““I have a drop of Jewish blood, like everyone else.” The phrases of the central figure of Argentine literature continue to sow a constellation of interpretations. He Borges Festivalwhich will begin this Monday and will continue until Saturday the 8th with free and open access and prior registration, is a literary meeting in a hybrid format that aims to expand the readings about the author of Universal history of infamy. The fourth edition, which will be held for the first time in the French Alliance of Buenos Aires (Córdoba 946), will have four international guests: Borja Bagunyà, professor at the University of Barcelona; Lisa Block de Behar, Uruguayan linguist; Edward BizubSwiss-American academic and author of Borges in Dédale, a literary biography that focuses on the permanent tension between Buenos Aires and Geneva; and the Czech academic Daniel Nemravathe only in-person conference in which he will address the connection between Borges and Kafka.
The in-person programming will also include Argentine writers. Gabriela Saidón will give a conference titled “Borges, the Jew”; Alejandro Vaccaro, Leonardo Pitlevnik and Patricio Zunini They will talk about the aspects not yet explored around Borges; Alejandra Kamiya He will analyze the story “El Sur” with his particular perspective and share literary tools; Ines Estevez, actress, musician and writer, will talk about her experience with Borges and recite some of her favorite poems; The writers Sonia Budassi, Yamila Begné and Olivia Gallo will debate how Borges is read today. It’s not bad to close the festival at the Recoleta Cemetery, although it may sound strange or creepy. Juan Baroffio will be in charge of the walk “The Ghosts of Borges”, a tour of the cemetery where many of the people who played a key role in the work and life of the author of The Aleph.
The writer Vivian Dragnaorganizer of the Borges Festival together with the editor and cultural manager Marisol Alonsoemphasizes that they want this meeting to be “a space for exchange, a place where Borges as host opens the doors for us to talk, reflect and enjoy the habit of reading.”. Alonso confirms that supporting a free cultural project is “an enormous effort.” “The final purpose is for people to get closer to reading, find new perspectives and be able to build spaces for dialogue that give them tools to develop their own critical thinking, so necessary in the face of the overwhelming reality we face.”
“We read and reread Borges to unlearn what we read in him,” says Yamila Begné, author of the novels Cupla, The February Machine and These stones. “With each new reading, the figurations fall, the preconceptions that surround Borges’ work, whether of any nature, almost mythical or academic, fall more and more. That is why with each reading we add we strengthen a personal approach to his stories, his essays, his poems,” analyzes the writer who was born in Buenos Aires, in 1983. What interests her most about these new readings is the ability to continue teaching what that was not even proposed. “It shows us structures and brings us closer to the way in which fiction can also think.”
Olivia Gallo (Buenos Aires, 1995) postulates that Borges “continues to be the central figure of Argentine literature.” “The preconception we have about his work as something superior and unquestionable is very present when we read one of his books. But I think it is possible to read it in another way, see beyond its narrative symbols and delve into the intimacy of its stories, discover in them not only the wonderful (I am referring to both the fantastic elements and the dazzling that its prose generates) but also the simple; In his texts we can follow the trace of his obsessions, distinguish ‘what he is in love with’, in the words of (Witold) Gombrowicz. Reading from this perspective allows us to unravel the idea that he is a difficult or elevated author; “He makes it more accessible and fun,” explains the author of the storybook. Girls don’t cry and the novel It’s not a vacation.
Sonia Budassi (Bahía Blanca, 1978) says that Borges seems to be an inexhaustible source of readings. “His interpretations continue to serve different disciplines and areas of knowledge and his work is updated with each reading.”. Its quality as a classic is based on that, on its timelessness and on the power to generate more texts,” ponders the author of the book of short stories. Pets, with which he won the first prize from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2021. “The most interesting stories are those that end up being metaliterary,” says Budassi; those that are theoretical while telling us a story. Despite some involuntary consequences of canonization, and his tendency to immobilize him, Borges was a subversive, and every phrase becomes more complex under his sieve. He subverted the value of that sentence of the village and the world, which left us aspiring literary workers confused.”
Gabriela Saidon will review Borges’ relationship with Judaisma bond that was reinforced by the support of the author of Fictions to the State of Israel and in his readings of philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza. Although this relationship has been systematically explored in recent years, the writer clarifies that “it is a niche production, as it is carried out by intellectuals and academics with, at least, Jewish surnames,” the author of the novel specifies. Burned letters. “That is not a minor fact if we think about the Judaism that Borges is interested in and that runs like an underground stream through much of his oral and written production, fiction and non-fiction, stories, essays and poems: the religious, linked with the Torah and the Kabbalah, and the one who takes the figure of the wandering, marginal, persecuted, but also vengeful Jew. “Borges campaigned against anti-Semitism and Nazism, especially during the 1940s and 1950s, and was a fervent defender of the State of Israel.”, argues Saidon and recalls the text “I, Jew”, from 1934, where he refers to what he called his “desire for Jewishness”, which is based on a family genealogy possible through the mother through the surname Acevedo (never proven) and expands in his literature. Borges also said: “I have a drop of Jewish blood, like everyone else.”
When Borges deals with the Jewish question in stories such as “Emma Zunz”, “Death and the Compass”, “Guayaquil”, “The Unworthy” or “The Dead”, his protagonists (Jews) “are murderers, traitors, informers: victims who become victimizers and who act, in some cases, motivated by revenge,” says Saidon and observes that these texts can be read as theories of fiction. “Fiction, Borges seems to say, is a Jewish invention.”
*The complete program can be consulted at www.festivalborges.com.ar
