Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui discusses Vicente Basso Maglio’s ideas about what the literary critic describes as “heroic expression,” with oblique references to the painting of another Uruguayan, Rafael Barradas. Based on literary ideas in particular, as well as on other thoughts about the creative exercise, Saralegui mixes quotes and arguments with aesthetic references and allusions to the visual arts. Following a (painful) thread that leads from antiquity to the present time, from Europe to America, the author and his commentator confront that ethically-based approach with “facile” and foreseeable formulism. This article is of interest because it testifies to the type of aesthetic discussion that was being fostered in literary circles (with obvious non-literary implications) at the same time as the type being encouraged by another critic who was with the Teseo group— Eduardo Dieste, who was strictly a visual artist. Basso Maglio and his critic engaged in intense intellectual discussions which, on this occasion, focused on a critique of those who produce but do not “create,” associating creativity with a certain measure of existential risk.       

Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui (1907–59) was a poet, journalist, anti-fascist political activist and supporter of the Second Spanish Republic, founding member of the AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores), and contributor to the magazine Alfar (La Coruña, from 1929), among other cultural and political activities in local circles. His essay, published in Alfar, reveals a close, universalist reading of the work of the poet and essayist Vicente Basso Maglio, La expresión heroica (La Coruña: Biblioteca Alfar, 1928, cover by Rafael Barradas). Ortiz Saralegui contributed to several magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, such as La Pluma, La cruz del Sur, and founded the radio station El espectador (where he worked from 1931 to 1961). He reviews Basso Maglio’s work and studies his creative processes (that are literary, though also philosophical and visual), praising them over the course of history. Saralegui focuses on the pain, the loneliness, and the social risks that are involved in the creative act. That process requires courage and an attitude, described by Basso Maglio as “heroic,” which leads to a spiritual “echo” over time: Plato, Raphael, Mantegna, Saint Teresa of Jesus, Barradas, poets from the “Novecientos” group in Uruguay, critics and thinkers such as Eugenio D’Ors, Walt Whitman, and many others. In his article, Saralegui refers to those key figures of creative thought in order to produce—with no implied challenge or totalizing involvement—examples that range from “local” to “international:” from the predictable gaucho art in Uruguay to an assimilated avant-gardism.