Borges A Life

by Williamson, Edwin

• ISBN13: 9780670885794
• ISBN10: 0670885797
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-08-03
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

This major new biography of Jorge Luis Borges reveals the human side of one of the key figures in twentieth-century culture. It shows Borges in love and despair, Borges's political passions, Borges against Peron. Drawing on fascinating new sources, the book will transform conventional views of this enigmatic genius.

Author Biography

Edwin Williamson is the King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Exeter College.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
The Sword and the Dagger (1899-1921)	p. 1
Family and Nation	p. 3
Mother and Father	p. 17
Childhood (1899-1914)	p. 32
Geneva (1914-1919)	p. 55
Spain (1919-1921)	p. 68
A Poet in Love (1921-1934)	p. 91
Buenos Aires (1921-1923)	p. 93
Second Visit to Europe (1923-1924)	p. 115
Adventures in the Avant-Garde (1925)	p. 130
The Aleph (1926)	p. 139
Rejection (1926-1927)	p. 149
Revenge and Defeat (1927-1930)	p. 160
Experiments in Fiction (1930-1932)	p. 175
The Rivals (1933-1934)	p. 191
A Season in Hell (1934-1944)	p. 205
Failure (1934-1935)	p. 207
Isolation (1936-1937)	p. 217
The Death of Father (1938-1939)	p. 230
The Example of Dante (1939-1940)	p. 240
The Garden of Forking Paths (1940-1944)	p. 256
Of Hell and Heaven (1944-1969)	p. 273
The "New Beatrice" (1944-1946)	p. 275
Humiliation and Anguish (1946-1947)	p. 291
False Hopes (1947-1950)	p. 299
Borges Against Peron (1950-1955)	p. 311
La Revolucion Libertadora (1955-1959)	p. 326
The Rule of Mother (1958-1963)	p. 342
Deconstructions (1963-1967)	p. 355
Marriage (1967-1968)	p. 369
Love Regained (1969-1986)	p. 383
Iceland (1969-1971)	p. 385
Between Sunset and Dawn (1971-1975)	p. 403
A New Dawn in Iceland (1975-1976)	p. 416
Blue Tigers (1976-1979)	p. 428
The Music of Japan (1979-1981)	p. 441
Deconstructing the Nation (1980-1983)	p. 452
The Weaver of Dreams (1984-1985)	p. 468
Creating an End (1985-1986)	p. 481
Epilogue	p. 490
Glossary of Argentine Terms	p. 493
Notes	p. 495
Bibliography	p. 537
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

PART ONE The Sword and the Dagger (1899?1921) Chapter 1 Family and Nation The ancestors of Jorge Luis Borges were among the first Europeans to arrive in America. Explorers, conquistadors, founders of cities, and rulers of provinces, they were builders of the vast empire that Spain was to establish in the New World. Gonzalo Martel de la Puente followed Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, Domingo Martinez de Irala won Paraguay for the Spanish Crown, Jeronimo de Cabrera founded the city of Cordoba in Tucuman, while Juan de Garay secured the settlement of the remote township of Buenos Aires. However, Borges himself was indifferent to these connections: ?The Iralas, the Garays, the Cabreras and all those other Spanish conquistadors who founded cities and nations, I have never dreamed about them....I am quite ignorant about their lives. They were people of very little intelligence?Spanish soldiers, and from the Spain of those times!?1The ancestors Borges dreamed about were the men who had broken with Spain and had fought to create the Argentine nation. On his mother?s side, Francisco de Laprida was president of the congress that declared the independence of the ?United Provinces of South America.? General Miguel Estanislao Soler commanded a division in the patriot army that the great Argentine liberator, San Martin, led across the Andes to free Chile and then Peru from the Spanish yoke. On his father?s side, Juan Crisostomo Lafinur was one of the first poets of Argentina and a friend of Manuel Belgrano, a founding father of the nation. Among Borges?s papers there survives a postcard depicting Lafinur (proudly identified with a cross by the young Jorge Luis) standing in the foreground of the picture as General San Martin is being received by the National Assembly of the new republic.2The most romantic of all Borges?s ancestors was undoubtedly Isidoro Suarez, a great-grandfather on his mother?s side. At the age of twenty-four, Suarez led the cavalry charge that turned the tide of battle at Junin, the second-last engagement in the liberation of South America. The battle took place on August 6, 1824, high up in the Andes of Peru, and the lofty silence of the snowcapped peaks was broken only by the clash of lance and sword, for no guns were used in combat by either army, and the patriots defeated the Spaniards in little under an hour. Suarez?s heroism won the praise of Simon Bolivar himself, who declared that ?when history describes the glorious Battle of Junin...it will be attributed to the bravery of this young officer.?3 And it was Bolivar who promoted Suarez to the rank of colonel after the young officer again distinguished himself at Ayacucho, the battle that finally put paid to the rule of Spain in America. Borges conceived of the War of Independence as a ?rupture in the continuity of the bloodline,? a ?rebellion of sons against their fathers.?4 His family, after all, took great pride in being criollos, people of pure Spanish descent born in America, but the meaning of independence, in Borges?s view, lay in the fact that the criollos had ?resolved to be Spaniards no longer:? they had made ?an act of faith? in the possibility of creating a national identity distinct from that of Spain, and it followed that if the Argentines did not persevere in the struggle to forge this new identity, ?a good many of us? would ?run the risk of reverting to being Spanish, which would be a way of denying the whole of Argentine history.?5 The movement toward independence in the area now comprising modern Argentina was spearheaded by Buenos Aires. An important reason for the city?s historic role is to be found in the strategic position it occupies on the estuary of a mighty river system that reaches right up into the heart of South America. This huge estuary was first discovered by Spanish explorers searching for a westward passage to Japan. In 1536 the first se