Samuel Glusberg — editor, publisher and writer with roots in the Russian Empire
Samuel Glusberg was born on 25 July 1898 in Kishinev, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, now Chișinău in Moldova, into a Jewish family. In 1905, when he was seven, he emigrated with his parents and six brothers and sisters to Buenos Aires, where the family settled in the Barracas district; part of the wider family settled in Chile. He later adopted the literary pseudonym Enrique Espinoza, which, contemporaries noted, joined the first names of Heinrich Heine and Baruch Spinoza.
In Buenos Aires he became one of the most important independent editors and publishers of the period. He founded the literary review Cuadernos Americanos in 1919 and in 1921 the review and publishing house Babel, which published new Argentine writers and became the longest-lived of his projects. It was followed by La Vida Literaria (1928–32), a review on the model of a literary newspaper, and by Trapalanda (1932–35). Through these he published and promoted writers such as Leopoldo Lugones, Horacio Quiroga and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, and in the late 1920s he worked to circulate the writings of the Peruvian thinker José Carlos Mariátegui in Argentina.
In January 1935, for reasons of health and politics, he settled in Chile, first in the south and then in Santiago, where he married and took an active part in the country's cultural life. In 1939, with the publisher Nascimento, he revived Babel in Santiago, and it ran until the early 1950s, described by one Chilean writer as the best cultural review the country had had. He was close to writers including Manuel Rojas, and in 1968 the Chilean Writers' Society proposed his name for a national honour.
As Enrique Espinoza he published stories, among them Mate amargo, poetry, essays and travel diaries, including Ruth y Noemí (1934), works that drew on Jewish themes of exile and on the meeting of cultures; among his later books were El castellano y Babel (1974) and Gajes del oficio (1976). After almost four decades in Chile he returned to Buenos Aires in 1973.
He died there in October 1987, aged eighty-nine. His work as an editor has since been the subject of academic studies in Argentina and Chile.
"Emigrated with his parents and six siblings to Buenos Aires in 1905; lived in Chile from 1935 to 1973, then returned to Buenos Aires."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Kishinev, Bessarabia Governorate (now Chișinău, Moldova)
Born in Kishinev, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, on 25 July 1898, he emigrated with his family to Buenos Aires in 1905, at the age of seven.
.svg?width=900)
Kishinev, Bessarabia Governorate (now Chișinău, Moldova). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.