Silvina Ocampo
Silvina Ocampo was an influential Argentine writer and artist born on July 21, 1903, in Buenos Aires. The youngest of six daughters, she came from a wealthy family, yet her upbringing was marked by loneliness, leading her to form close relationships with household servants. Ocampo initially pursued art, studying under notable figures in Paris, but eventually transitioned to literature, becoming a significant literary figure in her own right. She married writer Adolfo Bioy Casares in 1940 and adopted his daughter shortly after. Ocampo is best known for her unique storytelling, often exploring themes of fantasy intertwined with grotesque elements, as exemplified in her acclaimed work "Leopoldina's Dream." Despite her contributions, she has often been overshadowed by contemporaries like Jorge Luis Borges. Ocampo played a pivotal role in the development of magic realism, a genre that would gain prominence in Latin American literature. Throughout her career, she received multiple awards, establishing her legacy as a key figure in Argentine literature.
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Subject Terms
Silvina Ocampo
Author
- Born: July 21, 1903
- Birthplace: Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Died: 1994
Biography
Silvina Ocampo was born July 21, 1903, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the youngest of six daughters of Manuel Silvino Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre Ocampo. Her younger sister, Victoria Ocampo, would become editor of the prestigious literary journal Sur. Silvina was educated at home. Despite (or perhaps because of) the privileged position of her wealthy family, she grew up a lonely child and seems to have relied on the affection of the household servants.
Ocampo rejected the importance of the autobiographical element in relation to her work, and made few details of her personal life public. It is known that she briefly studied drawing and painting in Paris, France, under famed artists Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Leger. She held an exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1940 but subsequently turned to literature as the primary outlet for her creative impulses.
Ocampo met writer Adolfo Bioy Casares in 1933, and the two were married in 1940. Although the couple had no children, Bioy Casares himself had a daughter by another woman in 1954. Ocampo adopted the child, named Marta, soon after her birth. Ocampo died in 1994, and Marta was killed in an automobile accident only three weeks later.
As a writer and literary figure, Ocampo was closely associated with two men whose fame overshadowed hers, Jorge Luis Borges and her husband. Her earliest works include a series of drawings inspired by Borges’s poems, and she wrote a detective novel with Bioy Casares in 1946. The couple also hosted a weekly salon at which Borges was a frequent guest. Ocampo’s own writings posit a world of fantasy—but it is a grotesque, disorienting world in which cruelty and greed are the norm.
The work for which Ocampo is best known in English is probably “Leopoldina’s Dream,” from the 1959 collection La furia, y otros cuentos. Narrated by a dog, the story describes wicked sisters who attempt to exploit their older sibling’s ability to work miracles—with catastrophic consequences. Ocampo edited, with Borges and her husband, an anthology of Argentine poetry and The Book of Fantasy.
Ocampo received several awards for her work. Los nombres won second prize in the National Poetry Competition in 1953, Espacios metricos won the Municipal Prize in 1954, Lo amargo por dulce won first prize in the National Poetry Competition in 1962, and Cornelia frente al espejo won the prize of the Club of the XIII in 1988. Although not well known outside her native country, Ocampo is regarded as a key precursor of the school of magic realism that dominated Latin American literature during the latter half of the twentieth century.