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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.Cobas Carral, Andrea. "Modos de refundarse. Los casos de Borges, Bioy y Silvina Ocampo" en María Pia López (comp.) La década infame y los escritores suicidas. Buenos Aires, Paradiso, 2007: 1. She studied painting and drawing in Paris where she met, in 1920, Fernand Léger and Giorgio de Chirico, forerunners of surrealism.Ocampo, Silvina. "Prólogo" Antología: Cuentos De La "nena Terrible" Ed. Patricia Nisbet Klingenberg. Doral, FL: Stockcero, 2013. xiv
She received, among other awards, the Municipal Prize for Literature in 1954 and the National Poetry Prize in 1962.
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 training. 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.Carraud, Claudio (14 December 2009). " Silvina Ocampo: su vida y su obra es un enigma que vale la pena descifrar". Análisis digital. 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 Cusco 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." Villa María, fundada por orden del patrón Ocampo". El diario del centro del país. 24 September 2017. Retrieved 2 May 2018. 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. "El temperamento sanguíneo de los Ocampo". Bugle. 3 July 2011. Retrieved 20 May 2018.
Her mother, Ramona Máxima Aguirre, was one of eight children. She enjoyed gardening and playing the violin. Her family was of Creole peoples 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."Klingenberg, Patricia Nisbet, 1950- (1999). 9780838753897, Bucknell University Press. ISBN 9780838753897
Two events that had a significant impact on Ocampo in her youth were the marriage of her sister Victoria Ocampo 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" (2025). 9789871450619, Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. ISBN 9789871450619 There. 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 Ocampo 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 Ocampo and José Bianco.Pichon Riviere, Marcelo (22 August 1999). El tercer hombre. Revista Ñ. Archived from the original on 21 August 2016. Retrieved 15 October 2014.
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 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.Dujovne Ortiz, Alicia (February 6, 2005). Adolfo Bioy Casares y Silvina Ocampo, la extraña pareja. La Nación. In 1954, Bioy's extramarital daughter, Marta, was born. Ocampo adopted Marta and raised her as her own.Garzón, Raquel (September 14, 2014). La herencia de Bioy: amores secretos y muertes en un juicio de película. Bugle. 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.
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.
Despite the initial negative reviews of Viaje olvidado, the book came to be considered a fundamental text within the writer's collection of works, introducing readers to the features and themes that would characterize her future works. A few years later, Ocampo collaborated with Borges and Bioy Casares in the preparation of two anthologies: Antología de la literatura fantástica (1940), with a prologue by Bioy, and Antología poética Argentina (1941). In 1942, she introduced her first two books of poetry, Enumeración de la Patria and Espacios métricos. From then on, she alternated writing narratives with poetry.
In 1948, she published Autobiografía de Irene, stories where she shows a greater fluency in writing and a greater influence of Borges and Bioy appears.Podlubne, Judith (2009). " Autobiografía de Irene: El desvío formalista de Silvina Ocampo". Academic Report . Retrieved 20 May 2018 . Despite this, the book did not have much impact at the time of its appearance. Two years earlier she had written a crime novel with Bioy Casares, Los que aman, odian.
After several years of publishing only poetry (Los sonetos del jardín, Poemas de amor desesperado, Los nombres, which won the National Poetry Prize) she returned to writing stories in 1959 with La furia, with which she finally obtained some recognition. La furia is often considered the point in which Ocampo reached the fullness of her style.
Volumes of her unpublished texts appeared posthumously, including poetry and short novels. In 2006, four of her works were published: Invenciones del recuerdo (an autobiography written in free verse), Las repeticiones (a collection of unpublished short stories that includes two short novels), El vidente, and Lo mejor de la familia. In 2007, the novel La torre sin fin was published for the first time in Argentina, and in 2008, Ejércitos de la oscuridad appeared, a volume that includes various texts. All the material was edited by Sudamericana, which also reissued some of her short story collections. In 2011, La promesa was published, a novel that Ocampo began around 1963 and that, with long interruptions and rewrites, finished between 1988 and 1989, pressured by her illness. The edition was in the care of Ernesto Montequin.
Ocampo has been described as a shy woman who refused interviews and preferred a low profile.Moreno, María (9 October 2005). " Frente al espejo". Página/12. Critics wanted a firm statement about her position with respect to the "literary norm" so that they would know how to read her works and ensure that they were properly interpreting them, but they were unable to receive such a statement. In an interview with María Moreno—one of the few interviews Ocampo gave—Ocampo explained why she did not like to give interviews: "Tal vez porque protagonizo en ellas el triunfo del periodismo sobre la literatura” Perhaps.The only requirement that Ocampo put in order to be interviewed was that none of the questions be about literature. The only thing she said about the matter was the following: "Escribo porque no me gusta hablar, para dejar un testimonio más de la vida o para luchar contra ese exceso de materia que acostumbra a rodearnos. Pero si lo medito un poco, diré algo más banal" I.
Ocampo's habit of refusing to say much about her private life, methodology, and literature makes it difficult for critics to develop an analysis of her intentions. For Judith Podlubne, Ocampo's works are meta-literary. She says that the lack of information about where the writer comes from results in a dependence on literary norms. Sylvia Molloy suggests that criticism tries to reduce originality to something known, "reading what is read" instead of reading Ocampo's stories in their originality.
In recent years, critics have rediscovered Ocampo, and some unpublished works have been published in compilations such as Las repetitions y otros cuentos (2006) and Ejércitos de la oscuridad (2008).
Carolina Suárez-Hernán considers that Ocampo is a feminist or at least works from feminist angles. Suárez-Hernán bases her opinion on the context of Ocampo's literature, stating that Ocampo's literature contains a deep reflection on femininity and numerous demands for women's rights, as well as a critique of her situation in society. Ocampo finds different mechanisms of creation and deconstruction of the feminine. The women in her works are complex and present the dark side of femininity, and the multiple female representations shows an ambiguity that challenges the one-dimensional vision of the female character.
From three stories—"Cielo de claraboyas" (1937), "El vestido de terciopelo" (1959), y "La muñeca" (1970)—Amícola suggests that Ocampo's tales question the absence of sex-gender and of the feminine vision in psychoanalysis developed by Sigmund Freud, with a special focus on the horrifying. Amícola does what Ocampo does not understand about the critics; she focuses too much on the horror of her stories and ignores the humor. Ocampo told Moreno her frustration: "Con mi prosa puedo hacer reír. ¿Será una ilusión? Nunca, ninguna crítica menciona mi humorismo" With.
In contrast, Suárez-Hernán proposes that the humor used in Ocampo's work helps to subvert female stereotypes. For Suárez-Hernán, Ocampo's work maintains a subversive and critical stance that finds pleasure in transgression. Established patterns are broken and roles are interchangeable; stereotypical oppositions of femininity and masculinity, good and evil, and beauty and ugliness are subjected to satirical treatment. Likewise, space and time are subverted and the boundaries between the mental categories of space, time, person, and animal are blurred.
When María Moreno asked her what she thought about feminism, Ocampo replied: "Mi opinión es un aplauso que me hace doler las manos" My. "¿Un aplauso que le molesta dispensar?" An, questioned Moreno. "¡Por qué no se va al diablo!" Why was Ocampo's reply. Regarding the female vote in Argentina, Ocampo said, "Confieso que no me acuerdo. Me pareció tan natural, tan evidente, tan justo, que no juzgué que requería una actitud especial" I.
For Suárez-Hernán, the stories show the asymmetry between the world of adults and the world of children; parents, teachers, and governesses embody the sanctioning institution and are often nefarious figures. Suárez-Hernán considers that women, children, and the poor in Ocampo's work act in a subordinate position dominated by stereotypes. According to Suárez-Hernán, the world of childhood is privileged over adulthood as an appropriate space to subvert social structures; thus, the child's gaze will be the instrument to undermine the structural bases and transgress established limits. However, Suárez-Hernán believes that the powers attributed to the girl and her perversity generate disturbance in the reader who cannot avoid identifying with the adult woman.
Critic Cynthia Duncan, from the University of Tennessee, contends that the fantastical elements concealed latent feminist themes:
Ocampo's female characters, like Cristina, are not radical, outspoken feminists. They do not overtly criticize their husbands, nor do they rebel in predictable ways. They go about their lives quietly and submissively, until the fantastic intervenes to upset the traditional order that has been imposed on them. It is, perhaps, this aspect of Silvina Ocampo's work which makes it most disquieting to readers, male and female alike.Another critic, Patricia N. Klingenberg, has argued that the "raging, destructive female characters of Ocampo's stories should be viewed as part of her preoccupation with the victimization and revenge of women, children and 'deviants' in her works."
Ocampo reportedly said that the judges for Argentina's National Prize for fiction in 1979 adjudged her work "demasiado crueles"—too cruel—for the award.
Ocampo uses gradual changes in her short story "Sabanas de tierra" to highlight the metamorphic process of a gardener in a plant. These changes are typically noted by their transitions in senses and actions, for example, sound, smell, visual changes, and taste. According to Juan Ramón Vélez García, many of these processes of metamorphosis indicate biblical connections in Genesis. Vélez García interprets the transformative features of the characters as a cycle or return, highlighting the biblical phrase "pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris" (Vélez García K.R. 2006). The characters in "Sabanas de tierra" do not have proper names. Ishak Farag Fahim believes that this reflects an attempt to generalize the ideas and worldview that the story seeks to communicate.
Ocampo is buried at La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
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