Celia de Diego: an Argentine writer along Rosa Chacel´s route and access door to a new Argentine network

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the Spanish writer Rosa Chacel and the Argentine writer Celia de Diego in the context of the Spanish thinker’s exile. The corpus analyzed consists of the letters De Diego sent to Chacel between 1948 and 1976 which are preserved in the archives of the Jorge Guillen Foundation in Valladolid (Spain). On the one hand, the study of this epistolary material has brought to light the relevance of a writer like De Diego, almost forgotten today, and, on the other hand, it has contributed to the retrieval of Chacel’s network of connections in Argentina. It was through this network that Chacel managed to participate in the most important intellectual circles in the country at the time. The paper will discuss both the professional aspects of the relationship and also the intimacy that developed between both writers at a time when the friendship between women who resisted gender conventions constituted a powerful source of mutual help We can also reveal part of the strategies undertaken by the Spanish writer to get her work published and be present in the appropriate space for its dissemination. The transnational approach of this study will facilitate the discovery of unacknowledged works of great quality and modernity, which had nevertheless been ignored by a mainly patriarchal and national canon, and will also reveal Chacel’s own strategies as she struggled to publish her work and gain visibility.