Roberto Arlt

Roberto Emilio Godofredo Arlt (Buenos Aires, April 26, 1900 - ib., July 26, 1942), better known as Roberto Arlt, was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, playwright, journalist and inventor. Considered one of the most important Argentine writers of the 20th century, especially for El juguete rabioso (1926), Los siete locos (1929), Los Lanzallamas (1931), El Amor Brujo (1932) in the novel, along with important trails in the theater, with works such as Three hundred million (1932), La isla desierta (1937), and in the Argentine press, with its various etchings that were published weekly in the newspaper The World. The figure of Arlt remained mainly in the shadows, or at the literary avant-garde, for much of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when his work experienced a progressive resurgence thanks to the work of critics such as the late Ricardo Piglia. Arlt's literature has fundamentally gloomy nuances, its characters tend to be idealists related to philo-Marxism -sometimes explicitly, as in the case of the character of the Astrologer, in Los siete locos and others not so much, for example, the employees of the shipping company on The deserted island. In his work, he abounds in human misery and gloomy, neglected landscapes, like the ones he permanently portrays in the contrasting Buenos Aires of the turn of the century.

Biography

Birth and infancy

Roberto Emilio Godofredo Arlt was born on April 26, 1900. His parents, the Prussian Karl Arlt and the Austro-Hungarian Ekatherine Lobstraibitzer, were a couple of poor immigrants recently arrived in the country. His childhood was spent in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores. German was spoken in the family atmosphere. He had two sisters who died of tuberculosis (one at an early age and the other, Lila, in 1936.) His relationship with his father was marked by severe and not very permissive treatment or downright sadistic.

Career as a journalist, inventor and writer

He was kicked out of school at age eight and became self-taught. He ran away from his home at sixteen. He worked at a local newspaper, and was a library assistant; painter, mechanic, welder, dock worker and managed a brick factory. In the end he decided on journalism. Between 1920 and 1930 he approached the Boedo Group, which published in Editorial Claridad and met at the Café El Japonés . In 1926 he wrote his first novel: El juguete rabioso, to which he was initially going to give the title La vida puerca, but at that time Arlt was Ricardo's secretary and friend. Güiraldes, who suggested that the original name La vida puerca would be too crude for the readers of that time. He formed a company, ARNA (by Arlt and Naccaratti), and with the little money that the actor Pascual Naccaratti was able to contribute, he set up a small chemical laboratory in Lanús. He even went so far as to patent rubber-reinforced stockings.During his work as a journalist, in his columns, he described daily life in the capital. A selection of these articles can be found in Aguafuertes porteñas (1928-1933), Aguafuertes españolas (written during his trip to Spain and Morocco between 1935 and 1936), and in New etchings. In 1931 he had to witness the execution of the anarchist militant Severino di Giovanni.

Marriages

Arlt married for the first time in Córdoba with Carmen Antinucci, in 1922; A year later, his first daughter, Mirta Arlt, was born, who would become his executor. In 1940 he was widowed, and that same year he married Elisabeth Mary Shine on May 25, 1940 in Pando, Uruguay, with whom he would have a son he never met, also named Roberto.

Between 1941 and 1942 he lived in Chile, from where he sent contributions to the Buenos Aires newspaper El Mundo.

Death and legacy

Roberto Arlt died on July 26, 1942, at the age of 42, in the City of Buenos Aires, of cardiac arrest. His remains were cremated in the Chacarita Cemetery and his ashes scattered in the river Parana. At his farewell ceremony, the writer Nicolás Olivari spoke, and the poet Horacio Rega Molina read a poem. The following day the newspaper El Mundo published the last of his famous etchings: «A landscape in the clouds». The event did not sound in the newspapers because among the news was the reparation to Jorge Luis Borges, at that time relegated from the National Literature Award.

While she was alive, her daughter Mirta Arlt (the result of her first marriage) managed the writer's legacy until her death in 2014.

Literary style and influence

Roberto Arlt from a balcony in the City of Buenos Aires (1935).

Roberto Arlt's work was criticized during the first half of the XX century. Today, key opinion leaders in Argentine literature tell how his work has become a transcendent reference. Abelardo Castillo, for example, says that Arlt is a must-read for at least the last two generations of Argentine writers, since he redefined thematic and linguistic aspects and the artist-period relationship. Others, like Guillermo Saccomanno, place him on a par with Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Julio Cortázar and Rodolfo Walsh, some of whom confessed their admiration for the author. For the writer and literary critic Ricardo Piglia, Arlt inaugurated the modern Argentine novel, with its new style.

In his stories, the baseness and greatness of characters immersed in indolent environments are described with naturalism and humor. In this way, he portrays the Argentina of newcomers who try to insert themselves into an environment governed by inequality and oppression. He wrote stories that have entered the history of literature, such as The Hunchback , Red Moon and Terrible Night . Due to his direct way of writing and far from modernist aesthetics, he was described as "careless", which contrasts with the founding force that he represented in Argentine literature of the century XX.

After his death, his recognition increased and he is considered the first modern author of the Argentine Republic. Writers like Ricardo Piglia, César Aira and Roberto Bolaño are direct heirs to some of his literary searches. In the same way, Julio Cortázar considered him his teacher.

Starting in the 1930s, he ventured into the theater and in the last stage of his life he only wrote in this genre. His works premiered on the independent theater circuit in Buenos Aires, more precisely at the Teatro del Pueblo, directed by Leónidas Barletta. He broke with realism and addressed the problems of alienation through the unfolding of the scene. Only The Ghost Maker was released on the commercial circuit, being a huge flop. After his death in 1942, Three hundred million , Saverio, the cruel and The deserted island have been the most represented works. His utopian anarchism appears in the aforementioned Three hundred million (1932), in The Ghost Maker (1936) and in The Iron Festival (1940). He is considered as a precursor of the Argentine social theater and of later currents, such as absurdism and existentialism.

Adaptations to theater, film and television

Cinema

Criticism

• Carbone, R. (2007) Obsession Empire. The seven madmen of Roberto Arlt: a grotto. Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes
• Cordoba Iturburu (1932) The theater of the village and Three hundred Millions. EN: Arlt, R. Three hundred Millions, Buenos Aires, Raño.
• Facelli, L. (1988) The conditions of production of the dialogue in three hundred million of Roberto Arlt.
• Facelli, L. (1992) Imaginary of the Servant in Three hundred million Roberto Arlt. (Presented to the III IITCTL Meeting, Santiago de Chile, 1992).
• Facelli, L. (1994) Another space in the other space of Roberto Arlt: Three hundred million. Acts IV IITCTL Meeting, Mexico City, 1994 (in press).
• Fernández Toledo, G. (1983) The desert island: a closed metaphor. EN: Philological studies, n. 18, p.46-57.
• Foster, D.W. (1977) Roberto Arlt's The desert island; a structural analysis. EN: Latinamerican Theatre Rerview, 11(1).
• Martini, S. (1991) The theater of Roberto Arlt; an approximation to the phenomenon of reception. EN: Cuadernos de investigación del San Martín, 1(1), p.118-128.
• Ordaz, L. (1983) Roberto Arlt's dramatic renovation. EN: Hispanorama, Bremen, University of Bremen.
• Odraz, L. (1987) Roberto Arlt's dramatic masks. EN: Revista de estudios de teatro, 6(15)p. 3-14.
• Pellettieri, O. ed. (2006) Village theatre, an utopia made. Buenos Aires, Galerna, 2006.
• Pellettieri, O. ed. (2000) Roberto Arlt; dramaturgia and independent theater. Buenos Aires, Galerna, 2000.
• Prieto, A. (1963) Fantasy and fantastic in Roberto Arlt. EN: Hispanic Literature Bulletin, n.5, p.5-18.
• Rela, W. (1980) Renovating arguments of Roberto Arlt in the modern Argentine theatre. EN: Latinamerican Theatre Review, 13(2)p. 65-71.
• Russi, D. (1990) Metatheatre: Roberto Arlt's vehicle toward the public's awarness of an art form. EN: Latinamerican Theatre Review, 24(1), p. 65-75.
• Sagaseta, E. - Schinin, A. (1993) ed. Three hundred million. EN: An approach to the creative process in the theater; how we do it, cycle 1992. Buenos Aires, TMGSM.
• Gomez Sillato, M. (1989) The carnival is Saverio the cruel. EN: Latinamreican Theatre Review, 22(2), p. 101-109.
• Troiano, J. (1978) Cervantinism in two plays by Roberto Arlt. EN: American Hispanist, 4(29),p. 20-22.
• Troiano, J. (1976) The grotesque tradition and the interplay of fantasy and reality in the plays of Roberto Arlt. EN: Latinamerican Literary Review, v.4, p.7-14.
• Troiano, J. (1974) Pirandellism in the theatre of Roberto Arlt. EN: Latinamerican Theatre Review, 8(1),p. 37-44.
• Troaino, J. (1979) Social criticism and the fantastic in Roberto Arlt's The iron party. EN: Latinamerican Theatre Review, 13(1), p.39-45.

A critique

In Megaphone , no. Arlt, signed by a certain Lisandro Alonso: