Fever and Epic: Raúl González Tuñón, Correspondent in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

The poet Raúl González Tuñon is one of the most important Argentinean intellectuals for his work as correspondent in Spain. After reviewing briefly the biography and the intellectual work done by González Tuñón until 1937, when he comes to Spain as special envoy of La Nueva España, I focus on the analysis of many chronicles, characterized mainly by a structure of short and heterodox fragments that allows the author the introduction among them what could be more properly considered as letters, texts close to lyric field or poems. Later, I review the stay of Raúl González Tuñón in Chile in the company with another poet, Pablo Neruda, emphasizing the impact produced in the Chilean cultural field by the two poets who come from a country in war. Finally, I relate the newspaper reports of Raúl González Tuñón with his strictly literary work done between 1936 and 1939. In addition to read it in palimpsest key I suggest the reading of all his texts of those years as fragments of a great epic about the Spanish Civil War.