Margarita Xirgu and Victoria Ocampo: Two Interventions in the Construction of the Image of the Writer Federico García Lorca

Abstract

Several biographical studies on Federico García Lorca mention the close relationship he had with his leading actress, Margarita Xirgu, but few analyze the Catalan director's involvement in the dissemination of his work after his murder. A clear example is the premiere of La casa de Bernarda Alba in Buenos Aires in 1945, a posthumous work that Xirgu was responsible for staging. Much less is mentioned about the poet's connection with the intellectual Victoria Ocampo, who published Romancero gitano (1933) for the first time in our country under her publishing label. The following paper analyzes the interventions carried out by both Margarita Xirgu and Victoria Ocampo in the Argentine press to disseminate the image of the writer that García Lorca had forged during his visit to Buenos Aires between 1933 and 1934. Drawing on Bourdieu's (1983) concepts, the following analysis will examine the strategies used by cultural agents to legitimize the figure of the Spanish playwright and, in turn, themselves as leaders of companies within the Argentine cultural field in the 30s and 40s: Xirgu as the director of a theater company; Ocampo as the director of the magazine and editorial seal Sur.