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Forgotten Journey
Delicately crafted, intensely visual, deeply personal stories explore the nature of memory, family ties, and the difficult imbalances of love.
In this, Silvina Ocampo's first book of stories, we discover the purest form of what would become her signature style over the years: lyrical, oneiric, and menacing--and an atmosphere, both mundane and mysterious, bordering on the fantastical.
Forgotten Journey takes its title from the story of a girl who struggles to recall the events of her birth in order to remember her identity. Another story follows a friendship between two girls, one poor and one wealthy, who grow up to appear identical to one another, enabling them to trade lives and families. In "The Enmity of Things," a young man begins to suspect that his mundane possessions are conspiring against him. When he flees to his rural childhood home, the silent countryside proves only more sinister and mysterious.
This collection of 28 short stories, first published in 1937 and now in English translation for the first time, introduced readers to one of Argentina's most original and iconic authors. With this, her fiction debut, poet Silvina Ocampo initiated a personal, idiosyncratic exploration of the politics of memory, a theme to which she would return again and again over the course of her unconventional life and productive career.
In this, Silvina Ocampo's first book of stories, we discover the purest form of what would become her signature style over the years: lyrical, oneiric, and menacing--and an atmosphere, both mundane and mysterious, bordering on the fantastical.
Forgotten Journey takes its title from the story of a girl who struggles to recall the events of her birth in order to remember her identity. Another story follows a friendship between two girls, one poor and one wealthy, who grow up to appear identical to one another, enabling them to trade lives and families. In "The Enmity of Things," a young man begins to suspect that his mundane possessions are conspiring against him. When he flees to his rural childhood home, the silent countryside proves only more sinister and mysterious.
This collection of 28 short stories, first published in 1937 and now in English translation for the first time, introduced readers to one of Argentina's most original and iconic authors. With this, her fiction debut, poet Silvina Ocampo initiated a personal, idiosyncratic exploration of the politics of memory, a theme to which she would return again and again over the course of her unconventional life and productive career.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
45 people are currently reading
1423 people want to read
About the author
Silvina Ocampo
152 books532 followersSilvina Ocampo Aguirre was a poet and short-fiction writer.
Ocampo was the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important Argentine magazine Sur.
Silvina was educated at home by tutors, and later studied drawing in Paris under Giorgio de Chirico. She was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose lover she became (1933) when Bioy was 19. They were married in 1940. In 1954 she adopted Bioy’s daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954-94) who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo’s death.
Ocampo was the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important Argentine magazine Sur.
Silvina was educated at home by tutors, and later studied drawing in Paris under Giorgio de Chirico. She was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose lover she became (1933) when Bioy was 19. They were married in 1940. In 1954 she adopted Bioy’s daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954-94) who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo’s death.
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April 15, 2022
Perilous childhoods
For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country. He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.
I picked this book simply because it was on display on the shelf with new books in the library and because Silvina Ocampo’s name rang a bell in her capacity as a poet. Perhaps consequently it wasn’t a complete surprise that chunks of these twenty-eight short stories resemble prose poems – some stories being very brief, only two covering two or three pages, others spanning five to eight pages. The collection dates from 1937 and was recently for the first time translated into Dutch.
Trying to encapsulate these mood-driven micro-stories in one image, an eerie dollhouse or Wunderkammer came to mind, a cabinet of macabre curiosities, plenty of which are the sediments of childhood and its horrific moments of disillusioning initiation and epiphany when catching glimpses of the repugnant adult world (for instance on childbirth in the titular story Forgotten Journey), truth shattering the child’s ambivalent innocence.
Ocampo’s elicitation of childhood is sinister. A sense of menace and death is all-pervasive, replete as these stories are with illness, suicide, murder and mutilation. The flavours and images of childhood are not painted in idyllic, sugary pastels but in a shrill palette of surreal imagery which at times is that incandescent one starts to fear Ocampo’s children can engage themselves in arson any moment. Silvina Ocampo trained as a visual artist (she studied painting with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Léger in Paris) and her visual imagination seems to bleed into the language of her imagery, the views reflecting in distorting mirrors.
'Silvina Ocampo’s stories are memories masked by dreams; dreams of the kind we dream with our eyes open. The friendship or enmity of inanimate things – which cease to be – populate these stories as they populated our childhood or as they populate the lives of savage tribes', Victoria Ocampo wrote on this debut collection of her sister. Writing about their common childhood, Silvina’s memories that seeped into those stories likely disturbed Victoria, having been part and parcel of them and having perceived things differently - confronted with this strange, dangerous and cruel world in which little rich and poor girls live in big creepy mansions in the midst of servants and death and are treated horribly by adults, their indifference leading to injury or even death when they fall to their death on imaginary trapezes; almost surprisingly at least some of children manage to survive.
She lived in a lonely desert without a sheltering sky.
The brevity and strangeness of the stories reminded me of Gunnhild Øyehaug’s stories in Knots: Stories; the more gruesome ones rekindled Horacio Quiroga’s macabre short stories Tales of love, madness and death (with the unforgettable horror story The Feather Pillow), however Ocampo’s are more oblique and veneered with the surreal patina of dream. The most Ocampo’s vignettes reminded me of Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropisms- because of their lyricism, the menacing, dark and haunting atmosphere, the loneliness of childhood and unsafety in the bosom of the family, inner screams and domestic settings.
In short, my feelings on Ocampo’s debut stories are mixed: I enjoyed the imaginative, vivid and lyrical writing and some of the brilliant surreal imagery but didn’t warm to the unnerving interior worlds of bewildered young girls and cruel unreliable parents featuring in the stories. Among the ones I liked most were The Sea, on a woman embracing the sensuality of her own body and Diorama, a poignant, hallucinatory story on grief and how to hold despair in check. Having read a few of her poems since finishing this collection, in which I found some of her metaphors and images (like the paper roses) returning, I have a hunch her poetry might speak more to me than these stories.
(translation by Jason Weiss)
(Paintings by Dorothea Tanning)
For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country. He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.
I picked this book simply because it was on display on the shelf with new books in the library and because Silvina Ocampo’s name rang a bell in her capacity as a poet. Perhaps consequently it wasn’t a complete surprise that chunks of these twenty-eight short stories resemble prose poems – some stories being very brief, only two covering two or three pages, others spanning five to eight pages. The collection dates from 1937 and was recently for the first time translated into Dutch.
Trying to encapsulate these mood-driven micro-stories in one image, an eerie dollhouse or Wunderkammer came to mind, a cabinet of macabre curiosities, plenty of which are the sediments of childhood and its horrific moments of disillusioning initiation and epiphany when catching glimpses of the repugnant adult world (for instance on childbirth in the titular story Forgotten Journey), truth shattering the child’s ambivalent innocence.
Ocampo’s elicitation of childhood is sinister. A sense of menace and death is all-pervasive, replete as these stories are with illness, suicide, murder and mutilation. The flavours and images of childhood are not painted in idyllic, sugary pastels but in a shrill palette of surreal imagery which at times is that incandescent one starts to fear Ocampo’s children can engage themselves in arson any moment. Silvina Ocampo trained as a visual artist (she studied painting with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Léger in Paris) and her visual imagination seems to bleed into the language of her imagery, the views reflecting in distorting mirrors.
'Silvina Ocampo’s stories are memories masked by dreams; dreams of the kind we dream with our eyes open. The friendship or enmity of inanimate things – which cease to be – populate these stories as they populated our childhood or as they populate the lives of savage tribes', Victoria Ocampo wrote on this debut collection of her sister. Writing about their common childhood, Silvina’s memories that seeped into those stories likely disturbed Victoria, having been part and parcel of them and having perceived things differently - confronted with this strange, dangerous and cruel world in which little rich and poor girls live in big creepy mansions in the midst of servants and death and are treated horribly by adults, their indifference leading to injury or even death when they fall to their death on imaginary trapezes; almost surprisingly at least some of children manage to survive.
She lived in a lonely desert without a sheltering sky.
The brevity and strangeness of the stories reminded me of Gunnhild Øyehaug’s stories in Knots: Stories; the more gruesome ones rekindled Horacio Quiroga’s macabre short stories Tales of love, madness and death (with the unforgettable horror story The Feather Pillow), however Ocampo’s are more oblique and veneered with the surreal patina of dream. The most Ocampo’s vignettes reminded me of Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropisms- because of their lyricism, the menacing, dark and haunting atmosphere, the loneliness of childhood and unsafety in the bosom of the family, inner screams and domestic settings.
In short, my feelings on Ocampo’s debut stories are mixed: I enjoyed the imaginative, vivid and lyrical writing and some of the brilliant surreal imagery but didn’t warm to the unnerving interior worlds of bewildered young girls and cruel unreliable parents featuring in the stories. Among the ones I liked most were The Sea, on a woman embracing the sensuality of her own body and Diorama, a poignant, hallucinatory story on grief and how to hold despair in check. Having read a few of her poems since finishing this collection, in which I found some of her metaphors and images (like the paper roses) returning, I have a hunch her poetry might speak more to me than these stories.
Love is like an enormous house
Full of ornaments worth nothing
To one who doesn’t love and at a glance
assumes he knows the place and what things cost.
The intruder thinks, “Stuff like this
you can find anywhere –nothing’s original,
everything’s imaginary, nothing’s real.
Even the roses seem made of paper.”
Perhaps he’ll stop a moment
at the common place known as a bed,
with Cupid flying overhead,
and think, “And they call this romantic!”
But as a souvenir he’ll rob a rose.
Later, returning to his icy bedroom
praying, “I want to be in love”,
he’ll embrace his lover or his wife.
(translation by Jason Weiss)
(Paintings by Dorothea Tanning)
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August 2, 2022
Silvina Ocampo is perhaps the greatest overlooked author from Argentina. Forgotten Journey, a collection of twenty-eight short-short stories, is her first published fiction.
Silvina's older sister Victoria wrote a review of Forgotten Journey in Sur, the leading literary magazine in South America back in 1937 where she happened to be editor at the time. Now, did Victoria give Silvina's first published collection of stories a glowing review since, after all, they were sisters? No! Just the opposite, Victoria panned the book with such pronouncements as language full of irritating mistakes and writing stilted and awkward. Ah, sisters!
How did other critics and reviewers characterize Silvina's fiction? Most frequently we hear things like surreal, cold, eerily dark and strangely cruel - as a matter of fact, Silvina was denied a prestigious Argentine literary prize in 1979 since the judges cited her fiction as "too cruel."
Suffering from an inferiority complex of sorts throughout her lifetime, Silvina tried to remain in the shadows and simply write her stories - not so easy since she was married to novelist Adolfo Bioy Casares and was a friend and occasional collaborator with the great Jorge Luis Borges.
You'll be given additional biographical information in the book's Forward written by Carmen Boullosa. I'll share a more direct taste of Silvina Ocampo's fiction by focusing on a pair of fascinating gems from this collection beginning with the title piece -
FORGOTTEN JOURNEY
As a young boy I cherished the fantastic. I wanted to live in a world where Superman could soar through the air and Santa Claus and his reindeer delivered the presents I found under the tree. When told these types of things didn't, in fact, exist, I became upset.
Silvina Ocampo captures a similar upset and confusion in her tale of a young girl (perhaps Silvina herself) on the cusp of learning where babies really come from.
“Before they were born, children were stocked in a big department store, mothers ordered them, and sometimes went to buy them directly. She would have liked to see them unwrap the package and open the box that held the baby, but they never called her over in time in the houses with newborns.”
So charming. The narrator dips into the mind of a sensitive, impressionable little girl to give us a glimpse of how she understands the facts of life.
But then a series of shockers, beginning with the French chauffeur's daughter (Silvina grew up in a large family of wealthy Argentine aristocrats) delivering the bad news: “Children when they're born don't come from Paris. Children are inside their mother's bellies, and when they're born they come out of the bellybutton.”
Forgotten Journey, a tale of a young girl coming to grips with one of life's harsh realities. If we read carefully, we can detect an emotional charge that lies hidden deep between the lines, as if there's a strangeness too dark to be expressed in mere words.
SKYLIGHT
A number of critics and reviewers who characterize Silvina Ocampo's fiction as eerily dark and strangely cruel could take this weird tale as prime example.
I picture the narrator as nine-year-old Silvina, all curls and knee-length dress in the spirit of Alice in her Wonderland. Only here we have an unsettling tale which could carry the subtitle: Silvina in Crueltyland.
Every sentence, every image carries a weight that borders on Gothic horror. Yet, should we call Skylight a tale of terror? You'll have to read the story in its entirety to reach a final decision. For now, I'll link my comments to a quartet of direct quotes:
“Above the hall in that house with a skylight was another mysterious home, and through the glass you could see a family of feet surrounded by haloes, like saints, and the shadows of the rest of the bodies to which those feet belonged, shadows flattened like hands seen through bathwater.”
We've all been in an apartment building where we hear heavy footstep overhead. With this tale, Silvina imagines a little girl who can not only hear the upstairs neighbors but, thanks to a glass ceiling, she can look up and see them. Oh, my darling, you've become the ultimate voyeur.
“The home above was empty, except for the soft crying of a little girl (who had just received a goodnight kiss but didn't want to go to sleep) and the shadow of a hoop skirt, like a black devil in a perverse schoolmistress's ankle boots.”
Sounds like our little girl can sense all is not well upstairs; she can sense there might be drama brewing leading to an outbreak of violence.
“Both sets of feet ran in circles without reaching each other; the hoop skirt chased after the tiny bare feet. With talons outstretched, until a lock of hair hung, suspended in the air, caught by the black skirt's hands, and screams erupted.”
Violence, indeed! With those outstretched talons, so like a predator, grabbing a lock of hair (nice touch, Silvina – a lock of hair underscores we have a tender innocent overhead) and then screaming. Oh, my, if those upstairs neighbors ever realized they are being watched carefully thanks to (for them) their glass floor.
“Slowly, a head split in two was sketched upon the glass, a head sprouting bloody curls, tied in bows.”
How realistic is our narrator's depiction? Might she be imagining the entire sequence of events? After all, at the end of the tale she watches as the little girl overhead has taken the elevator down to run and jump amongst the trees in a plaza by the statue of San Martin.
Intrigued? If so, you'll have many more Silvina Ocampo tales to look forward to in Forgotten Journey, an author critic Chris Via describes as a combination Flannery O'Connor and Julio Cortázar.
Author Silvina Ocampo, 1903-1993
May 29, 2025
No será esta la última vez que yo lea a Silvina Ocampo.
Estos relatos de aquí son cuentos fantasiosos o cuentos de fantasía, cuentos góticos o cuentos de terror y misterios y luego algunos solo son cuentos costumbristas. En fin, que hay cuentos de toda clase y todos son cortos, sencillos y rápidos de leer. Le doy el aprobado.
Ahora, estos cuentos hablan sobre muertes extrañas, accidentadas o provocadas, de asesinatos y de violencia, algunos no escarban mucho y solo te dan la cotidianidad de fondo y otros te dejan con un regusto amargo debido al misterio o la tensión que hay en ellos.
Pero lo más resaltable es que son relatos donde mayormente el punto crucial es una figura femenina. Ya sean mujeres casadas o independientes, niñas, adolescentes, amigas, madres, hijas, novias, mujeres misteriosas, sin nombre o desconocidas. Todas son el centro de la historia ya sea como secundarias o principales.
Estos relatos de aquí son cuentos fantasiosos o cuentos de fantasía, cuentos góticos o cuentos de terror y misterios y luego algunos solo son cuentos costumbristas. En fin, que hay cuentos de toda clase y todos son cortos, sencillos y rápidos de leer. Le doy el aprobado.
Ahora, estos cuentos hablan sobre muertes extrañas, accidentadas o provocadas, de asesinatos y de violencia, algunos no escarban mucho y solo te dan la cotidianidad de fondo y otros te dejan con un regusto amargo debido al misterio o la tensión que hay en ellos.
Pero lo más resaltable es que son relatos donde mayormente el punto crucial es una figura femenina. Ya sean mujeres casadas o independientes, niñas, adolescentes, amigas, madres, hijas, novias, mujeres misteriosas, sin nombre o desconocidas. Todas son el centro de la historia ya sea como secundarias o principales.
May 30, 2024
The enmity of things
This short collection of stories is a perfect introduction to Silvina Ocampo, an undeservedly under the radar Argentinian writer who collaborated with Jorge Luis Borges and was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, author of The Invention of Morel. All of which is to say that Ocampo was at the heart of Argentinian modernist literature and culture even if she herself preferred to eschew the limelight (unlike her more ostensibly vibrant sister Victoria Ocampo, who corresponded with Virginia Woolf).
These stories are gloriously mysterious: very short, often no more than a couple of pages, they remind me somewhat of the writing of Katherine Mansfield, another modernist woman who is acutely sensitive to the visual and who also subscribes to a vision of sentient objects. In Ocampo, 'all the paintings had turned into naked women' (The Green Olive Dress), and a shop's display windows 'stepped forward to greet her' (ibid.). A man is driven to distraction knowing that his possessions threaten him, and eyeless dolls yet search the darkness for their eyes.
But there are other, more enigmatic and unknowable things going on in these tales: with classical statues and gestures to the myths of Narcissus and Pygmalion, there's a distinctively Ovidian sensibility here as things metamorphose; children are doubled, merge and separate; and mirrors, windows and water take on feverish roles that do more than merely reflect. Freudian scholars would have a field-day with the dreams and fantasies that play out, and there's a gulf of experience between the children in these stories and the adults who often try to confine or discipline them.
With acrobats, swings, horses as recurring motifs that seem to indicates modes of freedom, never without risk, there's a constant tension between what's inside and what outside. Houses and rooms play into this dichotomy, and also seem to act as figures for the body, a vessel for both mind and spirit: 'the little room of my hands' (Sarandi Street). Not surprisingly, rooms and minds become haunted.
Most of all, for me, is Ocampo's stylish writing: compressed and sophisticated, akin to poetry rather than prose with its density and layerings of metaphor, there's a distinctive voice and way of seeing the world that blew me away: 'the moonlight turned the earth into a lake filled with shadows where cemetery angels - a Venus with empty eyes, a Diana the Huntress running against the wind, and some bust of Socrates - wept' (The Statue Salesman).
Thanks to Dianne B. who introduced me to Ocampo.
This short collection of stories is a perfect introduction to Silvina Ocampo, an undeservedly under the radar Argentinian writer who collaborated with Jorge Luis Borges and was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, author of The Invention of Morel. All of which is to say that Ocampo was at the heart of Argentinian modernist literature and culture even if she herself preferred to eschew the limelight (unlike her more ostensibly vibrant sister Victoria Ocampo, who corresponded with Virginia Woolf).
These stories are gloriously mysterious: very short, often no more than a couple of pages, they remind me somewhat of the writing of Katherine Mansfield, another modernist woman who is acutely sensitive to the visual and who also subscribes to a vision of sentient objects. In Ocampo, 'all the paintings had turned into naked women' (The Green Olive Dress), and a shop's display windows 'stepped forward to greet her' (ibid.). A man is driven to distraction knowing that his possessions threaten him, and eyeless dolls yet search the darkness for their eyes.
But there are other, more enigmatic and unknowable things going on in these tales: with classical statues and gestures to the myths of Narcissus and Pygmalion, there's a distinctively Ovidian sensibility here as things metamorphose; children are doubled, merge and separate; and mirrors, windows and water take on feverish roles that do more than merely reflect. Freudian scholars would have a field-day with the dreams and fantasies that play out, and there's a gulf of experience between the children in these stories and the adults who often try to confine or discipline them.
With acrobats, swings, horses as recurring motifs that seem to indicates modes of freedom, never without risk, there's a constant tension between what's inside and what outside. Houses and rooms play into this dichotomy, and also seem to act as figures for the body, a vessel for both mind and spirit: 'the little room of my hands' (Sarandi Street). Not surprisingly, rooms and minds become haunted.
Most of all, for me, is Ocampo's stylish writing: compressed and sophisticated, akin to poetry rather than prose with its density and layerings of metaphor, there's a distinctive voice and way of seeing the world that blew me away: 'the moonlight turned the earth into a lake filled with shadows where cemetery angels - a Venus with empty eyes, a Diana the Huntress running against the wind, and some bust of Socrates - wept' (The Statue Salesman).
Thanks to Dianne B. who introduced me to Ocampo.
February 23, 2020
Last year (2019) City Lights published this first English translation of Silvina Ocampo's debut collection of short stories. It is a slim volume consisting of very brief 'stories'. My own definition of 'story' is admittedly pretty generous in what it encompasses, and yet I hesitate to apply that term to many of these pieces. For me a story implies a narrative; however minimal, tenuous, or fractured it is, I still expect at least a hint of narrative arc in a story. I'd actually be hard-pressed to apply a descriptor to a lot of the texts in this book. Vignette comes closest and is the most flexible, I suppose.
The back cover summary includes the term 'menacing' when describing Ocampo's 'signature style'. Certain pieces do contain a sense of menace, and in some cases that menace is born out in the sudden violence of the endings. More than anything, the pieces excel in how they evoke emotions and sensations. Ocampo is a powerful writer, but I still felt rather detached from the majority of these. The one that struck me most was 'Sarandí Street’—a tale told in first person by a woman recalling her experiences as a girl being harassed by a sleazy neighbor man while she walked to the store in the evenings. It feels like a real memory pulled through the gauze of years with the odd logic of youth still clinging to it. It is a perfect sliver of childhood horror—twining innocence and terror into an inexplicable union.
I’d only read Ocampo in an anthology before, so I'm unfamiliar with how her fiction evolved after this first collection, although I know she was prolific. I'd like to read more like 'Sarandí Street’ but based on my response to the collection as a whole, combined with friends' reactions to her NYRB collection, I'm skeptical about how frequently I'd encounter that exact flavor in her other work.
(I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning the six pages of blurbs preceding the title page of this tiny book, including one from Brian ‘Captain Blurb’ Evenson himself, as well as the entire text of the glowing Kirkus Reviews take on the collection. To say this is overkill would be an understatement...it felt like the publisher was literally shoving these accolades down my throat, and that if I didn’t swallow them I obviously didn’t share the refined taste of fancypants readers such as John Freeman, Executive Editor of LITHUB. Give me a break already, if anything that nonsense will turn me off from a book before I even start reading it.)
The back cover summary includes the term 'menacing' when describing Ocampo's 'signature style'. Certain pieces do contain a sense of menace, and in some cases that menace is born out in the sudden violence of the endings. More than anything, the pieces excel in how they evoke emotions and sensations. Ocampo is a powerful writer, but I still felt rather detached from the majority of these. The one that struck me most was 'Sarandí Street’—a tale told in first person by a woman recalling her experiences as a girl being harassed by a sleazy neighbor man while she walked to the store in the evenings. It feels like a real memory pulled through the gauze of years with the odd logic of youth still clinging to it. It is a perfect sliver of childhood horror—twining innocence and terror into an inexplicable union.
I’d only read Ocampo in an anthology before, so I'm unfamiliar with how her fiction evolved after this first collection, although I know she was prolific. I'd like to read more like 'Sarandí Street’ but based on my response to the collection as a whole, combined with friends' reactions to her NYRB collection, I'm skeptical about how frequently I'd encounter that exact flavor in her other work.
(I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning the six pages of blurbs preceding the title page of this tiny book, including one from Brian ‘Captain Blurb’ Evenson himself, as well as the entire text of the glowing Kirkus Reviews take on the collection. To say this is overkill would be an understatement...it felt like the publisher was literally shoving these accolades down my throat, and that if I didn’t swallow them I obviously didn’t share the refined taste of fancypants readers such as John Freeman, Executive Editor of LITHUB. Give me a break already, if anything that nonsense will turn me off from a book before I even start reading it.)
March 26, 2022
The great Silvina Ocampo wrote excellent dark tales. Her stories take place in recognisable domestic settings which become infected with strangeness and cruelty. I believe she is much better than Julio Cortazar, and that is saying a lot!
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April 8, 2023Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy6i7...
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January 3, 2021Hay algo de lo sensorial muy, muy presente en estos cuentos. Hay también cierta liviandad, no en la prosa sino en lo que pasa en los relatos, la forma de acercarse a las cosas, como si todo se tocara superficialmente, se rozara. Me llamó la atención la insistencia en la ropa, en describir vestidos y esas cosas. Pero al mismo tiempo hay situaciones muy densas, como la muerte de chicos, y eso creo que hace a la esencia de estos cuentos: esa liviandad de que parece que nada llega a sentirse por completo, combinada con escenas fuertes como la del primer cuento, la sangre de una cabeza aplastada contra un vidrio de claraboya. La realidad es que poco me acuerdo (sino nada) de los argumentos de los relatos de este libro, pero creo que tiene que ver con que son muy cortitos y por esa liviandad de la que hablaba antes, como si eso no te permitiera fijar de qué trataba cada cuento. Me encanta cómo escribe Silvina.
March 23, 2021
I didn’t expect to be so blown away by this book, but I did – and I got tossed hard. It’s like an abandoned lovechild of Clarice Lispector and Lydia Davis – picked up and fostered by Ottessa Moshfegh. The first few stories only tugged me gently, but the later stories absolutely dragged me – and my mind was wrecked in the best ways possible. Absolutely magical, darkly witty, and oh so irresistibly charming.
My carefully considered/selected favourites from the collection:
The Head Pressed Against the Window
“Mademoiselle Dargère was extremely pretty, and the children loved her, but a constant worry had settled between her eyebrows in the shape of vertical wrinkles that somewhat spoiled her beauty. Her nights were plagued by insomnia, and during those wakeful hours she would hear a chorus of dreams, wraithlike, arising from the sleeping children in their white nightgowns in the dormitories, each with twenty beds, where she would deposit a daily kiss on every brow.”
Diorama
“For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country. He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.”
Forgotten Journey
“Before they were born, children were stocked in a big department store, mothers ordered them, and sometimes went to buy them directly. She would have liked to see them unwrap the package and open the box that held the baby, but they never called her over in time in the houses with newborns. It was hot and they could barely breathe inside the box, and that’s why they arrived so red and cried all the time, curling their toes.”
Bare Feet
“Cristian secretly missed their distant, different, confident love affair. It was so easy to have faith in what didn’t matter that much. Those romantic idylls in cafes, on grocery store corners, on beaches: they robbed him of nothing, not his sunny morning walks, nor his hours of leisure, nor the loneliness that made him fumble around for a human connection, nor the visits to his cousins’ house, nor the divine generosity of time, nor his misery of constant solitude. He remembered Ethel Buyington and the unpredictable… Ethel finished her studies more ignorant than when she began and went on to travel the coasts of Africa with a French family. ”
Given some time and enough enthusiasm, one can easily argue that this book is a bloody masterpiece. I am too tired at the moment to do so, but regardless – I can confidently recommend this book to most readers. I am not even sure if I can call it magical realism because to me it’s more like something that flirts with hyperrealism and/but sassily adorned with odd knots and twists.
My carefully considered/selected favourites from the collection:
The Head Pressed Against the Window
“Mademoiselle Dargère was extremely pretty, and the children loved her, but a constant worry had settled between her eyebrows in the shape of vertical wrinkles that somewhat spoiled her beauty. Her nights were plagued by insomnia, and during those wakeful hours she would hear a chorus of dreams, wraithlike, arising from the sleeping children in their white nightgowns in the dormitories, each with twenty beds, where she would deposit a daily kiss on every brow.”
Diorama
“For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country. He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.”
Forgotten Journey
“Before they were born, children were stocked in a big department store, mothers ordered them, and sometimes went to buy them directly. She would have liked to see them unwrap the package and open the box that held the baby, but they never called her over in time in the houses with newborns. It was hot and they could barely breathe inside the box, and that’s why they arrived so red and cried all the time, curling their toes.”
Bare Feet
“Cristian secretly missed their distant, different, confident love affair. It was so easy to have faith in what didn’t matter that much. Those romantic idylls in cafes, on grocery store corners, on beaches: they robbed him of nothing, not his sunny morning walks, nor his hours of leisure, nor the loneliness that made him fumble around for a human connection, nor the visits to his cousins’ house, nor the divine generosity of time, nor his misery of constant solitude. He remembered Ethel Buyington and the unpredictable… Ethel finished her studies more ignorant than when she began and went on to travel the coasts of Africa with a French family. ”
Given some time and enough enthusiasm, one can easily argue that this book is a bloody masterpiece. I am too tired at the moment to do so, but regardless – I can confidently recommend this book to most readers. I am not even sure if I can call it magical realism because to me it’s more like something that flirts with hyperrealism and/but sassily adorned with odd knots and twists.
July 11, 2024
Reminiscent of Clarice Lispector in its lyrical observations of the inner lives and emotional landscapes of its characters the narrative delves into the profound intricacies of human existence and the delicate subtleties of personal experience yet I was left craving more from the abstraction. Some of the stories require extra readings to fully grasp their depth, but for now, here are some of my personal favourites:
1. The Poorly Made Portrait
2. The Lost Passport
3. Landscape with Trapezes
4. The Two Houses of Olivos
5. The Acrobats
6. The Nocturne
7. Sarandi Street
8. The Sea
9. The Linio Milagro Family
10. Bare Feet
I can't end this review without also sharing some of my favorite quotes that capture how beautiful Silvina Ocampo's penmanship truly is.
"They were so calm, like they were posing for an invisible photographer, they were becoming aware of growing up, which made one of them sad and pleased the other two."
"They had met only recently, but they felt so close like brother and sister, that the time they knew each other seemed to have begun with their birth. And then suddenly, like stealthy murderers that enter a house at night, the arguments had infiltrated their days, treacherously. As love grew in them, so did doubt and the tedious thoughtlessness that accompanies love. Like the indelible creases of a poorly ironed suit, the creases of ill-humored shouts and silence merged: everything became an insult."
"She wasn't fourteen anymore, not even in her early portraits. Nor could she write or feel as she had written or felt then."
1. The Poorly Made Portrait
2. The Lost Passport
3. Landscape with Trapezes
4. The Two Houses of Olivos
5. The Acrobats
6. The Nocturne
7. Sarandi Street
8. The Sea
9. The Linio Milagro Family
10. Bare Feet
I can't end this review without also sharing some of my favorite quotes that capture how beautiful Silvina Ocampo's penmanship truly is.
"They were so calm, like they were posing for an invisible photographer, they were becoming aware of growing up, which made one of them sad and pleased the other two."
"They had met only recently, but they felt so close like brother and sister, that the time they knew each other seemed to have begun with their birth. And then suddenly, like stealthy murderers that enter a house at night, the arguments had infiltrated their days, treacherously. As love grew in them, so did doubt and the tedious thoughtlessness that accompanies love. Like the indelible creases of a poorly ironed suit, the creases of ill-humored shouts and silence merged: everything became an insult."
"She wasn't fourteen anymore, not even in her early portraits. Nor could she write or feel as she had written or felt then."
July 19, 2020
Cuentos breves y maravillosamente escritos. Todos tiene un aura de ensueño. Quizás los argumentos, a veces, se difuminan en la forma.
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March 15, 2023Ik kan hier geen sterretjes aan geven.
Het ene verhaal is schitterend, het andere onbegrijpelijk (voor mij toch). De meeste zijn "magisch realistisch".
De meer realistische vond ik de beste.
Maar ik voel wel dat dit een zeer speciaal boek is. Dus als ik minder dan 5 sterren geef, doe ik de schrijfster onrecht.
En als ik 5 sterren geef, betekent dat dat ik het aan iedereen aanraad, en dat doe ik zeker niet.
Het eerste verhaal heet "Glazen zoldering". Een vreemd verhaal. Je kan het integraal vinden op internet ("Lees een stukje uit het boek."). Het tweede verhaal kan je ook volledig lezen.
De verhalen zijn zeer kort; ze bestrijken meestal slechts 1 à 2 pagina's.
Het ene verhaal is schitterend, het andere onbegrijpelijk (voor mij toch). De meeste zijn "magisch realistisch".
De meer realistische vond ik de beste.
Maar ik voel wel dat dit een zeer speciaal boek is. Dus als ik minder dan 5 sterren geef, doe ik de schrijfster onrecht.
En als ik 5 sterren geef, betekent dat dat ik het aan iedereen aanraad, en dat doe ik zeker niet.
Het eerste verhaal heet "Glazen zoldering". Een vreemd verhaal. Je kan het integraal vinden op internet ("Lees een stukje uit het boek."). Het tweede verhaal kan je ook volledig lezen.
De verhalen zijn zeer kort; ze bestrijken meestal slechts 1 à 2 pagina's.
March 20, 2022
De 28 korte verhalen in ‘Vergeten reis’ deden me hartverwarmend terugdenken aan de verhalen van een ander groot auteur, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Zoals jullie misschien al hebben ontdekt: mijn favoriete Spaanse auteur en koning van neogotische verhalen doorspekt met magie. Dat vleugje magie benevelde ook ‘Vergeten reis’ van Silvina Ocampo. Silvina werd geboren in Buenos Aires en overleed in 1993. ‘Vergeten reis’ verscheen al in 1937 maar de verhalen zijn anno 2022 nog heel herkenbaar en relevant.
De schrijfstijl van Ocampo is bijzonder beeldend, wat de korte verhalen aangenaam lezen maakt. De verhalen zijn enkele pagina’s lang (of kort zoals je wil) en ikzelf nam na elk verhaal kort even de tijd om te reflecteren en de mooie zinnen tot mij te laten doordringen. Ik vind wel dat je er vaak je hoofd moet kunnen bijhouden, omdat de verhalen zo kort zijn katapulteren ze je heel snel naar verschillende plaatsen, personages en details. Heerlijk dat sommige verhalen af en toe dat donkere, mysterieuze randje naar boven laten komen en dat specifieke details terugkomen doorheen de verschillende verhalen.
Vanaf het eerste kortverhaal had ik door dat dit boek me niet onberoerd zou laten. Laat je niet afschrikken door de soms wat beladen thema’s die de auteur duidelijk niet schuwt, dit geeft ze net diepgang. Al wil de auteur vaak ook gewoon humor in de verhalen verwerken. Het was trouwens een frustratie van haar dat lezers dit af en toe over het hoofd zagen. Trapezelandschap, de twee huizen van Olivos en de siësta in de ceder waren mijn 3 favoriete verhalen uit deze bundel.
Hoewel je op basis van de omslag dit boek misschien minder snel zal opnemen in de boekhandel is dit het lezen waard.
De schrijfstijl van Ocampo is bijzonder beeldend, wat de korte verhalen aangenaam lezen maakt. De verhalen zijn enkele pagina’s lang (of kort zoals je wil) en ikzelf nam na elk verhaal kort even de tijd om te reflecteren en de mooie zinnen tot mij te laten doordringen. Ik vind wel dat je er vaak je hoofd moet kunnen bijhouden, omdat de verhalen zo kort zijn katapulteren ze je heel snel naar verschillende plaatsen, personages en details. Heerlijk dat sommige verhalen af en toe dat donkere, mysterieuze randje naar boven laten komen en dat specifieke details terugkomen doorheen de verschillende verhalen.
Vanaf het eerste kortverhaal had ik door dat dit boek me niet onberoerd zou laten. Laat je niet afschrikken door de soms wat beladen thema’s die de auteur duidelijk niet schuwt, dit geeft ze net diepgang. Al wil de auteur vaak ook gewoon humor in de verhalen verwerken. Het was trouwens een frustratie van haar dat lezers dit af en toe over het hoofd zagen. Trapezelandschap, de twee huizen van Olivos en de siësta in de ceder waren mijn 3 favoriete verhalen uit deze bundel.
Hoewel je op basis van de omslag dit boek misschien minder snel zal opnemen in de boekhandel is dit het lezen waard.
July 26, 2022
Para comprender un poco más este libro, hay que tener en cuenta su contexto: es el primer libro de una mujer que aprendió otras lenguas antes que el español.
La manera de expresarse de Silvina es muy particular, casi como si escribiera pintando al óleo. Todo lo que cuenta está borroso, desdibujado, por la excepción de algunos momentos, los más claves en cada uno de los cuentos, que suelen coincidir con lo más truculento o macabro.
Son (muchos) cuentos (muy) cortos en los que los temas principales son la infancia y como desde ese lugar de inocencia se experimentan vivencias siniestras, sombrías y deprimentes. Con componentes fantásticos, y sobrenatures pero por sobre todas las cosas con una buena dosis de realismo mágico, Silvina en tres páginas por cuento nos transporta a distintos lugares, algunos quedando más en claro que otros, ya que muchos cuentos son excelentes, pero otros por su particular manera de expresarse no terminan de cerrar.
Me encantó como primera obra, y me da muchas ganas de seguir leyendo a Silvina para ver cómo evolucionó su forma de escribir.
La manera de expresarse de Silvina es muy particular, casi como si escribiera pintando al óleo. Todo lo que cuenta está borroso, desdibujado, por la excepción de algunos momentos, los más claves en cada uno de los cuentos, que suelen coincidir con lo más truculento o macabro.
Son (muchos) cuentos (muy) cortos en los que los temas principales son la infancia y como desde ese lugar de inocencia se experimentan vivencias siniestras, sombrías y deprimentes. Con componentes fantásticos, y sobrenatures pero por sobre todas las cosas con una buena dosis de realismo mágico, Silvina en tres páginas por cuento nos transporta a distintos lugares, algunos quedando más en claro que otros, ya que muchos cuentos son excelentes, pero otros por su particular manera de expresarse no terminan de cerrar.
Me encantó como primera obra, y me da muchas ganas de seguir leyendo a Silvina para ver cómo evolucionó su forma de escribir.
September 14, 2025
багато що в цій збірці нагадує сни — відсторонена оповідь, буденні й непримітні сцени, трохи розмиті по краях, водночас непередбачувані, моторошні, що діють за якоюсь невловимою логікою свого світу. вони лишають тебе з присмаком нерозв’язанності й усвідомленням, що щось завжди лишатиметься just out of reach.
іронічно додам, що повний відгук можна почитати тут: https://medium.com/@worseandbetter/%D...
іронічно додам, що повний відгук можна почитати тут: https://medium.com/@worseandbetter/%D...
March 18, 2020
From an NPR show that I was listening to for another reason, I learned about Silvina Ocampo, a very under-recognized Argentinian writer with a fascinating personal history, and about this first English translation of her debut book, a collection of stories. The forward to the collection, written by the translators, is worth reading to learn of her life, her milieu, her time. These stories, none of which are longer than six pages, are tiny evocative gems opening up whole strange worlds, surrealistic, metaphysically symbolic, dreamy, quasi-magical. Set in and around Buenos Aires, in the large houses of the wealthy and the small houses of those who serve them, and in the fields and forests surrounding those country estates, family, politics, class, desire, all come into being. There are terrible dreams, lost hopes, haunting visions, characters' entire lives summed up in magnificent detail, often culminating in dream-like violence. These stories, often focusing on women and girls, are decidedly feminist. Reading only a couple at a time was the best way for me. From the forward, I learned that one of Ocampo's sisters, a celebrity in intellectual circles, and an editor in chief, reviewed Silvina's collection, calling it "autobiographical," and claiming the narratives were awkward. What went on in that family? The forward has made me want to read more about the Ocampo sisters. These stories are complex, with a very original prose style, and deserve a wide readership.
May 23, 2022
Een mooi aantal kortverhalen maar ook een paar die ik niet goed snapte. Mijn recensie kan je hier lezen: https://axellesbooks.wordpress.com/20...
June 15, 2025
Viaje olvidado reúne los primeros 26 cuentos de Silvina Ocampo, relatos breves —quizás demasiado— que, como señala Mariana Enríquez en su biografía, llevan títulos que parecen sacados de cuadros. Comparten una atmósfera de ensueño que suele terminar quebrándose con algún giro trágico, bajo una prosa cargada de metáforas, tintes poéticos y ciertos elementos surrealistas. En ellos, son frecuentes las figuras de niños, mujeres, mucamas, paisajes rurales o casas, y lo que más me cautivó es cómo en algunos relatos logra fundir lo cotidiano con lo fantástico de una manera muy particular.
El cuento que más me impactó de todos fue el primero: Cielo de claraboyas . Quizás por eso sentí cierta decepción al ver que la mayoría no estaban a su altura, ya sea por su brevedad, por cierta falta de desarrollo o -por qué no?- por un desencanto lector que arrastro este año. Aun así, destacaría otros como: La cabeza pegada al vidrio, Extraña visita, La calle Sarandí o Viaje olvidado . En conjunto, me deja la impresión de una calidad muy volátil: algunos logran ese magnetismo misterioso que te atrapa mientras que otros son tan breves o poco interesantes que resultan fácilmente olvidables.
El cuento que más me impactó de todos fue el primero: Cielo de claraboyas . Quizás por eso sentí cierta decepción al ver que la mayoría no estaban a su altura, ya sea por su brevedad, por cierta falta de desarrollo o -por qué no?- por un desencanto lector que arrastro este año. Aun así, destacaría otros como: La cabeza pegada al vidrio, Extraña visita, La calle Sarandí o Viaje olvidado . En conjunto, me deja la impresión de una calidad muy volátil: algunos logran ese magnetismo misterioso que te atrapa mientras que otros son tan breves o poco interesantes que resultan fácilmente olvidables.
August 18, 2022
Ideaal om voor het slapengaan een kortverhaaltje te lezen van een paar pagina's.
Met het risico om er toch snel meerdere te lezen...
Met het risico om er toch snel meerdere te lezen...
July 12, 2025
crunchy meringue and the little room of my hands. i am reminded that stories don’t have to be lengthy. i want to write this sort of fiction, braided with poetry. words that are playful and impactful. serving imagination and purpose.
ps: half was read on the plane with a sore bottom and the rest was read at the beach with sore temples.
ps: half was read on the plane with a sore bottom and the rest was read at the beach with sore temples.
May 1, 2021
Mi primera impresión con Ocampo. Este es el primer libro de cuentos que escribió. Donde se pueden ver las marcas autobiográficas de su relación con hermanas y familia. Lo que más me gusto de sus cuentos fue, esa manera de describir las casas veraniegas, las personas que habitan en ellas, los campos , en tan solo dos páginas. Hay 8 cuentos que me gustaron mucho mas que el resto. Volveré a leerla.
June 23, 2025
Me perdí leyendo en el living de mi casa
February 20, 2021
After reading The Promise last summer I decided to return to Silvina Ocampo's work for a second time. I wish I had started with Forgotten Journey as I enjoyed it much more than The Promise. Forgotten Journey is Ocampo's debut and a great introduction to her work, as well as a great work of literature. I am not usually a fan of short books or short stories but this book, along with Baldwin's Go to Meet The Man which I read earlier this month, may have changed my opinion on the subject.
Forgotten Journey is a collection of 28 short stories that never extend beyond ten pages. With these stories being so short you would think they would be rather insignificant or minimal. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Even with the short run of these stories, Ocampo is able to craft explorative worlds and compelling narratives. Every word holds immense weight and is essential to the story. The minimalist writing offers more than many full length novels I've read. I was consistently intrigued by these stories and I'm sure I missed many of the concepts on this first read through.
The first story, Skylight, is a great opener and gives a great statement for what you are about to read in the coming stories. I won't spoil it here but Ocampo balances beauty and intrigue with darkness and horror. She perfectly crafts a story that leads you to believe it is going in one direction and takes it in another. This happens throughout the book but never feels like it is redundant. Especially for a book published in 1937, Forgotten Journey feels like it is well ahead of its time while still feeling timeless today.
Ocampo explores themes of anxiousness, paranoia, and distrust as well as the temporary nature of love, life, and memory. While some story's characters or settings may feel similar at times I think it lends to portraying these overall themes. With the stories, and book itself, being so short this repetition lends to remind the reader of what this collection is about.
As someone who isn't the biggest fan of poetry I found this to be the medium that truly resonates with me when it comes to portraying emotions and narratives in a short form. I'm much more drawn into these more descriptive efforts that offer more to react to. I haven't really read any books like this, which has definitely influenced my interest and enjoyment in this book.
Even if you don't catch all of the details of a story Ocampo's emotion is still easy to grasp. It is almost like listening to a song for the first time. You might not get all of the lyrics on the first listen but you can grasp the emotion and marvel at the talent and skill being portrayed.
This is the perfect morning coffee book. You can read a few stories and go about your day reflecting on what they mean. I actually started rereading the book directly after finishing it; something I've never done.
I'm still amazed by what Ocampo has done with this book. It is a great debut that only has me excited to read more from her.
Forgotten Journey is a collection of 28 short stories that never extend beyond ten pages. With these stories being so short you would think they would be rather insignificant or minimal. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Even with the short run of these stories, Ocampo is able to craft explorative worlds and compelling narratives. Every word holds immense weight and is essential to the story. The minimalist writing offers more than many full length novels I've read. I was consistently intrigued by these stories and I'm sure I missed many of the concepts on this first read through.
The first story, Skylight, is a great opener and gives a great statement for what you are about to read in the coming stories. I won't spoil it here but Ocampo balances beauty and intrigue with darkness and horror. She perfectly crafts a story that leads you to believe it is going in one direction and takes it in another. This happens throughout the book but never feels like it is redundant. Especially for a book published in 1937, Forgotten Journey feels like it is well ahead of its time while still feeling timeless today.
Ocampo explores themes of anxiousness, paranoia, and distrust as well as the temporary nature of love, life, and memory. While some story's characters or settings may feel similar at times I think it lends to portraying these overall themes. With the stories, and book itself, being so short this repetition lends to remind the reader of what this collection is about.
As someone who isn't the biggest fan of poetry I found this to be the medium that truly resonates with me when it comes to portraying emotions and narratives in a short form. I'm much more drawn into these more descriptive efforts that offer more to react to. I haven't really read any books like this, which has definitely influenced my interest and enjoyment in this book.
Even if you don't catch all of the details of a story Ocampo's emotion is still easy to grasp. It is almost like listening to a song for the first time. You might not get all of the lyrics on the first listen but you can grasp the emotion and marvel at the talent and skill being portrayed.
This is the perfect morning coffee book. You can read a few stories and go about your day reflecting on what they mean. I actually started rereading the book directly after finishing it; something I've never done.
I'm still amazed by what Ocampo has done with this book. It is a great debut that only has me excited to read more from her.
December 10, 2025
5⭐
Desde lo criollo y cotidiano, hasta lo crudo y terrorífico. Desde el mate, el río y el campo, hasta la ciudad, institutrices, sirvientas y casaquintas. Es la primera vez que leo a Silvina Ocampo y me abrió las puertas a mucho más.
Mis cuentos favoritos de esta antología (por orden de aparición en el libro):
Cielo de claraboyas, El Remanso, Paisaje de trapecios, La siesta en el cedro, y La calle Sarandí.
Desde lo criollo y cotidiano, hasta lo crudo y terrorífico. Desde el mate, el río y el campo, hasta la ciudad, institutrices, sirvientas y casaquintas. Es la primera vez que leo a Silvina Ocampo y me abrió las puertas a mucho más.
Mis cuentos favoritos de esta antología (por orden de aparición en el libro):
Cielo de claraboyas, El Remanso, Paisaje de trapecios, La siesta en el cedro, y La calle Sarandí.
June 15, 2022
I think I have a problem with microfiction, or the type of story found here which is somewhere between micro and the short story...maybe short, short stories? Most were 3-5 pages, not long enough to get past the early confusion I get at the start of a new story or book. There were two in particular I really liked "Landscape With Trapezes" and "The Acrobats." The rest were briefly entertaining but, because of their brevity, almost instantaneously forgettable. I hope City Lights publishes more of her novels, I liked The Promise well enough, I think. But if they do another collection like this, I might skip it.
July 15, 2025
lo terminé ayer, pero me olvidé completamente de reseñarlo. algo que me pasa con silvina es que nunca voy a entender por qué los intelectuales de su época le criticaban la gramática y el extrañamiento que dicen leer con su lenguaje. leyéndola, nunca me pareció rara una frase o fea una imagen. para mí, silvina escribe como si la lengua fuera de cristal, y estuviera constantemente a punto de romperse. pero qué sé yo, capaz no le estoy prestando la suficiente atención.
me gusta este libro como conjunto, pero algunos mis cuentos favoritos ("el diario de porfiria bernal", "la furia", "la soga") están en otros de sus libros. y qué bueno, ¿no? significa que puedo seguir leyéndola.
relectura nro 3: ya entiendo lo de la gramática🙏🏻 igual sostengo mi opinión original
me gusta este libro como conjunto, pero algunos mis cuentos favoritos ("el diario de porfiria bernal", "la furia", "la soga") están en otros de sus libros. y qué bueno, ¿no? significa que puedo seguir leyéndola.
relectura nro 3: ya entiendo lo de la gramática🙏🏻 igual sostengo mi opinión original
October 5, 2024
Beautifully written two-to-three page short stories embody the mind’s flickering memories, metaphorical transitions to unknown subjects described and imbues with mystery, longing and an uncanny unexplained finality. The stories’ brevity and fragmentation are enhanced with things given agency and with agents becoming objects, the receptors of a life of action.
The laundress Clodomira sprinkled the white clothing with her hand, as if watering flowers, and every now and then she looked over at the courtyard to watch the boys playing and showing off their extraordinary poses, their reflections captured in window frames. She never knew what they were talking about, and when she attempted to read their lips the mouths of her sons suddenly become as still as wax. She was an admirable laundress: the creases in shirts opened like big white flowers in the baskets of newly ironed laundry as she watched her sons' lips. Inside their heads a strange scheme took shape that for a while she tried to discern from the movement of their mouths, until she stopped trying, having become used to the closed door between her and them. In the mornings the two boys went to school, but the afternoons were filled with games in the courtyard, reading in the corners of the laundry room, and experimenting on imaginary trapezes that their mother had already begun to admire.
August 5, 2024
i’ve found collections of short stories quite tiring to read as the reader constantly steps from one world into another — but that was not the case for these wonderful stories by Silvina Ocampo, whose work i have wanted to read for quite some time, as all stories, different in content though they may be, all play out in the same universe of children with wishes and intentions of their own, who, despite the people that surround them, live solitary lives because their truest selves go unnoticed by precisely those people. i could imagine re-reading the stories, trying to get a deeper understanding, and thus a more profound admiration for them.
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July 24, 2023Eerie children murder / are murdered in many of the 28 very short stories by Argentina's rediscovered matron of the surreal. Silliness aside I love Ocampo, and these works of enigmatic microfiction (few run above 1,000 words) had me puzzling over every sentence, trying to find the throw away sentence explaining each narrative riddle, sometimes coming to the conclusion they were deliberately inexplicable, and rarely caring either way, so masterful is the language and tone. Apparently she wrote a ton of stuff, I hope more is translated quickly.
December 6, 2019
El primer libro de cuentos de Silvina Ocampo. Cuentos cortos, muy bien planteados, pero con finales abruptos, con cambios bruscos en la historia. Se sabe como empieza pero no cómo termina.
En rasgos generales, me gustó, está bien escrito, tan distinto... sobre todo el primer cuento "La casa de las claraboyas" que me dejó estremecida. De casi todos me pasó que hubiese querido que sean más largos, como si fueran el comienzo de una novela y faltara un motón, y de repente termina.
Quiero seguir leyendo a Silvina, quiero ver su evolución en el tiempo.
En rasgos generales, me gustó, está bien escrito, tan distinto... sobre todo el primer cuento "La casa de las claraboyas" que me dejó estremecida. De casi todos me pasó que hubiese querido que sean más largos, como si fueran el comienzo de una novela y faltara un motón, y de repente termina.
Quiero seguir leyendo a Silvina, quiero ver su evolución en el tiempo.
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