Abstract
This article deals with a particular aguafuerte by Arlt, which could give some hints for the interpretation of his entire oeuvre. In this journalistic piece Arlt mentions the two “costumes” he will take with him on his grand tour of South America: one will be useful for being among “decent people” and the other (extremely ragged) one, will be worn by him when mingling with the cities’ underworlds. These two “costumes” could be seen as representing his poetics. Arlt felt attracted by the delicacies of modernism but was not impervious to the miserable side of Buenos Aires life. Although neither explicitly part of the elegant Florida group of the city nor being positively considered one of the members of the proletarian Boedo group, he conspicuously embraced the alternative scenes without having to pay tribute to the social realism of some of his fellow travellers. It is perhaps in this ambiguity where the originality of his writing lies.
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