The subject of this study is the experience of time between men of letters from Brazil and Argentina in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The historical documentation that was investigated were two journals with strong resonance among those lettered communities in that time, the Revista Brazileira (1895-1899) and in the argentine case the journal La Biblioteca (1896-1898), as well as two authors particularly important as Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909) and José María Ramos Mejía (1842-1914). The approach prioritized the choice of evidences and symptoms that somehow demonstrate the relationship taken by those men of letters with temporality. The leading hypothesis is that, as opposed to what was considered from the historiography of the two countries, the fin de siècle experience brought with it distinct modalities of time that, far from merely intensify an alleged progressive time of modernity, allowed even his moderation and the taking of increasingly multiple forms.