Ocampo was born to a wealthy family in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six daughters of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. She was educated at home by tutors and in Paris. Ocampo was the sister of Victoria Ocampo, the founder and editor of the prestigious Argentine journal Sur. In 1934, Ocampo met her future husband, the Argentine author Adolfo Bioy Casares. They married in 1940. In 1954 Ocampo adopted Marta, born that year to Bioy Casares and one of his mistresses; Marta Bioy Ocampo died in an automobile accident shortly after Ocampo's own death. Bioy Casares's son by another mistress, Fabián Bioy, later won a lawsuit for the right to the estates of Ocampo and Bioy Casares; Fabián Bioy died in 2006.
Career
Before turning to writing, Ocampo studied painting in Paris under the cubist Fernand Léger and proto-surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Ocampo began her career as a short story writer in 1936. She was prolific, producing more than 175 pieces of fiction during one forty-year period. Ocampo did not abandon her artistic training; she produced illustrations for Borges' poetry and painted throughout her life. Borges perceived a connection between Ocampo's painting and poetry, writing that "like Rosetti and Blake, Silvina has come to poetry by the luminous paths of drawing and painting, and the immediacy and certainty of the visual image persist in her written pages." Ocampo was awarded Argentina's National Prize for Poetry in 1962, among other literary awards.
Literary works
Ocampo published her first book of short storiesViaje olvidado in 1937, followed by three books of poetry, Enumeración de la patria, Espacios métricos and Los sonetos del jardín. Ocampo frequently collaborated with other writers. She wrote Los que aman, odian with Bioy Casares in 1946, and with J. R. Wilcock she published the theatrical work Los Traidores in 1956. With Borges and Bioy Casares, Ocampo co-authored the celebrated Antología de la literatura fantástica in 1940, and also the Antología poética Argentina in 1941. Unpublished works by Ocampo are part of the at the University of Notre Dame.
Themes
Ocampo's work has fantastical qualities, like her contemporary Borges. Critics note that Ocampo's writing particularly focused on transformations, such as metamorphosis, doubling, splitting, and fragmenting of the self. Critic Cynthia Duncan, from the University of Tennessee, contends that the fantastical elements concealed latent feminist themes:
female characters, like Cristina, are not radical, outspoken feminists. They do not overtly criticize their husbands, nor do they rebel in predictable ways. They go about their lives quietly and submissively, until the fantastic intervenes to upset the traditional order that has been imposed on them. It is, perhaps, this aspect of Silvina Ocampo's work which makes it most disquieting to readers, male and female alike.
Another critic, Patricia N. Klingenberg, has argued that the "raging, destructive female characters of Ocampo's stories should be viewed as part of her preoccupation with the victimization and revenge of women, children and 'deviants' in her works." Ocampo reportedly said that the judges for Argentina's National Prize for fiction in 1979 adjudged her work "demasiado crueles"—too cruel—for the award.
Legacy
Ocampo's own merit as a writer has been overshadowed by her associations with her sister Victoria, her husband Casares, and her friend Borges. In recent years, however, Ocampo's work has been newly translated into English, bringing greater awareness to Ocampo's accomplishments as a writer. Ocampo is buried at La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
