Potpourri
Resumen del Libro
Potpourri was released as Eugenio Cambaceres left Buenos Aires for Europe. This, plus the omitted authors name ¿though immediately identified¿ Cambaceres social standing, the many allusions, and the writing style, all contributed to secure it a smashing success.The scathing critique of the Buenos Aires bourgeoisie unleashed bitter comments, that fostered press runs never seen before in the country.Some readers condemned the book invoking the need to kindle the recently obtained political peace, whilst others directly related it to French naturalist novel and pornography.But the accusation of licentiousness was just a pretext waved by a prudish oligarchy to hide a grim reality, deeply contrasted with the progressive stance it flaunted.Though the content can appear as a pamphlet against social hypocrisy, uncaring feminine education, and the new rich but uneducated portion of society, it also shows high literary qualities: rich writing techniques, vanguard narrative structures, agile and humorous style, colloquial tone and originally striking metaphors. Enough for the author to leave an unmistakable mark in the XIX and XX Centuries literature.In his foreword Claude Cymerman ¿prof. Emeritus of Latin American Literature at the Rouen University, France, highly regarded scholar on Cambaceres¿ explains the importance of Cambaceres within the River Plate social circumstances, his standing in Latin American literature, and helps place Potpourri among his later productions. The footnotes ¿both lexical and contextual¿ give the clues to understand the exact meaning of this work, the first an more full of foreign terms that sprinkle the Cambaceres production.
