Ricardo Güiraldes (1886–1927)

I’ve had this for ages but was finally prompted to read it by seeing it included in the Folha de São Paulo list. A coming of age story (written in 1926) in some ways, simply told. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing particularly creative or inventive--just a timeless story, very well done. (I must confess that I disliked the translation by Harriet de Onis, which seemed to prize literal accuracy over sensibility. That said, de Onis was largely, and single-handedly, responsible for introducing serious Latin American Spanish- and Portuguese-language literature to America in the 1950s and 1960s. She was a remarkable woman with a remarkable biography and was personally responsible for translating an astonishing number of major writers into English for the first time: Alejo Carpentier, Ernesto Sabato, Ricardo Güiraldes, Jorge Amado, Alfonso Reyes, Fernando Ortiz, João Guimarães Rosa, Gilberto Freyre. But all of her translations—and I have read many of them—have a literality about them that can be more or less off-putting.) Still, I had not realized the place of this particular book and having read it, confess that I’ll be looking for other works by Güiraldes.… (mer)

Don Segundo Sombra es una novela rural argentina escrita por Ricardo Güiraldes y publicada por primera vez en 1926.
A diferencia del clásico poema «Martín Fierro» de José Hernández, Don Segundo Sombra no reivindica socialmente al gaucho, sino que lo evoca como personaje legendario («sombra»), en un tono elegíaco.
«Segundo Sombra» parece sugerir a un subalterno, si bien el tratamiento de Don contrapesa (quizás sin que Güiraldes fuera consciente de ello) la subalternidad, señala a un gaucho que por mantener su axiología, sus principios, resulta superior a la axiología burguesa. Ricardo Güiraldes aprende en una especie de viaje iniciático lo que es el valor, el honor, la lealtad (que desde otra perspectiva puede mal interpretarse como subalternidad), el respeto al prójimo (todo esto, amenizado en el libro con descripciones). La novela fue publicada en 1926, está escrita narrativamente en primera persona.… (mer)