My Dreams are of a Field Afar or Sonnets From the English: Silvina Ocampo's Relationship to British Poetry

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Symbiosis 8.1 91-108
Author: Fiona J. Mackintosh
Pages: 21

'‘My Dreams are of a Field Afar’ or Sonnets from the English: Silvina Ocampo’s relationship to British Poetry' by Fiona J. Mackintosh, explores the deep connections between the Argentine poet Silvina Ocampo and British poetry. Originally published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, this essay examines how Ocampo’s reading, translation, and writing were influenced by British poets. Mackintosh delves into Ocampo's life, her cultural milieu, and the transatlantic tensions inherent in Argentine cultural life during the first half of the 20th century. This scholarly work is essential for readers interested in literary criticism, translation studies, and the transatlantic literary exchange.

Essay Excerpt

"Compared with its fellow Latin American countries, Argentina has traditionally seen itself as set apart in some way, having a relatively high percentage of the population of European descent, as opposed to native American or African. Argentine culture does not have a glorious native past on which to draw, such as the Aztec heritage in Mexico or the Inca in Peru. This sense of a historical vacuum has produced a society in which, alongside post-independence nationalism and exaltation of such mythified archetypes as the figure of the ‘gaucho’ (usually a mestizo of a Hispanic father and Indian mother), European cultural developments have always played an important part in shaping the cultural life of the capital, Buenos Aires. This only intensifies with successive waves of European immigration from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, a time when the liberal president-to-be, Sarmiento, saw Argentina as peculiarly destined for receiving the ‘civilizing’ effects of European immigration."