Susana Soca

Susana Soca (1906–1959) was a Uruguayan poet-writer. During the most productive part of her public career, much of which coincided with the Second World War, she lived in France. Soca also founded and for many years produced the transatlantic literary journal La Licorne. Both in her journal and elsewhere she was notable for the extent and effectiveness of her support for fellow writers from Latin America and Europe.

She died near Rio de Janeiro airport when the Lockheed airliner on which she was a passenger crashed, killing all 29 passengers and 7 of the 10 crew members.

Biography Provenance and early years Susana Luisa María de las Mercedes Soca was born at her parents' home in Montevideo. Susana's father was not particularly religious but her mother was a deeply committed Roman Catholic.

Contacts Soca knew many leading contemporary Uruguayan writers. These included the poet-professors María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira and Orfila Bardesio, the poet-essayist Carlos Sabat Ercasty, the distinguished writer Jules Supervielle and the author Carlos Reyles. There were frequent visits to Paris, initially with her parents and then, as she grew older, on her own. this provided a route by which she was able to find her personal identity and her homeland in the Spanish language. Sources also suggest that well before 1945 she was already working on plans for the launch and operation of her own literary journal. It provided a publication space for European authors who had been silent during the war or whose works had been overlooked. Some of the first French authors features were Paul Éluard, Maurice Blanchot, Roger Caillois, René Char, René Daumal and Jean Paulhan. Soca published literary texts, essays and poems from some of the twentieth century's most important writers and intellectuals. She also contributed numerous literary essays of her own, notably about European authors and artists. The focus was largely on timeless aspects of the arts, as far as possible set apart from political ideologies and involvement. She continued to undertake frequent trips to Europe. Back home in Montevideo she convened literary meetings at her home. She also organised and funded exhibitions that introduced European artists in Latin America, and acted as a sponsor for Uruguayan literary talents such as Felisberto Hernández.

In retrospect The full extent and importance of Soca's "behind the scenes" activities in literature and the arts during the 1940s and 1950s becomes apparent from literary anthologies, diaries and correspondence, much of which became available to scholars only after her death, for instance in the writings of Albert Camus and Emil Cioran, from pictures and photographs, and from the collected correspondence of others, such as Victoria Ocampo, Roger Caillois, Felisberto Hernández, Juan Ramón Jiménez, José Bergamín-María Zambrano. Jorge Luis Borges includes a sonnet, "Susana Soca", in "El hacedor", 1960. Gisèle Freund produced numerous photographs of Susana Soca for Soca's long-term admirer Henri Michaux. Soca's poetry was largely confined to her diaries, however, and during her lifetime remained private. The first published compilation of her poetry appeared only in 1959.