Juana Manuela Gorriti

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Juana Manuela Gorriti, illustration from the Almanaque Sud-americano of 1891/92

Juana Manuela Gorriti (born July 16, 1816 in Horcones , Departamento Rosario de la Frontera , Salta province , † November 6, 1892 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine writer and journalist . She spent many years of her life in Peru and is therefore also counted among the representatives of Peruvian literature.

Life

Juana Manuela Gorriti was born in 1816 in the province of Salta , in the far northwest of Argentina. Gorriti spent her youth as an exile in Bolivia , as a mature woman she lived for many years in Lima and in old age she stayed in different hotels in Buenos Aires, so that she said of herself that she felt like “an eternal stranger, outside and inside me Homeland". It is therefore difficult to assign them to one of the two national literatures of Argentina or Peru as an alternative .

Gorriti grew up on a large, castle-like estate, the Castillo de Miraflores near Salta. Her father, José Ignacio de Gorriti , was a general of the Argentine War of Independence against motherland Spain and a member of parliament and came from one of the richest families in his province. However, he had invested all his fortune in the independence movement, only to be chased away with disgrace and disgrace in the course of the ensuing civil war, even on charges of treason. He had to flee into exile in Bolivia in 1831 and his property was confiscated by law in 1832 . Juana Manuela remained self-taught because as a rebellious child she refused to go to school systematically. Her parents sent her to Salta, to the Salesian convent school , because her father was an advocate of women's education . To do this, she first had to be weaned as she was still breastfed by her mother and older sister at the age of 7. She couldn't stand the strict school rules and was sent back to the country, where she ran around freely and unrestrained. She experienced the turmoil of the War of Independence, because all of her relatives and their friends were deeply involved, for example Martín Miguel de Güemes . Much of it later found its way into her literary works, often embellished with fantastic elements. She was an avid reader of romantic works and an admirer of George Sand ; like them, she disguised herself as a man on her travels.

Gorriti married on April 20, 1833, at the age of 16, the 22-year-old Bolivian officer Manuel Isidoro Belzú , who resembled the heroes of her favorite authors Alexandre Dumas , Walter Scott , Stendhal ; Belzú led an adventurous life between uprisings and revolutions. His role model was Giuseppe Garibaldi in Italy, he represented democratic ideas, was himself a simple man from the people and very popular with the Indians - he was called "Tata Belzú" (Father Belzú) by them and venerated like a saint, he wanted land overthrow for everyone and the aristocracy. Belzú would later become general and in 1848 president of Bolivia. With him she moved from one garrison to another ( Sucre , Potosí , La Paz , Oruro ), opened several literary salons and, while her husband was absent, led an independent, eccentric social life for the time . Their daughters were born at short intervals: Edelmira on February 2, 1834 and Mercedes the following year.

Juana Manuela finally left her husband in 1841 because their characters were apparently incompatible. When she was not yet 25, she was already in exile in Peru, first in Arequipa and later in Lima; after separating from her husband, she led a very liberal life as a single woman. The older of her two legitimate daughters, Edelmira, lived from then on with her father in Bolivia, the younger, Mercedes, with her mother in Peru. Juana Manuela Gorriti never called himself, as is customary in the Spanish-speaking area for a married woman, with his name as an addition (ie: "Gorriti de Belzú "). Only after his violent death on March 23, 1865 did she take on the role of wife again: she happened to be in La Paz and, when she found out about the murder, faced his murderers in a dramatic scene and took the corpse into her own house . Shortly afterwards she dedicated a biographical sketch to Belzú in which she only hinted at her role as wife, even speaking of herself as of a stranger in the third person.

Juana Manuela Gorriti (from the book Vida de Grandes Argentinos )

In 1842 she returned to her hometown for a short time; she mastered the arduous journey from Bolivia to Salta across the Andes disguised as a man. Instead of Miraflores Castle, however, she only found its ruins, which inspired the story of Gubi Amaya ; this experience was a great shock to her.

In 1848 she moved to Lima, at a time when the former capital of the Viceroyalty and now the Republic of Peru was flourishing, a city in a mood of change, at the time of the introduction of gas lighting , railways - the first in Latin America - and steam shipping . This modernization , the profound social changes, the new are reflected in her work, especially in her chronicles , which are chronicles of progress.

She later had two illegitimate children, Julio and Clorinda, from a much younger man named Julio de Sandoval. He does not appear in any of her works, not even in her memories, but she lived happily with him for ten years in the 1950s. After 1860 she gave birth - probably from another father - to a son whose name was unknown and who died early. She ran a prestigious private school, to which the best families in Lima sent their daughters, and was thus able to finance her own living. In 1866, on the occasion of an attack by the Spanish fleet on the port of Callao , Gorriti excelled as a medic and received a gold medal from the Peruvian government. Soon after, her young son died, and then Clorinda too.

In February 1875 she traveled by ship to Buenos Aires, where she met the radical feminist Juana Manso de Noronha and was finally half-heartedly honored from various quarters: the Senate and Chamber of Deputies passed their own law as compensation for the expropriation of her father. From then on she received a state pension of 200 pesos in reparation ; However, she felt that this was "alms", especially since she had to commit to stay in Argentina. She needed an official permit to go back to Lima for another year. She received a poetry album from her fellow writers on September 18, 1875, containing sixty poems written especially for her, and the ladies of Buenos Aires organized a ceremony on September 24 at which they presented her with a gold star. In November of the same year Gorriti returned to Lima, where she was enthusiastically received.

In 1876 the Salon Juana Manuela Gorritis was founded in Lima, an institution that was concerned with both knowledge and the aesthetic enjoyment of this knowledge. 'Coronations' of poets such as B. Clorinda Matto de Turner (1877) took place, literary bets were made, the world and self-image of an avant-garde was formulated there in social gatherings. A large number of the participants were women, and an extraordinary number of “women's issues” were dealt with, which is why Gorriti is also considered a forerunner of the feminist movement in Latin America . The salon was, so to speak, the “antechamber of the literary public”. For the first time women spoke up as groups, but often got caught up in the “bad conscience discourse”, as if they had to justify themselves if they did something that was not foreseen in the role ascriptions for women in the 19th century. What happened in this private salon was so important in Lima's cultural life that it was reported in the capital's newspapers like opera performances or concerts. The files of these meetings from July 19 to September 21, 1892, were published. Gorriti also campaigned for young fellow writers such as Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera .

After her Peruvian visa expired, Gorriti returned to Buenos Aires by sea in late 1877. In January 1878 she traveled to the north of Argentina because she wanted to visit her homeland, but only got as far as Tucumán because of heavy rains and floods .

In 1886, at the age of 70, she managed to visit the scenes of her childhood in Salta again under unspeakable strain and to learn that the children and grandchildren of the former mortal enemies had reconciled themselves in the internal disputes, and even married each other, which they had irritated, but ultimately also pleased. After she also had to bury her daughter Mercedes young, she was exhausted and drained at the end of her life. The humid climate of Buenos Aires also affected her health: in the last years of her life she suffered from a very painful illness, probably neuralgia , and eventually developed pneumonia . Juana Manuela Gorriti died on November 6, 1892 in Buenos Aires. She received a state funeral for 1000 pesos; Obituaries and articles about her immediately appeared. With her one of the last eyewitnesses of the Argentine wars of independence died.

plant

Juana Manuela Gorriti 1900

Assignment and meaning

It is difficult to assign Gorritis to one of the generations customary in Argentine literary historiography: She is too young for the so-called "37s generation", but too old for the realistic and practical-oriented "80s generation". Gorriti is a typically romantic writer: she exaggerates feelings and exaggerates the national, patriotism . She is also important for the development of the romantic movement in Latin America, because she has gathered a whole circle of younger romantic male writers who promoted her and who in turn cultivated her.

Work characteristic

In reality, most of her prose texts can be assigned to the genre “ narrative ”, whereby she cultivates a mix between Inca legends , episodes of independence, historical-political narratives and autobiographical reports. What they all have in common is their 'Americanist' character: they are based on typically Latin American elements, such as the landscape. She can also be described as the founder of fantastic literature in Argentina: Elements of the extraordinary and strange play a major role, including magnetism and spiritualism , superstition , magic , occultism , dream and delusional states, para-scientific phenomena. But the parapsychological also causes the reader to feel insecure on the political-historical level; the foundations of what is considered secure are shaken. Gorriti thus became the forerunner of writers such as Leopoldo Lugones and Rubén Darío . She uses the technique of saying and keeping quiet at the same time and can thus often express the unspeakable: erotic and suppressed desire, the secret, the forbidden; a clear interpretation is made more difficult. Some of Gorriti's historical stories refer to the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas and have heroines whose behavior deviates from what is prescribed; this often leads to failure and madness. Often there are women who dress up as men or who somehow go through a split in personality (motif of the doppelganger ).

chronology

Title page of Panoramas de la vida from 1876

Gorriti publishes first stories in serial form in Lima newspapers, for example La Quena (The Quena). This narrative becomes the model for all of her later writings: in La novia del muerto, for example, she repeats the sequence death, madness, sacrilege ; the female heroes are literally torn apart by the consequences of men's struggles. It is a very complex work and is about impossible love, which is nevertheless realized, against all prohibitions and in a macabre environment. The male hero, Hernán, is a grandson of Atahualpa , the last Inca ruler murdered by Gonzalo Pizarro . The heroine Rosa is desired by two men, in this world and in the hereafter, but she still cannot be happy. Through the intrigues of a black slave, Hernán believes that his beloved has married and becomes a monk, while Rosa marries an unloved man. After much vicissitudes, Hernán returns to Lima and there is a reunion while he is holding mass. Gorriti shows a tendency towards anti-clerical criticism in many of her later texts . The appearance of the text becomes a scandal, some scenes have been classified as immoral. In any case, Gorriti gained great popularity, especially among the female audience. As a successor to Edgar Allan Poe , she shows her love for horror scenes and macabres. She ventures into new territory, in a literary genre that previously only existed in Europe, but not in Latin America, and also adopts the female perspective as her own.

Her first major work Sueños y realidades (Dreams and Realities) was a great success and cemented Gorriti's reputation as a writer, from now on she enjoyed international renown. These are two volumes of stories that were written between 1842 and 1864 or published in magazines, mostly in a romantic style.

Title page of El mundo de los recuerdos from 1886

The novel series Panoramas de la vida (Panoramas of Life) appeared in Buenos Aires in 1876. The subtitle: "Novelas, fantasías, leyendas y descripciones americanas" is also a reference to the genres used: novels, fantasies, legends and descriptions of South American landscapes. Sometimes it also contains fantastic stories, childhood memories and travel descriptions. The most important text in the collection is called Peregrinaciones de un alma triste (pilgrimages of a sad soul): the title recalls Peregrinaciones de una paria (1838) by Flora Tristan , a Franco-Peruvian author who reports on her unsuccessful attempt to live in Peru in the to be legitimized to the paternal family, a book that had fallen victim to censorship and public burning. The text is dedicated to the "Ladies of Buenos Aires". The main plot consists of conversations between two friends who are Argentinean but who are in Lima; these create an intimate ambience, their being together creates the text, so to speak. The model for Gorriti is the Arabian Nights , because the main character Laura, who tells her adventures, identifies with Scheherazade , who also saves herself from death by telling stories . Laura can “write herself healthy” by telling the story: She suffered from tuberculosis , which was incurable at the time. She breaks out of family ties and becomes a “pilgrim”, a traveler who takes her life into her own hands.

La tierra natal (The home earth) was created in 1886 when Gorriti returned to her homeland for the second time at the age of 70: These are biographical sketches of almost always female figures. The framework narration forms the train journey from Buenos Aires to Salta, during which she overhears various stories from her fellow travelers.

Title page of Cocina ecléctica from 1890

El mundo de los recuerdos (The World of Memories) is financed by the provincial government in Salta and also contains very short, mostly autobiographical sketches and landscape descriptions.

Gorriti later shows that even in old age she can keep up with the phenomena of modernization: The novel Oasis en la vida (Oasis of Life) is dedicated to an insurance company, “La Buenos Aires”, which acts as a sponsor ; The aim is to convince readers to invest in Latin American banks and buy insurance policies - an early form of product placement, so to speak . The subject is the writer's profession; In it she defends the buying and selling of fictions as a means for women to ensure survival, even to find material happiness.

In 1890 she published the Cocina ecléctica (Eclectic Kitchen), a special case within her literary work, because there are 200 recipes that she has brought back from various trips or that have been sent to her. Gorriti apologizes in the preface that she has never been a good housewife because she has always lived in the world of books and that she now wants to make up for this with this book. She understands this work also in competition with La cocina española antigua by her Spanish writer colleague Emilia Pardo Bazán .

Finally, in the year of death, Lo íntimo (Intimes), an autobiography in the form of diary fragments , which covers the period from 1874 to 1892, appears.

reception

Bust of the writer in the Plaza Gorriti in Rosario de la Frontera

Efrón describes Gorriti as "a famous and recognized writer, the most important of the 19th century in Argentine literature and one of the three women who founded Latin American literature". Rosalba Aliaga Sarmiento also describes her as " Argentina's first female novelist ".

A commonplace that one can find again and again in books about Juana Manuela Gorriti is that her own eventful life would provide enough material for a novel , and Martha Mercader actually wrote one: Juanamanuela, mucha mujer . Whose title was again in the Book of Amelia Royo satirizes : Juana Manuela, mucho papel . The critic Ricardo Rojas says of her that she is "the strangest woman's temperament that the Argentine earth has ever produced," which is of course a romantic cliché. In the German-speaking world, the author, who is very well known in Argentina, has hardly been noticed.

See also

literature

Complete edition

Gorriti, Juana Manuela: Obras completas , in 6 volumes, Salta (Arg.): Fundación del Banco del Noroeste (1993-1999). [Investigación y cuidado de la ed .: Alicia Martorell] ISBN 987-99027-1-8

Single track

Spanish

  • Cincuenta y tres cartas inéditas a Ricardo Palma. Fragmentos de lo íntimo. Buenos Aires / Lima: 1882-1891. Edición crítica, estudio preliminar, coordinación de dossier y diccionario a cargo de Graciela Batticuore. Notas en colaboración con César Salas Guerrero. Lima: Universidad de San Martín de Porres, 2004 ISBN 9972-54-114-2 .
  • Cocina ecléctica . Madrid: Aguilar, 1999. ISBN 950-511-492-3
  • Oasis en la vida . Buenos Aires: Ediciones Simurg, 1998. ISBN 987-9243-00-5
  • Peregrinaciones de una alma dreary . Ed. de Mary G. Berg. 1st ed., Basada en la ed. De Buenos Aires, impr. y Librerías de Mayo. Buenos Aires: Stock Cero, 2006. ISBN 987-1136-42-0
  • El pozo del Yocci . 1. ed., Basada en la ed. De Buenos Aires, Impr. Y Librerías de Mayo, 1876. Buenos Aires: Stock Cero, 2006. ISBN 987-1136-41-2
  • La tierra natal . 1st ed., Basada en la ed. De Buenos Aires, Félix Lajouane, 1889. Buenos Aires: Stock Cero, 2005. ISBN 987-1136-36-6
  • La tierra natal: Lo íntimo (Coleccion Autobiografias, Memorias y Libros Olvidados). Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de Las Artes, 2000. ISBN 950-9807-48-6

English

  • Dreams and Realities: Selected Fiction of Juana Manuela Gorriti: Selected Fictions of Juana Manuela Gorriti (Library of Latin America). Ed. by Francine Masiello, transl. by Sergio Waisman. Oxford University Press Inc, USA: 2003. ISBN 0-19-511738-7

Secondary literature

  • María Cristina Arambel Guiñazú, Claire Emilie Martín: Las mujeres toman la palabra. Escritura femenina del siglo XIX en Hispanoamérica . Vol. 1. Iberoamericana et al., Madrid et al. 2001, ISBN 84-8489-009-0 .
  • Graciela Batticuore: El taller de la escritora. Veladas Literarias de Juana Manuela Gorriti. Lima - Buenos Aires (1876-7-1892) . Viterbo, Rosario 1999, ISBN 950-845-082-7 , ( Biblioteca tesis Ensayo ).
  • Analía Efrón: Juana Gorriti. Una biografía íntima . Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires 1998, ISBN 950-07-1463-9 .
  • Lea Fletcher (Ed.): Mujeres y cultura en la Argentina del siglo XIX . Feminaria Editora, Buenos Aires 1994, ISBN 987-99025-6-4 , (Articles, Congress, Buenos Aires June 1-3 , 1992).
  • Bonnie Frederick: Wily Modesty. Argentine Women Writers, 1860-1910 . Arizona State University, Tempe AZ 1998, ISBN 0-87918-086-2 .
  • Marzena Grzegorcyk: Lost space. Juana Manuela Gorriti's postcolonial geography . In: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. Tesserae 8, 2002, 1, ISSN  1350-7494 , pp. 55-69.
  • Cristina Iglesia: El ajuar de la patria. Ensayos críticos sobre Juana Manuela Gorriti . Feminaria Editora, Buenos Aires 1993, ISBN 987-99025-3-X
  • Gabriele Küppers: Peruvian authors before the turn of the century. Literature and journalism as an emancipation project with Clorinda Matto de Turner . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1989, ( European university publications series 24: Ibero-Romanic languages ​​and literatures 20, ISSN  0721-3565 ), (at the same time: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 1988).
  • María Gabriela Mizraje: Argentinas de Rosas a Perón. (Mariquita Sánchez, Juana Manso, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Eduarda Mansilla, Emma de la Barra, Alfonsina Storni, Norah Lange, Victoria Ocampo, Beatriz Guido, Alejandra Pizarnik, Griselda Gambaro) . Editorial Biblos, Buenos Aires, ISBN 950-786-223-4 , ( Biblioteca de las mujeres 9).
  • María Gabriela Mizraje: Juana Manuela Gorriti . In: Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos No. 639, Sept. 2003, ISSN  1131-6438 : Dossier: Escritoras argentinas del siglo XIX . Pp. 31-39.
  • Hebe Beatriz Molina: La narrativa dialògica de Juana Manuela Gorriti . Ed. de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universita Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza 1999, ISBN 950-774-053-8 .
  • Amelia Royo (Ed.): Juanamanuela, mucho papel. Algunas lecturas críticas de textos de Juana Manuela Gorriti . Ed. del Robledal, Salta 1999, ISBN 987-9364-02-3 .
  • Beatriz Urraca: Juana Manuela Gorriti and the persistence of memory . In: Latin American Research Review . 34, 1999, 1, ISSN  0023-8791 , pp. 151-173.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. The author's date of birth is controversial; in some literary stories the year 1818 and June 15 are also mentioned. According to statements in Hebe Beatriz Molina's dissertation in 1999, the date of birth on July 16, 1816, during the so-called Congreso de Tucumán , appears very likely (see the arguments mentioned there: Molina, Hebe Beatriz (1999): La narrativa dialógica de Juana Manuela Gorriti Mendoza: Ed. De la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Univ. Nacional de Cuyo, pp. 471–472), but there are reliable sources that list June 15, 1818, and this date appears on some memorial stones , Statues etc. in their home province. The year 1812 is less likely, the third alternative mentioned by Graciela Batticuore in her edition of letters from Juana Manuela Gorriti to Ricardo Palma ( Cincuenta y tres cartas inéditas a Ricardo Palma. Fragmentos de lo íntimo. Buenos Aires - Lima: 1882-1891 . Edición crítica, estudio preliminar, coordinación de dossier y diccionario a cargo de Graciela Batticuore. Notas en colaboración con César Salas Guerrero. Lima: Universidad de San Martín de Porres, 2004, p. XXV.). It seems that the author herself, in a kind of 'romantic coquetry ' in her memoir, 'turned her age back' by two years in order to appear younger than she actually was.
  2. See Fletcher, Lea (1994): Mujeres y cultura en la Argentina del siglo XIX . Buenos Aires: Feminaria Editora, p. 18.
  3. See Efrón, Analía (1998): Juana Gorriti. Una biografía íntima . Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, p. 22ff.
  4. Her husband, Jorge Córdoba, was also President of Bolivia from 1855 to 1857, until he too was assassinated.
  5. ^ Who would later become a recognized poet, Mercedes Belzú de Dorado; she died in 1879.
  6. See Efrón 1998, pp. 121f.
  7. See Efrón 1998, pp. 171ff.
  8. In reality, when she was old, she traveled back and forth between Argentina and Peru and Bolivia, but had to apply for a separate visa
  9. See Mary Berg's foreword in the edition of Peregrinaciones de una alma triste , p. Xviii.
  10. See Küppers, Gabriele (1989): Peruvian authors before the turn of the century. Literature and journalism as an emancipation project with Clorinda Matto de Turner . Frankfurt a. M./Bern/New York / Paris: Peter Lang (= Europäische Hochschulschriften, 24), p. 74.
  11. Küppers 1989, p. 82.
  12. Küppers 1989, p. 78.
  13. See Efrón 1998, p. 180.
  14. See Graciela Batticuore 1999.
  15. See Mary Berg, Foreword to Peregrinaciones , p. Xviii.
  16. See Efrón 1998, pp. 205ff.
  17. This is shaped by the models of European Romanticism; most of their authors write because of the Rosas dictatorship in exile, such as Esteban Echeverría , Domingo Faustino Sarmiento or Juan Bautista Alberdi .
  18. The year 1880 marked an important turning point in Argentine history: the transition to the central state, with the establishment of Buenos Aires as the capital, the conclusion of the so-called "Campaña del Desierto", i.e. the military elimination of the last remaining indigenous cultures in Patagonia , as well as the beginning of massive European immigration . This year, in which Julio Argentino Roca takes over the presidency, is seen as the key date for the transition from 'mythical' to 'modern' Argentina (see History of Argentina ).
  19. See Efrón 1998, pp. 114f.
  20. See Arambel-Guiñazú, María Cristina / Martín, Claire Emilie (2001): Las mujeres toman la palabra. Escritura femenina del siglo XIX en Hispanoamérica . Vol I. Madrid / Frankfurt a. M .: Iberoamericana / Vervuert, p. 132.
  21. See Arambel-Guiñazú / Martín 2001, pp. 133ff.
  22. See Arambel-Guiñazú / Martín 2001, pp. 135f.
  23. See Arambel-Guiñazú / Martín 2001, p. 139.
  24. written between 1842 and 1844, published in El Comercio .
  25. See Efrón 1998, p. 112.
  26. See Efrón 1998, p. 123.
  27. published in Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Mayo, Carlos Casavalle Editor, 1865
  28. See Efrón 1998, p. 170.
  29. ^ Imprentas y Librerías de Mayo, editor Carlos Casavalle
  30. See Efrón 1998, p. 102.
  31. See Arambel-Guiñazú / Martín 2001, p. 141.
  32. Buenos Aires: Félix Lajouane, 1889
  33. Published in Buenos Aires, Félix Laouane, 1886
  34. Cf. María Gabriela Mizraje: "Juana Manuela Gorriti", in: Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos No. 639 (Sept. 2003): Dossier: "Escritoras argentinas del siglo XIX", p. 38.
  35. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de M. Biedma, 1888
  36. Buenos Aires: Felix Lajouane Editor
  37. Cit. Fletcher 1994, p. 80.
  38. Buenos Aires: Ramón Espasa Editor, 1892
  39. 1998, p. 65.
  40. 1938, quoted in Fletcher 1994, p. 64.
  41. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1980. The title is an appreciative play on words and could possibly be translated as: "Juanamanuela, a great woman".
  42. Salta: Ed. del Robledal, 1999. The title is also a play on words that refers to the first and could best be translated as: "Juanamanuela, Much Ado About Nothing".
  43. Cit. Fletcher 1994, p. 64.