JORGE LUÍS BORGES AND SUR

José Luís Possolo de Saldanha

Architect. Professor at ISCTE-IUL and researcher at Dinâmia’CET-IUL

To cite this paper: SALDANHA, José Luís Possolo de – Jorge Luís Borges e Sur. Estudo Prévio 9. Lisboa: CEACT/UAL – Centro de Estudos de Arquitetura, Cidade e Território da Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, 2015. ISSN: 2182-4339 [Available at: www.estudoprevio.net]

Creative Commons, licence CC BY-4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Abstract

This paper focuses on the rise of literary Modernism in Argentina, upon publication of the “wall journal”, which its founder, Jorge Luís Borges, named Prisma and which the Argentinian writer – together with four of his friends, armed with brushes and buckets of paint – applied to the walls of Buenos Ayres on the eve of the 25th November 1921 (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p.100).

Prisma consisted of a big billboard with texts by Ultraist writers from Argentina and from Spain and an engraving by Norah Borges (the writer’s sister) and preceded other periodical publications which, ten years later, would lead to the publication of the journal Sur, founded, directed and sponsored by Victoria Ocampo. This paper aims to describe the journal’s wide range during the years of its publications – between 1931 and 1971 – which would go beyond its national borders and, as well as its crucial relevance in the personal and literary life of its sponsor, collaborators and friends, in particular, Jorge Luís Borges.

Keywords: Journal Sur; Argentinian Modernism; Jorge Luís Borges; Victoria Ocampo; Steppe Landscape.

In memory of Ana B.C., deceased on the morning of 17 February 2010 in the southernmost city in the planet.

Nadie ignora que el Sur empieza del otro lado de Rivadavia […] y que quién atraviesa esa calle entra en un mundo más antiguo y más firme.- “El Sur”. In: Artifícios, Ficciones (BORGES, 1974, 1944, p.256).

I. Introduction

When I was young and looking for books to read at my father’s house, I accidentally discovered “O Aleph” by Jorge Luís Borges (Buenos Ayres, 1899 – Genebra, 1986). This may well have been the year the writer passed away. Some time later, I tried to know more about the book’s author. In a typically “Borges” way, no member of my family knew about the book or how it had appeared in one of the bookshelves. In fact, they did not even know the author.

The editor of Estudo Prévio, in a number dedicated to the South, has called for papers on Jorge Luís Borges and the literary journal Sur, which Victoria Ocampo (Buenos Ayres, 1890 – Beccar, 1979) directed and financed for over 40 years. The fact that the journal lasted for so long, something uncommon in all types of journals, calls for attention in view of Ocampo’s perseverance, the quality of the journal’s collaborators and the impact it had in disseminating writers from several parts of the globe throughout South America, as well as make known several Latin American authors.

Borges was an active collaborator of Sur, in particular during the first fifteen years of the journal: he was a member of its editorial commission, literary critic, translator and also contributed with originals. Most of his best known short stories were first published in Sur.

The name of the journal evidences its origin and proudly states that the South also held literary interest. Borges stated in “América y el destino de la civilización occidental”, in the edition of April 1936 of the journal Nosotros (pp.60-61, reprinted in BORGES, 2011, p. 339-340), that the culture of the Americas was not inferior to that of Europe and that “há mais de século e meio a poesia lírica francesa vive à conta de Whitman e de Edgar Allan Poe”.

The objective of Sur was therefore bold, the more so because the southern hemisphere has less surface and less population than the northern hemisphere. It is not surprising, then, that cartography placed Europe and Asia in the top part of the planet. In the well- known text by Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) on his trip to Patagonia, the author refers to lands further than South America – a continent that:

“Apesar das suas particularidades, era considerada uma terra normal quando comparada com o desconhecido continente antártico, o Antíctone dos pitagóricos, cuja localização nos mapas medievais era marcado com a palavra NEVOEIROS. Nessa terra às avessas, a neve caía para cima, as árvores cresciam para baixo, o Sol brilhava negro e os antípodas de dezasseis dedos dançavam até ao êxtase” (CHATWIN, 2016, p. 218).

Moreover, the southern hemisphere does not have the polar star, unlike the northern hemisphere, in which there is α-Ursae Minoris (known by the Latin name Polaris), in the Ursa Minor constellation. This star, which would be closest to the North Pole on 24 March 2100, was called Scip-Steorra (sea star) in the 10thc, in Anglo-Saxon England – an expression Borges probably new and liked. The existence of such a star led to certain developments in the north, which were unavailable in the south, where there is only the Southern Cross, which has moved across the sky (in Classical Greece, the star was still visible in subtropical lands…) and towards the South Pole.

Finally, we must point out the fascination that the planes of the Pampas (prairie) had over Jorge Luís Borges, a landscape he confessed he idealized and is recurrent in his work. Portugal offers a similar landscape, though at a smaller scale, as the territory spreads beyond the river Tagus and the population decreases as the open and natural space increases.

II.

The descendants of the earliest Hispanic colonizers of Argentine became known as criollos, a status they proudly accepted and which gave them an elite position in the country. Similarly to what occurred to the descendants of the pilgrims on the Mayflower in the United States of America, they became the equivalent to the aristocracy in their countries of origin. Both sides of the family of Jorge Luís originated from criollos – though the grandmother on his father’s side, Fanny Haslam (who called her grandson Georgie), had been born in Hanley, Staffordshire (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 23). In a text published in April 1934, in issue 3 of the journal Megáfono with the title “Yo, judio” (in protest for the Jews), Jorge Luís Borges wrote that he also liked to consider himself a Jew since he had discovered the surname Acevedo (his mother’s maiden name) in a list from the 19thc of Portuguese-Jewish families in Buenos Ayres. The surname Borges is originally Portuguese, as the writer states in “Los Borges”, some of whose verses are transcribed below (El Hacedor, BORGES, 1974, p. 831):

“Nada ó muy poco sé de mis mayores
Portugueses, los Borges: vaga gente […]
Son Portugal, son la famosa gente
Que forzó las murallas del Oriente.”

Borges’s Portuguese ancestors are also mentioned in “Colónia de Sacramento” (Atlas, BORGES, 1998, p. 469), a selection of which can be read below:

“Aqui, do outro lado do mar, projectou-se a vasta sombra de Aljubarrota e desses reis que agora são pó. Aqui lutaram os Castelhanos e os Portugueses, que assumiriam depois outros nomes. Sei que durante a guerra do Brasil um dos meus antepassados sitiou esta praça.

Aqui sentimos de forma inequívoca a presença do tempo, tão rara nestas latitudes. Nas muralhas e nas casas está o passado, sabor que se agradece na América.”

Considering that, in South America, European settlement – in particular from northern Europe – is more predominant as we move south, the opposite occurs regarding the Negro and American Indian settlements, which are more significant in the tropics. Therefore, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay are countries closer to European culture. Borges personifies this, both in terms of his interests (the study of English medieval history, of Scandinavian eddas and sagas, of Shakespeare and classical authors) and of his fiction, related to magical realism celebrated by many Latin-American writers.

The fact that Borges spent some years in Europe as a young man also contributed to his link to the old continent. During the first years as an adult, Borges, along with other Argentinian writers, attempted to gain identity and literary autonomy – that was exactly one of the objectives of Sur. The notes taken in the class on “The Argentinian Writer and Tradition”, which Borges gave in Colégio Libre de Estudios Superiores on 17 December 1951, evidence that:

“Creo que los argentinos, los sudamericanos en general […] podemos manejar todos los temas europeos, manejarlos sin supersticiones, con una irreverencia que puede tener, y ya tiene, consecuencias afortunadas. […] Creo que si nos abandonamos a ese sueño voluntario que se llama la creación artística, seremos argentinos y seremos, también, buenos o tolerables escritores” (Discusión, BORGES, 1974, pp.273-274).

Borges grew up in the humble (and at the time peripheral) neighbourhood of Palermo, whose name was given due to the high number of Sicilian inhabitants. In “Palermo de Buenos Ayres” (Evaristo Carriego. In: BORGES, 1974, p. 105), the writer refers to an historical source from the early 17th century, which talks about a mule “uma mula ruça que anda na chácara de Palermo, termo desta cidade”. In 1936, Borges, in “História de la Eternidad”, wrote about a peculiar concept of immortality he called leonidad: he advocated that the lion we see in the zoo is essentially the same our grandfathers saw a hundred years ago (BORGES, 1974, p. 358). He then states that the animal that inhabits the Savanna is immortal. From this point of view, we can suggest that the 18th century mule that lived in Palermo is the same Le Corbusier drew in the outskirts of Sao Paulo when he first visited the city in 1929, a trip that led him to Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Ayres.

Fig.1- Outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1939 Le Corbusier, Carnet B4-260. (Noteworthy is the fact that the architect wrote, in pencil, in the bottom right corner the name of the Brazilian Modernist writer Oswald [de]Andrade.) – SANTOS, Cecília Rodrigues dos, et alli, 1987. p. 48.

Architecture (and geometry…) is one of Borges interests and is present in his writings. Examples of this include“A Biblioteca de Babel” (short story published in “Jardines” and later in “Ficciones”), “O Aleph”, or “Hotel Esja. Reykjavik” (Atlas, BORGES, 1998, p. 455). In the short story “O imortal” (published in “O Aleph”) he described a construction that evokes the Baroco and the heterodox in Piranesi, which Borges undoubtedly knew as he mentions the Italian architect in at at least “Sobre o Vathek de Wouldiam Beckford” (Otras Inquisiciones. In: BORGES, 1974, p. 729). In “A Casa de Astérion”, he talks about the work of the mythical and archetypal architect Daedalus.

These interests by Borges have led to the publication by Cristina Grau of “Borges y la Arquitectura”, and, in 1927, the critical comment by Rafael Cansinos-Asséns in the journal La Nueva Literatura on Fervor de Buenos Ayres (apud GRAU, 1997, p. 46):

“Siente el poeta las calles y las casas como algo humanísimo y tierno, como criaturas dotadas de alma y capaces de eternidad: los pátios de las casas son sus corazones; las tapias rosadas, como un reflejo de la tarde ligera.”

Georgie lived in a closed family environment. His parents hesitated in enrolling him in the local sate school, which he would attend for only one years before being place in a school further away and better suited to the fragile young boy. He was mostly home schooled (in fact, he would never graduate secondary school and would later also not complete the baccalauréat in Geneva), he learned to read at about four years old with the support and encouragement of his grandmother Fanny Haslam and his mother Leonor Acevedo.

“Yo creí, durante años, haberme criado en un suburbio de Buenos Ayres, un suburbio de calles aventuradas y de ocasos visibles. Lo cierto es que me crié en un jardín, detrás de una verja com lanzas, y en una biblioteca de ilimitados libros ingleses. Palermo del cuchillo andaba (me aseguran) por las esquinas […].” Foreword to Evaristo Carriego (BORGES, 1974, p.729).

His studies in the family’s library were idealized and he would apply what he experienced in his readings to the suburban scenarios of crime and violence, the achievements in the South, from the Pampa to Patagonia which would repeatedly appear in his writings, among which the short stories “El Sur” (in“Fervor de Buenos Ayres”, he published a poem with the same name), “El muerto” or “Evangelio según Marcos” (published in “Informe de Brodie”, in 1970), or the poems “La Guitarra” (printed in the first editions of “Fervor”, but eliminated in later editions), “Los llanos” and “Al horizonte de un subúrbio”, published in “Luna de enfrente”,1925 (though in later editions the first poem was also eliminated). These are the final verses of the last poem we mentioned (BORGES, 1974, p.58):

“Pampa:

Yo sé que te desgarran

Surco y callejones y el viento que te cambia.

Pampa sufrida y macha que ya estás en los cielos,

No sé si eres la muerte. Sé que estás en mi pecho.”

III.

The Borges travelled to Europe in 1914, where they stayed for some time. Borges was a teenager then. They lived in Geneva until 1919 (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 60), from where they travelled to Spain, where they stayed until 1921, though they move several times. They stayed in Barcelona and Majorca for short periods and they eventually settled in Seville for some time. In the capital of Andalusia the young writer met other writers, especially those belonging to the Ultra group, a name adopted as they had responded to the appeal the Seville-born writer Rafael Cansinos-Asséns (1882-1964) had made in the previous year to “Ultra-romantic” poets. In a letter to a friend in Geneva, Borges mentions the group’s link to German Expressionism and Italian Futurism (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 71).

When the family settled in Madrid, Jorge Luís was already in contact with the ultraistas who would meet in the city, in Café Colonial, under the presence of Cansinos-Asséns. The Argentinian attended the meetings regularly though he would also go to Café del Piombo, where a rival group, of surrealists and radicals, met under the auspices of Ramón Gómez de la Serna – born in Madrid in 1888 and who had translated Marinetti’s manifesto to Spanish in 1909 (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 75), a few month after being published in Italy. Gómez de la Serna would exile in Argentina in 1936 because of the Civil War and would die in Buenos Ayres in 1963.

In 1921, Cansinos-Asséns and his disciples started publishing the literary journal Ultra, for which Borges would contribute during the first year of the journal. His sister, Leonor Fanny (Norah) Borges (Buenos Ayres, 1901-1998), also contributes with several engravings. Therefore, when the family moved back to Palma de Majorca Jorge Luís Borges appoints himself ambassador of the movement in the islands and wrote and published a “Manifiesto del Ultra”, in the Majorcan newspaper Última Hora, on 5 January 1921.

Due to family reasons, the Borges returned to Buenos Ayres in 1921, where the literary avant-garde was not present yet. Borges therefore attempted to found a local branch of Ultra (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 77). Jorge Luís lived in Argentina with his family until 1923. At this time, he published his first book, “Fervor de Buenos Ayres”, which included poems portraying an idealized perspective of his home country:

“Esta ciudad que yo creí mi pasado

Es mi provenir, mi presente;

Los años que he vivido en Europa son ilusorios,

Yo estaba simepre (y estaré) en Buenos Aires.”

Versos finais de “Arrabal”

As the family returned to Buenos Ayres, in 1921, Borges focused on editorial activities – usually short-lived. That same year he announces the beginning of vanguardia with a «wall journal» he named Prisma, which basically consisted of a huge billboard with printed Ultraist poems and Ultra’s aesthetic principles. The project involved Argentinian and Spanish artists, among which Guillermo de Torre, who had immigrated to Argentina to marry Norah Borges. The latter participated in issue number one of the journal with an engraving. Thus, on 25 November 1921, in the middle of the night, Jorge Luís, together with four friends, armed with brushes and buckets of glue, glued the journal Prisma in the walls of Buenos Ayres. The Argentinian avant-garde was born (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 100).

Fig.2 – Engraving by Norah Borges for the original cover of Fervor de Buenos Ayres, 1923. -GRAU, Cristina, 1997. P. 36.

In the first week of April 1922, the second issue would be glued to the walls of the capital and, on a trip, Borges and his companions would take the good news to Rosario (Santa Fé). By that time, it was decided that Prisma would be replaced by a more permanent and substantial publication, which Borges and his friends gave the avant-garde name of Proa (Bow). In early August 1922, the first issue would be published and would include texts by several authors, including one by Cansinos-Asséns, founder of Ultra (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p.184), one by Norah Lange (the only woman among the Argentinian ultraísts), one by Borges, and others by other writers. The cover had a different engraving by Norah Borges. A second and third numbers were published in December 1922 and July 1923, consisting of a single page folded in three. In 1923, the writer’s family went to Europe again. They stayed in Portugal for about two months, presumably in Lisbon (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 117), and returned to Argentina the following year where they remain.

At the end of August 1924, Proa took on anew appearance – it was bound and had about seventy printed pages. Issue 6 of the journal, published in January 1925, included a review of Joyce’s Ulysses by Borges, in which the Argentinian author proudly stated being the first Hispanic to understand the book by the Irish novelist. That issue of Proa included the last passage of Ulysses, part of Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy, the first translator into Spanish – by Borges – of Joyce’s book (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 129).

Borges collaborated with other Argentinian journals and newspaper, among which the literary journal Destiempo, published by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares (who financed it…). The journal would only be published three times, in 1936 and 1937. The second issue included a fable by Franz Kafka, one of the first translations of a writer still rather unknown in the Hispanic world but whose work Borges had recently discovered (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 223).

Borges had met Bioy Casares in 1932, at a lunch in Victoria Ocampo’s house (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 217). Bioy’s (Buenos Ayres, 1914-1999) family was one of the richest in Argentina, owner of large rural properties and, in 1935 was one of the 37

readers who had bought the original edition of “História Universal da Infâmia”. In the Winter of that year, their friendship would be reinforced by holidays spent together at “Rincón Viejo”, a resort belonging to Adolfo. The latter recalls, in an interview given to Edwin Williamson em 1994 (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 218) , that those holidays had influenced Borges’s relation with the countryside and its practices. On his attempt to ride a horse, he had slipped off his saddle and fallen… In any case, his delight with the vastness of Argentinian fields was true and proven by his enthusiasm when he was in Uruguay in a resort near the border with Brazil and saw a large group of men riding. “Meu Deus! Trezentos gaúchos!” (SORRENTINO, apud WILLIAMSON, 2004, p.210). These visits would feed his literary work:

“No hay que galopar cuando uno se está acercando a las casas y […] nadie sale a andar a caballo sino para cumplir con una tarea.”

“Evangelio segun Marcos” (BORGES, 1974, p.1068-1072)

In January 1940, Bioy would get married to Silvina Inocencia Ocampo (Buenos Ayres, 1903–1993), in a private ceremony in the church of Las Flores, near the resort. Victoria’s sister and also a text contributor to Destiempo, Silvina had studied painting in Paris with Fernand Léger and Giorgio de Chirico, where she had met Italo Calvino and later Simone de Beauvoir (to whom she was introduced by Victoria). The couple’s connection to Sur is also visible in the review on “O Jardim dos Caminhos que se Bifurcam”, which Adolfo would write for number 92, of May 1942.

Fig.3 – “An Artist’s Notes”. Drawings by Silvina Ocampo. Folio of the Journal Martin Fierro, June-July 1927. -GRAU, Cristina, 1997. P. 48.

IV.

The launching of the first issue of Sur, in January 1931, was celebrated with a party in the fashionable neighbourhood of Recoleta, a party organized by the journal’s owner and sponsor, Victoria Ocampo, in her new modernist house (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 184). Her sense of aesthetics led to a collaboration with Walter Gropius in the first number of a journal whose collaborators included Thomas Mann, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Henry Miller and Octavio Paz.

Ocampo belonged to one of the oldest and richest families in Argentina. When Filippo Tommaso Marinetti visited Argentina for the meeting the Pen Club had organized in Buenos Ayres between 5 and 15 September 1936, he said she was “the richest and most beautiful woman in Buenos Ayres”, who he nevertheless criticized because of her “Bolshevik snobbery ” (VÁZQUEZ, 1991, pp. 148-149). Her background allowed her to have an impressive artistic network which included, among others, André Malraux (who would publish in Sur), Aldous Huxley, Jacques Lacan, Sergéi Eisenstein, Le Corbusier, Nehru, Igor Stravinski – Albert Camus and Graham Greene, both of whom Victoria would invite to visit Argentina. On the other hand, her text, De Francesca a Beatrice had just been published in the acclaimed Revista de Occidente founded in Madrid the previous year by José Ortega y Gasset (who had become Victoria’s friend on a visit to Argentina in 1916).

Jorge Luís Borges’s talent, as well as the contacts he had in European literary circles (in particular in the Spanish avant-garde) led him to being invited to be part of Sur’s editorial commission. In 1933, Victoria Ocampo would also found Editorial Sur, a publishing company aimed at providing more opportunities for young writers and for publishing translated texts. It published several books by Borges, as well as works by André Gide and Virginia Woolf (in 1936 Borges translated “Pershepone” and “A room of my own”, respectively), Dylan Thomas, Camus, Greene, Huxley and D. H. Lawrence (the first translator into Spanish of the author’s work was Leonor Acevedo, Borges’s mother).

Fig.4- Sur’s editorial commission at the time the journal was launched in Silvina Ocampo’s house (standing by Gómez de la Serna, who has a hand in his pocket). Borges is the second on the left and his sister Norah is the second woman on the left (sitting down). Oliveiro Girondo is lying on the floor holding a cigar. – WILLIAMSON, Edwin. Picture 13.

The editorial commission also included Oliverio Girondo (Buenos Ayres, 1891-1967), a wealthy Argentinian poet who had contacts in the Southern European literary circle, having met Tommaso Marinetti, Gómez de la Serna and Rafael Cansinos-Asséns and lived in Paris for a long time. Girondo had known of Jorge Luís Borges in Paris, when he had read a copy of “Fervor de Buenos Ayres”, which had given him hope of a cultural avant-garde in Argentina. However, Buenos Ayres would be the arena for the fight for Norah Lange (Buenos Ayres, 1905-1972) between the two men Ayres. Norah was the woman and writer Borges most longed for in his life.

In his youth, Jorge Luís had been in touch with more exuberant literary modes. At Café Colonial in Madrid, Borges, together with Guillermo de Torre (who would later marry Norah Borges) and other five artists, had even written a letter to Tristan Tzara in which they offered him “their joyful accession to Dada”, and a “collective poem” entitled “Esquisse critique”, they had written (Borges, 2001, pp. 44-45) in the semi-automatic Dada style, and sent from the loud café (“deste estridente café”). A few years later, already in Argentina, he formed a group of intellectual young men to support the re- election of Hipólito Yrigoyen in the Radical Party (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 15). However, as time went by, Borges returned to a more contained literary mode, which contrasted with Girondo’s exuberance and higher literary prestige (and bravado…). Girondo had joined the Surrealist group of Gómez de la Serna, whereas Borges had sided with the ultraísts of Cansinos-Asséns. Since the two groups had become antagonistic, Girondo and Borges also went different ways, both intelecctually and personally.

Borges published “Discusión” in 1932, the same year Oliverio Girondo published “Espantapájaros” (espantalhos) – a mix of prose poems and semi-narrative texts. Thinking he would sell the five thousand copies, he designed a book promotion that became part of Buenos Ayres literary history:

“He rented a shop on the fashionable calle Florida, engaged several pretty girls as sales assistants, and piled up copies of Espantapájaros in the window. He then got a friend to make a huge papier-maché effigy of a scarecrow, which he dressed up in a top hat, monocle and pipe. This was meant to represent the “Academician”, that is to say, the embodiment of everything Girondo believed to be pedantic and moribund in Argentine culture. He then hired from a funeral parlor an open carriage drawn by six horses and manned by coachmen dressed in the style of the French Revolution. The Academician was mounted on this funeral cortege and driven around the streets of the city center for an entire fortnight. Girondo’s book was sold out within a month” (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p. 189).

Girondo accompanied Pablo Neruda during his stay in Buenos Ayres as consul for the Chilean Embassy on August 28, 1933. During that period, a party became famous when Neruda and Girondo stole a milk cart and Norah Lange climbed onto the traffic warden’s base in Avenue Leandro N. Alem – one of the busiest streets in Buenos Ayres – and had traffic stop to give way to the stolen cart, which Oliverio rode as Neruda said one of his most famous poems: “Sucede que me canso de ser hombre…” (de MIGUEL, apud WILLIAMSON, 2004, p.189).

The trio’s excitement rose as Frederico Garcia Lorca arrived to Argentina, where he lived from October 1933 to April 1934. During this period, the Spanish poet was acclaimed everywhere, including in the launching of the novella “45 días y 30 marineros” by Norah Lange, organized by Girondo. In a famous group photo you can see the writer, surrounded by “marineros”. Llorca does not appear in the most famous photo of the event, in which some of the 30 marineros are also missing… For a young female author, single and high class, the title of the novella alone was already rather bold.

Fig.5 – Launching of “45 dias y 30 marineros”. Frederico García Lorca, dark skinned, in the centre of the photo with Pablo Neruda on his left. Borges did not attend. He was perhaps not invited… – http://elblogdelpetitcolon.com.ar/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/girondo.neruda-lorca.jpg. Accessed on 16.04.2016.

Fig.6 –

Launching of “45 dias y 30 marineros”. Buenos Ayres, November 1933. (Oliverio Girondo in the centre, with a beard and a tie. Pablo Neruda is the second on the left, standing in the first row, his left arm on the shoulder of another “marinero”. Surely, Borges did not attend..) – WILLIAMSON, Edwin. Picture 14

V. Conclusions

As expected, Oliverio Girondo would triumph over the shy Borges. For several years, he had a romantic relationship with Norah Lange, which would lead to marriage on July 16, 1943. Lange died from a stroke on August, 6, 1972.

The Bioy would remain Borges’s best friends – and occasionally collaborate with him. Victoria Ocampo became the first woman member of the Academia Argentina de Letras, voted by her peers in June 1977.

Lorca’s disappearance, probably murdered at the hands of the nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, remains unexplained.

In September 1985, Jorge Luís Borges was diagnosed with cancer. He refused chemotherapy and tried to move on with his life. He secretly decided to die abroad in fear his death would be morbidly exploited by his country’s media. On November 28, he left for Geneva, the city he had chosen to die in. He passed away on 14 June 1986.

Girondo was run over by a car outside a cinema in 1961. The accident affected him physically and mentally. He died on 24 January 1967. In a scenario that evokes the short story “Os teólogos”, poets Olga Orozco and Lila Mora y Araujo described, in a interview in 1994 (WILLIAMSON, 2004, p.368), the way Jorge Luís Borges attended Oliverio’s funeral – holding his mother’s arm, he kissed Oliverio on the forehead and left without saying a word to anybody.

VI. Borges Publications in Sur

Borges’s relation with the journal Sur is made evident in the publication of several opinion articles, essays and fiction texts, among which “Notícia de los kenningar”, in Sur 6, Fall of 1932, pp. 202-8 (reprinted as “As kenningar” in História da Eternidade, 1936) and “El escritor argentino y la tradición”, in Sur 232, Jan-Feb 1955 (reprinted in 1957 in Discusión). He also published many of his short stories in the journal, which would then be collected under the title Borges en Sur.

“Los laberintos policiales y Chesterton”, Sur 10, July 1935.

“A Biblioteca Total”, Sur 59, August 1939.

“Ensayo de Imparcialidad”, Sur 61, autumn 1939.

“1941”, Sur 87, December 1941.

“Agradecimiento a la demonstración oferecida por la Socieda Argentina de Escritores”, Sur 129, julho de 1945. “Palabras pronunciadas por Jorge Luís Borges pronunciadas en la comida que le ofrecierob los escritores”, Sur 142, August 1946.

“L’Illusion Comique”, Sur 237, November-December 1955.

“Una efusión de Martínez Estrada”, Sur 242, September-October 1956.

The following short stories were reprinted by Editorial Sur in O Jardim dos Caminhos que se Bifurcam, 1941, and in Ficções,1944:

“Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote”, Sur 56, May 1939.

“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, Sur 68, May 1940.

“Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain”, Sur 79, April 1941.

In Ficções (1944) the following were reprinted:

“La Muerte y la Brújula”, Sur 92, May 1942.

“El milagro secreto”, Sur 101, February 1943.

“Tema del heróe”, Sur 112, Februrary 1944.

“Trés versiones de Judas”, Sur 112, August 1944.

The short stories reprinted in O Aleph , 1949, were:

“El muerto”, Sur 145, November 1946.

“La busca de Averroes”, Sur 152, June 1947.

“Emma Zunz”, Sur 167, September 1948.

“La escritura del Dios”, Sur 172, February 1949.

“Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva”, Sur 175, May 1949.

Finally, the short story “La secta del Fénix”, published in issue 145 in November 1946 de Sur, was reprinted in Discusión (1957).

Note: The biography Borges. A Life, by Edwin Williamson (2004), was crucial to the writing of this paper.

Bibliography

BORGES, Jorge Luís – Obras Completas, 1923 – 1972. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1974. ISBN-10: 950-04-0217-3.

BORGES, Jorge Luís – O Aleph. Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1976.

BORGES, Jorge Luís – Obras Completas, Vol. III, 1975 – 1985. Lisboa: Editorial Teorema, 1998. ISBN-10: 972-695-353-7. Edição original na língua espanhola: 1989.

BORGES, Jorge Luís – Obras Completas, Vol. IV, 1975 – 1988. Lisboa: Editorial Teorema, 1999. ISBN-10: 972-695-321-9. Edição original na língua espanhola: 1989.

BORGES, Jorge Luís. Borges en Sur, 1931 – 1980. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 2004. ISBN-10: 950-041-978-5. Edição original: 1999.

BORGES, Jorge Luís – Textos Recobrados, 1931-1955. Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2011. ISBN-10: 978-84-9989-237-5. Edição original: 2001.

CHATWIN, Bruce – Na Patagónia. Lisboa: Quetzal, 2016. 11ª Edição. ISBN-12: 978-972-564-772-1. Edição original na língua inglesa: 1977.

GRAU, Cristina – Borges y la Arquitetura. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, S.A, Ensayos Arte, 1997. ISBN-10: 84-376-0817-1. Edição original na língua espanhola: 1989.

MIGUEL, Maria Esther de – Norah Lange. Barcelona: Planeta, 1991. ISBN-10: 950-742-028-2.

SANTOS, Cecília Rodrigues dos, et alli. Le Corbusier e o Brasil. São Paulo: Tessela/Projeto, 1987.

SORRENTINO, Fernando – Siete conversaciones con Jorge Luís Borges. Buenos Aires: Casa Pardo, 1973.

VÁZQUEZ, Maria Esther – Victoria Ocampo. Barcelona: Planeta, 1991. ISBN-10: 950-742-056-8.

WILLIAMSON, Edwin – Borges: A Life. London: Penguin Books, 2004. ISBN-10: 0-14-303556-8.