Teorías de la hermandad poético-musical en el contorno nacional: la generación argentina de 1837

Abstract

Considering the processes of nation-building in Argentina during the nineteenth century as well as the consolidation of debates pertaining to the constitution of a 'national literature,' this article explores the relationship between poetry and music outlined in some works by the most important writers of the Argentine romantic Generation of 1837. Juan Thompson, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Esteban Echeverría, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and Bartolomé Mitre all expressed concerns for the role of music in their personal lives and in the broader national cultural project. These intellectuals did not always agree on the hierarchical relationship between music and poetry, but the ongoing search into the character of a national song constituted for all of them the middle point between both arts. However, the uneasy relationship between music and poetry, a sisterhood necessary for the development of national customs and progress, came to represent a complex dichotomy between the oral character of music and the work of the 'letrados.' Existing song repertoires within the national popular realms represented a threat to their cultural project, to the effect that folksong collections such as El Cancionero Argentino of 1837 were published by the intellectual elite as a way to obliterate other musical representations. Despite their efforts to bar the popular folklore from these discussions, defining the argentine character as inevitably lyrical and musical at the same time would eventually allow a work such as José Hernández's Martín Fierro to be centrally positioned within the national literary canon.