-19, 1 25, 138-g, 152. 1 53, 1 7 1 , 172, Carricgo, Evaristo, 151 24
.Alftbas Alftiritos, 43 175, 1 78, 18o, 18g, 191, 201 Carrizo, CCsar, 1 16
Amigos del Arte, •o, •6, •8, •9, 33, 4•, 'biblioteca de Babel, La', 691 101 Casabellas, Ramiro de, 195
49, 1 77 Bibliouta, La, 14 Caso tk tffl/>O, 1 8 1
Aules de Buntos Aires, 150-1, 161-2 Bioy, Adolfo, 1 go Ciua tk Liu Amhiciu, 1 7 2 , 183, 1 85-6
Anales tk los xaliil, 37 Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 46, 5 1 , 59, go, 91, Casal, Julio, 94
Anderson, Perry, 17-18 92-3, g.f., 951 104, 109, 1 1 1 1 1 1!)1 1 1 7, Casares, Tomas, 72
Anderson Imbert, Enrique, 68, 84, 99, 1 18, 1 1g, 1 20, 127, 144, 145, 146, 1 52, cout wrllt, LA, 1 85

"5 161, 190, 191, 201 Casey, Calvert, I 86

Andrade, Mirio de, 181 19, 107 BH, 195 Cutellani, Leonardo, 127, 128
Andrade, Oswald de, 18, 19 Boedo group, 20, 2 1 , 221 25, 261 28, 55, Castelnuovo, Elias, "6, 55, 130
Ailo 59, El, I 85 a.. 130, 201 Castillo, Ramon S., 6g, 99, 1 1 +
Aruermet, Ernest, 49, 57 Bolivar, Simon, 97 Castro, Fidel, 167, 1821 185
Anlolotfa de la literal•rafa14slita, 104, 1 1 1 Balsa, La, 1 1 Cazaux, Jean, 6g
AntoLoifa poitUa ar111ctiu, 104 Bomba), Maria Luisa, 83, 84 Cntlni, 155, 16o, 164
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 2 1 , 159 Bordelois, Yvonne, ·� Centro Editor, 170
Aragon, Louis, 79 Borges, Jorge Luis, 3, 4, 6, 15, 16, 19, •o, Cervantes, Miguel de, 138
Arciniegas, Gennin, 1 09 ••• •4, •s. •9, 45, 46, 47, .a. 49, 5 1 , Chace!, Rosa, •sB, 1 77, 18o
ArtnlliM y eJ Uytriolis.. . !Jrilbito, UJ , 73 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 68 , 6g , 78, 81, 94, CA.11<s, 155
Argcrich, Antonio, 11 87, 88, 8g, go-3, 94, 95, g8, 99, IOI , Chcsterron, G.K., 1 1.f, 161
Arlt, Roberto, 22, 841 157, 165 102, 103, 104, 105, 1o6, 1 10, 1 1 1 - 1 7, e/JUtu tk 1ortk, Lts, 6o
Arrufat, AntOn, 185, i86 1 18, I 19, 1 20, 1 2 1 1 124, 127, 1 28, 132, Chirico, Giorgio de, 1 18
ArlMro, 122 140, ...... 145-ti, 149, 1 50-2, 153, 154, Christ, Ronald, I 13
Ascasubi, Hilario, 48 157, 158, 1 59, 1 6 1 , 16•, 163, 164, 165, Churchill, Winston, g8
A.1rada, Carlos, 8g 1 70, 176, •n 1 78, 181, 187, •Bll--9. C� ads tlt stUUi, 1 7 1 , 19Cl
A.1urias, Miguel Angel, 37, 104, 144 1 go- 1 , 1go-3, 1g6, 197, 198, •00- 1 MtoJ .,.., Los, 155
,.,,.,., El, •8 Borges, Norah, •5, 46 On:ulo de la Prensa, 28
A.i..io1ropliical Si.1</us, 104 Braden, Spruille, 70, g6, I oo Clori"1il, 1 6, 17, •5, 26-7
Avellaneda, AndRs, 1 1 3-14, 1 3 1 Braga, Rubcm, 107 Clarll, 22, 25, 26, 27
Ayala, Francisco, 88, 1 6 1 Brecht, Bcrtoh, 101 CHra, 184, 1 g6
Azucla, Mariano, 47 Breton, AndrC, 23, 77, 79 Coc1eau, Jean, 52, 8o
Browne, Sir Thomas, 104 Coindrcau, Maurice, 78
&bd, 4• Bwnos Airu Lileraria, 156 Col6"id4, 18
Baeza, Ricardo, 66, 161 Bullrich, Eduardo, 46 Co..bal, 133
b"1tl4 tkl silnl<io, IA, 87 Bunge, Delfina, 33 C...Cla, ..6, I 3•
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 184 Burgin, Richard, 1 12 Congress k>r Cultural Freedom, 186
Ballagas, Emilio, 94 Burnham, James, 137 Connolly, Cyril, 3 1 , 38, 104, 1 33
Banchs, Enrique, 1 5 'busca de Averroes, La', 151, 190 C011lnfl/>Ord.Nos, 18
Barbieri, Vicente, 123, 1 24, 144 Butor, Michel, 179 Conti, Haroldo, 192, 197
Barbusse, Henri, 221 25, 26 ConltmlO, 1321 1 34, 1551 1 56, 157, 16o,
Barletta, LeOnidas, 26, 1 26, 162 Cabaltala, I 6• 164-5
Barral, Carlos, 170 ,..,,. "' GolU.l, IA, I 53 Corrincu alllru, 18o
Barranchea, Ana Maria, 8g Cabildo, 6g, 1 •8 Cortbar,Julio, 143, 144, 158-g, 16',
Basaldua, Hector, 46 Cabrera Infante, Guillermo, l.f.4, 1 8 1 16g, 1 70, 1 7 1 , 185, 186, 191
Bastos, Maria Lui.a, 16. 75, 167, 172, Caillois, Roger, 63, 6g , 941 101, 109, 1 1 2- Cosio Villegas, Daniel, 141
175, 177, 179 13, 137 Caulo, Carlos, "6
Bauistessa, Angel, 89 Calmdario, I '20 Cowley, Malcolm, 77
BayOn, Damiiln, 6 Calip/a, 136 Co.arinsky, Edganlo, 167, I 7!). Jg6
Beauvoir, Simone de, 133, 135 Calpe, Espasa, 39, 104 CrCmieux, Benjamin, 65, 138

229
 INDEX
Cttvel, Rene, 63 Fleming, Peter, 38 Guibert, Rita, 172
Crisisy rtS111T1tri61t th la litnotvro or1tn1Uta, Florida group, 20, 2 1 , 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, Guillen, Jorge, 102, 1o&-7
157 28 Guillen, Nicolas, 37, 5 1
CrilerW, 64, 66, 67, 72, 163 Fondane, Benjamin, 138 Giiiraldes, Ricardo, 1 2 , 22, 24, 25, 27, 33,
Crilnion, Tlv, 45, 94, 140, 1g6 FORJA, 126 45, 46, 48, 5 I, 76, g8
Croce, Benedetto, 139 Forner, Raquel, 127
Cnu.y R'!)'O, 65 Forster, E. M., 45 luzhla de la idto/ogia, El, 1 1 3
Cuodmws A""1'itaos, 1�101 141, 186 Foucault, Michel, 19, 20, 64 Halperin Donghi, Tulio, 1 3 1 , 132, 167
Cunard, Nancy, 33 France, Anatole, 2 1 Harris, Wilson, 37
Franceschi, Monsignor, 6,-S, 97 Hearl ef Darkness, 36
Dalton, Roque, 186 Franco, Gen. Francisco, 62, 66, 67, 141 Heidegger, Martin, 54, 86, 89
Dario, Ruben, 101 12-13 Frank, Waldo, 27, 35, 38, 40-3, 47, 53, Henriquez Urciia, Pedro, 45, 52, 59' 73,
Darkness al Noon, 137 54, 5&-7, 78, 86, 94, 97, 140, 202 I051 I091 1 201 138
Dazai, Ogamu, I 77 Franklin, Benjamin, 43 Heraud, Javier, 184
Dt Franttsta o Btolritt, 33, 50 Freund, Gisele, Bo, 81, 102 Hernandez, Felisberto, 108
De Gaulle, Charles, 133 Freyre, Gilberto, 1o8 Hemindcz, JosC, 121 2 1 , .pl, 51, 146, 163
De Quincey, Thomas, 1041 161 Friedmann, Florinda, 1 g6 Hemlindcz, Juan JosC, 191, 195
Decli,,, ef tlu West, Tlv, 36 Frigerio, Rogelio, 168 Hernandez Arregui, Juan JosC, 130, 1631
Denevi, Marco, 177, 192 Frondizi, Arturo, 168, 173 164
Desnoes, Edmundo, 186 Fuentes, Carlos, 1-H, 185 Herzog, JesUs Silva, 1 10
'Deutsches Requiem', 151 Historio dt la tltrnidad, 8g
Devoto, Daniel, 1 flt. Gallegos, ROmulo, 15 7 'Historia dcl guerrero y de la cautiva', 8g
Di4/ogo txislm<ial, 86 Gallimard, 6g, 78, 1 1 3 Historio dt uno posi61t or1enlitto, 72, 74, 87,
diario dt Gab..UI Q,iroga, El, 75 GAivez, Manuel, 1 1 , 14, 15, 2 1 , 27, 33, 88
Diaz, Leopoldo, 13 72, 75, 91, 163 Historio uniwrsal dt la infamio, go
Diaz Romero, Enrique, 14 Gandara, Carmen, 73 Hitler, Adolf, 68, Bo, g8, 1 2 1 , 137, 1 99
Disco, 124 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 34, 6o, 1031 138, hombre que tsld soloy ts;tra, El, 72
Di Tella Institute, 168, 174 197 Hombre� dt ma(z, 1 44
Doll, Ramon, 73, 75, 1 28, 130 Ganivet, Angel, 12 Hombres en sokdad, 72
Donoso, Jose, 18o-1 , 186 Garaudy, Roger, 135 L'lwmme revolU, 1 35, 136
Don StguJo Somhro, 121 22, 24, 47 Garcia Lorca, Federico, 66 Honorary Consul, Tlv, 140
Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre, 34, 35, 47, 49, Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, 77, 1-H, 1 7 1 , Hoover, Herbert, 40
74, 79, I O I , rn3, 134, 138 1 79, 185, 1 go , 200 lwra de los lwrMs, La, 1 74, 1 g6
Gardcl, Carlos, 130, 158, 188 Hark.on, 31, 104
Eandi, Hector, 75 Gay, Peter, 168 Hoy '" la CuitlU'a, 195
Echeverria, Esteban, 7, 148 Gelman, Juan, 195 Hudson, William, 45
Eco Contnn;ortboeo, 195 Genet, jean, 129, 1 38-g Hughes, Langston, 51
Eichelbaum, Samuel, 162 Gerchunoff, Alberto, 14 Huidobro, Vicente, 55, 84
Eisenstein, Sergei, 53, 55, 63 Germani, Gino, 168 Hull, Cordell, 70, g6, 97
El "°' 122 Gide, Andre, 3J. 44> 55, 6o, 63, 78, 84, Huxley, Aldous, 34, 53, 59, 6o, 68, 75, 8o
Eleps llali4Ms, 194 102, 103, 178 Hydriotap/Iia, 104
Eliot, T.S., 68, 1 04, 1 33, 140, 141, 159, Gigli, Adelaida, 155, 1 64, 165
1g6 Ginastera, Alberto, 6 lbarguren, Carlos, 64-5, 72, 128
Emece, 105, 1 70 Ginsberg, Allen, 185 lcaza, Jorge, 142
'Emma Zunz', 1 5 1 Giradoux, jean, 102 ltJtas, 1 4
Enc-ter. 186 Gironda, Oliverio, 23-4, 46, 184 lllia, Arturo, 1 70, 173
Elf. la SONgre, I I Cirri, Alberto, 143, 149, 15g-OO, 1 78, Jmperi4/ismo.J nJlara, I 64
Ensi!JO sabre Rosas, 75 193-4, 201 lnicial, 15, 22
&Ire ti clOV1I y lo tspo4o, 105 Giusti, Roberto, rn, 1 1, 13, 14, 16, 29, lnocenlls o culpablts, 1 1
Emuntraci6n dt la palria, I 24 162 lnquisicionts, 1 04
Erro, Carlos Alberto, 39, 46, 73, 86, 8g, Glusberg, Samuel, 40, 41, 42-3 invtnei6n dt Morel, La, 91, 1 1 1, 1 1 7, u8,
97-8, 1.S Gobello,Jose, 130 120
Escorobojo dt Oro, El, 171, 195 Godard, Jean-Luc, 1g6 Ionesco, Eugene, 177, 179
'escritura de Dios, La', 151 Godel, Roberto, 25 Irazusta, Julio, 55, 72, 73-4' 75, 1 30
Espotios mitricos, 124 Goldar, Ernesto, 153
Esf>rit, 61, 62, 63, 134 Gollancz, Victor, 137, 140 'jardin de scnderos que sc bifurcan, El',
EUDEBA, 170 Gombrowicz, Witold, 121, 189 1 10, 1 1 1 , 1 1 7, 1 18
Eva P116'A ('Ovtnhtrtro o mililmtlt? 157 G6mcz de la Serna, Ram6n, 23, 241 29, Jarry, Alfred, 181
Eooristo Conit10, go 47, 51, 52, 66 Jauretche, Arturo, 1261 130, 163
txislnttialismo ts u la1U1UP1ismo, El, 135 Gonzalez Lanuza, Eduardo, 23, 46, go, Jimenez, Juan Ram6n, 141
£xpresi6n, I 62 94, 99, 105-6, 1o8, 123, 1 26, 141, 142, Jitrik, Noe, 15], 164' 195
Extrema l.t.pitrdo, 2 1 154, 155, 1 7 1 , 185, 187, 18g, 192, 1g6, Jorge Alvarez, 1 70
201 Joyce, James, 24
Fabril, 170 Gonzalez Tu66n, RaUl, 127, 162 Juarroz, Roberto, 195
Faamdo, 7, 8 Goytisolo, Juan, 177, 179 jut�. El, I 56
Falcoff, Mark, 73 Gramsci, Antonio, 139, 200 jugwll rabioso, El, 22
Fargue, LeOn Paul, 24, 101 Grasset, Bernard, 46 Jung, Carl Gustav, 34, 35
Faulkner, William, 77-8, 84, 94> 200 Greene, Graham, 1 3g-40, 144, 178 Junwadd.,,es, 185
Fernandez, Macedonio, 24, 130 Grinberg, Miguel, 1 79, 18g, 195 Justo, Agustin P., 43, 64, 72
Fernandez Moreno, C&ar, 1 2 1 1 1 25, 152 Gropius, Walter, 49 Justo, Juan 8., 26
Fernandez Retamar, Roberto, 1 10, 185 Groussac, Paul, 14, 33 Justo, Luis, 1g6
Ferreyra Basso, Juan, 123 Guasta, Eugenio, 191, 192
Ferrero, Leo, 55 Gudiilo Kieffer, Eduardo, 192 Keene, Donald, I7 5
FmHW de Buenos Aires, 15, 29 Guevara, Ernesto 'Che', 185 Keyserling, Hermann de, 27, 34, 38, 50,
Fierio11ts, 1 10, 1 15, r go Guggenheim, Peggy, 33 54, 86, 1 38
Fitzgerald, Edward, 25 Gugliclmini, Homero, 50 Klages, Ludwig, 39
 INDEX 231
1:'4uo, 18 Martel, Julian, 11 Ocampo, Silvina, 46, 51, 59, go, 92, 94,
Klee, Paul, 23 Marti, Jose, 52, 53 95, 10.., 1 1 2, 1 18, 1 23-4, 127, 1 33, 152,
Koestkr, Arthur, 137 Martinez, Tom'5 Eloy, 1 70, 192, 1 g6 191, 192, 201
Kusch, Rodolfo, 155 Martinez Estrada, Ez<quiel, 3g, 42, 48, Ocampo, Victoria, 1 , 3, 7, 9. 10, 12, 13,
72, 75-6, 86, 87, g8, 103, 124, 140, 153, 14-16, 17, 20, 29, 31, 34' 35. 40-2, 43,
w.n.i. " "' '"'"'· El, 79, 1o8, 143 157, t61, t65, 182, 188-g, 201 44, 45, 46, 47, .a. 49, 50, 52, 53, 55,
Lacerda, Carlo., 107 M•b• Finro (magazine), n, 2 1 , 22, 23, 56, 57, 58, 59, 6o, 6 1 , 62, 64, 65, 66,
Laclau, Ernesto, 100 24, 27, 28, 29, 42, 49, n2, 1 24, 134 70, 74, 75, 78, 79, So, 81, 82, 83, 84,
lMy C"""s"":J' IAoer, 53 Morh• Fierro (poem), 12, 2 1 , 51, 1 15-61 86, 92, 94, g6, 97, g8, gg-100 102, 103,
Lafl'orgue, Jorge, 1 15 146, 151 Jo8, 109> I l l , 1 19, 125, 1 26, 127, 130,
La Flor, 1 70 Maso, Fa.,to, 185 133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 147-8,
laplllJ u los -�•ru, U., 1 7 Masotta, Oscar, 124, 150, 165 151, 152, 153, 157, 1 5'1-g, 163, 165,
Lancelou.i, Mario, 152, 191, 192 Massuh, Vic1or, 149 1 70, 1 7 1 , 172, • 7f, 1 75, 177, 1 78, 184,
Larbaud, Valery, 24, .a. 51 Masten, Lee, 53 186, 18g, 192, 1g6, 197, lgg-200, 201-2
Larguia, Susana, 72 Mastronadi, Carlos, 76 Oliver, Maria Rosa, 20, 32, 42, 43, 45,
Larreta, Enrique, 14, 27 ..,,.., .. El, 7 68, 70, 72, 78, 97, g8, 100, 105, 107,
Latcham, Roberto, 53 Maulnicr, Thierry, 135 1o8, 135, 144
Laughlin, Jamn, 147 Maurras, Charles, 74 Olivari, Nicolas, 130
Lawrence, D.H., 6o Mdib ul m.ius-, 86 Olivera, Ricardo, 14
Lawrence, T.E., 96, 103, 104' 1 39, 141 MtlliilotiJo "' Ill '""'· 88 Onetti, Juan Carlos, 185
Luvis, F.R., 76, 171 MtllisiJMWu ""'-"'"""'• 50 Ongania, Juan Carlos, 172, 173
Le: Corbwier (Charles-Edouard Mendez., Evar, 2 1-22, 24 Orl1111n, 181
Jeanneret), 49 Mendoza, Plinio Apuleyo, 144 Or'-U, 81, 82
L<H:bvre, Raymond, 25 Menotti, Oscar, 197 Orph<e, Elvira, 191, 192
lttlrtJ Ftdllf.Uts, 69, I O I , 102, 135 Mtrntrio '' AlllhUa, El, 14 Ortega y G&s1Ct, Jose, 34, 37, 38-40, 44,
Lezama Lima, JOIC, 181 Mcrlcau-Ponty, Maurice, 1 33, 135 47, 50, 52, 92, 1 75-6
Libtrtod �· po/abr•, 1o8 Merton, Thomas, 1 79, 191, 1g6 Ortiz, Roberto, 7 r , 99
Lida, Raimundo, 46, 8g Mlnlrt, 85 Ortiz de Montellano, Bernardo, 18
Liga de Education Politica, 39 MCtraux, Alfred, 53 Orwell, George, 1 37, 1 39
Lihn, Enrique, 186 Milooz, Czeslaw, 137, 159 o,,, Amtrica, 41
Llscano, Juan, 182 Mishima, Yukio, 177 Oviedo, Jose Maria, 1 84
Liauo, Felix, 18 Mistral, Gabriela, 53, 8:i-3, 841 1o8, 149
Llinas, Julio, 195 Mitre, Bartolome, 14, 163 Paita, Jorge, 1g+, 195
IA/i/4, 1 74, 177 IM<Ut. ,.,. "' """'"· u•. 1 14 Paku1 of lite Ptot1tk, Tiu, 37
Losada, Gonzalo, 104, 105 Molina, Enrique, 122, 127 Palacio, Ernesto, 25, 63, 73, 74, 157
Louda (publishing howe), 104-5, 144, Molinari, Ricardo, 94, 1 H p_,...., El, 6g, 128
170 Molloy, Silvia, 1 1 3, 175, 1 g6 'Parabola del palacio', 1go
u
L.s �. 41 Monaco, Jama, 3 3 Pllris Review, 1 13
LAs W..S, 1 7 1 Monnier, Adrienne, 34' 102 ,,.,., pnt/Uhs, us, 37
'lotcria e n Babilonia, La', 6g , 1 0 1 Montserrat, Santiago, 1 2 1 Pasternak, Boris, 1 77
Lottman, Herbert, 133, 135, 175 Moravia, Alberto, 1 39 Paulhan, Jean, 101
Ludwig, Emil, 65 Mounicr, Emmanuel, 6o, 621 64 pay.Jar, El, 12
Lugones, Leopoldo, 12, 14, 16, 23, 42, 48, 'mucrto, El', 151 Payr6, Julio, 6
66-1, 76, 84, 9 1 , 1 3 1 , 164 Mulhern. Francis, 1 Payro, Roberto, 13, 14
LMis Gr1111, mwrlo, 91 Mumford, L<wis, 53 Paz, Juan Carl01, 6
lMNs u rlllOilltidn, 185 M"""• NUIOO, 172, 185, 1g6 Paz, Octavio, 79, 84, 85, 1o8-g, 142-3,
L.J'O, 157 Mumon,J., 53 lff1 159, 16o, 1721 1 75-6, J8o, I8f,
Murat, Napolel>n, 49 ig6
McCarthy, Mary, 140 Murat, Ulises Petit de, 162 JHtodo •rigi..l d< Arrthita, El, 155
Machado, Antonio, 105 Murena, H. A., 481 1321 142, 152--6, 157, Pedro PtltlllflO, 77
MacL<ish, Archibald, 126, 127 158, 164, 191-2, 201 pntstuJoru, Los, 25, 26
M""'""'-• 19 Murry, Middleton, 6o f'lrdiu "' ,,;.., u., 1 19
Madariaga, Salvador de, 59, 66, 71, 178 Mussolini, Benito, 74, Bo Peron, Eva, 1 29, 147, 157
Maeztu, Maria de, 66, 73, 74 Peron, Juan Domingo, 2, 5, 8, 52, 53, 65,
Malaquais, Jean, 101 Nabokov, Vladimir, 1 74, 177 68, 70, 71, 88, 95, g6, 99, 100, I O I ,
-�. £1. 136 JfMiMt, la, ·�· • • ••• 23, 25, 27, 28, 33, 126 , 127, 1 28, 1 2g, 130, 1 3 1 , 136, 137,
Mallea, Eduardo, 39, 46, 48, :;o-1, 54' 46, 6o, 66, 130, 143, 151, 163 141, 145-50, 152, 162, 163, 166, 167,
55, 5g, 72, 73, 74, 75-6, 87-g, 94, 1 16, Nale Roxlo, Conrado, 66 16g, I J3, 1 74, 187, 188, 193, 199
1 2 1 , 153, 155, 162, 163, 164, 177, 201 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 34, 179 Peronism. 6, 56, 74, 76, 1 1 5, 1 20, 1 2 1 ,
Mallo, Maruja, 66 Neruda. Pablo, 53, 75, 8.f., 104, 105, 122, 1 26, 127, 1 29, 130, 131, 132, 146--50,
Malraux, AndrC, 341 53, 101, 1 33, 1 75, 141-2, 159, 162, 184 1 5 1 , 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 1 70,
200 Nicolson, Nigel, 81 173, 188-g, 201
Maftach, Jorge, 18 Nincovich, Frank, g6 p,,,�•• 78
Mann, Thomas, 1o1 Nizan, Paul, 6o, 84 pcrsonalism, 61-4
Mansi, Homero, 130 .Nodllnto £14ropeo, 87 Petitjean, Annand, 6g
MaraOOn, Gregorio, 65 .Nosolros, 1 1 , 13, 14, 15, 16, 1 7, 19, 28--g Pettoruti, Emilio, 23, 46, 127
M•tlra, 183, 186 Nosla/tio u lo ....,,,, 79 Peyrou, Manuel, 1 15, 11 g-20, 162
Marechal, Leopoldo, 23, 24, 25, 46, 55, .No•otllt Rnw FrOJffaise, 3, 441 451 46, 78, Pczzoni, Enrique, 155, 157, 158, 16o, 167,
76, 127, 130. 153, ·� 79, 85, 94, I O I , 1031 1 3.f, 138 172, 1 75, 1 78, 18o, 184, 1g6
Mariani, Robeno, 21, 25, 127 Nuslrll ArrUriea, 42 Picasso, Pablo, 37, 46, 1o6
Maria•egui, Jose, 18, 28, 41, 42 .NtuH Gttuta, 27 'Pierre Menard, autor dcl Q.uijotc', 58,
Marinello, Juan, 18, 53 N.,.. IUfttiMic•, L., 73 go, 92
Marinetti, F. T., 2 1 , 28, 65, 97 Piglia, Ricardo, 1 15
Maritain, Jacques, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, !4, Obligado, Rafael, 14 Pinedo, Frederico, 7 1
102 _.stntt JMj•o J1 UI IHKM, El, 181 Piiiera, Humberto, 182
Marmol, Jose, 7, 145 Ocampo, Arturo Camboun, 1271 130 Piiiera, Virgilio, 181
 INDEX
Piovene, Guido, 139 Rougcment, Denis de, 62, 102, 125, 127, Todorov, Tzcvtan, 35, 92, 1 1 7
Pizarnik, Alejandra, 177, lg.f.-5 137, 186 Tolstoy, Leo, 2 I
Pia, Roger, 192 Rozitchner, LcOn, 15 7 Torre, Guillermo de, 251 46, 491 631 94i
Plan th euasi6n, 1 1 7 Rubo!Jlat of o,.,,, Kilo-'-"'"'• 25 99
Pl•rol, 79, 1og Rulfo, Juan, 77, 185 Torres Bodet, Jaime, 52, 55
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1 1 1 , 1 14, 1 1 8 Torres Fierro, Danubio, 109
PO<SUI s.,.., Airu, 15g, 195 Sabato, Ernesto, 99, 120-1, 150, 164, 177, To IM Li1""'-t, 82
PO<SUI • ,.,W., 195 185, I� 191, 1g8 troltison dts """' La, 44
Poggioli, Renato, 2 Sackville·West, Vita, So, 81 Trejo, Mario, 195
Poiol C-i.r PoioJ, 6o Sienz Penga, Roque, 91 70 Tres trislts tizres, 1#, 1 84
Porchia, Antonio, 195 Said, Edward, 35 Trilling, Lione!, I 79
Portantiero,Juan Carlos, 157 Salazar Bondy, Sebastian, 143-4, 182 Trotsky, Leon, 26
Portogalo, JosC, 127 Salinas, Pedro, 66, 102 hilul, El, 120
Pound, Ezra, 159 San Martin, Gen. Jos< de, 138, 1 .S
PrebiJch, Raul, 49 Sanchez, Florencio, 15, 24 Ub" Roi, 181
Prnua, La, 66, 130 Sanchez Rivas, Anuro, 137, 162 Ulists (magazine), 18
Prieto, AdollO, 26, 157, 164 Sansinena de Elizalde, Elena, 291 1 77 Ul.Js�s (novel), 1 12, 134
Primna PltJU, 16g, 170-1, 192, 1g6 Santamaria, Haydee, 185 Unamuno1 Miguel de1 121 68
Primo d e Rivera, Miguel, 39 Sarduy, Severo, 167, 184, 1g6 Ungaretti, Guiscppc, 65
Prior, Aldo, 182 Sarlo, Beatriz, 12, 48 Uriburu, Jose FClix, 43, 70
Prisma, 22 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 71 8, 1 1 , Um B•rial: stt Hydriolophio
Proa, 221 24-5, 27, 28 13, 43, 7 1 , 73, 15 1, 192-3 Urondo, Francisco, 195, 197
Pr.p6siU>s, 188 Sartre, Jean·Paul, 3 1 , 84-5, 1011 1021 llttaS;? ti Ditnk>, las, 142
Proust, Marcel, 82, 92, 97 103, 129, 1 33-5, 136, 1 76, 200
Puig, Manuel, 1 84 Saslavsky, Luis, 91 Vaklemar, Abraham, 18
Puiggros, Rodolfo, 127 Scalabrini Ortiz, Raul, 54, 72, 130 Valery, Paul, 102, 103, 122, 138, 159
Pmo Fi..U, 1 86 Schekr, Max, 39, 8g Vallejo, C<sar, 18, 142, 184
Schmidt, Augusto Federico, 1001 107 Vanasco, Alberto, 195
(b'tsl·tt que la LiUlral1Ue? 135 Schoo, Ernesto, 1 70, 192 J!41111UJrdia, La, 99
Qpi Vi"" Mlxito, 53 Schultz de Mantovani, Fryda, 157 Vargas, GetU:lio, 107
Quiroga, Horacio, 42, 48, 75-6, 84' 163, Sm.1i1!7, I Varg., Uosa, Mario, 1 43, 144, 177, 1 79,
184 Slarcllfor a Method, 3 1 t85, 200
Scbreli, Juanjos<, 1 56-7, 163, 164 Vasconcelos, JosC, 18, 37
/WJi•ir•fa " la """"·" 72, 84> 85, 153 &x11> CMJi1totu, 1 3 1 , 163 Vcrbitsky, Bernardo, 192
'Ragnariik', 1go Shepherd, Dick, 6o Verb,,,,., 1321 155
Rama, Angel, 1 70, 1831 186 Sicardi, Francisco, 1 1 Vtrdt, 18
Ray, Man, 8o ;Sintftrt! 1 86 Vtrtie Memoria, 122
Raynaud, George, 37 Silone, Ignazio, 1 78 ,,trSOS <k la calk, 26
�la. 185 Silva, Alvaro de, I 07 Vitia liUTaria, La1 42
lla,.6", La, 66 So6rt ltlrouy l•m/Jas, t85 Vitmts, Sabado, Domingo, 197
Read, Herbert, 1 04 Solanas, Fernando, 1 74, 1g6 Villaurrutia, Xavier, 79
/UaliJ4d, 150-1, 161, 162 Solar, Xul, 23 Viiias, David, 51 9, 10, 1 34, 155, 157, 16.f.,
rcbeliOn de las masa.s, La, 52 Sot.dad ,_,., 1511-i1 192
Rebelo, Marques, 107 Sotero, FJ., 1 44, 155 Viiias, Jsmael, 157, 164
/Ujltxi(Jltts sobre la nusli6ft jtvJia, 135 Sol.1 Lua, 127 Virasoro, Miguel Angel, 8g
Rest, Jaime, 8g, 164 Sontag, Susan, 1 g6 Virgin Spain, 41
&i..r tJt I'URSS, 55, 63 Soto, Carlos Viola, 155, 195 vordgine, La, 47
/Uuisla dt ONllte, 18 Soto, Luis Emilio, 27, 1411 188 v.,1,., 79
&Disla dt Ottidmtt, 3, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, Spender, Stephen, 133, 178
45, 50, 8g, 94 Spengler, Oswald, 36, 37, 39, 86 Wahh, Maria Elena, 195, 1g6
Reyes, Alfonso, 37, 41, 45, 47, .S, 53, 85, Spilimbergo, Lino, 46 Walsh, Rodolfo, 1 15, 197
94, 1 10 Stabb, Martin, 86, 8g Waugh, Evelyn, 38
Reyes, Salvador, 24 Stalin, Josef, 55, 63, 142 Wclch, Denton, 104
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 122, 1 38, 159 Stapledon, Olaf, 93 Wells, H. G., 161
Rios, NoviOn de los, t 22 S1cinbeck, john, 78 WilCock, Juan Rodolfo, 95, 1221 1231
Rivera, Diego, 27, 52 Sternberg, Joseph von, 1 16 1 24-5, 133
Roa Bastos, Augusto, 38, 183-4 S1evens, Wallace, 1 59 Wilde, Eduardo, 9
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 167, 178 Stieglitz, Alfred, 27 Williams, Raymond, 2, 4
Roca, Julio, 71 Stomi, AJfonsina, 76, 84 Wilson, Jason, 79, 143
Rock, David, 8 Stravinsky, Igor, 78 Wolfe, Tom, 16g
Rockefeller, David, g6, 97 Sturrock, john :J-4 Woolf, Leonard, 81
RodO, JosC Enrique, 12, 41 Sudamericana, 77, 104, 1 o6, 144, 170 Woolf, Virginia, 33, 6o, 74, 75, n. 7�2,
Rodriguez Fco, jos!, 181 Supervielle,Jules, 21, 47, 55, 94, 102 102, 138, 1 44, 200
Rodriguez Monegal, Emir, 25, 1321 1611
1 70-3, 184, 186-7 Tagore, Rabindranath, 34, t 79 Xirgu, Margarita, 66, 136
Rojas, Ricardo, 12, 15, 51 Tola, 83
Rojas Paz, Pablo, 24 Tamayo, Rufino, 143 rears, T�. 81
Rolland, Romain, 26 Tate, Allen, 1g6 Yo t/ swp,_, 183
Romains, Jules, 65 Tntps M°"""'1, w, 85, 1 34> 135 Yrigoyen, Hipl>lito, 22, 73
Romero, Francisco, 52, � 161 Terra Roxa, 18 Vunque, Alvaro, 25-6, 127, 162
Romero, Jose Luis, � Teseo, 120
Romero Brest, Jorge, 16g Thoma., Dylan, 1 79, 195 Zambrano, Maria, 66
&om efOnt's Own, A, 33, 8 1 , 82 Tllrtt GMilltaS, 8 1 Zamora, Antonio, 25
Roosevelt, Franklin D.1 40, g6 Ticmpo, Cesar, 67, 1 30 Zola, Emile, 2 1
Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 7, 8, 73, 145, Tiny. lattrotk, 86 Zona, 19�
1 5 1 , 163, 187, 1 93 'TIOn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', 90, 92, 93 Zweig, Stefan, 65