Leopoldina's Dream by Silvina Ocampo

Leopoldina's Dream by Silvina Ocampo

SILVINA OCAMPO WRITES IN A STYLE THAT HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED BY JORGE LUIS BORGES AND ITALO CALVINO AS ONE OF THE FINEST IN THE SPANISH LANGUAGE. HER STORIES WRITTEN WITH A DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY, ARE AMONG THE MOST DISTURBING AND FASCINATING A READER CAN HOPE TO ENCOUNTER. MANY ARE ABOUT THE UNEASY CONJUNCTION OF OPPOSITES; OF EVIL AND SAINTLINESS, LOVE AND HATE, THE DIFFICULT WORLD OF CHILDHOOD AND THE DANGEROUSLY SIMPLE WORLD OF ADULTS. BORGES, WHO IS PROVIDING A PREFACE TO THIS COLLECTION, AS WRITTEN THAT THE CRUELTY OF HER STORIES IS NO DOUBT THE RESULT OF HER NOBILITY OF SOUL, A JUDGEMENT NO LESS PARADOXICAL THAN HER OWN WRITING.

Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) was born to an old and prosperous family in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six sisters. After studying painting with Giorgio di Chirico and Fernand Lü¾Ž–”¼ger in Paris, she returned to her native city--she would live there for the rest of her life--and devoted herself to writing. Her eldest sister, Victoria, was the founder of the seminal modernist journal and publishing house Sur, which championed the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, and in 1940 Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo were married. The first of Ocampo's seven collections of stories, Viaje olvidado (Forgotten Journey), appeared in 1937; the first of her seven volumes of poems, Enumeraciü¾Œ¶˜¼n de la patria (Enumeration of My Country) in 1942. She was also a prolific translator--of Dickinson, Poe, Melville, and Swedenborg--and wrote plays and tales for children. The Argentine critic Ezequiel Martü¾™†”¼nez Estrada wrote that everything in Silvina Ocampo's poetry carries with it her reminiscence of a lost paradise, of an inferno traveled in dreams. Thus Were Their Faces, a collection of Ocampo's stories and novellas, is published by NYRB Classics.

Jason Weiss is the author of five books, including Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk', the Most Outrageous Record Label in America and The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris. Among his translations are the stories of Marcel Cohen and the poems of Luisa Futoransky. He lives in Brooklyn.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780140100112
ISBN 10	0140100113
Title	Leopoldina's Dream
Author	Silvina Ocampo
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	1988-09-29
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable