2 - Sur: the early years

Summary

Desde un rincón, el viejo gaucho extático, en el que Dahlmann vió una cifra del sur (del sur que era suyo), le tiró una daga desnuda que vino a caer a sus pies. Era como si el sur hubiera resuelto que Dahlmann aceptara el duelo.

Victoria Ocampo

Victoria Ocampo financed Sur out of her own personal fortune and supplied its initial contributors from her circle of friends. Cyril Connolly, the editor of the British cultural magazine Horizon, has remarked that: ‘Magazines require two animators: an editor and a backer (or angel) … The life of a little magazine depends on three things: the resources of its angel, the talents of its editor and the relationship between them ‥ With a good angel and wise editor, contributions flow in and ultimately the public is formed for them: they shape the times which they reflect.’ At first, Ocampo combined both functions, though since a magazine is a composite literary text, blending different voices, it soon became much more complex than a mere reflection of her own very personal literary tastes and social background. In the beginning however, the magazine cannot be divorced from Ocampo's personal development. Since Sartre's Search for a Method, we have learned to see the family organisation as socially coded or symbolic of the society at large, and Victoria Ocampo and Sur offer a complex set of references.