Macedonio Fernández

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Macedonio Fernández

Macedonio Fernández (born June 1, 1874 in Buenos Aires ; † February 10, 1952 ibid) was an Argentine writer with a diverse work of novels, short stories, essays, poems and unclassifiable texts. As a pioneer of the avant-garde, he exerted a great influence on Argentine literature. Jorge Luis Borges called him in his eulogy for his friend a "demigod who has become an Argentine".

Life

Macedonio Fernández was the son of the landowner and officer Macedonio Fernández and his wife Rosa del Mazo Aguilar Ramos. Inspired by reading Walden or Life in the Woods ( Henry David Thoreau ), Fernández tried to live from and with nature as a high school student together with a group of like-minded people on an island in the Río Paraguay . After a short time he stopped this experiment and returned to his school, the Colegio Nacional Central. In the winter of 1887/88 he began to study law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and was able to successfully complete this degree in 1897 with his dissertation "De las personas".

Fernández was admitted to the bar in 1898 . The following year he married Elena de Obieta, with whom he had four children. After the death of his wife in 1920, he gave up his work as a lawyer and the children remained in the care of his grandparents.

Fernández was already a freelancer for Leopoldo Lugones and his newspaper “La Montaña” during his studies . Through this work he also made the acquaintance of José Ingenieros , Juan Justo and others.

In 1921 the Borges family returned from Switzerland. Jorge Luis Borges wrote about the meeting with Macedonio Fernández: “Perhaps the main event of my return was Macedonio Fernandéz. Of all the people I have met in my life - and I have met a lot of remarkable people - none of them impressed me as deeply and lastingly as Macedonio. ”Macedonio Fernández was already friends with Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam during his student days; now this friendship extended to his son Jorge Luis Borges - at that time a young poet before the publication of his first volume of poetry. In 1928 Fernández published No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos at the insistence of Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz and Leopoldo Marechal . Papeles de Recienvenido will follow next year . There are also first indications of the possible publication of the novel Museo de la Novela de la Eterna (only published posthumously in 1967). Macedonio Fernández himself described this novel as the “first good novel” - in contrast to this there was the “last bad novel”, Adriana Buenos Aires .

In 1947 Macedonio Fernández moved into the house of his son Adolfo, where he lived until his death.

reception

In the Argentine literature Macedonio Fernández holds a prominent position. As an important member of Grupo Florida , he published a lot in the literary magazine Martín Fierro on the avant-garde of Argentina.

Even in his early poetry, Fernández can no longer be counted as part of Modernismo and even before Lugones' “Lunario Sentimental” he made a name for himself with ultraism . Above all, he influenced his colleagues in the common literary circle Grupo Florida .

Works

Single issues

  • No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos . Manuel Gleizer, Buenos Aires 1928.
  • Papeles de Recienvenido . Cuadernos del Plata, Buenos Aires 1929.
  • Una novela que comienza . Ercilla, Santiago de Chile 1941 (preface by Luis Alberto Sánchez ).
  • Poemas . Guarania, México 1953 (preface by Natalicio González ).
  • Museo de la Novela de la Eterna . CEAL, Buenos Aires 1967 (preliminary remark by Adolfo de Obieta ).
  • No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos y otros escritos . CEAL, Buenos Aires 1967 (preliminary remark by Adolfo de Obieta).
  • Cuadernos de todo y nada . 2nd edition Corregidor, Buenos Aires 1990.

Work editions

  1. Papeles antiquos. Escritos 1892-1907 . 1981.
  2. Epistolario . 2nd edition 1991, ISBN 950-05-0635-1 .
  3. Teorías . 3rd edition 1997, ISBN 950-05-0584-3 .
  4. Papeles de recienvenido y continación de la nada . New edition 2004, ISBN 950-05-0530-4 .
  5. Adriana Buenos Aires. última novela mala . New edition 2005, ISBN 950-05-1595-4 .
  6. Museo de la Novela de la Eterna; primera novela buena . 1975.
  7. Relato, cuentos, poemas y misceláneas . ". 2004 edition, ISBN 950-05-0478-2 .
  8. No toda es vigilia de los ojos abiertos y otros escritos metafisicos . 1990, ISBN 950-05-0577-0 .
  9. Todo y nada . 1995, ISBN 950-05-0991-5 .

In German translation

literature

  • Álvaro Abós: Macedonio Fernández. La biografía impossible . Plaza & Janés, Buenos Aires 2002, ISBN 950-644-020-4 .
  • Waltraud Flammersfeld: Macedonio Fernández (1874–1952). Reflection and negation as a determination of modernity . LAnf, Frankfurt / M. 1976, ISBN 3-261-01777-5 .
  • Todd S. Garth: The self of the city. Macedonio Fernández, the Argentine Avant-Garde, and modernity in Buenos Aires . University Press, Lewisburg, Pa 2005, ISBN 978-0-8387-5615-7 .
  • Dieter Reichardt: Latin American authors. Literary dictionary and bibliography of German translations . Erdmann Verlag, Tübingen 1972, ISBN 3-7711-0152-2 , p. 62.
  • Martalucía Tamayo Fernández: Germán Arciniegas y Macedonio Fernández. Vidas paralelas postmodernas . University Press, Bogotá 2006, ISBN 958-683-869-2 .

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Lothar Müller : Beauty to Power. Macedonio Fernández is a forgotten master of Argentine literature . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 11, 2014, literature supplement, p. 3.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Fernández, Macedonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires , Argentina
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1952
Place of death Buenos Aires , Argentina