Boedo Circense: Leónidas Barletta, Raúl González Tuñón, and the Limits of Tradition Author(s): Jason Borge Source: Hispanic Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Summer, 2008), pp. 257-279 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27668847 . Accessed: 12/04/2013 19:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Hispanic Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions boedo circense: le?nidas barletta, Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n, and the Limits of Tradition Jason Borge Vanderbilt University ABSTRACT The circus and circensian practices lend themselves par to the Latin American as ticularly well avant-gardes privileged proletarian spaces encompassing both the "crafty" extreme of carnival?in Bakhtin's sense of subversive and artisan?as well as the commercial, technological aspects of the emerging mass media. This article focuses on the circus as a traditional and modern culture in early twentieth-century key link between Argentina. In particular, it examines the writing of Le?nidas Barletta and Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n, both figures loosely associated with the avant-garde Boedo movement. In the work of these writers, I argue, the circus operates rather than metaphorically: a series of primarily metonymically through interventions, principally Tu??n's early poems and Barletta's novel Royal Circo, the working-class suburb of Buenos Aires is laid out as a living theater of marginality in which the circus performs a central role. In his novel, Barletta sees the circensian as a site of and hunger in need of either greed or refinement?the latter option put to in Barletta's liquidation practice later work as founder and director of the influential Teatro del Pueblo. Tu??n, on the other hand, reconstitutes the circensian as a vital "osmotic" space between memory and modernity, in the process showing how appar ently marginal cultural practices could be reconstituted through literary expression. Long fascinating to Latin American poets, novelists, and playwrights, yet for themost part neglected by literarycritics and cultural theorists, themod ern circus furnished intellectuals of the early twentieth centurywith a partic ?^ Hispanic Review (summer 2008) 257 Copyright ? 2008 University Pennsylvania Press.All rightsreserved. of This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  c^? Hispanic review : summer2008 258 ularly useful form of cultural production at the intersection of traditional and mass culture. Combining the "low" visual register of traveling perform ers with the melodramatic language of the follet?n, the circus served as a bridge between these popular forms and themusic hall, radionovela and early cinema?a channel that Jes?s Mart?n-Barbero has called a mediating ??lugar osm?tico" (184). The circus and circensian practices (such as streetmagic and puppet shows) lent themselves particularly well to the Latin American avant-gardes as interstitial spectacles of poverty and social marginality, but also as privileged proletarian spaces encompassing both the "crafty" extreme of carnival?in Bakhtin's sense of subversive and artisan?and elements of themodern, technological realm of film. The circus also conveniently offered Latin American writers immunity from confusion with "folklore," allowing politically engaged intellectuals to inscribe themselves in the circensewithout disqualifying themselves by marking the terrainwith which theywished to as autre. identify unassimilably Thanks in part to the prestige of Ram?n G?mez de la Serna's widely dis seminated book of chronicles, El circo (1916), the circus enjoyed general ca chet among Latin American avant-gardists.1 It was in Peru, Brazil, and Argentina, however, where the Big Top would leave the biggestmark in intel lectual circles. Beginning with the 1928 publication of Jos?Carlos Mari?te gui's essay "Esquema de una explicaci?n de Chaplin," the radical Peruvian Amauta the circensian as a model of "bohemian" cul journal championed tural and created a way to embrace cinema without production popular ap pearing either to embrace Hollywood commercialism or to turn itsback on traditional culture. Brazilian modernists, meanwhile, latched onto their own charismatic clowns as the patron saints of cultural cannibalism. Mario de Andrade published two investigative pieces in the Revista de Antropofagia speculating on the life and work of the nineteenth-century clown-singer Ve ludo.2 Later, the antropofagistas reported a 1928 "happening" during which the palha?o Piolim was feted by the group?"almo?amos Piolim," the jour i. In spite of G?mez de la Serna's ties with numerous Latin American vanguard writers, his influence was felt strongest?and longest?in Argentina. In the 1920s, his arrival in Buenos Aires was eagerly anticipated by the martinfierristas (Macciuci 192). Years later, his collaboration with Sur and its editor Victoria Ocampo cemented his bond to the region (334-35). 2. See Mario de Andrade's two essays, "Romance do Veludo" and "Lund? do escravo." This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ??> Borge 259 nal declared.3 In a number of essays published in the journal Terra Roxa e outras terras,meanwhile, Antonio de Alc?ntara Machado lauded the circus as Brazil's only "authentic" national theater, a model of politically engaged popular performance.4 Itwas inArgentina, however, where the circusmade itsdeepest impact on as literaryproduction and performance. Mari?tegui had embraced the circus an archive of traditional memory conspicuously devoid of local color. In deed, his celebration of the clown was on the figure's contingent "improve ment" by Chaplin, whose "noble English" character as the Little Tramp represented themost "evolved" form of clown genealogy (172).5The antropo fogistas project was at once more nationalist and less explicitly proletarian than Amauta's. Their mock canonization of Piolim was driven a carnival by impulse to crown a new Rei Momo and thereby implicitly consecrate their own In contrast, the circensian served nei vanguard project. Argentina, by ther as a vehicle for subversive "folk" celebrity nor as a totalizingmetaphor of traditional resistance tomodern capital. Especially in the social realism of the Boedo movement, the circus as a of the semimodern as emerged trope well as a historical referent of the arrabal. In the work of Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n and Le?nidas Barletta, I would like to propose, the circense operates primarilymetonymically rather thanmetaphorically: through a series of in terventions, principally Tu??n's early poems and Barletta's novel Royal Circo, theworking-class suburb of Buenos Aires is laid out as a living theater of marginality of which the circus is deemed particularly emblematic. Whereas Barletta sees the circensian largely as a site of greed and hunger in need of either refinement or liquidation, Tu??n reconstitutes it as a vital "osmotic" space between memory and modernity. 3. Piolim's vanguard renown does not end with his mention in the Revista de Antropofagia. In a cr?nica about the circus published in theDiario Nacional two years later,Mario de Andrade recalls the lunch and concedes that theModernistas enthusiasm for the circus had in truth been an enthusiasm for Piolim himself. Like Chaplin, Andrade writes, "a comicidade de Piolim evoca na . . . que nos todos gente urna entidade, um ser profundamente sentimos em nos, ?as nossas indecis?es e gestos contradit?rios" ("Circo de cavalinhos" 104). Piolim latermakes a cameo ap pearance inOswald de Andrade's novel Serrafim, Ponte Grande (1933). 4. In one essay, for example, Alc?ntara Machado declares unequivocally that "O teatro nacional, como muita historia nossa, nao ? nacional" ("Indesej?veis" 5). 5. Mari?tegui's rejection of local clowns could hardly be more explicit: "El clown ingl?s representa el m?ximo grado de evoluci?n del payaso. Est? lo m?s lejos posible de esos payasos bulliciosos, excesivos, estridentes, mediterr?neos, que estamos acostumbrados a encontrar en los circos via jeros errantes" (172). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26o ?? hispanic review : summer2008 Clowning Literature In an innovative study of popular English circus literature of the 1940s, Yoram S. Carmeli argues that such writing reifies the actual circus (by that time in decline) by reproducing the "piay' of circus not just through narra tive but also through themateriality of the books themselves?which con themselves as authentic documents of circus culture while at stantly present the same time undermining their own credibility on the subject by their "clowning." The goal of highbrow literature and art, Carmeli contends, has been to present the Big Top as a metaphor for the fragmentation ofmodern society (183-84). Popular literature, by contrast, aims not for a serious treat ment but rather conjures "a totalized presence of the (absent) circus" (197). Argentine circus literature of the 1920s and 1930s falls somewhere between the popular and erudite models described by Carmeli. Although like the lat ter it employs the circus as a trope of problematic modernity, it shares with the former a project of preservation and nostalgia. Carmeli argues that popu lar literature reveals the circus "as an invented tradition" (180). While Tu??n, Barletta, and others reconstitute the circus through literature (albeit in ways that diverge from Carmeli's "nonserious" circus texts), the reverse is also true: tradition, to a much extent than in En Argentine literary greater gland and the United States, is itself "invented" by the circus. The most important foundational event of both the circo criollo and Riverplate theater historywas the 1884 adaptation of Eduardo Gutierrez's serial novel JuanMo rena. Initially staged in pantomime by theUruguayan-born Jos? Podest?, at the time one of the region's most celebrated circus personalities (known also by his clown moniker Pepino 88), the theatrical version of JuanMoreira was an enduring hit both inArgentina and elsewhere in Latin America. The pop ular spectacle combined the familiar story of a heroic gaucho driven to vio lence with the visual language of the Big Top. Inaugurating a formula that would comprised the second and concluding bill of last for decades, Moreira a mixed spectacle that began with traditional circus performances: clown routines, high wire acts, and equestrian feats, performed by the same artists who would later play the leads and supporting roles of the drama.6 By the 6. According to Seibel, the unprecedented success of theMoreira pantomime was due principally to its tragicomic exploitation of national myth and the formal originality of the spectacle, whose circus semantics contrasted so sharply with the European, bourgeois conventions of contempora neous national theater (65). The circus-play's success no doubt had much to do with shifting This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ?^ 261 Borge 1920s, the original JuanMoreira had spawned scores of different adaptations, an opera, at least two silent films, and countless cordel-like rewrit including novel the numerous characters and novel ings of Gutierrez's incorporating ties of the stage play (Seibel 66-67). The bawdy language, popular typology, and circus pedigree of the play incurred the disdain of theArgentine literary establishment, which saw in thewidely disseminated revenge story a poten tial instigator of urban violence as well as the profanation of the nation's cultural landscape. Ironically, the public denouncement of thework by such prominent intellectuals as Jos? Ingenieros and Florencio S?nchez probably contributed to the "bohemian" cachet enjoyed by the circus among the and in particular among participants of the Boedo group, who avant-gardes, were too eager to distance themselves from their bourgeois only predeces sors.7 Perhaps in part because of the disfavor intowhich JuanMoreira had fallen with the cultural establishment, but also due to the circus's continuing popu larity in Buenos Aires well into the 1930s, the circense plays a visible role in literature. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Argentine avant-garde earlywork of the poet Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n, in particular his first two collec tions El violin del diablo (1926) and Mi?rcoles de ceniza (1928). Interestingly, it is not Pepino 88 that captivates the young Tu??n, but rather the English born clown Frank Brown, Podest?'s contemporary and frequent collaborator who had performed alongside Pepino 88 in the original production of Juan Moreira. Since Brown's elegant pantomime tended to appeal to children more than Podest?'s, it is not surprising that the former should be singled out by a poet whose own childhood coincided with the latter end of Brown's demographics as well. As ?ngel Rama has pointed out, themain problem with Argentine theater before the arrival ofMoreira had been the lack of a "real and present" audience, "suficientemente numeroso como para financiar el funcionamiento de compa??as estables" (132). The mass migra tion from the provinces therefore constituted a new, popular public ready to embrace a circus drama about a wronged gaucho, especially since, as Rama notes, a number ofMoreira's spectators were in fact recently displaced gauchos themselves (142). The mostly nonverbal adaptation of Gutierrez's novel?sparse dialogue was gradually introduced into theMoreira repertoire?also makes sense on another level. Pantomime and exaggerated physical gesture in the circus and popular theater,Mart?n-Barbero writes, were essentially nineteenth-century responses to various official prohibitions of "vulgar" dialogue. Along with "schematic" plots and "Maniquean" styliza tion, popular performance was compelled to adopt an anachronistic "rhetoric of excess," a rheto ric that has flourished to this day in the form of popular film and soap operas (126-31). 7. Ingenieros concludes that the "delincuente" JuanMoreira "no es ... un exponente de las cualidades psicol?gicas del criollo, sino m?s bien su ant?tesis. Es funesto para nuestra moral colec tiva el culto de semejante personaje" (150). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 262 c?? hispanic review : summer2008 celebrity. In "A los veteranos del circo," Tu??n claims the English clown as "due?o de las risas de mi generaci?n" (91) and safe-keeper of "mis primeras emociones pl?sticas" (92). Brown's privileged position in Tu??n's collection of circus characters is consistent with the poet's foregrounding of the exotic elements of the circo criollo. Along with "Old Tom Gin" (as Tu??n calls Brown), El violin del diablo spotlights a French woman lion tamer in "Circo," a Filipino carnival dancer in "Nostalgia de las danzas b?rbaras," and Gypsy performers in "Gitanos ambulantes." The overall effect is that of the circen sian as an essential component of a porte?o landscape tinged with familiar a conflation of extra?o and somehow constitutive of strangeness: extranjero normative local identity. Beatriz Sarlo has argued thatTu??n's earlywork presents a cold, relatively unfiltered vision of the old Buenos Aires. "Centrado en el presente," Sarlo writes, "[Tu??n] admite el pasado solo bajo la sintaxis del flash-back expli cativo o no melanc?lico" (159). Sarlo's remark that pintoresco pero suggests use of the arrabal as a metaphor precludes itsm?tonymie Tu??n's validity as a historical referent?hence any sentiment the poet might harbor toward his childhood. Yet in its evocation of the past, the poet's tribute to Frank Brown in "A los veteranos del circo" is hardly just picturesque. Tu??n's "specular" vision sometimes lingers sentimentally?sometimes tenderly, irascibly?on the old clown, treatinghim as a beloved relic: ?FrankBrown est?s viejo! ?Frank Brown tan arrugado! Yo siento por ti lamaldad del espejo. ?Malditomaquillaje! ?Ese carm?n est? pasado! Frank Brown eres un fuelle demasiado gastado, un juguete que ha caducado. (El violin del diablo 91) Tu??n supplements his representation of Brown with a fantasy inwhich the poet "updates" his master by reviving the venerated clown's tired routine with and tangos and zamacuecas": "Shimmys para hacer reir a un ni?o, que es tan noble misi?n, har?a de mi alma una matraca, de mi entusiasmo una faca, de mi poeta un clown, y una serpentina de mi coraz?n. (91) This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ?^ Borge 263 By casting his makeover as loving tribute, Tu??n at once mocks the circus as an anachronism and hallows it as a creative model: in poeticizing Frank Brown?to return to Carmeli's clowns himself. Such reci concept?Tu??n procity could not have been enacted without the poet's sentimental embrace of the circus as a constitutive part of the arrabal of his youth. Rather than reducing the circus to metaphorical instrumentality as a symbol of cultural fragmentation or vulgarity, in other words, Tu??n (by "clowning") recon verts Brown's ludic anachronism to evoke "a totalized presence of the (ab sent) circus" (Carmeli 197) more typical of popular circus literature than high-minded poetry. "A los veteranos del circo" reads, then, not like a wholesale of rejection as Sarlo contends, but rather as a ambivalent of nostalgia, playful, expression recognition bymetonymy. As an anachronistic foreigner,Old Tom Gin (like many of the other circus figures from El violin del diablo) is ostensibly from the "wrong" place (England) and time (the nineteenth century) to serve as a fittingmentor for a young Argentine writer with vanguard ambitions. From a different set of criteria, Frank Brown is also representative of the "wrong" cultural practice, one tainted by themarket and themoral dubiousness of Moreira?dual "vulgarities" that Tu??n does not attempt to disguise. In "Eche veinte centavos en la ranura," another poem from his first collection, Tu??n juxtaposes thewonder and venality of street sideshows, where money must be spent "si quiere ver la vida color de rosa" (97). If the circense specta cle promises the customer "otra esperanza remota de vida miliunanochesca" (99), it also freelymixes innocence with prurience. Cien lucecitas. Maravillas De reflejos funambulescos. ?Aqu? hay mujer y manzanilla! ?Aqu? hay t?teres y refrescos! Pero sobre todo, mujeres para los hombres de los puertos que como alfileres prenden sus en los ojos muertos. (98) ojos, Tu??n's depiction of the coexistence of juvenile and adult entertainment, where one can "become a child again / and walk among the sailors from Liverpool and the Suez" (98), is on one hand an accurate description of many circuses and carnival shows, and not in early-twentieth-century just This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  c?? Hispanic review : summer2008 264 Argentina. At the same time, Tu??n's insistence on the interchangeability of fantasy as the stuffof grittyfairytale and lightpornography reveals a literary project of decidedly modern enchantment. The commodification o? porte?o circus culture, in short, does little to diminish itspower to cast a good spell. Tu??n thus consecrates and disavows the circensian as a simultaneously "correct" site of nostalgia and appropriation. literary InMi?rcoles de ceniza, Tu??n trades in his Baudelairean alter ego Fran?ois Villon for the strugglingmagician JuancitoCaminador, in the process reposi tioning the clown as a twentieth-century subject much closer in spirit to than Frank Brown. In his prose text, "Cosas le ocurrieron a Chaplin que Juancito Caminador," Tu??n champions modern circus magic through the voice of Juancito: "Vengo a decirles que la prestidigitaci?n triunfa en el arte y en la vida. S?ntesis, sorpresa, fantas?a. Somos la somos la imaginaci?n, mentira, somos la velocidad" (92). to Frank Brown's outdated Compared clothing and tired routines, the new payaso is almost a futurist: emblematic of the speed, technical imagination, and artifice of themodern metropolis. Indeed, along with Betty Bronson films and featherweight boxing matches, for Juancito, "no arte tan y armonioso, tan asombroso y sutil hay superior como el arte de la prestidigitaci?n," an artwhose "best friends" are Yankee empresarios,poets, and lying children (93-94). JuancitoCaminador's motley assortment of bedfellows illustratesTu??n's unique brand of radicalism. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White have argued that bourgeois intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu ries typically "disowned" the carnival and consigned the "impurities" of car nival pleasure to the realm of the Other as a way of safeguarding "a stable and 'correct' sense of self" (178). From one Tu??n's endorsement of angle, formal and mass commercialism appears to a carnival synthesis perform esque "profanation" of distinct discursive domains through a "high" hybrid ization of erudite and modern and traditional. Such a maneuver is popular, consistent with a vanguard rejection ofmost things bourgeois. At the same time, however, Juancito is partially "purified" by his unwitting social activ ism?which Tu??n ties to his character's as a clown. shortcomings Much likeChaplin's Little Tramp, Juancito is a pathetic figure ill-equipped to excel at his chosen and excess vocation, yet whose charming failures comic endear him to children and theworking classes while making a mockery of the cultural and political establishment. The conclusion of "Cosas que le ocurrieron a Juancito Caminador" underscores the clown's Chaplinesque This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ?? Borge 265 qualities. Performing in a provincial town, luancito pulls streamers out of his hat until they inundate the audience: [La serpentina] a llenar la carpa subiendo a las m?s altas mien lleg? gradas tras los burgueses se enredaban al querer huir y todo se en despavoridos redaba en la y los ni?os hac?an bollos con ella para serpentina pobres arrojarlos sobre el boticario del pueblo, el maestro, el socialista y los con s?jales. (Mi?rcoles 100) While Juancito's botched trickfirstdrives away "petrified" bourgeois specta tors, even the town socialist is not from the The spared ensuing anarchy. streamers are linked metaphorically to luancito's tenderness?a asso quality ciated repeatedly with the clown's special connection with children (93). Such identificationwith the irrational power of children recalls Latin Ameri can vanguards' frequent and spirited celebration of Chaplin.8 In Tu??n's evocation of circus culture, social engagement and sentiment combine to mitigate the profanity of m?salliances without resorting to total depuration. The result is a body of earlywork thathovers between avant-garde and estab lishment, literaryand popular. Boedo and the Limits of the Circense The increasing importance of political commitment in Tu??n's literary work soon distanced him from the Florida camp and brought him closer to the Boedo group. Regardless of affiliations and ideological stripes, Sarlo has argued, Argentine writers of the period shared a common obsession with borders and liminality, both actual and symbolic. Though the lines between Boedo and Florida were frequentlyblurry, constantly shiftingand often arbi trarilydrawn, one of the principal differences lay in the former's reconstitu tion of the suburbs as a site of As Sarlo has city's working-class literary praxis. noted, certainwriters?including Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n, his brother Enrique, 8. A notable example isXavier Abril's unusual text, "Radiograf?a de Chaplin," published in two parts in Amauta (1928). Chaplin, inAbril's poetic vision, possesses a tacit,mysterious connection to children above all others. "La intenci?n de Chaplin est? ya en los ovarios de lasmadres contem . . . Los beb?s dicen por?neas Chaplin y se orinan. En Virginia, para que los ni?os se queden dormidos les dan teta y Chaplin" (73). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 266 c?? Hispanic review : summer2008 Nicol?s Olivari, and the consensus boedenses Elias Castelnuovo, Alvaro Yun que, and Le?nidas Barletta?infused the suburbio not justwith aesthetic but also ideological value (180).Whereas JorgeLuis Borges in his martinfierrista phase "acriolla la tradici?n literaria universal y, almismo tiempo unlversaliza las orillas," other writers, exiled from Florida either by birth or choice, take a slightlydifferent approach. Rather than, like Borges, jumping directly from a geographical to a literary referent, they insert a third, ideological step, ren dering the social margins visible by introducing themselves as actors or near actors in the outlying "stage" they describe (Sarlo 180-81). Even more so than Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n, itwas Le?nidas Barletta who identified the circus as a marginal site ideally suited for both aesthetic and ideological purposes?that is, as a multilevel referent (physical, social, and symbolic) that allowed thewriter to assume a literaryvoice in consonance with the "others" of the arrabal. As Sarlo notes, the challenge and novelty of theArgentine vanguards consisted of their self-inscription into theworking class suburbs whose Others were "[o]tros que un noso pueden configurar stros con el yo literario de poetas e intelectuales; son Otros cuando pr?ximos, no uno mismo" (180, original emphasis). Barletta's novel Royal Circo (1926) presents the circus primarily as the ter rain of impoverished subjects in a fruitless search for economic opportunity. Whereas Tu??n paints the Big Top as a marginally sentimental site of anach ronism and nostalgia, for Barletta human oddities and material desperation translate into a theater of exploitation and broad pathos. In the novel, the founder of the eponymous Royal Circo, Sardina, hastily assembles a troupe of circus artists, "freaks," and animals, then runs offwith Estella theAmazon when his venture soon proves The of human unprofitable. specter poverty? reiterated by the performers' cohabitation with a half-starved elephant, lion, and donkey?is a thread that runs throughout the novel. After Sardina aban dons his circus, the English clown Tim?n (JohnGeeps) complains that the lifeof a circus performer is "a dog's life." Takeo, a Japanese tightropewalker and former owner of a laundry service, disagrees: ?Es Es la vida del artista. Esto no es un No somos obreros. justa. trabajo. No nada. producimos a la gente. ?Alegramos ?Nadie nos pidi? alegr?a. No hacemos nada ?til. Planchar, lavar, s? . . . ?No s?lo de pan vive el hombre. La es buena . . . alegr?a This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ??> Borge 267 ?La ... s? ... la gente r?e . . . Pero nosotros, ?Somos La alegr?a alegres? nuestra es la que divierte a la (127) pobreza gente. In spite of Tim?n's claims to the contrary,Royal Circo presents the circus mainly as an unhappy proletarian activity, yet one with which working-class readers could be reasonably expected to identify. The preponderance of circus artists in the cast of characters, at the same time, lends foreign-born the setting an exotic atmosphere thatwould appear to displace readers from the terrain of virtual Others towhich Sarlo refers.This suggests an attempt to infuse the "otros pr?ximos" of the arrabal with an aura of celebrity rooted in historical truth. Several of the novel's characters, in fact, bear a close re semblance to well-known fixtures of the circo criollo: lohn Geeps (Tim?n) evokes Frank Brown; the "Amazon" Estella, meanwhile, may well clearly have been inspired by the famous ?cuy?reRosita de la Plata, who made news not only for her unprecedented work under the Big Top but also for her widely publicized extramarital affairwith Frank Brown and subsequent di vorce fromAntonio Podest?, Jos? Podest?'s younger brother (Seibel 54-55). Barletta, therefore, the circus as a world of near-alterity whose represents are meant to embody to an with occupants marginality exceptional degree out, however, being exceedinglymarginal.9 The characters of Royal Circo rarely stray into unassimilable extremes. By privileging the business of the circus over its traditional roots and foregrounding the European credentials of the traveling performers, Barletta dispenses with an issue he would not have been able to avoid had he set his novel in the carnival proper. In very general terms, circus and carnival are perhaps best thought of as cultural cousins whose divergent practices often belie their genealogical ties. Helen Stoddart has written of a crucial overlap between the two, such that "circus and circus texts may or represent some of the inversions and m?salli perform ances which Bakhtin identifies as features of carnival processions, but they do so as art rather than as subversive carnivalesque (temporarily) socially carnival" (38). As helpful as Stoddart's distinction is, it does not speak to the racial poli 9. Helen Stoddart has recently called attention to the economic need formodern circus perform ers tomaintain a balance between celebrity and "banal" approachability. Performers, she writes, "must be exceptional in some highly visible way, and yet at the same time be seen to possess enough of the attributes of ordinariness to facilitate identification and empathy on the part of the consumer" (56). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 268 <c^? Hispanic review : summer2008 tics of carnival and circus so pertinent to the literary representation of either set of practices, especially in Latin America. To write about the local carnival with any degree of verisimilitude, Riverplate writers of the 1920s and 1930s were forced to grapple with the inherent ethnic otherness of the spectacle in terms of its participants, its practices, or both.10 The choice of the circus as the setting of his novel, on the other hand, permits Barletta to emphasize the Continental aspects of the arrabal by exhibiting themargins inwhiteface. Such a maneuver has a felicitous by-product in that it allows for a less con " tentious to a we.' As and White contend, the way "configure Stallybrass emergent bourgeoisie, "with its sentimentalism and itsdisgust, made carnival into the festival of the Other" (178, original emphasis). Barletta, however, an alternative not free of bourgeois senti negotiates position?one certainly mentalism yet also not driven by "disgust" to isolate the Other entirely. By refusing to represent the circus as simply the "festival of theOther," Barletta avoids relegating himself to a position of privileged outsider.His circumven tion of carnival extremes leaves theway clear for a literary treatment of the popular without resorting to primitivism. Barletta exchanges wild saturnalia for scenes of sentimental solidarity. The spectacle of desperate characters caught in cycles of destitution and adversity and also serves as a pretext for sermonizing. Circo's generates pathos, Royal main characters prove to be virtuous cast-offs of the circus's failure. Tim?n (the English clown), Salustino (a clown-magician whose morbidly obese first wife dies at the outset of the novel), and Gloria (a widowed trapeze artist) end up bound together bymelodramatic circumstances: Salustino takes Glo ria under his wing after her lover commits suicide, and Gloria's fatherless daughter Elena is eventually married off to Tim?n. Given the novel's rela denouement, Sarlo argues that Barletta's combines sen tively happy approach timentalitywith "pious realism" (200). Barletta's strategy thus violates the guiding precepts of the Boedo school, which calls for a more sober social realism.11 At the same time, the "Maniquean" plot and character devices and ?o. For a number of writers, local carnival practices like the corso, the murga, and the desfilewere tinged with africanidad and duly colored black. See, for example, theUruguayan Ildefonso Pereda Vald?s's negrista poems; Roberto Arlt's aguafuertes "Fiestas de carnaval" and "?Qu? farra 'hicimo' anoche!" (241-46); and Enrique Gonz?lez Tu??n's short story, "Tus besos fueron m?os." 11. In a 1927 Claridad article titled "Ellos y nosotros," Roberto Mariani outlines the basic differ ences between Florida and Boedo. While claiming realism as the literarymode of "nosotros," he qualifies the term by underscoring the boedenses "un-frivolous" solidarity with the working classes. "Nuestro realismo no es tendencioso," he writes, adding that "tenemos una interpretaci?n seria, transcendental del arte" (18). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ??> Borge 269 "rhetoric of excess" cited byMart?n-Barbero as the hallmarks ofmelodrama at least offer the advantage, in Royal Circo"s case, ofmatching their popular matter. subject Barletta "re-creates" the circus in a differentway than the English circus literature described by Carmeli, where writing and consumption together constitute a "performance ofmarginality" inwhich the circus world is ludi cally "transformed and perceived as an embodiment of unique ontological isolation, epitomizing a temporality out of social time and a spatiality out of relations and meanings" (176). Royal Circo "performs marginality" from the point of view of work, not play. If Barletta muzzles "carnival laughter" for the sake of circus however, he also sacrifices some of the subversive pathos, of the carnival's In the power?the craftiness?typical marginal participants. lugubrious space of Barletta's Big Top, social hierarchies are not inverted, is muted, and malicia is reserved for those in power.12 transgression already a melanc?lica con las tradiciones"?to use N?s By showing "complacencia tor Garc?a-Canclini's turn of phrase (205)?Barletta displays a sensibility closer in spirit to nineteenth-century folklore studies than to early twentieth century vanguardism. Far from being a nostalgic tribute or "playful" recreation, then, Royal Circo represents the circus as a vehicle of capitalist exploitation. In one of the novel's last chapters, an aging Salustino and his adopted daughter headline a show at the "Cine-teatro Rivera" that opens with a short-reel silent variety Western. The audience, Barletta's narrator tells us, is impervi impoverished ous to the seductive wiles of the film industry: "?[D]?nde iban a encontrar ellos minas de oro y tesoros escondidos, si todos viv?an en la vecindad del arroyo Maldonado, que era dep?sito de latas y botines viejos?" (140). This same audience, however, proves highly susceptible to Salustino's simple yet beguiling magic act, inwhich the elderlymago conjures not gold but "useful" edible goods: garden vegetables and a duck (146).When at the conclusion of the show a near riot of enthusiasm to the theater, the erupts, causing damage owner asks Salustino not to an encore "Si esto reluctantly give performance: se repite tendr? que cerrar el sal?n" (147). The message imparted by this 12. In his seminal work, Roberto da Matta has stressed the centrality of malicia and malandragem to the social outcast's unique power to destabilize the structure of authority by occupying the "interstices between order and disorder"?a subversive power da Matta has identified as the very core of Brazilian carnival (130-31). Yet in Barletta's novel, greed, hunger, and modern technology have sapped the circus of its sacred remnants, leaving dominant structures intact. This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  c?? hispanic review : summer2008 270 concluding scene is two-fold. On one hand, if traditional culture temporarily overshadows early movie magic, the theater owner's Hollywood's venality ultimately eclipses the folk genius of Salustino's performance?a genius cul tivated in the circus. At the same time, the inclusion of the cinema in the "Cine-teatro Rivera" variety show Barletta's main anxiety about the signals modernization of popular entertainment?that the technical apparatus and profitmotive spell the demise of the circus's ritual remnants, in spite of the latter's abiding suitability for the inhabitants of the suburbio.13The juxtaposi tion of the cinema and "late" circus culture in Royal Circo suggests that, for Le?nidas Barletta at least, the arch of oral culture's resemantization was an essentially venal one failing to serve the needs of theworking classes. From a different Barletta's novel can be seen also as an vantage point, attempt to purge the circus by narrating its supposed demise at the hands of themarket and new technologies. His maneuver stands in contrast to Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n's poetry, particularly his collection La calle del agujero en la media (1930). In his third book, Tu??n curtails themodernista decadence of his earlier work in favor of a poetics that hovers even more precariously between the arrabal and the metropolis. Tu??n embraces the cinema as theme and creative muse inways similar to those used later by Nicol?s Oli van in his book El hombre de la baraja y la pu?alada (1933), a collection of fanciful cr?nicas that imagine personal relationships with silent and early sound film stars.14Like Olivari, Tu??n naturalizes Hollywood celebrities by rerendering their screen personalities in such a way that theywould not look 13. Barletta's lament at the circenses demise later surfaces in his collection of prose poems, Los destinos humildes (1938), in which assorted street vendors and entertainers?from peanut and candy salesmen to soothsayers and puppeteers?struggle against the changes brought on by mo dernity. One of themost interesting pieces is "El fot?grafo ambulante," a portrait of a man who photographs portraits, a primitive technologist caught between the traditional and the modern, the "miraculous" and themundane. Barletta generates pathos by juxtaposing the wonder of the apparatus with the impoverished simplicity of its operator: "en su m?xima sencillez, el fot?grafo hace como que ignora el portentoso milagro que va a realizar ... no puede hacer otra cosa; aunque, s?, puede m?s: puede iluminar el retrato con unos toques ingenuos y falsos de color" (76-77). 14. The title of Olivari's book is a reference to one of several Hollywood stars he "covers" in his cr?nicas: William Powell. In addition, Olivari imagines Gary Cooper in a Buenos Aires dive bar, writes a love letter to Lillian Gish, and likens Laurel and Hardy to honorary porte?os, "medio burgueses ymedio vagos" (62). In his "letter" to Lillian Gish, Olivari foregrounds the geographical distance that separates the chronicler from the actress: she is,he writes, "la 'baby' de mi conscien cia de gaviero en los muelles de San Francisco, condenado al periodismo en Buenos Aires, por un destino grotesco" {j8). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ?^ Borge 271 out of place in the mean streets of Buenos Aires. Tu??n sees the actress Evelyn Brent as "friend to thieves and prostitutes" (48); George Bancroft as a "failed artist" and "artful thief" who at night frequents "nostalgic ports" and "hidden taverns" (47); and writes of the actor William Powell: "Fue jugador. Su vida fue una partida brava, / el p?cker, el amor, el contrabando, y tuvo / la impasibilidad de un fil?sofo esc?ptico / que descubre lo in?til y peque?o del mundo" (49). Elsewhere in the collection, Tu??n works in an inverse direction: instead of transfiguring the film industry into something local and intimate, he fur ther internationalizes the porte?o vernacular of his earlier works. "Mario nettes," for example, emphasizes the European of circus and pedigree carnival culture. Tu??n mockingly historicizes the figures of Punch and Gui gnol to show how clown prototypes echo the follyof human societies, "pobre aserr?n el coraz?n, pobre m?scara deste?ida / nuestra ilusi?n" (45).15 In "Pe trouchka," Tu??n likens himself to Stravinsky's puppet-clown in love with an enchanted ballerina, comparing the body of his own lover, however, to the "carne verde y brutal de Greta Garbo" (170). In the same way that the jump-cut and collage effects of his work reveal a formal influence of the cinema beyond the topical treatment of film celebrities, Tu??n's "free famil iarization" of erudite and sources reveals a popular carnivalesque approach in his work transcending the thematics of circus and carnival.16Rather than mass culture as the rival or executioner of oral culture, in anxiously viewing short, La calle del agujero en la media juxtaposes cinema and the circense in ways that stress their propinquity. The survival of his poetic voice Juancito Caminador in subsequent books from the 1930s consummates thismingling of the traditional and themod ern, as Tu??n continues to liken his poetic work to that of a street-wise magician with "marvelous" qualities akin to those of a filmmaker. Juancito's world is hardly an insular one populated by pure anachronism and sad out casts. Instead, it is "lived-in" space that reacts to modern injustices through a mixture of indignant protest and playful adaptation, a hybrid of tactics 15. "Marionettes" would later form the basis of a three-act play cowritten with Olivari and pro duced by Teatro del Pueblo called Dan tres vueltas y luego se van (1934). 16. Sarlo suggests Bakhtin's concept of "free familiarization" when she writes of La calle del agu jero en la media that its "yo po?tico no se fija en ninguno de estos niveles [culturales diferentes] y puede, en consecuencia, organizar el collage de un traje de payaso con un libro de Rimbaud, mediante cortes y yuxtaposiciones aprendidos tambi?n en la sintaxis del cinematogr?fico" (171). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  c?? Hispanic review : summer2008 272 announced at the conclusion of the poem "Juancito Caminador," from the collection Todos bailan (1930): "Y mi coraz?n contin?a alegre y violento / como el coraz?n alborotado de un mundo nuevo" (33). Years later, in his poem "Canto inconcluso a Chaplin" (from the collection Hay alguien que est? esperando), Tu??n cements the link between circensian memory and cinematic modernity by revivingChaplin's traditional roots: "Ya no es como en el circo de cara tiznada / ni cara de como luna / ayer, albayalde prestada. [Pero e]s el mismo hombrecito con cabellos m?s viejos" (148). Ifmodern times have changed Carlitos, however, Juancito remains his loyal deputy. In the poem's last stanza, the poet-prestidigitador underscores the personal and vocational solidarity that stillbinds him to themovie-clown: ?Oh calle de lamedia agujereada! All? iremos en busca del sujeto notable como t? y como yo, a el vino. compartir En la calle la mu?a nos asedia. (149) burguesa The Beautification of theFolk Questioning the lack of precision in Bakhtin's articulation of "distinct dis cursive domains," Stallybrass and White argue that "[wjriting about a fair . . . could be as much an act of dissociation from, as a of engagement sign with, its festive space" (61).While Le?nidas Barletta's early fictional work leans closer to engagement than dissociation, his subsequent leadership of Buenos Aires's Teatro del Pueblo promised to combine popular performance with in a way that conflated discursive domains. Tea literary representation tro del Pueblo was founded in 1930 as an alternative to the city's commercial theaters, viewed by Barletta and other original members as artistically bank rupt and priced out of reach of working-class spectators. After struggling for a of years, the Teatro, under Barletta's direction, won couple gradually larger audiences, funding and the begrudging respect of the lettered elites who at first mocked the upstart theater's amateurish Roberto Arlt com productions. ments that Barletta's was a one because it in enterprise particularly daring vented a new theatrical tradition rather than relying on an already existing one. Barletta's with Ford's, Arlt writes, "No ex Comparing audacity Henry This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ??> Borge 273 ist?an autores, ni teatros, pero [Barletta] debe haberse dicho: hagamos el teatro que los autores se har?n (17).17 despu?s" Perhaps itwould be more accurate to say that new authors were not con stituted from Barletta's as much as established writers recon project already stituted themselves as playwrights through the new theater.One such writer was Arlt himself,whose dramaturgy blossomed in the atmosphere of creative latitude fostered by Barletta.18Another was Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, au thor of the play T?teres de pies ligeros, the theater's first critical and popular success. In the journal Metr?polis, which during the early 1930s served as the literaryand critical voice of Teatro del Pueblo, the theaterwas routinely advertised as a "teatro de marionetas," and indeed a number of productions of the period besides Martinez Estrada's dealt eithermaterially or themati or marionettes.19 re cally with puppetry Martinez Estrada's play, however, veals that the circensewould have to be diluted for it to be integrated into Teatro del Pueblo's brand of performance. T?teres de pies ligeros is a decidedly "high" rendering of the commedia del' arte tradition, offering a twentieth century variation ofwhat Bakhtin calls "an individual carnival," whereby the original "carnival spirit," conditioned by Romanticism, acquires a "private, 'chamber' character" (36-37). In T?teres, the stock characters Pierrot, Co lombina, Arlequino, and Polichinela speak inmeasured verse, their irony is refined, and the story reveals little attempt to adapt itsEuropean modalities to local Martinez Estrada, in other words, Martin-Bar settings. promotes bero's popular archetypes to "artistic" categories largelydevoid of the earthy, carnival laughter that defined them to begin with. IfRa?l Gonz?lez Tu??n's poem "Marionettes" had rendered clown as violent and coarse? prototypes that is, truer to their form?Martinez Estrada dresses them original up. Turning traditional performance into a theater of ideas, T?teres de pies ligeros features nostalgia without excess: the beautification of the folk. Yj. Both Barletta and Ford, Arlt adds, are like conquistadores who operate in similar ways: "crean la dificultad, se cierran el camino de salida, y entonces no les queda otro recurso que triunfar o romperse la cabeza" (17). 18. Arlt's emergence as a playwright began with Teatro del Pueblo's production of Los humillados (1931), an adaptation of a fragment of his novel Los siete locos; it continued with Trescientos millones (1932), Saverio el cruel (1936), Africa (1938), La isla desierta (1938), La fiesta del hierro (1940), and El desierto entra en la ciudad (1942). Although Arlt's work with the Teatro was generally well received by critics, especially those of the independent press, he would find the widest reception from his only play produced in the commercial circuit, El fabricante de fantasmas (1936). 19. One notable example is Eduardo Gonz?lez Lanuza's play El bast?n de polichinela, staged in 1935 This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  ,<x" Hispanic review : summer2008 274 At first glance, Teatro del Pueblo's lofty staging of the circensian would seem inconsistent with Boedo's platform of politically engaged art and Bar letta's opposition to bourgeois theater. A closer look, however, reveals the ambivalence with which many boedenses had for some time approached the topic of the cultural "revolution" that the Teatro ostensibly spearheaded. In an important essay titled "Nuestro Teatro" and published inClaridad (1927), Alvaro Yunque had viciously described mainstream Argentine theater as "otro mal nacional [y] una ingeniosa m?quina de distraer, o sea, de idioti zar" (24-25). The most remarkable aspect of Yunque's manifesto is not his predictable attack on the "monstrous hedonism" of capitalist society that,he claims, has "stained" the theatermore than any other art (25). Rather, it is his wholesale rejection of both high and low registers of the 1920s theatrical scene that calls attention to itself.The greatest dangers to theatrical art,Yun que claims, are not the serious "teatro de melodramas en nombre de just dramas y, con el nombre de comedias, la merengue sentimental" but also the demotic "pantomimas sin pretensiones" (27). By condemning both high minded melodrama and popular nonverbal performance, Yunque hopes to rid theater of any trace of vulgarity,whether bourgeois or plebeian. The main problem with Yunque's frontal assault on the national stage is that it is essentially alchemical. Yunque attempts too forcefully to extract the pueblo from theplebe, condemning the latter as fatuous in order to transform the former into a whitewashed domain of "human fraternity" (28).20 In a particularly telling passage of the essay,Yunque traces the dubious origins of thep?blico-plebe to the "base" influence of the circus: ?Cu?nto mejor fuera para la cultura argentina que el ladr?n Juan Moreira no saltara nunca del circo al escenario! Y curiosa coincidencia ?sta de que la industria del teatro nacional moderno, industria el concepto bur seg?n gu?s: la de producir tenido su en el de un ganancias, haya origen personaje ladr?n y salteador de oficio, "un caballero de industria," como castizamente se denomina a los tales. (24-25) Yunque thus paints himself into a corner. To buttress his argument that the current theater scene suffers from a flawed foundation (correctable only by 20. In their excellent overview of the Teatro's early years, Patricia Veronica Fischer and Grisby Og?s Puga have noted that, given the theater's general failure to generate the trulypopular audi ence they had hoped to attract, itwas in some sense a "teatro popular sin pueblo" (169). This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ?^ Borge 275 social and cultural revolution), he resorts to the conventionally bourgeois argument that JuanMoreira should be disqualified as a popular hero because of his The circus, meanwhile, emerges as a supposed "immorality." symbol of Moreira's?and theater's?venal menace: the native lair of the Argentine "caballero de industria." "Nuestro Teatro" previews Teatro del Pueblo's ideological underpinnings and shows how even themost politically radical wing of theArgentine avant garde either "elevated" or rejected the circense in its quest for cultural re spectability. Beginning inClaridad, and later in the 1930s publications Metro polis and Conducta (the latter two closely affiliatedwith Barletta's theater), criticism of "serious" art assessments of popular forms. increasingly trumped Both Metr?polis and Conducta go far beyond the scope of theater to include art, and film criticism. Not mere vehicles of the Boedo literary, music, group, moreover, the journals feature essays and reviews such writers as Eduardo by Gonz?lez Lanuza, Nicol?s Olivari, and Ra?l Scalabrini Ortiz, in addition to regular contributions from boedenses like Elias Castelnuovo, Yunque, and of course Barletta himself. The inclusiveness of the journals' critical literature points both to the strengths and theweaknesses of the Teatro's project. On one hand it shows Barletta's growing influence and openness to a broad range of viewpoints; at the same time, the very reflects a of van journals' heterodoxy dampening guard social activism that typifiedBarletta's earlier literaryoutput. Metropo lis's music criticism, for example, rarely engages with popular forms, to comment on local of the European classical tradi preferring performances tion; the journal's literary and theater criticism,meanwhile, tends to high light putative artistic qualities over social content. Though often extensive, film criticism in both journals eschews Hollywood commercialism and seeks to expurgate the cinema's its aesthetic refinement, popularity by stressing when not insisting on its corrosive effecton live theater.21 If film found an 21. One of the secrets to Teatro del Pueblo's broad appeal, nevertheless, is its selective assimilation of film. In a highly original essay, Arlt insists that the cinema "day by day is killing the laughable national theater," though, he says, film does not present a threat to "artistic" theater since it "lies outside its jurisdiction" (16). Particularly in the 1930s, however, Teatro del Pueblo integrates film into its productions and other cultural activities in a number of ways. In 1931, for example, the Teatro staged a play called Cinema by Roberto Pinetta. In 1938, Emilio Novas presented a confer ence titled "Sentido social y permanencia de la obra de Carlitos Chaplin" (Verzero 52). Later, in 1939, the theater staged a short theatrical piece by Ildefonso Pereda Vald?s called "Un hombre en la pantalla," based on Chaplin's perennial character the Little Tramp. Yet itwas the company's sole film production (Los afincaos, 1941, directed by Barletta) and the picture's ample coverage in This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  ?? hispanic review : summer2008 276 uneasy niche in Barletta's world, Conductas lukewarm of radio reception drama is especially indicative of Teatro del Pueblo's highly ambivalent stance toward the reconversion of the popular. In a 1942 editorial attributable to Barletta titled "El radioteatro: factor de embrutecimiento colectivo," the journal declares categorically that "la radiotelefon?a es el enemigo p?blico n?mero uno de la cultura [que] rechaza sistem?ticamente todo intento de arte (10-11). superior" In later Conducta editorials, Barletta appears more and more preoccupied with El Teatro's the mainstream press, as far as to acceptance by going repub lish in the journal various accolades from foreign observers and local news papers such as La Prensa. A telling example of the theater's push for respectability is signed by theNew York-based stage actor Jacob Ben-Ami on April 17, 1941 and published with an accompanying Spanish "translation" in Conducta. The English hand-written original reads, "My congratulations to the finest folk-theater in South America," which ismistranslated as "Mis congratulaciones por el fin?simo Teatro del Pueblo en Sudam?rica" (17). Whether intentional or not, the rerendering of the original reveals Barletta's intention to cast the Teatro not as "the finest folk-theater" but rather as an "exceedingly refined" theater?a product not of the plebe (to return to Al varo Yunque's distinction) but rather that of a morally and aesthetically ele vated pueblo. The document reveals a great deal not just about Teatro del Pueblo's strat for acceptance, but also Barletta's ambivalent views on the evolution of egies culture. In many ways, Teatro del Pueblo was built as a "safe haven" popular from mass entertainment, although, under the guise of cultural praxis, it ultimately leaned heavily on erudite literature and art to lend it the "edify ing" prestige and institutional leverage with which ostensibly to defy the bourgeois establishment. In fairness, it should be noted that the Teatro cre ated a viable, successful alternative to what Barletta and other moderately boedenses saw as the corruption of the plebe, and in so doing undeniably transformed the literary landscape in the 1930s. Yet the Teatro was essentially an that to "correct" the working classes enterprise sought by contracting established writers likeMartinez Estrada to beautify the folk instead of pro moting the inclusion of "organic" popular forms on the national stage. Conducta that ultimately consecrated the cinema as complementary to the Teatro's stage produc tions. This content downloaded from 128.83.63.20 on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  : boedo circense ??> Borge 277 In their studyMemory andModernity, William Rowe and Vivian Schelling argue that the uneven transition from traditional tomodern culture in Latin America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was articu lated principally through intermediaries like the follet?n and the circus, in such a way that "[t]he traditional [was] resignified inside themodern?or, equally, themodern [was] arrived at through tradition" (33). The literary and I have examined in this essay reveals the valid production performance ityof Rowe and Schelling's assertion, but also suggests its limitations. Teatro del Pueblo's ideological platform was previewed in Royal Circo, in which Barletta depicts the circus less as an "osmotic" middle passage between and modernity than as a cultural dead-end condemned to perpetu memory ate a of venality and exacerbated the circensian's cycle poverty?a cycle by gradual transformation by themodern culture industry. Both Barletta and Ra?l Gonz?lez Tu??n were certainly instrumental in introducing the circense to the Tu??n's work, twentieth-century Argentine literary imaginary. though, signals alternative options largely absent from Barletta's literaryand cultural to circus culture as cinema's forebear production: namely, recognize and potential comrade-in-arms, and to celebrate both the Big Top and the silver screen as viable vessels of popular culture. If Tu??n's later equally poetry suggests that neither Juancito nor the Little Tramp's playful magic could ultimately hold off the flood of themarket, Tu??n at least illuminates a blueprint for socially engaged literature that integrates carnival and celluloid, showing that tradition could indeed be "resignified inside themodern." Works Cited Abril, Xavier. "Radiograf?a de Chaplin." In Avances de Hollywood: cr?tica cinematogr?fica en Latinoam?rica, 1915-1945. Ed. Jason Borge. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2005. 174-79. Alc?ntara Machado, Antonio de. 'Tndesej?veis." Terra Roxa e Outras Terras 1.1 (1926): 5. Andrade, Mario de. "Circo de cavalinhos." Taxi e Cr?nicas no Diario Nacional. Sao Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1976. 403-05. -. "Lund? do escravo." Revista de Antropofagia 1.5 (Sept. 1928): 5-6. -. "Romance do Veludo." Revista de Antropofagia 1.4 (Aug. 1928): 5-6. an essay 2. Buenos Aires: Losada, Arlt, Roberto. Obras. With by David Vi?as. Vol. 1998. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. 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