Victoria Ocampo
Encyclopedia
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
writer and intellectual, described by Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
as La mujer más argentina ("the quintessential Argentine woman").
Best known as an advocate for others and as publisher of the legendary literary magazine Sur, she was also a writer and critic in her own right and one of the most prominent South American women of her time.
Her sister, Silvina Ocampo
Silvina Ocampo
Silvina Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine poet and short-fiction writer.Ocampo was born in Buenos Aires, the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. She was educated at home by tutors. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important...
, a writer also, was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.-Biography:Adolfo Bioy...
.
Biography
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
into a high-class society family, she was educated at home by a French governess. She would later write, "the alphabet-book in which I learned to read was French, as was the hand that taught me to draw those first letters."
She is sometimes said to have attended the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
: on page 39 of her biography of VO, Doris Meyer states that, during the family's 1906-1907 trip to Paris, the same during which she was etched by Paul César Helleu
Paul César Helleu
Paul César Helleu was a French artist best known for his portraits of many of the most famous and beautiful women of his time including the Duchess of Marlborough, the Countess of Greffulhe, the Marchesa Casati and Belle da Costa Greene.-Biography:He was born in Vannes, Brittany, France...
, the Ocampos allowed 17-year-old Victoria, "well-chaperoned", to audit some lectures at the Sorbonne and at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
. She remembered particularly enjoying Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
's lectures at the latter. She was not, of course, ever matriculated at either; her very old, traditional and rich family frowned on formal education for females, and so Victoria had none.
In 1912, Ocampo married Bernando de Estrada (aka Monaco Estrada). The marriage was not happy, and in 1920, the couple separated, and Ocampo began a 13-year affair with her husband's cousin Julián Martínez, a diplomat.
In Buenos Aires, she was a lynchpin of the intellectual scene of the 1920s and 1930s. Her first book, written in French, was De Francesca à Beatrice (1923?), a commentary on Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Divine Comedy. Other works include Domingos en Hyde Park; El Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
de Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
; Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
(Terra incógnita); a series called Testimonios (ten volumes); Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, Orlando y Cía; San Isidro
San Isidro
Isidro and Ysidro are Spanish forms of the personal name Isidore. San Isidro or San Ysidro may refer to:-People:* Agot Isidro , Filipina actress...
; 338171 T.E. (Lawrence of Arabia) (a biography of T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
) and a posthumously published autobiography. There is also an edited book of dialogues between Ocampo and Borges.
Perhaps of greater significance than her own writing, she was founder (1931) and publisher of the magazine Sur, the most important literary magazine of its time in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. Among the writers published in Sur were Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, Ernesto Sabato
Ernesto Sabato
Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...
, Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.-Biography:Adolfo Bioy...
, Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
, José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...
, Manuel Peyrou
Manuel Peyrou
Manuel Peyrou was an Argentine writer and journalist.-Life and work:Peyrou was born in San Nicolás de los Arroyos in 1902...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Enrique Anderson Imbert
Enrique Anderson Imbert
Enrique Anderson-Imbert was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer and literary critic.Born in Córdoba, Argentina, Anderson-Imbert graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. From 1940 until 1947 he taught at the University of Tucumán. In 1947, he joined the faculty of the University of...
, José Bianco, Santiago Davobe, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada
Ezequiel Martínez Estrada
Ezequiel Martínez Estrada was an Argentine writer, poet, essayist, and literary critic. An admired biographer and critic, he was often political in his writings, and was a confirmed anti-Peronist...
, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...
, Waldo Frank
Waldo Frank
Waldo Frank was a prolific novelist, historian, literary and social critic. Most well-known for his studies of Spanish and Latin American literature, Frank served as chairman of the First Americans Writers Congress and became the first president of the League of American Writers.-Biography:Frank...
, Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945...
, Eduardo Mallea
Eduardo Mallea
Eduardo Mallea was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nación.-Work:...
, Silvina Ocampo
Silvina Ocampo
Silvina Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine poet and short-fiction writer.Ocampo was born in Buenos Aires, the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. She was educated at home by tutors. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important...
(her younger sister), Alfonso Reyes
Alfonso Reyes
Alfonso Reyes Ochoa was a Mexican writer, philosopher and diplomat.-Early life:Alfonso Reyes parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa...
, and Enrique Pezzoni.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, she supported and edited from Argentina in collaboration with her friend and translator Pelegrina Pastorino, the
anti-Nazi magazine "Lettres Francaises" directed by Roger Caillois
Roger Caillois
Roger Caillois was a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on subjects as diverse as games, play and the sacred...
and in 1946 she was the only Argentinean who attended the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
.
In 1953, Ocampo was briefly imprisoned for her open opposition to the regime of Juan Domingo Perón.
She was made a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters in 1976 (the first woman ever admitted to the Academy; she formally took her seat on June 23, 1977). The "cultural dialog", initiated in 1977 by the de facto government but organized by UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
, was held in her home, Villa Ocampo
Villa Ocampo
Villa Ocampo is the former house of Victoria Ocampo , one of Latin America's greatest cultural figures, founder and director of Sur magazine...
, in San Isidro
San Isidro, Buenos Aires
San Isidro, Buenos Aires is a municipality in Greater Buenos Aires and one of the most affluent municipalities in Argentina. It is located in San Isidro Partido in the Buenos Aires Province....
, Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...
; she eventually donated the house to UNESCO.
At "Villa Ocampo" Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
and Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
had been her guests, also Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
, José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...
, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...
, Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
, Rafael Alberti
Rafael Alberti
Rafael Alberti Merello was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27....
, etc. Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
dedicated his 1973 novel The Honorary Consul
The Honorary Consul
The Honorary Consul is a British thriller novel by Graham Greene, published in 1973. It was one of the author's favourite works.- Plot summary :...
to her, "with love, and in memory of the many happy weeks I have passed at San Isidro and Mar del Plata
Mar del Plata
Mar del Plata is an Argentine city located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata is the second largest city of Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" had apparently the sense of "sea of the Río de la Plata region" or "adjoining sea to the Río de la Plata"...
" and in 1934 she was the recitant in the American premiere of André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
-Igor Stravinsky's opera-ballet Perséphone
Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....
at the Teatro Colón conducted by the composer.
Victoria Ocampo died in Buenos Aires in 1979, and is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery
La Recoleta Cemetery
La Recoleta Cemetery is a famous cemetery located in the exclusive Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It contains the graves of notable people, including Eva Perón, Raúl Alfonsín, and several presidents of Argentina.- History :...
in Buenos Aires.
Honors
- Maria Moors Cabot prizeMaria Moors Cabot prizeThe Maria Moors Cabot Prizes are the oldest international awards in the field of journalism. They pick what the Trustees of Columbia University see as journalistic contributions to inter-American understanding.-Award:...
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- Doctor honoris causa - Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the... - Premio de Honor de la SADE
- Gold Medal - Académie françaiseAcadémie françaiseL'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
Biopics
- Her life was portrayed in a film for TV in 1984 "Four Faces of Victoria", directed by Oscar Barney Finn with four actresses playing the different ages of Victoria (Carola Reyna, Nacha Guevara, Julia von Grolman and China ZorrillaChina ZorrillaChina Zorrilla is an award-winning Uruguayan theater, film and television actress....
). - Her attitude and political views were depicted in Monica Ottino's theater play "Eva and Victoria", an imaginary confrontation between young Eva PerónEva PerónMaría Eva Duarte de Perón was the second wife of President Juan Perón and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is often referred to as simply Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita.She was born in the village of Los Toldos in...
and old Victoria. The play ran successfully during the eighties with Soledad SilveyraSoledad SilveyraSoledad Silveyra , is a prominent TV, theater and cinema Argentine actress.She has made over 65 TV and film appearances since 1964. Most of her appearances have been in film and TV where she made her debut in the soap opera El Amor tiene cara de mujer in 1964 as a 12 year old...
and China ZorrillaChina ZorrillaChina Zorrilla is an award-winning Uruguayan theater, film and television actress....
as Ocampo.