Silvina Ocampo

Silvina Ocampo (28 July 1903 – 14 December 1993) was an Argentine short story writer, poet, and artist. Ocampo's friend and collaborator Jorge Luis Borges called Ocampo "one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language, whether on this side of the ocean or on the other." Her first book was Viaje olvidado (1937), translated as Forgotten Journey (2019), and her final piece was Las repeticiones, published posthumously in 2006.

Before establishing herself as a writer, Ocampo was a visual artist. She studied painting and drawing in Paris where she met, in 1920, Fernand Léger and Giorgio de Chirico, forerunners of surrealism.

She received, among other awards, the Municipal Prize for Literature in 1954 and the National Poetry Prize in 1962.

Personal life

Ocampo was born to a wealthy family in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six daughters (Victoria, Angélica, Francisca, Rosa, Clara María, and Silvina) of Manuel Silvio Cecilio Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre Herrera. Her family resided on the Canary Islands before moving to Argentina in the mid-19th century. Ocampo was the sister of Victoria Ocampo, the founder and editor of the prestigious Argentine journal Sur.

Ocampo was educated at home by tutors and in Paris. Her family belonged to the upper bourgeoisie, a fact that allowed her to have a very complete education. She had three governesses (one French and two English), a Spanish teacher, and an Italian teacher. Because of this, the six sisters learned to read in English and French before Spanish. This trilingual training would later influence Ocampo's writing, according to Ocampo herself.

Her ancestors belonged to the Argentine aristocracy and owned extensive lands. Her great-great-great-great-grandfather, José de Ocampo, was governor of Cuzco before moving to Virreinato del Río de la Plata. Manuel José de Ocampo (her great-great-great-grandfather) was one of the first governors when independence was declared. Her great-grandfather Manuel José de Ocampo y González was a politician and candidate for president of the country. He was also a friend of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Her grandfather, Manuel Anselmo Ocampo, was a rancher. Another of her ancestors was Domingo Martinez de Irala, conqueror of Asunción and future governor of Río de la Plata and Paraguay. The brother of Ocampo's great-great-great-grandmother, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, was Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. Another distant relative is Juan Manuel de Rosas who was the main leader until 1852.

Her mother, Ramona Máxima Aguirre, was one of eight children. She enjoyed gardening and playing the violin. Her family was of Creole origins and religious. Her father, Manuel Silvio Cecilio Ocampo Regueira, was born in 1860 and was an architect. He was one of nine children and had a conservative character.

In winter, Ocampo visited her great-grandfather, who lived nearby, daily. During the summer, her family lived in a villa in San Isidro, a modern house that in its time had electricity and running water. Currently, this house (Villa Ocampo) is a UNESCO site and recognized as a historical monument. In the summer, she took classes on the second floor, where she learned the fundamentals that would later help her become a writer.

The critic Patricia Nisbet Klingenberg maintains, however, that as a child Ocampo "lived a lonely existence, relieved primarily by the companionship of various household workers [. . . ] This, then, is the place from which her works emerge, from memory and identification with those identified as other."

Two events that had a significant impact on Ocampo in her youth were the marriage of her sister Victoria and the death of her sister Clara. She stated that Victoria's marriage had taken away her youth: "Hubo un episodio de mi niñez que marcó mucho nuestra relación. Victoria me quitó la niñera que yo más quería, la que más me cuidó, la que más me mimó: Fanni. Ella me quería a mí más que a nadie. Fanni sabía que yo la adoraba, pero cuando Victoria se casó y se la llevó con ella nadie se atrevió a oponérsele" [There was an episode from my childhood that strongly marked our relationship. Victoria took away the nanny that I loved the most, the one who cared for me the most, the one who pampered me the most: Fanni. She loved me more than anyone else. Fanni knew I adored her, but when Victoria married and took her with her, no one dared to oppose her]. She also stated that she began to hate socializing once Clara died.

In 1908, Ocampo traveled to Europe for the first time with her family. Later she studied drawing in Paris with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Léger. Among her friends was the Italian writer Italo Calvino, who prefaced her stories. Back in Buenos Aires, she worked on painting with Norah Borges and María Rosa Oliver. She held various exhibitions, both individual and collective. When Victoria founded the magazine Sur in 1931, which published articles and texts by many important writers, philosophers, and intellectuals of the 20th century, Ocampo was part of the founding group. However, like Borges and Bioy Casares, she did not have a prominent role in the decisions about the content to be published, which was a task performed by Victoria and José Bianco.

In 1934, Ocampo met her future husband, the Argentine author Adolfo Bioy Casares. They married in 1940. The relationship between the two was complex, and Bioy openly had lovers. Some authors have described Ocampo as a victim, but others, such as Ernesto Montequin, have rejected this portrait: "Eso la pone en un lugar de minusválida. La relación con Bioy fue muy compleja; ella tuvo una vida amorosa bastante plena [. . .] La relación con Bioy podía hacerla sufrir, pero también la inspiraba" [That puts her in a handicapped place. The relationship with Bioy was very complex; she had a fairly full love life [. . . ] The relationship with Bioy Casares could make her suffer, but it also inspired her].

Ocampo and Bioy remained together until her death, despite her husband's frequent infidelities. In 1954, Bioy's extramarital daughter, Marta, was born. Ocampo adopted Marta and raised her as her own. Marta Bioy Ocampo died in an automobile accident shortly after Ocampo's own death. Bioy Casares's son by another mistress, Fabián Bioy, later won a lawsuit for the right to the estates of Ocampo and Bioy Casares; Fabián Bioy died in 2006.

Career and literary works

Ocampo began her career as a short story writer in 1936. Ocampo published her first book of short stories, Viaje olvidado, in 1937, followed by three books of poetry: Enumeración de la patria, Espacios métricos, and Los sonetos del jardín. She was a prolific writer, producing more than 175 pieces of fiction during one forty-year period.

Ocampo frequently collaborated with other writers. She wrote Los que aman, odian ("Those Who Love, Hate") with Bioy Casares in 1946, and with J. R. Wilcock she published the theatrical work Los Traidores in 1956. With Borges and Bioy Casares, Ocampo co-authored the celebrated Antología de la literatura fantástica in 1940, and also the Antología poética Argentina in 1941.

Before turning to writing, Ocampo had studied painting in Paris under the cubist Fernand Léger and proto-surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Ocampo did not abandon her artistic training; she produced illustrations for Borges' poetry and painted throughout her life. Borges perceived a connection between Ocampo's painting and poetry, writing that "like Rosetti and Blake, Silvina has come to poetry by the luminous paths of drawing and painting, and the immediacy and certainty of the visual image persist in her written pages."

Unpublished works by Ocampo are part of the Silvina Ocampo Collection at the University of Notre Dame.

Ocampo was awarded Argentina's National Prize for Poetry in 1962, among other literary awards.