Call Number:

C1422

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

39 boxes

Language:

Spanish; Castilian

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Alejandro Rossi papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1955-2009 (bulk) and 1812-2010 (inclusive)

Creator:

Rossi, Alejandro, 1932-2009

Form:

Correspondence., Manuscripts., and Notebooks.

Abstract:

The Alejandro Rossi Papers consist of personal notebooks, manuscripts, correspondence with writers, academics, editors and artists, and printed material of the writer.

Alejandro Rossi [1932-2009] was born in Florence, Italy, to an Italian father and a Venezuelan mother. His early life was peripatetic in nature; his family fled Italy during World War II for Venezuela, and then later moved to Buenos Aires, where Rossi spent his adolescence. 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 literary journal Vuelta in 1978. 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 career, and became a Mexican citizen in 1994. He died in Mexico City in 2009.

The Alejandro Rossi Papers 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. There is a small grouping of materials that Rossi kept together in a folder entitled "important documents"; among the materials are three black-and-white photographs, a letter and document related to Rossi's ancestor, the Venezuelan general José Antonio Páez, and several items related to his involvement with the founding of Vuelta. For more material related to this literary journal, the researcher is encouraged to consult Rossi's correspondence files with authors such as Octavio Paz, José Bianco, Carlos Fuentes, and others.

Manuscripts of all Rossi's literary works, photographs, diaries, notebooks, and correspondence, including letters from Octavio Paz (26), Jose Bianco (14), Carlos Fuentes (5) , Guillermo Cabrera Infante (4), Mario Vargas Llosa (1), and many others.

Organized into the following series and subseries: