Rosa Chacel’s literary networks and routes in Argentina: autobiographical testimony and fictional context

Abstract

This article focuses on Rosa Chacel’s contribution to the Argentinian literary networks. Member of the Spanish “Generación del 27” who alternated her exile between Río de Janeiro and Buenos Aires during almost two decades, Rosa Chacel’s case is a good example of the opposition between the potentialities and obstacles posed by Argentinian society to the Spanish exiled writers. Living and working in Argentina was her first choice, because of Buenos Aires’ editorial power in the Hispanic world and her previous relationships with relevant editors in the city, as Guillermo de Torre and Victoria Ocampo. In spite of the many difficulties that she afirmed to have found for her fully integration in the literary society of the country, those decades of American exile were essential for her career development. To deepen into this question, it is especially useful to analyze the testimony of her personal and profesional activities in Buenos Aires (from the forties to the fifties), as it is reflected in her first volume diary, Alcancía. Ida (1982) and her Argentinian novel, La sinrazón (1960).