We continue The Indy’s Beyond Borges series with Ricardo Güiraldes, author of one of the two most important regional novels to have emerged from Latin America during the 20th century.
In his epic ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, Güiraldes transformed the cultural heritage of the Argentine gaucho into an enduring national myth, resulting in the celebration of his novel as an instant classic and the elegy of a bygone era.
Güiraldes’ gaucho entered literature already an emblem of the past, and is often held up as the image of a true gaucho.
Having journeyed in Argentine writing from the uncivilised barbarian put forward by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, through Bartolomé Hidalgo’s courageous and patriotic war hero, Estanislao del Campo’s backward and uncultured laughing stock and José Hernández’s persecuted citizen-turned-criminal; Güiraldes’ stylised portrayal helped cement a positive and prevailing image of the Argentine gaucho.
But whilst the novel marked a return to the themes of the gauchesque and was in keeping with the genre in that it assumed the voice of a gaucho narrator, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ made little attempt to imitate the same local vocabulary or dialect found in earlier examples of gaucho literature.
In employing the polished techniques of European writers in a work that was at once European in flair and Argentine in nature, Güiraldes essentially refined the Latin American novel.
Reaching a new generation and a new audience, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ was heralded an instant classic.
As the first novel to receive such immediate acclaim and the last important writing to emerge on the gaucho theme, it gained more critical attention during the 20th century than perhaps any other work of Argentine writing.
Retaining its relevance and its following several generations on, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’ remains one of the most-treasured texts in Argentine writing, and is still considered the masterpiece of all literature pertaining to the Argentine gaucho.
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