Jorge Luis Borges: Visionary, Writer, Unique
People of Buenos Aires, the largest city in Argentina, like to call their city the “Paris of South America”. It exhibits French architecture, French and Italian food, French pronunciation of Spanish, and the same fading glory of the once French empire. Buenos Aires - Good Air - is as diverse as it’s big. It has several distinct “barrios” - neighborhoods - ranging from working class, rough “La Boca”, where it’s dangerous at night for outsiders; to exclusive, gated community “Recoleta”, where the wealthy elite have private security guards to keep out the rest of Argentina.
Barrio La Boca: colorful, but risky to be out after dark
Barrio Recoleta: Affluent & gated
Even the gates of Recoleta shout "money!"
"Evita" Duarte is buried in the Recoleta cemetery
Standing in front of Evita's crypt; some Argentine women jumped into the photo
Everywhere you go the people are sustained on a red meat diet, with pasta and pizza being the “healthy” alternative. All parts of the cow are eaten. Even though Buenos Aires is located on the coast, seafood is almost nonexistent. Passionate Tango infuses the soul and stimulates dreams of love, struggle, triumph, failure, and more love.
Passionate Tango dancers
While in Buenos Aires, I had dreams of dancing the Tango
This was the city were Jorge Luis Borges wondered aimlessly absorbing vibrations and images that produced a new literature. His work was original. He liked to say, “I’m not really a writer. I’m a careful, voracious, thinking reader. I interpret what I read.” His themes covered from describing the infinite, the soul, the Supreme Spiritual Being to everyday people and places of Buenos Aires. He wrote succinct, erudite book reviews of books never written, for readers too busy to read a tome of five hundred pages. He speculated, “Well that book should have been penned on this important topic of human existence.”
Painting of Jorge Luis Borges as an elder
I followed Borges’s footprints throughout Buenos Aires. I started at the barrio of “Palerma” where a placard announces the home where he was born and lived his early childhood. It’s now an insurance office and not open to the public. I felt a presence there, but it may have just been an allergic reaction to the polluted air of the big city. I stopped at his favorite place to have coffee, Cafe Tortoni. He wrote drafts of short stories while sipping a hot expresso with milk. There was a long line standing in the rain waiting to get in, as if it were the exclusive “Studio 54” disco where only the beautiful or rich could enter. Not being either, I begged (and tipped) the doorman to let me in only to take some photos of the elegant interior. His initial reaction was, “No!”, until he saw the cash which brought a smile to his long face as he discreetly pocketed the money and opened the door. I could hear the not so “beautiful people”, but no doubt rich, grumble and hiss. So I apologized as I entered and said, “I’m only taking a picture or two”, and showed my camera. Borges was there! It was only a bust of his head, though it was an exact likeness.
Inside the elegant Cafe Tortoni
Bust of Borges in the Cafe
Borges looking at the people enjoying his favorite Cafe
My next destination was “Libreria de Avila”, one of Borges’s favorite bookstores where he gave frequent readings of new work. The seventy year old owner told me he met Borges and knew him, but was not an intimate acquaintance. He said Borges was almost blind and led around by an associate and recited passages of short stories from memory. There would always be a large turnout and “plenty of books were sold. He was very good for business.” Porteños, as the people of Buenos Aires are called, are book readers and the city is filled with bookstores, some selling new books, others used, and a few offer for sale antiquarian books. There are no deals for the really old volumes. They are priced for those with money. I did find an old, tattered, sheets missing, foxed and discolored pages, torn front cover paperback of “Las Ficciones” (The Fictions) with an alleged Borges’s handwritten signature. I was tempted; until I saw the price and remembered that I already have two copies, one in English, the other in Spanish. I passed. I did breath in the same stale book infused air that Borges experienced while in the Avila bookstore. I write, therefore I think (or is it the other way around?).
Inside the Avila bookstore
Even Evita went to the Libreria de Avila
I walked over to the barrio of “San Telmo”, where I stayed at an overpriced hostel. San Telmo is full of antique stores and tall, dark buildings made to simulate a colonial French style. The buildings are covered with graffiti and create an atmosphere of faded, tarnished glory of a bygone era. I visited the former “National Library” where Borges worked and was the director. It is now the “Museum of Music”. I asked the security guard if I could see the office where Borges worked. He shouted, “No!”, and shut the door. Borges’s spirit still lingers there. I think I saw his ghost wondering in the upper floor, book in hand, oblivious that this Californian was eager to meet him and absorb his aura. I went and had dinner instead.
One of many antique stores found in San Telmo
French architecture, but too much graffiti
There is an atmosphere of faded glory in San Telmo
Former National Library where the door was shut in my face
I read about a museum with Borges’s name housed in the plush “Galeria Pacifico” mall. I had to go. Next to Gucci, Cartier, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Versace and other high end stores was the “Centro Cultural Borges”. What would Borges say of having a tribute to him housed next to these ostentatious brands? “Pretentious.” The museum framed quotes from Borges’s books under photos of sites in Buenos Aires. There were photos of Borges at different stages of his life, of his parents, wife and favorite books. He loved to read: Joseph Conrad, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Cervantes, Kafka, Spinoza, Chuang Tzu, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virgilio. There are rotating exhibits of art work by different artists. Borges’s spirit or essence were no where to be found. Maybe he never lived?
The high end Galeria Pacifico mall
Newspaper depictions of Borges at three stages of his life
Borges as a young man with his mother, father, and sister
Some of Borges's favorite books
One of the current works of art in the gallery,
entitled: Infinite Silence, it speaks to the dark
period in Argentina's history when dictators ruled
and "disappeared" people
Borges was a recluse, who spent much of his life alone, reading and writing in his extensive personal library. That is the life of a reader/writer. It’s a profession that is practiced in solitary. His life’s work influenced many of the great Latin American writers: Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the profound Mario Llosa Vargas, the spirited Chilean turned Californian Isabel Allende, Mexico’s original Juan Rulfo and many others. He has inspired me to read great literature and write. Borges did exist!
I finally found some decent seafood, a smoked salmon sandwich, yummy!
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