In Search of “Our America”: Two Trips of Waldo Frank to Argentina (1929, 1942)

Abstract

The paper dwells on the Argentine contacts of the American writer Waldo Frank (1889–1967): two lecture tours to Argentina in 1929 and 1942 and subsequent literary projects. The author discusses the peculiarities of Waldo Frank’s literary image formation in Argentina before his visit: since 1925, Samuel Glusberg, one of the trip organizers, introduced Frank's works to Argentinean readers on the pages of his magazines Babel and La vida literaria. Together with J.C. Mariátegui, Glusberg made arrangements for publishing Frank's books in Latin America. After his first trip in 1929, Frank gained a great popularity in Argentina, became the ideological inspirer of the large-scale journal Sur edited by Victoria Ocampo, was published in the Latin American press and issued the travelogue America Hispana: a Portrait and a Prospect (1931). The second trip of 1942 was significantly different from the first one: Frank led anti-war propaganda and was declared persona non grata for criticizing Argentina policy. After leaving Argentina, Frank did not lose faith in the New World utopia and continued the Latin American theme in his work. The paper compares the writer’s two visits to Argentina, reconstructs the content of his speeches according to his two lecture collections Primer mensaje a América Hispana (1930) and Ustedes y nosotros: nuevo mensaje para Iberoamérica (1942), as well as travelogues America Hispana and South American Journey (1943) and Memoirs of Waldo Frank (1973); traces the evolution of his utopian ideas about the unity of the Americas. The correspondence between Frank and Glusberg sheds light on many joint projects of the writers. The paper uses materials from the Latin American press of the 1920–1940s, for the first time systematizes publications on W. Frank’s work in Babel and La vida literaria. The study is complemented by a brief analisis of North American book reviews of Frank’s books on Latin America and the Argentinean chronicles of August 1942 from The New York Times. A list of the Argentine editions of Frank’s books is published in the addendum.