SOURCE: Alonso, Carlos J. “Reading Sarmiento: Once More, with Passion.” Hispanic Review 62, no. 1 (winter 1994): 35-52.

In the following essay, Alonso argues that Sarmiento writes with passion more than logic, linking this characteristic to trends of modernity and cultural identity in South American literature.

Cualquiera puede corregir lo escrito por él [Sarmiento]; pero nadie puede igualarlo.

(J. L. Borges 130)

Anyone who has read Sarmiento in a more than casual fashion has probably experienced what I can only describe as a sensation of unsettledness, a moment when one feels that there is something uncanny, something bizarre transpiring before one's eyes; a feeling that some impenetrable and elusive force is at work in the text that is being examined. It begins as a suspicion that Sarmiento's discourse is not governed by the requirements of logic or analysis; that reason and reasonableness may not be the best instruments for moving along its...