SOURCE: Bach, Caleb. “Poet of Shadows on the Pampa.” Américas 54, no. 5 (September-October 2002): 14-21.

[In the following essay, Bach explores the biography of Don Segundo Sombra by examining its author, Ricardo Güiraldes, and its inspiration, Segundo Ramirez.]

No one could forget his courtesy; it was the unsought, first form of his kindness, the lasting measure of a soul clear as the day. Nor can I forget his bizarre serenity, the fine, strong face, the lights of glory and of death. His hand questioning the guitar as in the pure dream of a mirror (You are reality and I its reflection). I see you conversing with us in Quintana. You are there, magic and dead. Yours now, Ricardo, is the open field of yesterday, the dawn of the stallions.

That is how Jorge Luis Borges paid homage to his friend, the writer Ricardo Güiraldes, in Elogio de la sombra (1969). Some forty years earlier, Güiraldes had died of cancer at the age of forty-one, about a year after the publication of the novel that would make him famous, Don Segundo Sombra.

Güiraldes and Borges had collaborated in founding the second version of the literary journal Proa, or prow (which had its office in Borges's home at Calle Quintana 222, hence the reference above), and Güiraldes had worked closely with other literati—Macedonio Fernández, Roberto Arlt (for a time his private secretary), and Victoria Ocampo, the grand dame of Argentine letters—but as a writer he had struggled to find a voice and audience.

Don Segundo Sombra changed all that. An instant success, Güiraldes's coming of age tale of a guacho, or orphan, who becomes a gaucho captured the imaginations of his countrymen at a time when traditional, rural values were under assault by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration on a grand scale. The author lived long enough to witness a succession of editions sell out to eager readers and see his book win the Premio Nacional de la Literatura for 1927. More than seventy-five years later, with more than several million copies printed in thirty-two languages, Don Segundo Sombra still enjoys a devoted readership and continues to generate debate regarding its message and genesis.

The book's plot, linear and uncomplicated, involves a streetwise city kid who, at age fourteen, finds himself in a dusty little town on the pampa living with but henpecked by two supposed aunts. When an old gaucho rides into town, the boy learns that the herdsman is Don Segundo Sombra, and he runs away with the weathered veteran on an extended cattle drive. In the role of mythic hero, the seasoned professional teaches his protégé the value of stoicism, dignity, and courage, among other traits. After five years of adventures, the young man, now belatedly identified as Fabio Casares, learns he is not an orphan at all but a landowner's son, and an inheritor of an estate. At the end of the book, before Fabio parts company with his tutor, he asks him, “Is it true that I am not the same as before and that those goddamned pesos will put an end to my life as a cowhand?” His padrino, or spiritual godfather, Don Segundo Sombra, replies, “Look, if you're really a gaucho, you don't have to change because wherever you go, you'll go with your soul up ahead like the lead mare of the herd.”

Güiraldes modeled Don Segundo Sombra after a cattle driver named Segundo Ramírez, who at age fifty began working as a puestero, or resident ranch hand, on one of his family's estancias and remained in their employ until his death in 1936 at the age of eighty-five. Güiraldes was about the same age as Fabio when he first met Segundo Ramírez, who projected the qualities of a weathered gaucho malo. Tall, with dark, leathery skin from years of working and wandering outdoors, the rugged herdsman still favored the traditional chiripá (a loose diaper-like cloth draped between the legs, tucked under the belt, and worn over leggings).

Today, the author's nephew, Comodoro Juan José Güiraldes, enjoys recalling estancia life during the heyday of the gauchos who so inspired generations of Argentines. At the age of eighty-five, he is the only surviving family member to have known the writer personally.

“Actually,” he begins, “Don Segundo never worked on my grandfather's estancia, La Porteña [on the outskirts of San Antonio de Areco, about seventy miles northwest of the capital], as is often stated but rather at La Fe, an adjacent ranch belonging to my father. Near the horse stables, there was a small house called La Lechuza, where he lived with his woman, two daughters, and an adopted girl. I can remember him by heart—I was eight or nine at the time. I would sit right next to him. He used to say his grandmother was a slave who gained her freedom in 1813. He looked a little mulatto, but there was a lot of Indian and Spanish blood in him as well.

“It is often said his name wasn't Segundo Ramírez, which in a way is true because long before the book came out we in the family always called him Don Segundo Sombra. The name was not a later poetic invention by my uncle but rather a bit pathetic because sombra means shadow—as if to say ‘I am the shadow of some other man.’ I will tell you something. There is a well-known Argentine musician, tall, swarthy, plays the piano like an angel: Ariel Ramírez. Almost certainly his grandfather fathered Don Segundo, which to Ariel, would make Segundo a second cousin once removed. Both of them with the same name, both born in Coronda—famous for its strawberries—near Santa Fe, a little town of only about a hundred inhabitants: There are too many coincidences for this not to be true!”

Ariel Ramírez, the pianist and composer of the famous choral work La Misa Criolla, confirms the story. “I've never made a big thing of it, but my father, Zenón Ramírez, was one of ten legitimate children, but by another woman, a mulatta, my grandfather, Loreto Ramírez, also produced Segundo, my father's half-brother. The old man still gave him the family name even though he was un hijo natural.”

“One might wonder what happened to Don Segundo,” muses Güiraldes, “after the book came out when, for example, members of Victoria Ocampo's coterie—Waldo Frank, Hermann Keyserling, and Rabindranath Tagore—would go to San Antonio de Areco to find something connected to Ricardo. Of course he had died, so the only thing to do was seek out Don Segundo, who by then didn't do much work because he was always at home receiving visitors. My father was content to pay him his salary to attend to these sorts of things; so much about my uncle became known through the old gaucho.”

Some critics have suggested that in contrast to Güiraldes's noble creation, the real Don Segundo had an unsavory side: that he was given to knife fights and often was surly, cynical, and uncommunicative. “Some of that is true,” admits Güiraldes, “but he was an able man and even though he was illiterate, others had read the story to him so he knew the importance of the book bearing his name. Gradually, he took on the qualities of the title character.

“He always had been very clever with jokes,” Güiraldes continues. “In the old days maté was served only by the women, never by the men, from a pot, as the men sat under the trees, and with sugar. So when a visiting journalist had been there half an hour, Mercedes, his china—common-law wife—came out and asked Don Segundo, ‘with or without sugar?’ he responded, ‘of course, as always, with sugar!’ Believing sweetness implied softness, the journalist expressed amazement that the old man drank his maté with sugar, but Don Segundo replied, ‘Yes, sweet, you know why? Because I am already a gaucho!’”

Doubtless, it was Don Segundo's earthy, “criollo roguishness” (in the words of critic Giovanni Previtali) that appealed to Güiraldes who, as a teenager, would sit around and listen to him spin yarns. Later, determined to become “the literary disciple of the gaucho,” he stated his goal in a work plan: “to seek a language of simplicity inseparable from the pampa.”

Devotion to the boundless grasslands was basic to the young writer's nature, but there was also an urbane Güiraldes, quite at home at the Jockey Club, Hipódromo Argentino, Teatro Colón, and other posh enclaves of Buenos Aires. To further complicate this inner tension, there was another tug and pull between his rioplatense self and a strong identification with France, which translated into a constant restlessness, a need to be somewhere else.

Ricardo Guillermo Güiraldes was born in Buenos Aires on February 13, 1886, and just a year later accompanied his family to Paris, which would become a second home. His father, Manuel José, was a prominent estanciero who had received a diplomatic appointment to Paris; his mother, Dolores Goñi, came from another wealthy landed family. The late nineteenth century was Argentina's belle époque, a period of great optimism, prosperity, and expansion—new railroads, port facilities, parks, and boulevards—with francophilia at its peak as well-heeled porteños strove to be the Parisians of South America.

“My uncle learned to speak French and German before he ever started Spanish,” recalls his nephew. Upon returning to Argentina in 1890, he continued to be privately tutored in all three languages at la Porteña (the estancia was named for the country's first locomotive) until age fifteen, when he was obliged to move to family quarters in the capital and take a horse-drawn tramway to the Dominican school, Colegio Lacordaire, where he struggled with his studies. He only survived his first year through much tutoring and would never be a great student, although he loved to read, especially in French: Hugo, France, Rabelais, Zola, Flaubert, and Baudelaire. Intent on becoming a writer, at age seventeen he attempted a novel about young love which he abandoned after seventy pages. He also penned verses influenced by the spare, modern style of Rubén Darío (who had been posted to Buenos Aires as a consular officer). After barely graduating from high school, he half-heartedly studied architecture and law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, dropping out to hold down jobs in a bank, auction house, and pawnshop, and spending extended periods at La Porteña working with the ranch hands, occasionally painting and drawing, composing poetry, playing the guitar, and singing—all life-long interests.

“He learned traditional folk songs from the peones and loved opera at the Teatro Colón. My uncle had a deep, baritone voice—very distinctive. His father also loved the arts—painting, sculpture, literature, and music. During the presidency of Figueroa Alcorta, he served as mayor of Buenos Aires and personally organized the installation of sculpture throughout the city as part of the 1910 centenary of May 25, our independence day. He also served as vice president of Amigos del Arte and was among the earliest patrons to promote and collect paintings by the Uruguayan impressionist Pedro Figari. He came to realize Ricardo was really a poet. Ricardo could not have traveled to Europe or later throughout the Orient—all at his father's expense—if he hadn't felt that way.”

At his father's instigation, just before the centenary, Güiraldes headed for Paris to gain further seasoning. En route, he holed up in Granada, Spain, where at the Hotel Alhambra, he sketched a short story of an Argentine playboy on the loose in Paris, “Los impulsos de Ricardito,” which eventually evolved into his first novel, Raucho.

Handsome, charming, fluent in French, he enjoyed immediate popularity within the smart set. With a painter and musician friend, Alberto López Buchardo, he introduced Argentine tango to several Parisian dance halls. With another friend, Adán Diehl, he made an extended circuit of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, India, China, transiting Russia by rail, and also experimenting with hashish in Ceylon but, homesick after two years overseas, he returned to Argentina sobered by much of what he had seen.

In 1913, he married a second cousin, Adelina del Carril, a member of another family of estancieros (whose sister Delia would later marry Pablo Neruda). During their years together she provided much needed encouragement and oversaw the publication of assorted writings after his death.

As World War I broke out in Europe, Güiraldes began his literary apprenticeship in earnest, working both at La Porteña and Polvaredas, an estancia owned by his in-laws, but mostly consorting with a rising generation of writers in Buenos Aires, often seeking advice from the reigning literary master, Leopoldo Lugones, at his office in the Biblioteca del Consejo Nacional de Educación. Social animal that Güiraldes was, he rarely focused full time on his writing, instead jotting down notes to himself on small cards, then pecking away at his short stories and poems, none of which were long. As the pieces accumulated, it was Adelina who proposed he publish them.

In 1915, using their own funds, they engaged Imprenta Tragant in Buenos Aires to issue two small editions, neither of which attracted much attention. El cencerro de cristal, consisting of forty-six microrelatos, was rather impressionistic in feeling, also sometimes satirical and humorous. Cuentos de muerte y de sangre, originally illustrated with line drawings by a young nephew, Alberto, contained anecdotal sketches, or relatos del fogón (to quote critic Raúl Castagnino), including one called “Al rescoldo,” in which Don Segundo appears as narrator. When few seemed to care about his writing, out of frustration Güiraldes dumped the latter edition down a well at La Porteña, and only through the efforts of Adelina were a few copies salvaged.

He then briefly became involved in some theater projects with a friend, Alfredo González Garaño, even a ballet, which momentarily attracted the attention of Nijinsky, then performing in the capital. In need of a break, Güiraldes took a steamship cruise along the coast of Chile and Peru and on to the Caribbean, where he collected material for a future book, Xaimaca. Returning home in 1917, he finished and published Raucho: Momentos de una juventud contemporánea, inspired by his father-financed fling in Paris, which also contained some well-rendered descriptions of his formative years in the countryside. Two years later he published “Rosaura: un idilio de estación,” a sentimental melodrama first sketched in 1914. Once again illustrated by his nephew Alberto, and dedicated to his only sister, Lola, it appeared in a literary magazine, El cuento ilustrado, edited by Horacio Quiroga, the Uruguayan short story writer famous for his dark tales. In the story, a country girl becomes infatuated with a handsome young landowner she spots at the train station who later returns with his wife on his arm, compelling the girl to throw herself beneath the wheels of a locomotive! Neither Raucho nor “Rosaura” did much to dissuade locals from perceiving Güiraldes as an indulged playboy des lettres.

During the war years, Güiraldes did not suffer from what he called “indiferencia pampeana.” With González Garaño and others he organized the Comité Nacional de la Juventud to lobby (unsuccessfully) Argentine president Hipólito Irigoyen to break diplomatic relations with Germany. Private notes from the period also reveal he was deeply troubled by the conflict. A year after the war ended, perhaps feeling deprived of a place dear to him, Güiraldes and his wife headed for France.

During the crossing, he read a copy of A. O Barnabooth: His Diary, by Valery Larbaud, and, impressed by this tale of an eccentric Peruvian millionaire, Güiraldes set out to meet the author when he arrived in Paris. An important, lasting friendship ensued. As a member of the French literary vanguard, Larbaud was close to André Gide, who edited La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, and he also frequented Adrienne Monnier's tiny librairie, La Maison des Amis des Livres, which was a favorite haunt of many avantgarde writers, including Valery, Apollinaire, Eluard, Breton, Reverdy, and Aragón. In short order, Güiraldes became aware of many literary innovations of the period. Inspired by the intense activity around him, he managed to finish Xaimaca, part travelogue, part novelized treatment of a purely fictitious shipboard love affair. While in Paris he took Spanish lessons from Miguel de Toro y Gisbert, author of the Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado, apparently to clarify issues of grammar and usage as they might pertain to Don Segundo Sombra, then coalescing in his mind.

“Ultimately, my uncle decided to ignore the dictates of the Spanish Academy because he wanted to write in the vernacular, the way gauchos really speak, with the syntax and localisms he had known since childhood.”

In the fall of 1920, after a summer of vacationing with friends on Majorca, Güiraldes and his wife returned to Paris, where he wrote the first nine chapters of Don Segundo Sombra. Despite this productive, opening surge, he did not undertake the remaining chapters for another five years.

Later that same year, Güiraldes returned to Buenos Aires still largely unrecognized as a serious writer. In a personal letter he referred to his own “literary nonsituation,” obviously distressed by the lack of response to the autographed copies of his books he constantly sent to local writers. Nonetheless, he continued to ponder his gaucho work in progress. Early the following year, while spending a month at Dos Talas, an estancia on the south coast, he carefully recorded vivid impressions of crablands, quicksand, and other aspects of the harsh landscape, which eventually would make up much of Chapter XV in Don Segundo Sombra. Believing he needed to remain in Argentina to collect more material for his book, at mid-year he canceled a planned trip to Europe in favor of two more months at an estancia salteña in the northwest. There, with Adelina, and poet friend Juan Carlos Dávalos, he consorted with a variety of colorful characters, went jaguar hunting, and regularly attended cockfights. In late 1921, back at La Porteña, Güiraldes penned Poemas solitarios, and the following March he and his wife again made a circuit of Paris and Majorca, not returning to Argentina until late in 1923.

Back home, unable to resolve the remainder of Don Segundo Sombra, Güiraldes busied himself with other projects. Fortunately, the same year, at an Amigos del Arte reception, Güiraldes met Borges, then twenty-three and a rising star within the literary vanguard. Thereafter, they met frequently at cafés or at the Hotel Majestic, where Güiraldes and Adelina maintained a suite of rooms. During this period, competing literary viewpoints within the port city largely did battle through journals, including so-called mural-journals, newspaper-sized broadsheets posted on walls for all to read. With Borges's help, Güiraldes placed pieces in Martín Fierro, an important journal named for the gaucho in the epic poem by José Hernández. And, at one point, Güiraldes helped Borges with some early poems. Pooling their resources, Borges and Güiraldes collaborated in relaunching Proa, another journal that had lapsed publication. The two could not have been more different—Borges, a timid, awkward, rumpled, nearsighted soltero, and Güiraldes, an athletic, handsome, charming married hijo de estanciero—but their shared passion for literature provided the glue for the friendship. Beginning in August 1924, for a year, Borges, Brandan Caraffa, Pablo Rojas Paz, and Güiraldes produced a dozen issues of Proa, containing new writing from Spain, France, and Argentina. Three more issues would be published, but without Güiraldes. In August 1925 he learned that he had Hodgkin's disease.

Suddenly, completing Don Segundo Sombra became an all-consuming obsession. Without missing a beat, Güiraldes began Chapter X acknowledging the actual lapse that had occurred in writing the book: “Five years had passed without our separating for even one single day during our strenuous life as herders. Five years of that make a gaucho of a boy when he has the good luck to live those years alongside a man like the one I called my godfather.”

In a race with his own mortality, Güiraldes finished the book at La Porteña in March 1926. Chapter by chapter Adelina typed his hand-written pages and delivered portions of the manuscript to a local printer, Francisco Colombo. The author penned a long dedication, which begins “A Ud., Don Segundo” (significantly, in the original draft in Güiraldes's handwriting, the last name Ramírez appears, but it was omitted from the final version). He also acknowledged a debt to several other gauchos as well as his literary precursor, José Hernández.

The book appeared on July 1, 1926. Lugones's laudatory review in La Nación surprised the apprehensive author. The first edition of two thousand copies sold out in two weeks, and the second edition of five thousand also went quickly. In March 1927, when his condition had not responded to treatment, Güiraldes left for France to consult with specialists in Paris. He had hoped to continue on to India, but as he grew weaker, he took up residence in an apartment belonging to González Garaño, where in the ensuing months, family members joined him, including nephew Juan José, then ten years old.

“Despite his grave condition, my uncle remained in good spirits to the end. He spent his last days editing and writing an introduction for El sendero, a collection of reflective pieces that were spiritual in feeling.” Many paid tribute to the writer's courage. Roberto Arlt wrote, “Completely good, a perfectly great man in his soul and in his life.” And in November, President Marcelo T. de Alvear met the ship carrying the writer's remains as it arrived in Buenos Aires. Güiraldes was laid to rest at La Porteña, where nearby, a few years later, Don Segundo Ramírez also was buried.

Although Güiraldes's book often would receive valid criticism for what it is—an idealized portrayal of the gaucho's condition as seen through the eyes of landed gentry—Don Segundo Sombra was destined to enjoy remarkable popularity worldwide and literary respect of a sort that eluded the author most of his days. As Patricia Owen Steiner, English translator of a 1992 edition of Don Segundo Sombra, says, “Don Segundo Sombra gives a picture of the past as the people of Argentina would like to remember it. … The language of the rancher-narrator is in decided contrast to that of the gaucho. It reflects a cultured, literary voice, rich in vocabulary and subtle connotations often lyrical in tone. It, too, is intimate and expresses a strong feeling of empathy between man and nature.”

Juan José Güiraldes adds, “My uncle may have been the scion of a wealthy family, but he truly knew and loved the campo and could describe it in passages that read like poetry. I think he intended his book to convey basic values to succeeding generations, especially immigrants pouring into the country, as if to say, if you follow the way of the gaucho for five years, you too will become a true Argentine.”

Today, the collective memory of both the author and Don Segundo lives on at the Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes, located in the main house at La Porteña, now open to the public, and especially during the Festival Nacional de la Tradición. Held during the first ten days of November, this time-honored event features gauchos demonstrating their skills as herdsmen, performing musicians and dancers, and traditional feasts of grilled meat—all paying tribute to human values rooted deeply in the countryside. And during the festival, speeches and toasts pay homage to Ricardo Güiraldes, who, despite his artistic struggles and premature death, managed to enter literary immortality.