For many historians, the 1930s were a blot on the Argentine Catholic politician Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Zuviría’s CV: during this time he publicly supported Spain’s Franco, published an anti-Semitic pamphlet postulating a Jewish cabal in New York (applauded by the Nazi press), and, as the military dictatorship’s chosen National Library Director and Minister of Public Instruction in the 1930s, advocated censorship and a strict religious education.

La Casa de los Cuervos by Hugo Wast

But Zuviría’s literary reputation may be more recuperable. In addition to these political activities and under the pen name Hugo Wast, he also wrote romantic fiction—becoming one of the best-selling authors in Argentine literary history, with more than three million copies in Spanish and further translations into 15 languages. Zuviría aimed to write for a wide public—according to biographer Juan Carlos Moreno, he always ensured his books were published in three versions, making them accessible to all budgets: “One deluxe and beautifully-bound; a second with good paper; a third, for a popular audience, very cheap.” He published short novelas and novels in installments in the pages of weekly magazines like ‘La Novela Semanal’ (which ran his novel ‘La Casa de Los Cuervos’ in three parts), and was read overwhelmingly by lower and middle class women. In his chaste stories his Catholic views on the woman’s role are present, but subtlely – like daggers wrapped in pink silk.

Today, magazine romances of the period like Zuviría’s are either ignored or are erroneously dismissed as “literature of the barrio, the pizzería, the milonguitas“. But in their role as both commentary on and engagement with the public, the stories are an intriguing source – both historians and writers seeking a socially-oriented modernism could do worse than give them another look.

Developing romance

The “romance” developed in Argentina in the mid-19th century, at the same time the nation itself was battling into existence. Like the nation, the novel followed the country/city split—one version projecting a national self-image as a land of gaucho and pampas (exemplified by Echeverria’s “El Matadero”), the other focusing on the city and social interactions. The romantic novel was an offshoot of the latter, turning specifically toward the relationships between men and women. Bartolomé Mitre’s ‘Soledad’, written at age 26 and eventually published in the Revista de Buenos Aires, was one of the genre’s first examples, capturing a tone future romances would copy. (“Eduardo made a gesture of impatience he could not hide, and which did not escape the penetrating view of his loving and jealous wife.”)

Kiosko selling all sorts of reading material, including novelas. (Photo: Juan Manuel Caicedo Carvajal)

In the belle époque period Argentina developed its enormous system of publishing houses, and romance became a business. Novels began to be serialized in popular magazines; magazines also began to commission the shorter one-off romance story, or “novela rosa.” The format was convenient: a man might buy his wife a copy at a kiosco on his way home from work. It were also cheap: in 1920 a magazine cost around 10 centavos, compared to $1.50 or $2 for a book by an economic publisher.

Such professionalization was evident in the prose. Although many of the early romances seem like hodgepodges of whatever theme the author felt like putting his pen to, the magazine format spurred the development of a standardized style. Authors regarded the writing of magazine stories as a profession like law or medicine – and they had philosophical ideas about their own work.

A March 1920 copy of El Suplemento includes a section called ‘Nuestros Escritores’, with autobiographical statements by commissioned writers. To prove their sincerity and sentimental understanding, authors tended either to boast about their personal amorous experience, or, in the opposite direction, to claim a hermit-like existence lived completely through their stories. In both cases, the aim was connection with the reader. “For the reader to understand me in such a way as to consider me a best friend, that is glory,” wrote Richard Lavalle. Héctor Oliveira extended this idea to advocate an everyday language, saying that “a novel must provide more ideas than sensations, must sustain emotion – above all, emotion! To achieve this it is necessary to reduce language to artificial expressions, to the point of discarding from the lexicon any word unincorporated into the current language, plain and simple.”

That Oliveira is able to tell his readers he is writing in a “simple” way is itself of interest, and puts in question the image of a cynical, professional author churning out work for a mass audience. Readers were fully aware of the self-imposed formal bounds of the genre, and accepted them as the chessboard necessary for the game.

Dreaming within the structure

In the case of the serialized novela rosa, there were two structures: a highly-stylized, allusive baroque prose, and an ideal of Christian virtue.

'La Equivocacion de Colette', one of the many novelas rosas published by Colección Orquídea.

When publisher Colección Orquídea released a new series of romance novels, it included in the last pages of its second volume ‘Entre dos almas’ an ‘Amorous Dictionary’. The first two entries of the ‘A-D’ section, continued in subsequent volumes, reads thus: “ADEREZO (seasoning): The most beautiful seasoning a woman can have is simplicity. If virtue in dignity is maintained, love will concede its grace. BAILE (dancefloor): It is the battlefield of love and one of the many inventions of the devil. Here women often lose many things that men find.” The reference to “virtue” and the warning against potentially compromising situations reinforces the fact that the romance novel in its origins was highly Catholic. Sentimental effusions were contained within marriage, with the end of procreation; occasionally, monologues in the confessional were used to drive plot.

Although societal pressures are rarely overcome in these stories, the idea of fulfilled love was itself rather radical. Plots alluded to possibilities (even if thwarted) of barrier-crossing relationships and adultery within marriage. A structure was created within which the reader could dream.

The context? A lot of women in unhappy marriages. In 1902 José Ingenieros delivered his famous lectures at the Universidad de Buenos Aires on the psychology of the sentiment, in which he argued that society discourages passion. (The divorce law was discussed that year in the Ateneo, but divorce wasn’t legalized until 1987.) Critics today often argue that the romance developed the suffocating idea of woman as “mujer-ángel”, that in them the only feminine resources are wide eyes and soft trembling voices, and that women “don’t speak, don’t discuss, but only swear, imprecate, curse, and, above all, cry”. The very time and attention given to these actions, however, recognises that woman might have an inner life.

Modern views

It wasn’t until 1984, with the publication of Beatriz Sarlo’s groundbreaking ‘El Imperio de los Sentimientos: Narraciones de circulación 1917-1927′ that Argentina’s serialised romances were taken up seriously as texts worthy of scholarly attention. (In doing Sarlo helped introduce cultural studies to this country.) To Sarlo, however, the genre is ultimately an unfulfilled form without higher aspirations, free of the linguistic games, purposeful difficulty, and irony marking out true literature. “In my library there hardly remain examples of the sentimental novels I analyze,” she writes in the prologue to the 2000 reedition. “I sent those folletos to readers interested in knowing the literature firsthand – parting from them in the first place, because I am no collector, and in the second, because I thought and still think that I will not return to them.”

'Boquitas Pintadas' by Manuel Puig

Where the critic hesitated, the writer leapt. A number of novels (and telenovelas) took the serialised romance as inspiration in the decades after it had ceased to be a popular form – Manuel Puig’s 1969 novel ‘Boquitas Pintadas’ being perhaps the most famous example. A complicated, violent romantic history unraveled in sixteen entries, each section imitates the techniques of folletin and radiotheatre, and is preceded by the tango lyrics of greats like Alfredo Le Pera. “And all of it, for what? Look, I’m going to die with this life that I have, nothing more than working in the house and grumbling about the kids,” one frustrated woman writes in a letter, never sent. Puig lovingly inserts references to products and program announcements, mirroring the way in which serialized stories were published alongside advertisements: in one scene a young girl imagines herself wearing ‘Empire Nocturne’ perfume, and prides herself on speaking like a radio announcer, S’s crisp.

The past few decades have seen Argentine literature turn inward, but in doing so it is in danger of ignoring the popular desires, rich possibilities of dialogue, and preexisting cliché expressions and slang in which Argentina is particularly rich—and which the language of the serialized romances captured. Zuviría used the structures of the serialized romance to embed his social views; today’s writers might draw on the same resources to make different points.

Lead photo by Stephen Coles

“It’s been a long week,” explains Maxine Swann, sitting down with a glass of white wine. And coming from a woman who’s launching her third book in only a few days, that’s not hard to believe.

As a writing coach, contributor of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post, and an award-winning author of the novels ‘Serious Girls’ and ‘Flower Children’, her writing has received literary recognition in the form of a Ploughshares’ Cohen Award, an O. Henry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and was also selected to appear in the 1998 and 2006 collections of ‘Best American Short Stories’.

Originally from the rural state of Pennsylvania, Maxine lived in New York, Paris and Pakistan before arriving in Buenos Aires, but something about migration to faraway places obviously agrees with her. For this edition of BA Lives, The Indy caught up with her to talk about her not-so-recent relocation and the theme of migration in her new book ‘The Foreigners’.

You’ve lived in Buenos Aires for almost ten years now, how did you come to settle here?

Well, I arrived in Buenos Aires in 2001 with the intention of staying for a few months, and, now that I say this, I realise there’s a pattern here. I arrived in Paris in 1991 to study for a semester and stayed for seven years. I arrived in Pakistan in 1998 with the idea of staying for a month and stayed for over a year. But I’ve never stayed anywhere as long as I’ve stayed in Buenos Aires. I feel like it suits me. I’m happy here – relaxed and playful, and inventive in a new way. Who knows why it happens, but I do feel like certain tendencies I have towards solitude, or being overly reserved, are corrected here.

Can you tell me a little about your latest book ‘The Foreigners’?

Yes, of course. I started writing ‘The Foreigners’ without knowing what the book would be about. I just knew I wanted to capture Buenos Aires, so I began with descriptions of the streets of Chacarita, that kind of thing. I wanted to capture certain feelings the place had given me- of freedom, happiness, loneliness. Of course, I’m also a foreigner here, so my Buenos Aires is a foreigner’s Buenos Aires; which is the other thing I wanted to write about – what it means and how it feels to be a foreigner. So I chose my characters based on that. They each have a different experience of “foreignness”, that I’ve either experienced myself or observed in others.

What interests you about the theme?

I think the interaction between a living creature and its environment is really fascinating – the intensity of that relationship. There’s a metaphor running throughout the book comparing foreigners to invasive plant species. Some plant species, when placed in a foreign environment, simply wither straight away. There’s too much moisture in the air, or too little, or not enough minerals in the soil, or too much iron, who knows. I’ve spent a lot of time living abroad and, in my experience, the same thing happens with foreigners. Some are immediately diminished by their new surroundings, while others flourish in entirely unexpected ways – sometimes beautifully and sometimes frighteningly – growing rampantly, choking other species, blocking their light, that kind of thing. I think sometimes foreigners feel free to act with a kind of impunity, where the codes are all unfamiliar and their own identities in the new place are suddenly hazy. There’s a chain of events in my book that also has to do with that.

Your previous books ‘Serious Girls’ and ‘Flower Children’ have both been based on your own upbringing and adolescence. Did writing about adult characters in this book feel like a natural progression?

Yes, I think so. I did suddenly find myself fascinated by adulthood. That said, this book is much less autobiographical than my other books. Part of the evolution also had to do with that, feeling freer to invent, and create rather than reflect the world, even if the reflection was always substantially deformed. I often think that when we write fiction we write our dream version of the world, everything switched around, several people conflated into one – your uncle becomes the dog on the corner – that kind of thing. Here I think I stepped even further away, which is maybe why writing this book was so enjoyable.

As a foreigner yourself, there’s perhaps an assumption this book is at least tangentially autobiographical. To what extent are the characters in the book based on yourself or your own experiences as a foreigner in Buenos Aires?

There are definitely some parallels in the book with my own experiences – the loneliness that the Austrian woman feels, and the moments of delirious freedom that the American woman does.

All three of your novels, ‘Serious Girls’ in 2003, ‘Flower Children’ in 2005 and now ‘The Foreigners’ in 2011, have been completed since moving to Argentina. How do you find the creative climate in Buenos Aires compared to other places you’ve lived?

I think there’s more space here to be experimental than in the United States. There, literature seems to be increasingly at the mercy of the marketplace – meaning everyone’s main concern is how many books you sell. Not only editors, but writers too – because the amount of books you sell determines the value of your next book contract. So, needless to say, it’s not an environment that encourages audacity. Here, probably because there’s nearly no money involved, the criteria are different. I feel for writers here from a financial perspective, but on the other hand, I find it very refreshing.

You also run two writing workshops each year. Tell me a little about the workshops and what motivates you to teach?

I’ve been directing writing workshops for a while, in different settings. I think teaching is a perfect antidote to writing. I enjoy helping people figure out how to express what they’re trying to express. Having spent so much time struggling with that myself, I also think it makes sense to pass along whatever knowledge I’ve come up with. Also, writing is so solitary. I like trying to find ways to make it more social. I still hope to find a way to write a collaborative novel – it’s one of my cherished future projects!

And finally, with three books already under your belt, what’s next?

At the moment I’m writing a new novel that takes place in Pakistan. It’s a book that’s been germinating in my mind for years so it’s great to finally have it on the table.

Copies of Maxine Swann’s ‘The Foreigners’ will be on sale at the public launch party where Maxine will be joined by special guests discussing the book. Readers of The Argentina Independent are invited to attend at 7.30pm, Costa Rica 5824, Palermo Hollywood, Buenos Aires.

We continue The Indy’s Beyond Borges series with Ricardo Güiraldes, author of one of the two most important regional novels to have emerged from Latin America during the 20th century.

In his epic ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, Güiraldes transformed the cultural heritage of the Argentine gaucho into an enduring national myth, resulting in the celebration of his novel as an instant classic and the elegy of a bygone era.

Ricardo Güiraldes (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Early life

Himself resembling an escaped character from a fin de siècle novel, Güiraldes led a lifestyle that was simultaneously decadent and bohemian.

The son of a wealthy member of the Argentine oligarchy, he was born in the rural town of San Antonio de Areco in 1886. His family moved to Paris when he was only one year old, and settled in an upscale neighbourhood near the Rue Saint-Claude.

With French and German as his first and second languages, and Castellano as his third, the family returned to Argentina in 1890 where he began his education.

In Argentina, his time was divided between Buenos Aires and his father’s estancia, La Porteña, in San Antonio de Areco. It was there that he came across the men who would lend free rein to his writing. His father’s employee, Segundo Ramírez, was to be Güiraldes’ teacher in the practical matters of rural life but also provided the inspiration for at least one of his short stories, as well as the basis for the eponymous character in the novel that would establish his fame.

Having studied architecture before switching to law in 1905, Güiraldes completed neither and instead sailed for France, where in the company of artists, musicians and writers, he developed an interest in ethics and metaphysics that would lead his writing beyond traditional themes to more universal ideas of religion and philosophy.

Spiritually restless, but satiated by recent overseas travel in Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Egypt, Russia, Japan, and Germany, it was in Paris, in the workshop of Argentine sculptor Alberto Lagos, that Güiraldes decided to dedicate himself to writing.

As at home in the salons of Paris as on the  estancias of San Antonio de Areco, Güiraldes would return to again and again to the French capital, eventually dying there in 1927.

Early Writing

Following his return to Buenos Aires and his marriage to porteña Adelina del Carril in 1913, Güiraldes published his first book of short stories and a book of poetry together in 1915.

‘Cuentos de muerte y de sangre’ and ‘El cencerro de cristal’ were both overlooked by critics, but ‘Raucho’, written and published two years later, was more a sketch of what would follow in ‘Don Segundo Sombra’.

Güiraldes' novel served as an elegy of a bygone era (Photo: Eduardo Amorim)

Its protagonist, a man who leaves the Argentine countryside for Paris but returns an educated and cultured individual, drew a likeness with Güiraldes himself, and later reappeared in the closing chapters of ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ as the well-travelled teacher and companion of the book’s narrator.

A second novel, originally published in a literary review as ‘Un idilio de estación’ in 1818, was later republished in book form. Dedicated to one of his sisters, ‘Rosaura’ told the story of a blossoming romance between a woman of society and a well-travelled, handsome stranger passing through Lobos train station, who promises to open her eyes to a world beyond the limited scope of rural Argentina.

Indeed, almost all of Güiraldes’ literature concerns itself with the difficulty of settling upon a national identity that could blend the traditions of the past with the ideals for the future.

Conveying the collective concerns of many Argentines at the turn of the 20th century, his writing sought to recover the lost identities of his readers, and ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ in particular, met the demand for a rose tinted perspective on a past that many Argentines did not know but were eager to accept.

The Creation of an Instant Classic

Güiraldes’ ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ is a classic coming of age tale that follows an inexperienced and orphaned young gaucho as he becomes a man under the care of an older and accomplished mentor, Don Segundo. 

The first ten chapters had been written in Paris as early as 1920, but it was not completed until 1926 when a wave of Argentine immigration had led to a resurgence of interest in the gaucho. Unlike the social and political interest that had accompanied the genre the first time around, the renewed interest stemmed more from nostalgia and a need for understanding.

Written when gaucho culture had already perished, the novel was less a reflection of national spirit – as gauchesque literature had typically been – and more a lament for something lost.

'Don Segundo Sombra' cemented the stereotype of the Argentine gaucho (Photo: Eduardo Amorim)

Güiraldes’ gaucho entered literature already an emblem of the past, and is often held up as the image of a true gaucho.

Having journeyed in Argentine writing from the uncivilised barbarian put forward by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, through Bartolomé Hidalgo’s courageous and patriotic war hero, Estanislao del Campo’s backward and uncultured laughing stock and José Hernández’s persecuted citizen-turned-criminal; Güiraldes’ stylised portrayal helped cement a positive and prevailing image of the Argentine gaucho.

But whilst the novel marked a return to the themes of the gauchesque and was in keeping with the genre in that it assumed the voice of a gaucho narrator, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ made little attempt to imitate the same local vocabulary or dialect found in earlier examples of gaucho literature.

In employing the polished techniques of European writers in a work that was at once European in flair and Argentine in nature, Güiraldes essentially refined the Latin American novel.

Reaching a new generation and a new audience, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ was heralded an instant classic.

As the first novel to receive such immediate acclaim and the last important writing to emerge on the gaucho theme, it gained more critical attention during the 20th century than perhaps any other work of Argentine writing.

Retaining its relevance and its following several generations on, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ remains one of the most-treasured texts in Argentine writing, and is still considered the masterpiece of all literature pertaining to the Argentine gaucho.