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Florida group
The Florida group were a Buenos Aires-based avant-garde literary group in the 1920s, known for their embrace of "art for art's sake". They were identified with the magazines Proa and Martin Fierro, the latter named after the long poem Martin Fierro, generally considered the greatest work of nineteenth-century Argentine literature. The group is also often referred to as the Martin Fierro group (Sp. "grupo Martin Fierro").
Among the members of the Florida group were Oliverio Girondo, Norah Lange, Ricardo Guiraldes, Francisco Luis Bernardez, Leopoldo Marechal, Conrado Nale Roxlo, and Raul Gonzalez Tunon.
Guiraldes was something of a father figure to many Florida members; already a major figure, he spent the 1920s writing his masterpiece Don Segundo Sombra and studying Hindu philosophy. He died in 1927, while planning a trip to India.
Nicolas Olivari, who co-founded the more political Boedo group, later became a member of the Florida group. The fiercely independent Roberto Arlt met with both groups on an irregular basis, but committed to none.
Jorge Luis Borges was not a regular in Florida meetings even though he was widely believed to be, mostly because of his frequent writing for Martin Fierro. Actually, Borges claimed that the entire Florida-Boedo rivalry was a pointless imitation of European fashions and that he should belong to Boedo because of geography but that he stayed put.
Arturo Cancela suggested in a letter to Martin Fierro that both sides merge under the common name of "Schools of Floredo street", and to name Manuel Galvez as president, as he lived in Pueyrredon street, equidistant from both groups. By 1930, all the involved parties had concluded that the perceived rivalry was no longer an issue. Girondo (for Florida) and Castelnuovo (for Boedo) wrote newspaper articles to that effect.
After the 1930 military coup, the Florida constituency gravitated towards Victoria Ocampo's Sur magazine, which managed to remain aloof of the ever-deteriorating state of Argentine politics - until the advent of Peronism in 1945.
Since the 1960s, left-wing and Peronist Argentine commentators have identified Florida with many of the perceived illnesses of Argentine society such as ignoring the aspirations and culture of the lower classes (which Peronism articulated later), looking towards Europe for inspiration, and being out of touch with any kind of productive work. Gonzalez Tunon alone was excepted from this treatment, because of the social themes of his poetry.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Florida group
