Fariña Núñez, Eloy (1885–1929)

Eloy Fariña Núñez (b. 25 June 1885; d. 1929), Paraguayan writer. Probably the most respected author in Paraguay during the first quarter of the twentieth century, Fariña Núñez was born in the tiny hamlet of Humaitá, site of a major battle during the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance some seventeen years earlier. Perhaps owing to the isolated position of his hometown, Fariña Núñez chose to go to Argentina for his education. He graduated from the Colegio Nacional of Corrientes and later studied law at the University of Buenos Aires.

Fariña Núñez spent most of his adult life in Buenos Aires, where he worked as a clerk in the internal revenue administration. His true love, however, was literature and his prime subject Paraguay. In 1913, when the Buenos Aires daily La Prensa opened a literary competition, Fariña Núñez won it with a short story entitled "Bucles de oro" (Golden Curls). He later published volumes of poetry (Canto secular; Poesias escojidas), miscellaneous prose (Las vértebras de Pan; La mirada de los muertos; Cuentos guaraníes), philosophical treatises (Conceptos estéticos; Asunción; Crítica), an essay in economics (El estanco del tabaco), and even a novel on Graeco-Egyptian life and customs (Rhódopis). His death at age forty-four robbed Paraguayan letters of one of its chief practitioners.

See alsoEducation: Overview; Literature: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William Belmont Parker, Paraguayans of To-Day (1921), pp. 31-32.

Carlos Zubizarreta, Cien vidas paraguayas, 2d ed. (1985), pp. 273-275.

Additional Bibliography

Delgado, Susy. 25 nombres capitales de la literatura paraguaya. Asunción: Servilibro, 2005.

                                    Thomas L. Whigham