José Mármol
Encyclopedia
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
journalist, politician, librarian, and writer of the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
school.
Born in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, he initially studied law, but abandoned his studies in favor of politics. In 1839, no sooner had he begun to make a name for himself than he was arrested for his opposition to Argentina's conservative caudillo
Caudillo
Caudillo is a Spanish word for "leader" and usually describes a political-military leader at the head of an authoritarian power. The term translates into English as leader or chief, or more pejoratively as warlord, dictator or strongman. Caudillo was the term used to refer to the charismatic...
, Juan Manuel de Rosas
Juan Manuel de Rosas
Juan Manuel de Rosas , was an argentine militar and politician, who was elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires in 1829 to 1835, and then of the Argentine Confederation from 1835 until 1852...
. He was held in irons for six days. A year and a half later, the political climate spurred him, as it had many other Argentine dissenters, to flee the country. He found passage to Montevideo
Montevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
on a French schooner
Schooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
. He was welcomed by other exiles, among them Juan Bautista Alberdi
Juan Bautista Alberdi
Juan Bautista Alberdi was an Argentine political theorist and diplomat. Although he lived most of his life in exile in Montevideo and Chile, he was one of the most influential Argentine liberals of his age.-Biography:...
, Florencio Varela
Florencio Varela
Florencio Varela could refer to:*Florencio Varela, Argentine writer, journalist and educator*Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires, a town named after the writer*Florencio Varela Partido, the administrative district of the town...
, Esteban Echeverría
Esteban Echeverría
José Esteban Antonio Echeverría was an Argentine poet, fiction writer, cultural promoter, and political activist who played a significant role in the development of Argentine literature, not only through his own writings but also through his organizational efforts...
, Juan María Gutiérrez
Juan María Gutiérrez
Juan María Gutiérrez was an Argentine statesman, jurist, surveyor, historian, critic, and poet.He was a major figure in Argentine liberalism and one of the most prominent promoters of Argentine culture during the 19th century...
, and Miguel Cané
Miguel Cané
Miguel Cané was an Argentine writer, lawyer, academic, journalist, and politician....
. Three years later, the siege of Montevideo
Uruguayan Civil War
The Uruguayan Civil War, also known as "Guerra Grande", was a series of armed conflicts that took place between the Colorado Party and the National Party in Uruguay from 1839 to 1851...
by Rosas's ally Manuel Oribe
Manuel Oribe
Manuel Ceferino Oribe y Viana was the fourth president of Uruguay.-Biography:Manuel Oribe was the son of Captain Francisco Oribe and María Francisca Viana, a descendant of the first governor of Montevideo, José Joaquín de Viana...
led Mármol to flee yet again, this time to Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. Here he remained until February 1843, at which point he boarded a ship for Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
. The ship encountered fierce storms and was eventually forced to return to Rio de Janeiro. He remained in the city another two years before returning to Montevideo, where he spent the next seven years.
The fall of Rosas after his defeat at the Battle of Caseros
Battle of Caseros
The Battle of Caseros was fought near the town of Caseros, more precisely between the present-day train stations of Caseros and Palomar in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, on 3 February 1852, between the Army of Buenos Aires commanded by Juan Manuel de Rosas...
(1852) allowed Mármol to return to Argentina. After an exile that had lasted thirteen years, he was elected a senator and later a national deputy from the province of Buenos Aires. The secession of Buenos Aires from the Argentine Confederation
Argentine Confederation
The Argentine Confederation is one of the official names of Argentina, according to the Argentine Constitution, Article 35...
prevented him from serving as plenipotentiary
Plenipotentiary
The word plenipotentiary has two meanings. As a noun, it refers to a person who has "full powers." In particular, the term commonly refers to a diplomat fully authorized to represent his government as a prerogative...
to Chile, a post to which he had been appointed. However, he later served as plenipotentiary to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. In 1858 he became director of the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina
Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina
The National Library of the Argentine Republic is the largest library in Argentina and one of the most important in the Americas...
, until blindness forced him to retire. He died in Buenos Aires in 1871. By coincidence, his two most notable successors in the office of chief librarian, Paul Groussac
Paul Groussac
Paul-François Groussac was a French-born Argentine writer, literary critic, historian, and librarian. He was born in Toulouse to Catherine Deval and Pierre Groussac, the scion of an old Languedocian family.-Biography:...
and Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, also suffered from blindness in their old age.
Work
During his time in Montevideo, Mármol founded three journals, most notable among them being La Semana, and he contributed to many others. He earned a reputation as a passionate critic of Rosas and his supporters, and the sobriquet el verdugo poético de Rosas ("the poetic hangman of Rosas"). In fact, his best known poem, A Rosas, el 25 de Mayo de 1843 (To Rosas, 25 May 1843), composed of alexandrineAlexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...
lines, is a vivid, fierce invective against the dictator. Abusive political content is indeed not absent from his work, whatever the genre. Also characteristic of Mármol are his unique descriptive sensibility and his treatment of love.
In Uruguay in 1847 he published six of what would eventually be twelve cantos of El Peregrino ("The Pilgrim"), a long autobiographical poem set to the rhythm of his changing fortunes, which drew heavily from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
His lyric poems were collected into Armonías (Montevideo, 1851). In 1844 he published the first part of his semi-autobiographical Costumbrist novel Amalia, whose second part would not appear until his return to Buenos Aires years later. In 1914, Amalia was adapted into the first full-length Argentine film
Cinema of Argentina
The cinema of Argentina has a tradition dating back to the late nineteenth century, and continues to play a role in the culture of Argentina....
. Mármol's works for the stage were El Poeta (1847) and El Cruzado (1851). His style shows the influence of many Romanticists, not only Byron but also Chateaubriand
François-René de Chateaubriand
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...
, José de Espronceda
José de Espronceda
José Ignacio Javier Oriol Encarnación de Espronceda y Delgado was a famous Romantic Spanish poet.-Life:Espronceda was born in Almendralejo, at the Province of Badajoz. As a youth, he studied at the Colegio San Mateo at Madrid, having as teacher Alberto Lista...
, and José Zorrilla.