Potted Cactus

The imperious autocrat of Argentina's intellectual life is a woman. Now 54, tall, tailored Victoria Ocampo has been her country's acknowledged "Queen of Letters" for nearly a quarter of a century.* As essayist, she speaks for the old traditions: the French-speaking aristocrat reluctant to cut the cord to Europe. As editor, she speaks for tomorrow: the new and national literature for which Argentina strives.

Only the snobbish, opulent, Paris-loving aristocracy of Argentina could have produced Victoria Ocampo. Her wealth is based on the feudal holdings of her estanciero ancestors. She was educated in Paris, writes in French, then translates into Spanish. She can quote Racine by the yard.

Few men & women of intellectual power have visited Buenos Aires without finding their way to the Ocampo salon. At her Mar del Plata villa, brought beam-by-beam from England, or her San Isidro ancestral home where San Martin once plotted Peru's and Chile's liberation, the high talk proceeds preferably in French. "Since infancy," says Victoria, "in the whispering of Argentine alfalfa and wheat I have heard the sound of French verses."

The Ocampo prose, gracefully garnished with French, English and Spanish quotations, is concerned with places and people the author has known: Hyde Park on

Sunday, Boston in the dimout, the Patagonian lakes, Virginia Woolf, Paul Valery. It has whimsy and charm, but it represents a hybrid culture which Victoria Ocampo has not shed.

Last week, stopping off in Manhattan on her way to the relics of the Europe she loves, she carried her latest book (Testimonios III). In it she described herself as "a South American potted cactus." She has been trying to throw the pot away since she founded (in 1931) the literary magazine Sur (South) in the forefront of a national movement in Argentine letters. Later she started her own publishing house, Ediciones Sur, to publish books she likes.

Sur was designed to "bring literature's best to Argentina," ended by being Argentina's own best literary mouthpiece. It has brought to Argentina, in Spanish, Andre Gide, Benedetto Croce, William Faulkner, Thomas Mann. It has forwarded the reputation v of Argentine prizewinners like Jorge Luis Borges, Eduardo Mallea, provided a soapbox for promising Argentine newcomers like J. R. Wilcock, Vicente Barbieri. Sur claims only 3,000 circulation, loses money on every issue, but has wide influence. Victoria foots the bills.

She is ready to talk, regally, about her love for democracy, about Sur, about herself, her dislike for totalitarian government. But she talks most easily about the growth of her love and knowledge of Argentina. Said she this week: "Before I only knew Buenos Aires province. Now I have discovered the rest of the country."

* Victoria Ocampo and Nobel Prizewinner Gabriela Mistral were born on the same day, April 7, but the Chilean poetess is two years older.

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