An American Place: Victoria Ocampo’s Editorial Politics, the Foundation of Sur, and Hemispheric Alliances Gorica Majstorovic is Assis- n 1927, Argentine painter Xul Solar paints “Otro tant Professor of Spanish horóscopo Victoria (Ocampo).” This canvas depicts four at The Richard Stockton encircled spaces. The first space depicts a shape that re- College of New Jersey. Her I sembles the map of South America. The second space frames areas of expertise include a face with the Argentine flag coming out of it. The third late nineteenth and twenti- eth-century Latin American space contains another face, which overlaps the previous one. literature, particularly in The fourth space resembles a profile, next to which is written the context of migration “Victoria.” I invoke Solar’s painting at the beginning of this and national identity. Her essay for it visually prefigures the merging of Argentine and publications have appeared continental perspectives that will be announced as program- in Latin American Research matic in the first issue of Victoria Ocampo’s literary journal. Review, Profemina, and her For Ocampo and Solar, as well as for Jorge Luis Borges’s early current book manuscript is works, national criollismo (manifested in Solar’s painting entitled Cosmopolitanism through the representation of the Argentine flag) and inter- and the Nation in Argentine nationalism are not opposed notions. In fact, they merge in Literature (1920-1940): Reading the Tower of Babel the paradoxical union to which Beatriz Sarlo has referred as and Babylon Tropes. “national universalism” (“Fantastic”). At the beginning of 1931, three years after Solar’s painting was made, Victoria Ocampo founded Sur, a lite- rary journal that lasted 45 years and ran for 340 issues. It published Spanish American works and disseminated foreign texts in translation throughout Latin America and the world. Translation, in fact, was one of Ocampo’s lifelong interests, to such a degree that Beatriz Sarlo has referred to the whole production of Ocampo’s literary magazine Sur as “a transla- tion machine” (La máquina 93–195). Translation is a survival of the living after and beyond the life of the original text, as Walter Benjamin writes in his 1926 seminal essay on the task Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 9, 2005 172 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies of a translator. It is to be understood, Bella back she received was mostly supportive, Brodzki points out, “not as an extension but getting involved in publishing was a of life but as an infusion, a transfusion, of courageous project for a woman of her time otherness” (207). and social class. At the end of the 1920s and Since the foundation of Sur, Victoria beginning of the 1930s, not surprisingly, Ocampo was not only the main agent of this Ocampo’s own father was arguably the kind of “transfusion” into Latin America, strongest opponent to her project. When but also a constructor of the cosmopolitan she informed him of her plans to use the “bridge” between the Argentine literary family’s economic means to publish the production and that of the world. Sur journal, he replied sternly: “Estás abocada a greatly informed Latin American cultural la catástrofe, a la ruina” (Ayerza de Castilho circuits about literatura universal, as world 132).1 literature is called in Spanish. The most Despite her father’s objections, Ocam- celebrated Latin American writers of the po decided to persevere and launch Sur. so-called “Boom” unanimously recognize At its foundational moment, however, that their key literary influences were those Ocampo’s otherwise wide cosmopolitan they had read about first in the pages of reaching out to the world (she had written Sur. Julio Cortázar thus reads Sur as a on the Tower of Babel trope and on Dante) significant component of the patriotism was more modest in scope. At the begin- in one of his Argentine characters. That ning of the 1930s, it was the ideals of a one country’s cultural patriotism could so continental union—represented visually in significantly rely on a literary magazine is Solar’s painting—together with the desire not an insignificant accomplishment on to forge ties with North American culture Victoria Ocampo’s part. In the story “Lucas, that provided the main inspiration for the su patriotismo,” Cortázar recalls “la lectura first issue of Sur. de Sur en los años dulcemente ingenuos” In 1929, Ocampo visited the United (232). Despite the comment’s slightly States for the first time. There she engaged ironic connotations, it clearly acknowledges in conversations with the North American Sur’s capital importance for the intellectual writer Waldo Frank, whom she had met in formation of Cortázar’s generation of writ- Buenos Aires. Frank was already immersed ers. No other literary journal in Spanish in making plans for publishing a new liter- America, not even Vuelta, edited in Mexico ary journal with another Argentine intel- by Octavio Paz, has ever reached the scope lectual, Samuel Glusberg. John King points of influence Sur had generated. Paz himself out that Frank and Glusberg immediately acknowledged in 1962 that what Ocampo “began discussing a magazine to be called accomplished had never before been ‘Nuestra América,’ which would have a Pan- achieved in Latin America (279–80). American, continental perspective” (42).2 The preparations for the launching of Glusberg, who later in his literary career Sur consumed a number of years. Through- adopted the pseudonym Enrique Espinoza, out this period, Ocampo persistently con- had published the Spanish translation of sulted fellow intellectuals in Europe and Waldo Frank’s Our America.3 Glusberg North America about the risks involved in also sponsored Waldo Frank’s lectures in publishing a new literary journal. The feed- Buenos Aires (1929–1930). These were Gorica Majstorovic 173 the lectures that had provided Ocampo the mountains, and the other falls with the opportunity to meet Frank, who bruised and limp upon the lowlands then subsequently offered much needed of the world. His need is great, and support for the creation of Sur. However, what moves across his eyes is univer- Ocampo was not interested at all in work- sal. But his tongue is tied [...]. The problem is not to force America to ing with Glusberg “whom she had found speech [...]. The problem is rather ideologically and socially unacceptable” to lift America into self-knowledge (qtd. in King 42). that shall be luminous so that she Despite the difficulties, the journal may shine, vibrant so that she may was launched. Following Glusberg’s and be articulate. (4-5) Frank’s initial idea for Nuestra América, Ocampo initiated a similar quest for an Frank’s thoughts, not different from those “America of secret treasures.” This quest was of many other intellectuals of the time, both to be at the core of the first four issues of Latin American and foreign, resonate with her journal. She expressed the necessity for what Spivak calls “the imperialist project such a quest in a letter to Frank. In hom- which had to assume that the earth that is age to the North American writer, Ocampo territorialized was in fact previously unin- wrote Frank a letter. She then published scribed” (1). This is not to say that Waldo this letter as the opening essay of Sur. This Frank, a renowned leftist, exemplifies an im- gesture of conversion—of private affairs into perialist ideology in this passage. However, public matters—exemplifies a whole set of it is worth pointing out the way in which Ocampo’s personal alliances turned public. the gender of Frank’s America undergoes a If cosmopolitanism is defined as reaching significant shift. When Frank first envisions out to the world, then Ocampo’s version of America as a giant, he portrays it as male: it it is certainly a personal enterprise, aggran- is a giant and therefore masculine, although dized as a set of affairs of communal, if not mute. Subsequently, Frank’s America does of national and continental, importance. It not appear as a male giant but rather as a is in the same vein that Waldo Frank writes feminized body in need of major improve- his 1919 book Our America to friends. In ments. This feminized America can only be- doing so, he writes it for himself and for come articulate by feeding her giant mouth America: “So it is, my friends, that writing with words of interpretation. And this this book for France, I write it for America” process of “feeding” can only be achieved (4–5). He goes on to explain America, first on the condition that the intellectuals of to a French reading public and then to an Frank’s time assume the responsibility to American audience. In a 1929 Spanish follow his prophecy. translation, he addresses a South American Victoria Ocampo is one of the first public as well. Frank’s definition of America South American intellectuals to respond to reads as follows: Frank’s prophetic call. The impact of Frank’s proposal on Ocampo reads from the first America is a turmoiled giant who pages of Sur: cannot speak. The giant’s eyes wan- der about the clouds: his feet are Ha querido usted explicar a sus ami- sunk in the quicksands of racial and gos por qué es América un gigante material passion. One hand grasps inquieto pero todavía sin palabras, y 174 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies ha escrito un libro. Sur testimonia su portrayal of the indigenous, the ideological admiración por esa obra, mi absoluta position between those who select the pho- adhesión a lo que la inspiró [...]. tographs and those being photographed, Cada uno, según las fuerzas respecti- is, in fact, further separated.