“]

Alejandro Rossi at his desk [Alejandro Rossi Papers, 1812-2010, Box 31, Folder 6.

The Princeton University Library’s Manuscripts Divisionhas recently added the papers of Alejandro Rossi (1932-2009) to its extensive collection of archives, manuscripts, and correspondence by Latin American writers and intellectuals.

Alejandro Rossi was born in Florence, Italy, to an Italian father and a Venezuelan mother.  He studied philosophy in Mexico, Germany, and England, before settling in Mexico City, where he became professor of philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1958. His book on analytical philosophy, Lenguage y significado (1968), confirmed his status as a philosopher, but when Octavio Paz asked Rossi to contribute articles to the literary magazine Plural, Rossi began to enter the world of letters.

The writer Juan Villoro has described Rossi as the consummate conversationalist, a quality that characterizes his prose writing. With his friends Octavio Paz, Salvador Elizondo, and Juan García Ponce, Rossi helped found the influential literary journal Vuelta in 1978. A member of Mexico’s El Colegio Nacional since 1996, and winner of the Premio Xavier Villaurruita for his novel Éden, vida imaginada in 2007, Alejandro Rossi enjoyed a long distinguished career, and with great pride became a Mexican citizen in 1994. He died in Mexico City in 2009.

The archive contains a wide range materials, including notebooks, drafts of writings, correspondence with writers, editors, philosophers, and artists, and materials related to conferences and lectures in Mexico and abroad.  A detailed finding aid, recently created by new SALALM member Jill Baron, is available at http://findingaids.princeton.edu/getEad?eadid=C1422.

Feel free to contact me or the Manuscripts Division for additional information about this collection.

 

Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez
Princeton University Library