Surveys
29 January 2025

Italian books in Argentine

Author: Alejandro Patat, University for Foreigners Siena

Italian books in Argentine

The presence of Italian books in Argentina has been so significant that it has strongly influenced the development of local culture. Despite the close relations between the two nations, and despite the existence of an extensive bibliography that brings together many of the issues related to the various processes of cultural contact, we do not currently have sufficient data to understand and analyse the vast history of Italian publishing in Argentina. For this reason, and in order to be able to offer a synthesis of the problems that have been partially resolved by studies, we must use them as a starting point in order to define the extent to which new and further research is needed.

First of all, it must be made clear that both the presence of Italian books and the history of publishing not only imply the publication of volumes in Italian in the South American country, but also the circulation, diffusion, reception, criticism and translation of Italian literature in Argentina. It is clear that it is impossible to reconstruct the first two editions without considering the way in which the culture of the peninsula was received in South America.

In addition to the great compilations that have provided a comprehensive picture of the impressive Italian migration phenomenon in Argentina, such as Euroamericani (1987) and Storia dell’emigrazione italiana (2009), it is enough to leaf through Los Italianos en la historia de la cultura argentina by Dionisio Petriella (1979) or, in the specific case of literature, the repertory edited by Trinidad Blanco de García (2008) to get an idea of the role that Italian culture in general has played in the country.

From the intersection of all these materials and, if I may say so, from the results of the studies carried out by the author of these lines (Patat, 2004, 2005), two key points emerge in the history of relations between the two cultures.

The first proposes dismantling the myth or historiographical commonplace that Argentina was a monolithic Anglophile and Francophile nation. The second is the one that calls for a methodological approach that considers Italian culture abroad not as a mimetic appendix of the culture of origin, but as an autonomous and rich expression of a contaminated, hybridised and dialogical culture.

The above-mentioned repertory of literary relations had the merit of bringing together in a single volume the various ways in which the two literary systems came into contact. And the result of this research is truly impressive. To sum up, it can be said that from the second half of the 19th century it was the liberal elites, from 1870 to 1930, who had a profound knowledge of Italian culture (and above all of the language), while it was the middle-class Argentinean intellighentzia, the result of social integration, in collaboration with the last wave of immigration, who dominated Italian culture in translation, or to be translated, from the 1930s to the present day. If the liberals imposed a classical and classically oriented view of Italy – according to the European paradigm – it was the emerging middle classes that began, especially from the 1950s, to pay attention to 20th century Italian non-fiction, theatre, poetry and fiction.

This schematic division, with all the risks of interpretation that it entails, would show that the circulation of Italian books experienced two distinct modes. We know, for example, that the period of national reconstruction after independence from Spain coincided with an appropriation of the culture of the Risorgimento, conceived as a reflection of the tragic destiny of the newly born nation. In the early years of the Argentine Republic, therefore, there was a proliferation of certain authors considered to be the forerunners of the patriotic discourse (Parini, Alfieri and Foscolo), a discourse that contributed to the affirmation of Argentine national identity.

Another example of this early period is the intellectual action of Pietro de Angelis, a historian close to the Neapolitan court, who was responsible for nothing less than the creation of the Argentine National Historical Archive. This founding act was read and interpreted for the first time in a more incisive way than in the past (Salvioni, 2003). I am referring to the fact that the historical archive of a modern nation is founded according to the conceptual and ideological paradigm of a courtier-intellectual at the service of Naples, and therefore on the basis of a very Neapolitan idea of history, which will remain very strong in Argentina. It should also be remembered that it was during this period that Garibaldi’s South American enterprise took place, which left an indelible mark on the constitution of the new nation.

It is also important to remember the extraordinary role played by the Italian press throughout South America from 1870 until the Second World War. Federica Bertagna’s studies show that Italian journalistic production was never conceived as a monolingual and monocultural claim: the newspapers La Patria degli Italiani and Il Popolo d’Italia were genuine instruments of political, social, economic and cultural mediation between the two nations. In their pages it was possible to follow events on the other side of the Atlantic, as well as the fundamental issues of the host country. In other words, Italian journalism in Argentina did not develop on the basis of a self-referential or simply importing concept, but rather welcomed into its pages the issues that preoccupied the new homeland. It is therefore necessary to study the circulation of books published as supplements in newspapers that not only catered to the tastes of Italian readers in Italy but also sought to meet the needs of their counterparts in Argentina. Nicola Fatighenti’s current research at the Doctoral School of the University for Foreigners in Siena focuses on the way these newspapers covered Italian literature and the debates surrounding it.

It was also during this prolific early period that an Italian publishing industry developed, often as a result of foreign entrepreneurial investment in the South American country. One example is the publication of a number of novels by the Bietti publishing house at the end of the 19th century, with the words ‘Bietti – Buenos Aires/Milano’ on the cover. The work of Marco De Cristofaro (2024, 2025), a young researcher working in Belgium, brings to light many of these connections, such as the publishing projects of Angelo Sommaruga or certain key issues such as the concept of Latinity, which was an object of inter-identity discussion between the two nations.

With regard to the second major period, we have a reconstruction of the circulation of Italian literature in the country (Patat 2005) and we know in detail one of the most important publishing projects of the second half of the 20th century. The volume Abril. Da Perón a Videla. Un editore italiano in Argentina, a beautiful historical essay by Eugenia Scarzanella, allows us to understand one of the pieces of the extraordinary mosaic of actions and enterprises carried out by Italian Jews who fled to Argentina after the racial laws of 1938. Abril, founded and directed by Cesare Civita in 1941 and sold in 1976 for political reasons, was not only a modern publishing house devoted to children’s and feminist literature, and the producer of numerous news magazines and comic strips (their collaboration with Hugo Pratt is well known), but it was also a place where the forces of a very large group of Jewish intellectuals coalesced (Paolo Terni, Leone Amati, Gino Germani). It was also a place where a female intellectual class was formed, as in the case of Marisa Segre Montefiore, Paola Ravenna and Nora Smolensky: “For a journalist to say ‘I work at Editorial Abril’ was like saying today I work at the New York Times” (Scarzanella, 2013, p. 138).

The story of Abril should be the starting point for future research on the fate of Italian books and publishing in Argentina. That is, it should indicate a path that highlights the fruits of Italian-Argentine cultural interaction and collaboration, starting from a bilingual and bicultural vision.

 

Bibliography

 

Federica Bertagna, La stampa italiana in Argentina, Roma, Donzelli, 2003.

Marco De Cristofaro, « The Latinity of the Sister Nations at the Dawn of Modern Publishing: Editorial Initiatives and Intellectual Exchange Between Italy and Argentina (1870-1910) », Romance Quarterly, 1-16, 2024.

Marco De Cristofaro, « L’editore dei due mondi. Angelo Sommaruga e «La patria italiana» in Argentina », in Marco De Cristofaro, Elisa Martínez Garrido, Roberto Ubbidiente eds., Con altri occhi. La letteratura italiana fuori d’Italia 1861-1900, Pisa, Pacini, 2025.

Euroamericani. La popolazione di origine italiana negli Stati Uniti, in Argentina e in Brasile, Torino, Fondazione Agnelli, 1987.

Alejandro Patat, L’italiano in Argentina, Perugia, Guerra, 2004.

Alejandro Patat, Un destino sudamericano. La letteratura italiana in Argentina 1910-1970, Perugia, Guerra, 2005.

Dionisio Petriella, Los italianos en la historia de la cultura argentina, Buenos Aires, Asociación Dante Alighieri, 1979.

Repertorio bibliográfico de las relaciones entre la literatura argentina e italiana, Córdoba, Edición de Trinidad Blanco de García, Ediciones del Copista, 2008.

Amanda Salvioni, « Pietro De Angelis e l’archivio del dittatore », in Id., L’invenzione di un medioevo americano, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 2003.

Eugenia Scarzanella, Abril. Da Perón a Videla. Un editore italiano in Argentina, Roma, Nuova Delphi, 2013.

Pietro Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi, Emilio Franzina eds., Storia dell’emigrazione italiana, 2 vol., Roma, Donzelli, 2009.

 

Italian books in Argentine
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