Talk:Victoria Ocampo

University of Paris
Tantris changed this to merely say that she "is said to have attended" the University of Paris rather than that she attended it. Was there any reason to doubt this statement, which seems to be in pretty much all of the (admittedly scant) biographical materials I've seen? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:02, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Princesses don't go to the Sorbonne
I amended that statement because I consider it extremely unlikely. Not only did VO complain all her life that she had been unable to go to University, but women of her time and class simply didn't. Her father would never had countenanced her going.

It is essential to the understanding of VO to appreciate that her position in pre-1914 Argentina was similar to that of a princess. She was the Argentine equivalent of a Bibesco. French countesses didn't go to the Sorbonne either. Would the comtesse de Noailles, née princesse Bassaraba de Brancovan, have gone to a riff-raff replete Sorbonne? Not on your life. Also, VO visited Paris many times, but never actually lived there, or anywhere outside Bs As.

Have you seen Doris Meyer's full-length biography, in English, of VO?

Tantris 14:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I haven't. I'm familiar with Ocampo mostly secondhand, through extensive familiarity with Borges. - Jmabel | Talk 15:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Unless "well-chaperoned"
On page 39 of her biography of VO Doris Meyer states that, during their 1906-1907 trip to Paris, the same during which she was etched by Helleu, the Ocampos allowed 17-year-old Victoria, "well-chaperoned", to audit some conferences at the Sorbonne and at the Collège de France. She remembered particularly enjoying Henri Bergson's conferences at the latter.

She was not, of course, ever matriculated at either.

Tantris 22:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)