Novel
Soledad
Not translated into English
Eduardo Acevedo Díaz · 1894
Synopsis
In a pago of the eastern countryside, a singing gaucho and guitarist, Pablo Luna, lives apart, with no known trade; he is said to be the son of an old woman known as the witch of the ravine. Hired for the shearing on the estancia of don Brígido Montiel, he crosses paths with Soledad, the master's daughter, eighteen, whom her father has promised to a Brazilian, Manduca Pintos. Luna does not pursue her, and it is she who comes to him. Montiel, who despises him, interrupts their first conversation, then has him dismissed from the shearing.
Context
Subtitled “Tradición del pago”, the story was published in 1894; an essay published by the Academia Nacional de Letras dates it to 1893. Unlike its author's historical tetralogy, its plot is entirely invented, and critics read it as a short story: it runs to seventy-six pages in the 1954 edition of the Uruguayan classics. A Chilean journal sees in Luna the archetype of the gaucho payador. The text was reissued in 1931 with El combate de la tapera and a study by Alberto Lasplaces.
Who it is for
A short narrative in Spanish, of about seventy pages, directly accessible; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's masterpiece and as a model of the gauchesco narrative; a Uruguayan writer called it a “poema magistral”.
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