Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
VICTORIA & SILVINA OCAMPO
In 1931 Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) - a writer, publisher and intellectual - founded
Sur,
a
renowned cultural magazine that introduced Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus and TS Eliot to Argentine
readers.
Sur
also featured writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Ernesto Sábato and
Julio Cortázar.
Ocampo was an inexhaustible traveler and a pioneering feminist, and was loathed by some for her
lack of convention. A ferocious opponent of Peronism, chiefly because of Perón's interference with
intellectual freedom, Ocampo was arrested at her summer chalet, Villa Victoria, at the age of 63. She
entertained her fellow inmates by reading aloud and acting out scenes from novels and cinema.
Ocampo never went to university, but her voracious appetite for knowledge and her love of literat-
ure led her to become Argentina's leading lady of letters. She hosted intellectuals from around the
globe at Villa Victoria, in Mar del Plata, creating a formidable literary and artistic salon. (The villa is
now a cultural center.)
Today you can also visit Victoria Ocampo's restored mansion in San Isidro, Villa Ocampo
(
www.villaocampo.org
)
, for a reminder of a bygone era.
If Victoria is remembered as a lively essayist and a great patroness of writers, her younger sister,
Silvina, was the literary talent, writing both short stories and poetry. Silvina won several literary prizes
for her work, and in 1940 she married Adolfo Bioy Casares, a famous Argentine writer and friend of
Jorge Luis Borges.
