A smaller country doesn’t often produce a literary great, especially one with such an insight into the national character. So a stamp to remember is very important. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Visually todays stamp is not impressive. A poorly produced portrait, with a name and nothing else. A scene from Hernandez’s master work “Martin Fierro” would have been better. Perhaps with a portrait of the author in the corner. Mr. Hernandez has been on several Argentine stamps over the years but always with a similar portrait.
Todays stamp is issue A366, a six Peso stamp issued by the Republic of Argentina in 1967. The stamp comes in several colors and sizes over several years. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. This value is pretty consistent through the many variations of this stamp.
Jose Hernandez was born the son of a butler, growing up on a series of cattle ranches. He became a journalist and politician. At the time there was a divide in Argentine politics on the importance of the power of the countryside verses the importance of Buenos Aires. Large amounts of revenue was being generated by beef exports and Buenos Aires wanted to keep the windfall for itself. Hernandez with his experience in the countryside came down on the Federales side, that favored more revenue participation in the provinces. Hernandez and the Federales also were opposed to allowing immigration fearing Europeanization of Argentina. Both sides of the issue had turns in power and during a turn of the opposing Unitarios, Hernandez was exiled to Brazil.
It was in Brazil that Hernandez wrote his master work in two parts, “Martin Fierro”. It is an epic poem of a gaucho who struggles with the difficulty, desperation, and striving for honor endemic in the life of a gaucho, a cowboy. This type of life was still current at the time of the poems writing but was in it’s last days. The poem was immediately popular and over time became a classic with it’s vivid description of time and place. Hernandez was recognized as capturing a piece of the Argentine national psyche.
As such, the work is often compared to Italy’s “Divine Comedy” and Spain’s “Don Quixote”. Spanish literary critic Miguel de Unamuno made a case for how the work fit into the traditions of great Spanish literature, one of the few Latin American works to do so. Why not, Argentina did have Spanish colonial roots.
Some aspects of the poem do not play as well to modern sensibilities. It adheres to traditional structuring with six line rhyming stanzas. Most modern poets stick to free verse. Many of the poems situations place the Hero, a white of Spanish heritage, in combat with Natives and Blacks that behave brutally. This would just not be allowed today, whatever the reality.
Hernandez was later allowed to return to Argentina. He died in Buenos Aires only a few years after publication of his seminal work.
In the modern way, the Martin Fierro story as been the basis for the more modern. There are Martin Fierro comic books and deeply political Argentine movies. Interestingly there was a Hollywood film loosely based on the story and actually filmed in Argentina called “Way of the Gaucho” from 1952. It was one of the so called runaway productions filmed overseas because the studio, (20th Century Fox), had cash tied up in the country due to post war currency controls.
Well my drink is empty and so I will pour another to toast Jose Hernandez. Many journalists attempt to write literature but few succeed. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.
