ABSTRACT
When still a teenager María Elena Walsh won acclaim from the Argentine cultural elite for her first book of poetry, Otoño imperdonable, 1947 [Unforgivable Autumn], whose melancholic tone, formal perfection and elegiac idealism led anthologists to include her among the Neoromantic poets of the Generation of 1940. A plaquette, Apenas viaje [Brief Journey], and the joint volume with Ángel Bonomini, Baladas con Ángel [Ballads with Angel], followed in 1948 and 1952, respectively. However, increasingly disillusioned by both poetry and politics in Argentina, and unwilling to continue the creative activity she described as “bordering on madness,” Walsh left to live in Europe in 1952–56. In Paris, with poet and ethnomusicologist Leda Valladares, she formed the duo “Leda and María” and enjoyed considerable success singing traditional folklore in nightclubs and music-halls, thus acquiring the musical training she would employ so magisterially later. This was the first of the various changes in direction that would characterize her remarkably versatiie public career.
