The Rodolfo Usigli Archive
The Rodolfo Usigli Archive was acquired by Miami University in 1995
and is housed in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections Library. Since its
acquisition the Archive materials have been rehoused in acid-free containers. A
preliminary survey of the collection has been completed and plans are underway
for the preparation of an online catalog record and finding aid for researchers.
The Archive is the definitive research collection relating to Usigli's life and
career. Stored in more than 70 boxes with multiple fles, with close to a quarter of
a million items, it includes correspondence, both manuscript and typed drafts of
original plays and translations of works by other artists, personal, theatrical, and
diplomatic photographs, essays, books, playbills, posters, theses written about
Usigli, awards, newspaper and magazine articles, memorabilia, and ephemera.
The correspondence includes letters to and from George Bernard Shaw, José
Clemente Orozco, Octavio Paz and many others. The archive also includes rare
materials such as Usigli's unpublished poems, plays and short stories; and the
correspondence between Usigli and Diego Rivera regarding their joint efforts to
publicize André Breton's lectures during the 1938 Surrealist Week in Mexico City.
The archive not only has copies of Breton's lectures, which Usigli translated for
the occasion, it also has a rare print of Rivera's poster "Communicating Vessels
(Homage to André Breton)" and a broadsheet with the famous "Manifesto for
an Independent Revolutionary Art!," both produced as a result of the visit by
Breton.
FINDING AIDS
The Corona Trilogy Finding Aid
El gesticulador / The Impostor Finding Aid
Rodolfo Usigli and Octavio Paz Correspondence Finding Aid
RodolfoUsigli: Theater of the New
World
The Walter Havighurst Special Collections Library