Poet of shadows on the pampa: in his internationally renowned novel, Don Segundo Sombra, Ricardo Guiraldes captured the tradition and spirit of the gaucho, a beloved symbol of Argentine national identity.

• Author: Bach, Caleb

"No one could forget his courtesy; it was the unsought, first form of his measure of a soul clear as the day. Nor can I forget his bizarre serenity, the fine, strong face, the lights of glory and of death. His hand questioning the guitar as in the pure dream of a mirror (You are reality and I its reflection). I see you conversing with us in Quintana. You are there, magic and dead. Yours now, Ricardo, is the open field of yesterday, the dawn of the stallions."

That is how Jorge Luis Borges paid homage to his friend, the writer Ricardo Guiraldes, in Elogio de la sombra (1969). Some forty years earlier, Guiraldes had died of cancer at the age of forty-one, about a year after the publication of the novel that would make him famous, Don Segundo Sombra.

Guiraldes and Borges had collaborated in founding the second version of the literary journal Proa, or prow (which had its office in Borges's home at Calle Quintana 222, hence the reference above), and Guiraldes had worked closely with other literati--Macedonio Fernandez, Roberto Arlt (for a time his private secretary), and Victoria Ocampo, the grand dame of Argentine letters--but as a writer he had struggled to find a voice and audience.

Don Segundo Sombra changed all that. An instant success, Guiraldes's coming of age tale of a guacho, or orphan, who becomes a gaucho captured the imaginations of his countrymen at a time when traditional, rural values were under assault by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration on a grand scale. The author lived long enough to witness a succession of editions sell out to eager readers and see his book win the Premio Nacional de la Literatura for 1927. More than seventy-five years later, with more than several million copies printed in thirty-two languages, Don Segundo Sombra still enjoys a devoted readership and continues to generate debate regarding, its message and genesis.

The book's plot, linear and uncomplicated, involves a streetwise city kid who, at age fourteen, finds himself in a dusty little town on the pampa living with but henpecked by two supposed aunts. When an old gaucho rides into town, the boy learns that the herdsman is Don Segundo Sombra, and he runs away with the weathered veteran on an extended cattle drive. In the role of mythic hero, the seasoned professional teaches his protege the value, of stoicism, dignity, and courage, among other traits. After five years of adventures, the young man, now belatedly identified as Fabio Casares, learns he is not an orphan at all but a landowner's son, and an inheritor of an estate. At the end of the book, before Fabio parts company with his tutor, he asks him, "Is it true that I am not the same as before and that those goddamned pesos will put an end to my life as a cowhand?" His padrino, or spiritual godfather, Don Segundo Sombra, replies, "Look, if you're really a gaucho, you don't have to change because wherever you go, you'll go with your soul up ahead like the lead mare of the herd."

Guiraldes modeled Don Segundo Sombra after a cattle driver named Segundo Ramirez, who at age fifty began working as puestero, or resident ranch hand, on one of his family's estancias and remained in their employ until his death in 1936 at the age of eighty-five. Guiraldes was about the same age as Fabio when he first met Segundo Ramirez, who projected the qualities of a weathered gaucho malo. Tall, with dark, leathery skin from years of working and wandering outdoors, the rugged herdsman still favored the traditional chiripa (a loose diaper-like cloth draped between the legs, tucked under the belt, and worn over leggings).

Today, the author's nephew, Comodoro Juan Jose Guiraldes, enjoys recalling estancia life during the heyday of the gauchos who so inspired generations of Argentines. At the age of eighty-five, he is the only surviving family member to have known the writer personally.

"Actually," he begins, "Don Segundo never worked on my grandfather's estancia, La Portena [on the outskirts of San Antonio de Areco, about seventy miles northwest of the capital], as is often stated but rather at La Fe, an adjacent ranch belonging to my father. Near the horse stables, there was a small house called La Lechuza, where he lived with his woman, two daughters, and an adopted girl. I can remember him by heart--I was eight or nine at the time. I would sit right next to him. He used to say his grandmother was a slave who gained her freedom in 1813. He looked a little mulatto, but there was a lot of Indian and Spanish Mood in him as well.

"It is often said his name wasn't Segundo Ramirez, which in a way is true because long before the book came out we in the family always called him Don Segundo Sombra. The name was not a later poetic invention by my uncle but rather a bit pathetic because sombra means shadow--as if to say `I am the shadow of some other man.' I will tell you...