The Guardian Illuminates Norah Lange's Brilliance
James Reith implores readers to examine Argentinian poet and fiction writer Norah Lange's writing in translation, in particular, a forthcoming novel translated by Charlotte Whittle called People in the Room. About Lange, Reith writes, "Outside Greek mythology, muses are passive; artists are active. One inspires, the other creates. The two roles are not mutually exclusive, though it is rare to be remembered as both. Norah Lange was renowned for her beauty and flamboyance." From there:
A young Jorge Luis Borges, arguably Argentina’s most famous literary export, once gushed about “the double brilliance of [Lange’s] hair and her haughty youth”. These days, Lange is largely remembered as a muse for Borges and for the Martin Fierro group of writers and the Ultraist literary movement.
There’s just one problem with this narrative: Lange was an author herself. She wrote groundbreaking, avant-garde fiction that was well received during her lifetime.
So why is she not remembered? In 1959, Lange was awarded Argentina’s highest literary prize, the Gran Premio de Honor of the Argentine Writers’ Association – the same award Borges won in 1944. Yet Lange’s image as a muse, as a footnote to her male contemporaries, persists. In her native Argentina, only a few of her 11 books remain in print, and only now – 68 years after its original release – is the first translation of one of her novels, People in the Room, being published in English.
Born in 1905 in Buenos Aires, Lange was already collaborating with major writers in her late teens, as her mother hosted literary tertulias at their family home on Calle Tronador. Following several books of poetry, she published two semi-autobiographical novels. The first was about an adulterous love triangle, thought to be based on her own experiences with Borges and the poet Oliverio Girondo, whom she later married. The second was about a lone woman travelling on a ship with 30 sailors from Buenos Aires to Oslo. Both received mixed reviews due to their “indecent” subject matter, and Lange would later disown them – but they are early examples of, what KM Sibbald calls, “her vanguard feminism”.