• Available eBook version
Vies croisees de Victoria Ocampo et Ernest Ansermet
Correspondance 1924-1969
Jean Jacques Lagendorf

During his second stay in Buenos Aires, in 1924, Ernest Ansermet, who was given the task of helping the new symphony orchestra settle in over its first season, managed to put together a brilliant program. Victoria Ocampo, passionate about Debussy, literature and philosophy, was very impressed by the quality of that first season. The day after the first concert, she invited Ansermet to visit her, sending the first billet in what would be a 44-year correspondence. The visit was a veritable meeting of the minds. Ansermet was subjugated by her intelligence, intensity, and thirst for the essential. Victoria Ocampo felt that she had been granted a miracle: this man was her brother. He shared her essential needs, he had the same taste for the life of the mind. He loved to write. Ansermet confided in Stravinsky about his “platonic liaison” with Victoria. Their letters conceal a warmth of expression, an intensity of need to know the other and an emotional charge born of a passionate search for truth. This correspondence is not just the revelator of the internal lives of two beings, but also the place where, in a certain manner, they became themselves. Victoria Ocampo led a brilliant life centered around her journal Sur. Her stunning intellectual activities attracted into her orbit many of the great thinkers of her time, including Huxley, Keyserling, Maritain, Caillois, De Rougemont, Thomas Mann and Malraux. Her ambition was to create a bridge between the southern hemisphere and the Occident. Ernest Ansermet shared her vision and understood the stakes. Victoria in turn inspired him in his own struggle for his orchestra’s survival and to write The Foundations of Music in the Human Conscience, a book which would become his musical and philosophical testament. From 1924 to 1969, a remarkable exchange of almost 200 letters between a Swiss orchestra conductor and an aristocratic Argentinean woman, a correspondence focussed on music, literature and philosophy.

Vies croisees de Victoria Ocampo et Ernest Ansermet -
  • Available material :
    Finished copy

  • Buchet/Chastel
  • Essais-Documents
  • Publication date : 21/10/2005
  • Size : 15 x 23 cm, 358 p., 25,35 EUR €
  • ISBN 978-2-283-02149-1
Backlist of the author
About the author