Sebastián Jorgi: affective memories of Buenos Aires in the work Orsái (1965)

Abstract

This essay aims to highlight the research work on the Argentine writer Sebastián Jorgi, whose imaginative references for conceptualizing the city are reconfigured through affective memories in a transforming metropolis.  By dismantling the logic of modern Buenos Aires, the poetic voice expresses the decision to name it, starting from the constructed neighborhood of Barracas, through a self-reflective displacement that raises questions about history, language, cultural tradition, and aesthetic affiliations. In this context, some poems extracted from the work Orsái (1965) will be studied, based on the theoretical principles established in Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and Gilbert Durand’s The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary. The use of lunfardo is observed, a decision that not only provides the raw material but also the initial topophilia, surpassing mere fascination and experimentation. Jorgi draws nourishment from this cultural organicity among the various interlocutors with whom he established connections during his artistic trajectory, including in the following decades. Orlando Mario Punzi, from the Lunfardo Porteña Academy, refers to Sebastián Jorgi’s programmatic decision in this work as stemming from "a physical and spiritual need to speak of the happy times of his youth," from which Jorgi cannot detach himself (Punzi, 2009).  Studying him within the academic field offers new interpretative possibilities regarding a multifaceted historical-cultural period open to research.