Ricardo Güiraldes

Ricardo Güiraldes (1886-1927), Argentine writer. One of Argentina’s most important authors, he is best known for his novel Don Segundo Sombra (1926; translated as Don Segundo Sombra, Shadows on the Pampas, 1935).

Güiraldes was born to a well-to-do family in Buenos Aires. He spent his early childhood in Paris, France, and later spent the summers at his family’s ranch in the Pampas (plains), where he became acquainted with the culture of the gauchos (cowboys). Güiraldes’s education was supplemented by his extensive readings in European and Latin American literature; he attended the University of Buenos Aires but did not graduate. Frequent visits to Paris from 1910 onward acquainted him with emerging avant-garde literary trends and influenced his writing. In the 1920s, with writer Jorge Luis Borges, Güiraldes helped found the Argentine periodicals Martín Fierro and Proa.

Güiraldes’s early works, which include the poetry collection El cencerro de cristal (The Crystal Bell, 1915) and the short-story collection Cuentos de muerte y de sangre (Tales of Death and Blood, 1917), were poorly received by critics, who judged the works to be idiosyncratic and inaccessible to a general audience. Güiraldes continued writing, however, and his novel Xaimaca (Jamaica, 1923) was better received. The work draws on his experiences of cosmopolitan life in Paris and Buenos Aires and his love of travel. It also reflects the influence of the symbolist movement, which declared the imagination to be the true interpreter of reality.

In 1926 Güiraldes’s masterpiece, Don Segundo Sombra, was published. The novel narrates a boy’s coming-of-age under the tutelage of an aging gaucho, reflecting the author’s childhood in the Pampas. It includes descriptions of rural life and nature as well as folktales. The work is also remarkable for its blend of literary and colloquial Argentine Spanish. Other works by Güiraldes include the novel Rosaura (1922) and the posthumously published poetry collections Poemas solitarios (Solitary Poems, 1928), Poemas misticos (Mystical Poems, 1928), and El sendero (The Way, 1932), which chronicles the author’s spiritual quest.