Silvina Ocampo's Terrible, Evil World
"She was unique, different, seductive, like no one else in the world. That’s what people who knew her say." Thus begins Mariana Enriquez's profile of poet and writer Silvina Ocampo at Lit Hub, translated by Megan McDowell. The article opens with a dive into Ocampo's biography and concludes with a look at her late novel, The Promise, published last month by City Lights. Picking up from the top:
They try to evoke her, hands in the air, eyes lit up by memory, and when they start to reference the anecdote that would define Silvina Ocampo’s singular brilliance, they shake their heads and smile shyly. “Whenever I try to tell a story about her it always seems silly. She comes off as crazy, or stupid. And she was absolutely neither of those things.” They can’t call her up or bring back that disquieting fascination that so bewitched them. Silvina took her mystery with her.
Those who remember her have only snippets that don’t form a complete image. Silvina walking along the roadside, alone, when she spent the summer in the countryside. Silvina apologizing because she didn’t have sugar for the coffee, because the cockroaches had eaten it. Silvina observing a parade of ants: “If they were capable of thought, they would commit suicide.” Silvina refusing to have her picture taken, wearing her perpetual white-framed sunglasses and her men’s clothing. They remember her legs—beautiful—and her impossible voice, broken and hesitant; they remember her talking on the phone for hours, lying on the sofa. They whisper that she was psychic; she predicted storms, passions, misfortunes.
For many years, Silvina Ocampo, eccentric aristocrat, wife of Adolfo Bioy Casares, intimate friend of Jorge Luis Borges, was the only woman recognized as a writer in Argentina. Of course there were others, contemporaries and predecessors, but it was her name that was taken for granted and considered to be enough. Her social position and her relationships contributed to this unanimous recognition.
Read on at Lit Hub.