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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Bringing together the names of Sherwood Anderson and Eduardo Mallea at first only emphasizes differences between the writers—differences that appear in common beliefs about them and their respective countries. Place, time, and critical tradition set them apart. In the first instance, geographical separation would appear still important despite easy modern communications; and cultural variance is, of course, even more to be considered than spatial distance. Such matters as the quite different colonial impulses creating the present-day United States and Argentina, the “Anglic” tradition as opposed to the Hispanic, Protestantism to Catholicism, and pragmatism to idealism lead one to expect that if Anderson and Mallea conform to the general patterns of their native areas they will have little in common.
1 See my “Terms of Spiritual Isolation in Eduardo Mallea,” MLF, xxxvii (1952), 21-27.
2 The Triumph of the Egg (New York, 1921), p. 100; Poor White (New York, 1920), p. 181; Winesburg, Ohio (New York, 1946), p. 56.
3 Los enemigos del alma (Buenos Aires, 1950), p. 16.
4 Triumph of the Egg, p. 89.
5 (Buenos Aires, 1939), p. 67; Nocturno europeo (Buenos Aires, 1935), p. 212.
6 Many Marriages (New York, 1923), p. 192; La bahía de silencio (Buenos Aires, 1945), p. 583.
7 Winesburg, Ohio, p. 142.
8 Sherwood Anderson (New York, 1951), p. 195.
9 La torre (Buenos Aires, 1950), p. 273.
10 “Seeds,” The Triumph of the Egg, p. 31.
11 Todo verdor perecerá (Buenos Aires, 1941), p. 51; Los enemigos del alma, p. 39; Many Marriages, p. 75.
12 Harlan Hatcher, Creating the Modern American Novel (New York, 1935), p. 167.
13 La bahia de silencio, p. 110.
14 “Winesburg, Ohio, after Twenty Years,” Story, xix (1941), 32.
15 Historia de una pasión argentina (Buenos Aires, 1944), p. 143; El sayal y la púrpura (Buenos Aires, 1941), pp. 46, 50.
16 A further link between the two novels, Agata, although nameless, unmistakably reappears for a moment in Los enemigos del alma: “Al anochecer, … una mujer harapienta corría en las afueras a campo traviesa perseguida por los médanos, azorada y definitivamente muda, como una imagen de la vida corrida por la muerte entre la aridez de mayo y el triste tamarisco” (p. 222).
17 Mallea's father, Narciso S. Mallea, was by profession a doctor. His book, Mi vida, mis fobias (Buenos Aires, 1941), reveals a man so intensely preoccupied with self—with his political connections, his medical practice, and his own nervous disorders—that he had little time for his family. In its 240 pages the autobiography contains only two laconic references to his wife and sons, even then omitting their names. The neurosis he describes in himself—erythrophobia—is a plausible reason for his having been ill at ease with them, to the point of coldness. This whole problem is further illuminated by another novelist's filial revolt, well stated by Martin Kallich, “John Dos Passos: Liberty and the Father-Image,” Antioch Review, x (1950), 99-106.
18 “El mundo que rejuvenece,” in El sayal y la púrpura, p. 168. Although the essay is dated 1940, it is instantly obvious that this cannot be true of the whole text, since Anderson died 8 March 1941. It is interesting to note that Todo verdor perecerá came off the press in September of the same year.