The 1930 military coup, which had overthrown Argentina's Radical government, reinstalled the old oligarchy in power. The restored ancien régime was corrupt, and by the early 1940s the country was again ripe for change; this time events would culminate in the Peronist revolution: a populist nationalist movement, headed by a charismatic leader, in which an alliance of the trade unions and sectors of the armed forces once more supplanted the land-owning oligarchy and established a corporate state.

In this chapter we consider the work of three writers of the 1940s: Roberto Mariani, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Leopoldo Marechal. Unlike in the 1920s, when his writing engaged with current issues, Mariani now seems out of touch as he seeks to understand 1940s’ Argentine society in terms of the past. By contrast, the work of the other two authors – from different perspectives – reflects the advent of Peronism.

Roberto Mariani, Regreso a Dios

Mariani's novel was published in 1943, just before these momentous changes in the political landscape. However, there is no sense of anticipation; rather, it is a gloomy meditation on a nation that has lost its way.

The novel begins in an unspecified present, as an elderly civil servant, Pablo Aguilar witnesses an emotional scene in a Buenos Aires café. Aguilar leads a bleak existence, ruefully characterised as ‘su actual estado de soltería vacía en el desamparo de una indiferente pieza de pensión […] frente al espejo, un hombre de cabellos grises cosiendo con torpes dedos rígidos un botón de ropa interior’ (1943: 15). The scene in the café sets Aguilar reflecting on his own life, which has been unfulfilled, since he has not followed his true instincts; he is ‘Este hombre de cabellos grises que añoró el desviado curso de su existencia’ (1943: 15). On leaving the café, Aguilar revisits in his memory events of long ago; retelling these events, which happened to Aguilar himself and to various characters associated with him, constitutes the main body of the novel.

There is a lack of precision about this earlier temporal setting (we do not know Aguilar's current age): ‘Tenía entonces, en aquel entonces tan remoto, treinta años de edad’ (1943: 17).