Argentine Remnants

Remnants from Argentina. Not the most engaging of photos--too blocky and obvious, the elements don’t quite turn into anything beyond themselves--but it does convey the experience of returning to this particular corner, towards the end of the bookshelves, right behind the office door. The books are from a class I did just one time, in 2009--on Argentina--VS185X Songs & Places: Canciones Criollas. I chose Canciones Criollas to emphasize the music of the Argentine countryside--en el campo--rather than the tango world of Buenos Aires (the first thing everyone thinks of, naturally.)

The course involved some crucial reading--Lucio Mansilla’s Una excursión a los indios ranqueles--here in a translation. To my mind it’s one of the great books of the 19th Century, nearly lost, however, because it’s from a world that’s almost entirely marginal to European/American experience. Written by an Argentine colonel who’d led a group of men into the interior--tierra adentro--country then controlled by los indios Ranqueles (and other indigenous tribes)--with the hope of making a peace treaty to insure their continued existence. (Argentina was on the brink of intense western expansion, and the same fate awaited their native peoples as in this country.)

The book is a diary of sorts--a record of the expedition--and as a “contact” story it’s in a class by itself. Mansilla, in addition to his military flair, was also a very good writer--and his sympathies (sometimes quite ironic) with the Ranqueles shine through.

The cause was lost in the end--these peoples were wiped out--but the book survives. And for me, it provides a remarkably astute vision of the European Argentine sensibility in an encounter with lives and customs of a people who were very different--and in essence American.

My vision for the class was that some of these same encounters could be found in the songs. Not in the literal sense--but rather in how the songs convey the feeling of what it’s like to live in that remote country--what W.H. Hudson (whom we also read) describes as The Purple Land. Also a beautiful attempt by a European (a writer with European framework and tools, let’s say) to convey an American experience.

Which takes us back to Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis--that synoptic attempt at conveying these beautifully distinct weltanschauungen… beautifully distinct visions of the world...

_____

The tall books to the left are also a memoir--De este lado del camino, by another curious figure--Polo Giménez, whose Paisajes de Catamarca remains one of the emblematic songs in the folclore of Argentina. The memoir was obscure, and impossible to find, so I had these copies made...bound in gray at CopyCentral, with one of my drawings on the cover...
____

Both sets of books are here like this because they were extra copies--ones I ended up with after the semester’s end. It would happen all the time--I’d gather these hard-to-find sources, and some of the copies would end up on my shelves--either purchased or returned from the library. And I never had a plan for what to do with them, so they’d continue on as a kind of archaeological record of the class. Not a complete record, mind you--just the extra copies! And that incompleteness was part of what I’d see whenever I look at them there on the shelf. Still do...
___

And now Robin tells me that libraries themselves are moving away from books--to be replaced by digital copies--so that even the physical experience here--fragmentary as it is--will be lost.

My own version of los indios Ranqueles, perhaps… Can I be my own Lucio Mansilla?

.