El matadero (y apologia del matambre)

by Esteban Echeverria

Overview

El Matadero depicts a characteristic scene of the terrible times in Argentina before its institutionalization as a democratic republic.
Esteban Echeverría transports us in place and time, and allows us to witness and relive the opressive climate of the regime against which he fought, and that was finally defeated by Urquiza giving way to the country dreamed by Alberdi, Mitre and Sarmiento, among many others.
Member of Marcos Sastre's literary salon, when Rozas orders it closure Echeverria founded the Asociacion de Mayo, a secretive society following Mazzini's Young Italy.
The matadero (the slaughter yard) was conceived as a political pamphlet. However the quality of its prose projects beyond its original purpose, transforming it into a jewel, useful for the study of popular customs that constitute the soul of history.
At its time the critic observed that these pages were not conceived with publishing in mind, due to the haste with which they were written and crude realistic language employed. Curiously enough these "faults" constitute their major feature, as they have saved the author's work from the changes in literary fashion.
Echeverría in this "nouvelle" (perhaps short story would be more accurate a deffinition) according to his friend Juan María Gutiérrez "performs as a painter that opens his sketchbook to quickly depict in general strokes the scenes of a public street, saving them to compose a customs picture, later and in the quietness of his shop"
Tempted by this line of thought we decide to include in this edition the elegant and witty "Apology of the thin flank" (apología del matambre). Because if pictorial sketches are valuable as clues to the painter's genius, the Apología. depicts the Echeverría, author of "Dogma Socialista" and simultaneously friend of Juan Bautista Alberdi, author of the basis of the Argentine Constitution, written following the same guidelines as the Constitution of the United States of America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789871136094
Publisher:	Stockcero
Publication date:	06/01/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	56
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.13(d)
Language:	Spanish

About the Author

1805 - 1851 Argentine writer belonging to the influential generation of '37. He began his studies at the College of Moral Sciences; abandoning them at the end of 1823, despite having been an applied student. In 1824 he traveled to Europe to complete his education. In Paris (1825-1830) he follows the most varied courses, becomes familiar with the literary and ideological trends in vogue, forms a solid encyclopedic culture and assimilates countless works in French and English. With that important baggage he returns to Buenos Aires. He introduces literary romanticism in Plata, provoking a fruitful renewal, and formulates the doctrine of political liberalism, impregnated with high social and pedagogical concerns. In 1831 he published his first verses in Buenos Aires newspapers. In 1832 his poem Elvira appears anonymously. The indifference with which he is received contrasts with the overflowing enthusiasm and warm sympathy that later Consuelos (1834) and Rimas (1837) arouse, where he inserts the Captive, his best work in verse. In 1837 the Literary Hall was opened in the bookshop of Don Marco Sastre, the future educator and author of Temple Argentino. In the Salon, works are read, discussed and discussed. Echeverría is one of its great entertainers. When Rosas closed the Hall, Echeverría founded a secret society, the May Association, in the manner of Mazzini's Joven Italia. The Association has subsidiaries in the provinces of Córdoba, Tucumán and San Juan. Most of the men who returned to organize the Republic after Caseros militate in their ranks, including Juan Bautista Alberdi who in due course confronts the Socialist Dogma of Echeverría (published in the Indicador, of Montevideo, in 1839 and republished in 1846 ) its Bases and starting points for the political organization of the Republic of Argentina (first published in Chile in 1852). Finally Alberdi's ideas triumph in the facts, which are embodied in the Argentine Constitution of 1853, although many intimately continue to long for Echeverría's romantic postulates. Of his literary production in prose, his splendid realistic story El abattoir, the first of its kind written in Plata, and his Manual of Moral Teaching for primary schools (1846) should be especially mentioned. From adolescence he has to fight against the disease. He continually suffers from nerves and is chased by his heart condition. His health worsened considerably in 1851. A pulmonary ailment took him to the grave in Montevideo on January 19 of that year. Echeverría's complete works were compiled by his close friend, Don Juan María Gutiérrez, in Buenos Aires (1870-1874).