Eugenio Cambaceres
As "Musica Sentimental" was published the porteño society remarked its originality and its author's talent. The chosen subject -the stay of a "rastacueros" in Paris and his decease due to syphilis- aligns the plot with the contemporary socialites' essential initiatic trip to France, and its literary style with the naturalist trend of the times. Manuel Lainez -a highly influential voice at that time- said: "when a book facilitates its reading from first to last line without boring or disgusting but, on the contrary, with continuously growing interest while breeding plenty of ideas in every page, arising numerous memories with every chapter, doses of uncommon feelings and affections in every dialogue, it can be said very truly that it is written with art, that it is saturated with "esprit", that it obeys to an inspiration that nature concedes to intelligences bound to these agile, fresh convivial productions that are read and get recorded in memory with an indelible stamp". This new edition of Cambaceres' classic turn-of-the century prototype for later naturalist novels by Claude Cymerman (prof. Emeritus of Latin American Literature at the Rouen University, France, and highly regarded scholar on Cambaceres) includes an introduction that highlights the importance of Cambaceres within the River Plate society, as well as his standing in Latin American literature. The footnotes (both lexical and contextual) yield the necessary clues to fully understand the exact meaning of this work, making this edition a must for any literature course on nineteenth century Hispanic American Narrative.
